A Quick Look at a Big Book: Mythic Bastionland

 

After two iterations of the age of Industry, and once in the age of electricity, Chris McDowall, AKA Mr. Bastionland, has decided to tackle the age of heroic fantasy, of the Arthurian persuasion. Rather than the explorers of Into the Odd and debt-ridden failed careerists of Electric Bastionland, Mythic Bastionland concerns itself with Knights on a Quest. Like previous games set in the world of Bastion, the rules are light as they come, though with a little bit of added complexity in combat in the form of Feats and Gambits, as well as wrinkles related to weapon types, mounted combat, and mass combat. You know, knight stuff. Besides that, it's just the usual three-stat roll-under and no to-hit roll. It all sounds cool and fun. In total, all of this ends up filling a total of sixteen pages, including the GM advice for running the game. At the end of the book are 30 pages of play examples with commentary (the "Oddpocrypha"), with the rest (the majority of the book) are taken up by 72 types of Knight, and 72 Myths to seek, both Myths and Knights taking up a page each.

The Knights are absolutely my favourite thing about this game. I have wrestled a bit with finding the Cairn 2e backgrounds missing something for me, and unlike them, the Mythic Bastionland Knights hit the bullseye: each come with a set of equipment, but crucially also a special ability and a passion, the latter governing how they restore their Spirit (one of the three Virtues, the game's stats). Every knight is also paired with a Seer, connected to seeking out the myths as they have vowed.

On the opposing page for every Knight is a Myth: essentially a little six-step quest to drop somewhere in the world. All the "standard" Myths consists of six Omens, which the Knights can happen upon as they travel the world, escalating the urgency of the Myth with each encounter. Generally, they also come with a few NPCs and a random table for something.

Where I find the Knights completely perfect for me, I find that the Myths are a little bit too sparse for me. Generally, each Omen consists of 1-3 sentences, describing something that will come to pass. Here, I could have used a little bit more detail, and perhaps some extra notes of how to interact with it. Omens 5 and 6 of The Sea read: "5. A great storm begins, and won’t stop until the wave has arrived. Saltwater rises from all water sources, the land is flooded, and harvest ruined." and "6. The wave swells on the horizon, as tall as a mountain range. If it washes over the Realm then little can survive. After the devastation the Sea is quelled and returns to its rightful place." While undeniably flavourful, this does not offer me much in terms of how the players characters can deal with this and save the realm from destruction. A previous Omen mentioned a magical ring that could potentially control it, but offering only one solution, and only if the players realise it when they encounter it earlier, feels a bit unsatisfying to me. Of course, I can always make something up as a GM, but the descriptions here don't offer me any hooks for what types of solution would make sense. The flavour is absolutely there - every Myth reads amazingly, but I think they would have been more easier for me to use if they had each gotten a spread instead of a page.

I think this is a symptom of Mythic Bastionland's biggest weakness for me: McDowall is a bit too sparse in his description and guidance for the things I could use a bit more guidance with. In some ways, Mythic Bastionland invites comparison with Cairn (its second edition in particular): they are both Into the Odd-derived fantasy games, but each aiming for a different style of fantasy: where Cairn is grounded and focused on commonfolk in small settlements and big forests, Mythic Bastionland concerns itself with Knights in a Realm. So far so different, but in terms of presentation, I find myself missing an equivalent of Cairn 2e's Warden's Guide. Mythic Bastionland gives me 8 pages on running the game and two spreads of spark tables. It presents the basics well enough, but I could have used a bit more guidance on how to run domains and courts in particular - the book just presents me with a list of roles that should be filled (Steward, Sheriff, etc.) and directs to the spark tables. It all feels a little bit "draw the rest of the owl" with the spark tables offering good character concepts etc. but not really telling me how to use them. It feels like I'm supposed to bring even more to the table myself, as the GM, but offering me less tools compared to Cairn 2e. I have no doubt that this could play amazingly if I figured a bunch of this stuff out or stole some ideas from elsewhere The Oddpocrypha at the end covers it a bit, but by nature of being very example-based, it only covers a quite narrow set of questions, and not really the broader general advice I am yearning for. For this reason, it is probably not a game I would recommend to inexperienced GMs - they'd probably be better off picking up the Cairn box if they want to try their hand at Oddlikes. Of course, this might be a personal brain mismatch issue - maybe I'm just wired differently so it's not as obvious to me as it would be to someone else. However, for something with as specific a flavour as Mythic Bastionland, some guidance on maintaining that flavour outside the provided Knight and Omen descriptions would be extremely useful, because that flavour is perhaps the strongest component of the game.

Another thing which the book does not cover at all, which came as a bit of a surprise to me, it the topic of courtly romance and siring an heir. The big name in Arthurian RPGs, Pendragon, prominently features such dynasty building, and wooing fair maidens and the troubles of remaining faithful (or not) in the face of temptation is a topic that features prominently in Arthurian legend (I would in fact argue that the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot triangle, and the issue of Mordred, Arthur's illegitimate son, are the centrepiece of the whole mythos). It feels like a strange omission to me to never mention the topic of spouses and offspring, especially as the ruler of a domain. Of course it's something I can "just roleplay" without mechanical support, but I buy books because I want their support.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention the art. People debate endlessly on social media whether successful RPGs are just artbooks in disguise. This is absolutely not the case for Mythic Bastionland, for a variety of reasons, but one of them is: if this was trying to sell itself on its art, the art would be bigger, because it is so good. I absolutely adore Alec Sorensen's work here, it is hugely evocative, sets the tone perfectly, and just looks incredibly good. If there was a Mythic Bastionland artbook containing just the art in larger format, I would buy it in a heartbeat. Maybe a tarot deck? I am sold on the idea already. If my my memory does not betray me, the Kickstarter fulfilment suffered some delay due to art taking longer than planned, but waiting for it was absolutely the correct choice. I have rarely seen a game which such cohesive and appropriate art.

All in all, I think Mythic Bastionland reads like a great game, though it is perhaps not the first game I would suggest to someone new to running games, as it has quite some reliance on GMs making things up to put around the established Omens of the myths in particular, without offering that much guidance (or at least not the type of guidance I would have wanted). I hope I will get a chance to play it soon, because I'm excited about Knights and Quests now.