Run of the game

In just another week, I’m releasing the core rules for Witches of the Wenderweald. As June 30 draws closer, I’ve had some folks ask what this feels like at the table — how does a session play out?

Your game begins in Gideon’s Reach. It’s a muddy, earthwork fortress surrounded by palisades and haunted swamps.

Small though it is, it’s the largest town in the Wenderweald by a damn sight — home to zealots, smugglers, and frightened villagers. And the Witch Hunter general is convinced everyone is a witch (or at least knows one).

You’re stuck somewhere between the witches and the crusaders hunting them. War, pogroms, and fear leave folks with little recourse or salvation when monsters and panic rear their ugly heads.

Wenderfolk aren’t heroic. They were born to die defending this great bitter land.

There is violence and danger out there beyond the walls of Gideon’s Reach.

Maybe all the children in Brasshill have gone missing. Maybe a Stag Knight patrol never returned. Maybe trappers found more Balačko tracks near the old silver mine.

Something is wrong beyond the walls of The Reach, and there’s no one else to turn to in these dark days except for you.

Gather your supplies and barter for what you’ll need out there.

A peat shovel for the mud. A bog pole for plumbing the muck.

A few days of rations, that’s all you can afford. You’ll need your silver to buy a charm to ward off the witch. Whatever’s left, keep for bribing the gatehouse guards.

Choose a path overland and slip past the Witch Hunter’s patrols. You can keep to the road, but Stag Knights patrol it this time of year.

So you turn to the woods and the marsh.

The weather turns. Fog settles over the bogs. Animals begin following at a distance. Strange runes appear carved into trees. The deeper you travel, the more Doom gathers.

The Wenderweald isn’t your home. It belongs to the monster and those made monstrous by it. They leave signs of their passing and eating.

Broken branches. Half-eaten carcasses. Corpses dressed like deer to appease things best not named under the moonlight.

Strange, infectious blooms grow where nothing should.

As you carve deeper into the wilderness, it reveals what you came to find. A trail of clues slowly emerges. Each discovery pushes you closer to your quarry.

You left Gideon’s reach to find something: a mutant beast or wandering witch. A cult terrorizing the border bivouacs, maybe, or something far…older.

You might never encounter the monsters out here, but they are always near and always watching.

The Wenderweald is patient, but eventually something finds you.

A pack of Not-Deer tracking you emerges from the tree line. That horde of likho — just a rumor — is surging toward you. The rusalka sings from the black, still waters of the wide-reaching marshland.

There’s nothing for it — you’re in the fight now.

Combat is fast, violent, and often fatal. Armor helps, but fleeing is safer — if you can. Drawing blades (rolling dice) risks broken bones, severed limbs, and worse.

When you’re forced to fight the Wenderweald, you’re not asking “can I win” as much as “what will winning cost me?”

Worse for someone, anyway. To be a witch is to bend the Wenderweald to your whim.

You might command roots to burst up from the earth like ophidian tendrils. Call a stampede of spectral stags. Awaken a dead tree and bind it to your service. Boil the blood in your enemies’ veins.

But every hex demands a price. It drains your spirit. It corrupts your flesh and soul. The witch who draws too much power becomes something less human and something more dangerous.

The witch is a living contagion in the Wenderweald, and their magic can spread to others like a pox.

If you survive your trek out there, you can return to Gideon’s Reach. Wounded. Exhausted. Changed — forever.

The witchery and treasure you brought back will fetch a fair price from the smugglers and secret witches back home. Trade them for silver, for rumors, or for witchery.

Seek the physikar to treat your injuries. Pray for absolution in the temple. Wait for the corruption in your flesh to die off, or else consume you entirely.

Sooner or later, though, the Wenderweald will call you back.

The woods remember you. The monsters haunt your dreams. The witches watch you while you sleep.

And the ruins of the Sun Kings are still out there, waiting to be found.

I’m putting in the final touches now.

At its heart, Witches of the Wenderweald is a game about leaving safety behind. You follow clues into a hostile wilderness. You discover something terrible. You decide what you’re willing to sacrifice to survive it. Then you come home carrying the consequences.

Mark your calendars: June 30.

See you soon…

—Odinson