1. This post contains references to murder, gruesome deaths, and the supernatural.
2. I'm going to keep descriptions of the module we played and system mechanics broad. Please consider buying Vaesen and its modules to support the creators.
3. I'm going to be pretty critical of Alchemy VTT. I am a not unbiased because I'm a long-time Foundry user and overall a big fan of its design and pricing model. I feel that my criticisms stand on their own.
3. I'm going to be pretty critical of Alchemy VTT. I am a not unbiased because I'm a long-time Foundry user and overall a big fan of its design and pricing model. All that said, I feel that my criticisms stand on their own.
## The Prep
Preparing for Vaesen was extremely interesting. Character creation presents an interesting tradeoff early on when you decide your character's age. This choice impacts two things: your attributes and your skills. The younger you are, the more points you can allocate to to your attributes but you get fewer skill points. The reverse applies for older characters: you've had longer to practice your skills but your body just isn't what it used to be.
You also choose your living standards from options like Destitute, Struggling, Financially Stable, Well-off, and Filthy Rich. This determines two properties of your character: your Capital and the bonus you apply when attempting to purchase items or otherwise apply your wealth for your gain.
You also get to choose your character's Archetype from choices like Academic, Officer, and Vagabond. Your Archetype dictates your Talents. Talents grant conditional bonuses or add minor abilities to your character For example:
- One of the Academic's Talents is Bookworm: Gain +2 to Learning when looking for clues in books or libraries.
- Hunter has a Talent called Herbalist: By utilizing wild herbs, you can use MEDICINE without
having access to medical supplies.
Before your first mission, you can purchase equipment ( knives, tinderboxes, hunting dogs, and crowbars ), services ( doctors, barbers, postriders, carriages, and meals ), and weapons appropriate for a semi-rural 1860s steampunk Sweden.
## The Setting
Speaking of, the setting for Vaesen is stunning and it sets the mind alight with possibility. The dawn of the Industrial Age spurs sudden population booms in urban centers which begin expanding outward into the wilderness while folk of all sorts are drawn from the countryside in search of gainful labor or to chase their dreams of riches. Forests are cleared to fuel and build machines that belch smoke into the sky, ore is ripped from the living earth in the name of growth and progress, and all the while people quietly forget or proudly forsake The Old ways. All the while, the creatures and forces humankind once carefully and respectfully shared the world with grow disquiet, no longer appeased by rituals and mindful distance.
@ -50,9 +55,11 @@ Some rolls are fairly safe. Asking a constable whether they've seen any stranger
If you manage to survive your encounter with the Vaesen, you can return home to Upsala and your own private castle, complete with butler.
### Home Sweet Home
- Castle Gyllencreutz, Upsala: your base of operations
- upgrading your base
- Dispelling or soothing the Vaesen
One aspect of Vaesen that stands out is your upgradeable base of operations. After dispelling or soothing a Vaesen you return home to Castle Gyllencreutz, the initially decrepit and poorly maintained home of The Society. There's also a butler, though his services are pretty strictly domestic.
If your missions are successful you can, over time, renovate the castle and restore access to the records room, the armory, and other useful rooms. This section is pretty short because I've only played one session and don't have direct access to the manual. If you want to learn more, you'll have to play with your group and survive a mission.
### Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
In the same vein as upgrading the Castle Gyllencreutz, I can only write briefly due to our limited play time. Your character can improve their skills, eventually acquire new talents, and acquire new resources/capital.
## The Venue
During the course of our game, we used two separate Virtual Table Tops to play: Alchemy and Foundry. We switched after our first session ( fact check this? maybe it was two ) because of some shortcomings with the current Alchemy implementation of the Vaesen system.
### Alchemy VTT
@ -77,15 +84,20 @@ Alchemy also did not go out of its way to make critical UI elements very visible
Alchemy didn't seem to implement token vision or fog of war, at least not for the Vaesen system or the module we were using. This isn't the end of the world but for a **mystery game**, seeing the **entire map** the instant it loads can be immersion breaking at best and a meta-gaming nightmare at worst.
### Foundry
Our Foundry experience was a radical improvement. Our game-runner created our characters on our behalf so I can't speak to the process in that regard but the rest of the process was extremely straightforward. When rolling for skills the Vaesen system in Foundry had helpful prompts when you had equipment that might augment your dice pool.
Our [Foundry](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/vaesen) experience was a radical improvement. Our game-runner created our characters on our behalf so I can't speak to the process in that regard but the rest of the process was extremely straightforward. When rolling for skills the Vaesen system in Foundry had helpful prompts when you had equipment that might augment your dice pool and tabs in the character sheet for tracking Conditions *and* automatically deducts die from your pool as you accrue Mental/Physical conditions.
- Foundry
- Purchasable System for mechanics
- Purchasable module for maps and NPCs
All in all, cannot recommend Foundry highly enough for running Vaesen.
## The Tragedy
This section will be gruesome and brief. I don't want to get too graphic and I especially do not want to spoil the module we played.
The story of our mission is not a happy one. A terrible cowardly man brutalized his family. A half dozen innocent by standers and two of our party of three burned alive because of the crimes committed by the previous generation while the third hauled a skeleton and an unconscious man two kilometers through the pouring rain. Technically, the Vaesen was soothed and the mission successful but only at immense cost.
My poor orphan boy Fish never got to see his 20th birthday. It was **an absolute blast**. It's close to if not the most fun I've ever had playing a tabletop RPG.
## Final Thoughts
Vaesen is not a game of heroic fantasy. Your characters are fragile and powerless to stop the events that play out with brute force. Any hope for intervention requires careful preparation and an immense amount of luck. Each injury makes future successes exponentially more unlikely. Failures cascade quickly. Your character *begins the game* scarred by something tragic in their past and will only be subject to a greater quantity and variety of violence and loss.
Your character can, and probably will, die powerless to save themselves or the people around them. This can be scary and sad but it offers a *storytelling* experience that most standard tabletop offerings do not dare.
Melodrama aside, Vaesen does not demand that the **players** be miserable and scared. Like most storytelling experiences, the participants can choose the tone, ranging from Scooby Doo or X-Files all the way to first edition Grimm gruesomeness. In a world filled with strange and powerful forces, death doesn't have to be guaranteed nor does it have to truly be the end of the story.
Melodrama aside, Vaesen does not demand that the **players** be miserable and scared. Safety tools and a strong Session 0 are very important here, and like most storytelling experiences, the participants can choose the tone, ranging from Scooby Doo or X-Files all the way to first edition Grimm gruesomeness.
In a world filled with strange and powerful forces, death doesn't have to be guaranteed nor does it have to truly be the end of the story.
unknown
1 month ago