Thoughts on Mythic Bastionland

Mythic Bastionland—The Game that Broke My Players

Mythic Bastionland is among the most interesting and evocative roleplaying games I have ever had the pleasure of running. It is a unique achievement in creating a game system that so perfectly encapsulates a specific genre or theme (Arthurian legend). For that reason, I love it, and cannot imagine running it to introduce new players to TTRPGs. Let me explain...

Let's Talk about Magical Bullshit

Wait, Mike, this game is about knights. They can't really cast spells. At best they get weird powers. What are you on about? Stay with me here.

For me, magic in TTRPGs is a difficult subject. I love low fantasy, sword & sorcery nonsense. Hell, my default fantasy adventure game is Old-School Essentials. It's so default I've written a massive adventure module for OSE, and an official OSE Quick Delve adventure for Necrotic Gnome (publication forthcoming, I'll link it when it gets released). And yet, in every edition of D&D, magic is actually a science. It's repeatable, teachable, and reliable.

Magic in most RPGs is scientific. You cast the spell and you always get X effect. It might come with a spell save, or variable damage, but it is predictable. Even systems like Shadowdark, which has the unpredictability of 'roll to cast', still results in the same effect every time. That's a scientific standard. For a given input, you get a standard output. Drop an apple, gravity pulls it 9.8m/s² towards the gravitation center of the Earth.

I find Maze Rats and Knave interesting because they attempt to do what other games in the tradition of D&D do not: embrace the Chaos. By allowing players to create new spells via random tables, they require an amazing creative exercise and attempt to somewhat embrace the unpredictability of magic. You might get "Ominous Obsidian Path" or "Chalgot's Sacred Blossoming Horn". I have no idea what either of those do, but they're unique and interesting.

True magic is "anti-science bullshit". It defies explanation. It is Chaos projected into the waking world. But, understandably, that's very hard to put into a roleplaying game in a way that doesn't feel awful. This is a sacrifice we make at the altar of playing a silly dwarves and elves fantasy game with our friends. If truly chaotic magic does creep into our games, it tends to come from behind the DM screen. Speaking of which...

Magic in Mythic Bastionland

So why did I just spend four paragraphs rambling about magic? Because, dear reader, it's what makes this game so inspirational and unique. More than anything else I’ve run, (and I've played a lot of them) Mythic Bastionland feels like you are knights dealing with phenomenological magic. That is to say, Myths fundamentally work outside the realm of our understanding. Things just happen. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but it always feels surreal and unpredictable. Encountering a Myth or a seer is a deeply strange thing that breaks our logical understanding of the game world.

Let me share an anecdote from my own game. My players started off in the Seat of Power at the start of Spring. Their Duke mentioned that there were rumors of a strange caravan to the south. With that he sent the Company off to see what that was about. No further details, just the lord of the realm oddly concerned that a caravan was a threat to his rule. So the knights headed south. On the very first day, before they had even gotten out of the forest where the duke's castle was located, they got hit with the first Omen for the Wheel, a completely different Myth. The very first day, with no explanation, a great gust of wind kicks up and the next Season is upon them. The entire forest is in Autumn colors. It was just Easter. Magical Bullshit.

This is where Mythic Bastionland floored me and sent my players into the throws of madness. Some of my players such as my brother, the chaos gremlin that he is, embraced this aspect of Mythic Bastionland with relish. They treated every new Omen as a scene from the Green Knight. Why is there suddenly a stairway into the sky that wasn't there when we were setting up camp? Because why not? Let's go climb it and see what's at the top.

However, some of my others players have become unstable. I don't mean this in a mocking way. I'm quite serious that it has broken one of my players, specifically the one who prided himself on being the guy who will play anything. The idea that Myths can be things that just happen, and he sometimes has little to no way to understand why this is happening, has caused him to end multiple sessions saying:

"I have no idea what just happened tonight. What the hell is going on? We completed a Myth and gained one Glory. We didn't resolve anything. There was a Tower and then it fell down. We didn't do anything. WHAT IS THIS GAME?!"

This is not to say they aren't enjoying themselves. When I ask "do you want to keep playing Mythic Bastionland next week?" the answer has been an emphatic yes. The game is great. Yet, for more right-brained participants, it can feel like Who's Line is it Anyway?.

The Other Bits

Brevity

One of the key strength's of Chris McDowall's design is just how concise it is. The actual rules for the game are only 16 pages (7.5%) out of a 212 page tome. How you actually play the game. I thought Cairn 2e was brief at 22 pages of actual rules, but this is even slimmer. The major benefit to me and my table is that I can sell the game to my players very easily. We don't need to try to parse nearly 250 pages of rules like we would in something like Dark Heresy 2e. Hell, the game explicitly states that if players don't want to learn the rules, they can make a Knight and just play diegetically. Experienced players will probably want to learn how the combat system works, but in classic OSR fashion, you really can just play the character in the world and learn as you go. That was a big selling point for my players, who aren't too keen on learning "yet another new ruleset".

A Lack of Guidance

Now, that isn't to say that the brevity of the game rules is perfect. I've struggled quite a bit when it comes to the Myths. The rules for each Myth take up only half a page. The issue I have here is that I often found myself asking "wait, what do I do with this?" Two out of the 5 Myths my players have dealt with so far have start with the knights coming across wagons or carts going somewhere. My players invariably say "okay, we'll follow them / the tire tracks". But these are weird Mythic events, and what am I to do when the event is happening across the map from the Myth hex? Both times I had to decide whether to let the players see tracks that lead all the way back to the Myth hex, or say "the tracks mysterious end". The game book does not help the GM out here. You're usually given two to three sentences, slapped on the ass and sent on your way.

The resolution to the Myths also suffers from this lack of help. "Rulings over Rules" and all that, but I do wish there had been a little more page space dedicated to how one might resolve some of these things. I can already hear the counter-argument that this is the nature of magical bullshit, and I was just singing the praises of Myths from that angle. It's a hard thing to get right.

One more thing on the Myth structure itself. While some are clear story arcs, others just kind of end in a way that left my players asking "we're finished the myth? Did anything even happen?" In my previous play session the knights completed the Tower myth. When the great tower fell at the end of the Myth, the players were more confused than anything else when I rewarded them Glory. I'm not sure if this was a failing on my part as a GM, or some Myths are just going to end without much the players can do about it. In the case of the Tower, my brother was happy to chime in when everyone sat around confused:

There never really was a Tower. Our knights were just witness to the downfall of Perfection and all who seek it.

Uh... sure, let's go with that. As long as the rest of the players buy into it, I can roll with that.

Combat

I cannot say enough nice things about the combat system in Mythic Bastionland. As stated before, I already have my fantasy adventure game of choice, so I never really looked into playing Into the Odd, Cairn, or any other Odd-likes. Mythic Bastionland proved to me that I wasn't giving the basic system a fair shake. Every turn, my players are always trying to decide the best way to gang up on an opponent, and what Gambits to use in a given situation to swing the fight in their favor. The Feats that knights get access to really do make them feel like Arthurian badasses who stand a cut above everyone else. Not only does this feed into genre play, it's also is pretty historically accurate. Knights were a landed, warrior-caste that were trained from youth for battle and armed to the teeth for their age. They should be a cut above everyone else.

I like Mythic Bastionland's combat system so much, it actually inspired me to start working on creating my own game. More on that here as I continue to fiddle with it.

If I have one quibble, it's that the game seems balanced around smaller tables. I currently have 5 players at my table. We've had up to six before. The combat system as it stands feels more balanced for three players, maybe four at most. Chris did write a blog post with suggestions on mixing it up, and I don't want to sound like this is a major problem. It is just something I've others note as well in online discussions.

Knights

One of the key things about Arthurian myth is that the knights are iconic. They are archetypes in their own right. Perceval, Lancelot, Gallahad, Gawain, Bors, Palamedes, Tristan. The knights in Mythic Bastionland have a similar, but even stranger, gravitas. Each is wholly unique thanks to their gear, utterly bizzarro steeds, unique Passions, and special ability. No two knights are the same, and they feel like characters that belong in this weird medieval world. That's so important to the fantasy of the game. If the knights didn't fit the game's tone, I don't think it would have grabbed people as much as it seems to have.

Oddpocrypha

The final 32 pages of the book are dedicated to examples of play and Chris' commentary there of. This is an incredible resource, and I hope that other games try to emulate this as a teaching example. It really does help you understand not only how to play, but also the mindset of the creator. It gets you inside his head on how this thing is supposed to work. That's really helpful, given how odd this thing can feel if you're going into it blind. I can't imagine being a first time GM and choosing Mythic Bastionland as the game you want to run for your very fist go behind the screen, but I'm sure someone is going to do it. The more help the better.

So Why Wouldn't You Run this For New Players?

Ah yes, that thing I said earlier to get people riled up. It's a true statement. I would not run Mythic Bastionland for someone who has never played a TTRPG before. It's an incredible game, but I think it breaks too many genre norms to provide new players with a safe learning experience. Based on my (admittedly poor) memory, I've introduced players to TTRPGs with 3.5e, 4e, 5e, OSE, Shadowdark, Mothership and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. All of these games put the agency squarely on the players. They can be broken into discreet, bite sized chunks that teach the more basic elements of what a TTRPG is and how they tend to work.

I spend about ¹/₄ of a teach session with a new player reminding them which dice is the d8 or the d20. I don't need to add more cognitive load to an already alien situation by telling this poor newbie that they rode their horse for 4 hours and for no reason they can understand, the Sun suddenly decided to revolt from the sky. I want to teach TTRPGs by putting new players at the front door to a simple dungeon and let them explore a relatively simple scenario that should mostly makes sense. Let the character sheet, the weird dice, and the goofy guy talking in funny voices behind a cereal box be the peak of tonight's oddities. We can get to the really weird stuff later.

Mythic Bastionland throws this out the window. It shows up outside of school and says "hey kid, you wanna see something cool?" Hell yeah I do! But the reason I want onto Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is specifically because it breaks genre conventions that I've learned over 25 years of being a part of this hobby. It's a truly wild experience as a GM. I can only imagine how bonkers it feels to be a player.

I want to keep the narrative taking place in the secondary world to remain in digestible, logical parts for new players. A door. A room full of drunk goblins. We can save dealing with the Sun going rogue and needing a good talking to for their second campaign.

Final Thoughts

In summary, what do I think of Mythic Bastionland? It's incredible. It's dangerous. It's unexpected. It's weird and makes me want to see what LSD trip we go on next week. You only get so many of those in a lifetime when playing TTRPGs. I don't know if there's higher praise I can heap on a game.

Buy Mythic Bastionland. Spring it on your players with no explanation of what you're doing to them. Sit back and bask in the glory of their utterly perplexed faces as you describe 12 warty guards pulling a giant slug (who is both ravenously hungry and unimaginably sad) bound in chains through the forest in the dead of night. They might not thank you, but they'll certainly remember the experience.