Background
This is the fourth and final part of my play report for EmemyCo’s The Fangwitch’s Falls, read Session One, Session Two, and Session Three.
If you’re just interested in my players’ and my final thoughts on the module jump down to the end.
Fangwitch’s Falls can be purchased here, or alongside Em’s currently kickstarting module Try The Beetle Milk.
I’m using Brighter Worlds, which is my own hack of Cairn, Electric Bastionland, and Macchiato Monsters. You can pick it up here for free, or look at the SRD here, but if you imagine “Whimsical Cairn with Class Abilities” you’re most of the way there.
The Cast
Granny Hexwhistle
Witch on a flying broom with a small, frog that sweats hallucinogen. All-around bad person.
Mercutio Smock
Gentleman and Runewright extraordinaire, crafting interesting logic-based magics.
Tibbius Sacrum
A skeletal Bag of Bones slowly turning into a literal cartoon skeleton with all of his hijinks.
Pele
A Cleric of Small Gods with a small, divine, volcano headed golem (God of Magmatic Renewal) riding around on his shoulders. She can change the nature of the world by speaking with her god.
Previously On
The party got information about the Fangwitch from a strange Fae in the Deep Woods, and then concocted an elaborate plan to retrieve the Mask from the bottom of the lake. Surprising everyone, the plan worked. The Mask is some sort of ancient VR headset that would normally control the Fangwitch (an ancient terraforming engine), but currently cannot.
Session Four
The party begins to circumnavigate the Lake to head towards the Falls, behind which they know are a series of caves containing the Fangwitch. Along the way they run into a tadpole person: a traveling fencer by the name of Plukia. Plukia acts as a merchant of sorts, trading his goods and skills in exchange for fish and duels. Sadly none of the party takes him up on the offer for a duel to first blood (although Tibbius tries to cheat the system on account of not having blood). Granny trades the Jade Fish Amulet (a veritable lifetime supply of fish) for Plukia to train Pele in the ancient martial art technique of water running (plus some cooking spices).
GM’s Note: Plukia is one of my favorite NPCs from the module, and I was very happy I rolled his encounter here at the 11th hour. A bit disappointing none of my players wanted to duel him, but training montage is also pretty good.
After an intense training montage and parting ways with Plukia, the party arrives near the falls, but decides to make camp and attack the caves in the morning. They settle in a convenient cave located nearby, and are surprised by a River Bear returning home during the night.
The River Bear, upset by the home invasion, tries to chase them out but is instead insulted for its bachelor status (it seems to be the last of its kind), set aflame, and then killed. To add insult to injury Tibbius then raises it from the dead in skeletal form as the first member of his Skeleton Crew.
GM’s Note: Poor river bear, it didn’t deserve this.
Granny Hexwhistle messily eats the heart of this bear as part of the Perfect Divination ritual, which gives her perfect knowledge of the next 24 hours.
In the morning, the party uses the previously created Water Repelling Rune to open a gap in the waterfall so the party can make their way through. Inside, they navigate through the caves, avoiding a group of water logged ghouls with a combo of water running, broom flying, and runes.
Reaching a large underwater lake, the party sees the enormous Fangwitch coiled around a submerged stalagmite, and beyond it a glowing fissure in space. Mercutio dons the mask and attempts to force the Fangwitch through the fissure, but fails in a battle of wills and the Fangwitch attacks the party.
Pele tries to speak with her god to turn the rock pourous, thereby lowering the water level to stop the Fangwitch from getting close, but instead turns the stone into sand nearly dumping everyone into the water. Pele sprints away using her newly learned water walking, Granny flies on her broom, and Mercutio ducks back into the hallway leaving only Tibbius to get wet.
The battle ensues!
Granny flies overhead draining away the Fangwitch’s Grit with Entropic Drain, Tibbius swims around on his River Bear skeleton and opportunistically attacks the Fangwitch, and Mercutio continues his mental battle through the Mask. Eventually Pele is able to turn the tides by speaking with her god to open a series of magma vents in the base of the lake, blasting the Fangwitch with super-heated steam.
The Fangwitch breaks and runs, swimming swiftly through the glowing fissure.
GM’s Note: The module notes that the Fangwitch will flee through the fissure on a failed morale save, and Mercutio’s mental battle had weakened its will making it more prone to failure. It was still a funny moment of them battling to force it through the fissure, and then it deciding to turn and run through the fissure. The party sorta looked around and were like, “well, we let it run then?”
Mercutio (having by this point puzzled out the Mask’s interface somewhat) finds that he cannot close the fissure due to “another user” having set it open.
Tibbius takes the mask and swims down to investigate the fissure, through which he seems massive piles of gold and gems like those of a dragon’s hoard. Deciding to head through himself to investigate, he finds himself in a giant underground (not underwater) vault containing limitless riches, and some distance away a throne with a four armed skeleton wearing an identical Mask. Heading that way, Tibbius is ambushed by the Fangwitch who had been hiding inside one of the piles of gold. Taken by surprise, he’s sliced in twain, and even with his enhanced skeletal durability is crunched into dust by the Fangwitch.
Or that’s what would have happened, as Granny Hexwhistle reveals that was all simply what she saw in her Perfect Divination prediction. Time is “rewound” to just after the Fangwitch flees through the fissure and a new plan is formed.
GM’s Note: I’ve been trying to get this “iT wAs AlL a ViSiOn Of ThE fUtUrE” divination mechanic into and RPG for ages, and this was the first time it came up at the table. I was worried about it being annoying, but having a “reset button” floating in the background was actually a lot of fun. I may have to tweak some things to avoid overuse, but I like it a lot.
Mercutio engraves a rune onto Granny’s broom that makes anyone touching it weightless, allowing everyone to pile on together. A strange sight bursts into the treasure vault, of a witch’s broom with a Cleric riding up from, a Witch riding in the middle, a Runewright riding in the back, and a Skeleton hanging off the bottom.
Pele hops off the broom and dashes to the gold pile the Fangwitch is hiding within. She speaks with her god to instantly melt, then resolidify the gold managing to (at least temporarily) lock the Fangwitch in place.
The rest of the party flies over to the throne, rips the mask off the (thankfully actually dead) skeleton’s head, and flies back. They pick up Pele and make it through the fissue just as the Fangwitch breaks out of its golden cage, and after passing through don the masks and (with their powers combined!) close the fissure.
GM’s Note: The dramatic timing on this makes it seem like I had my finger on the scale, but it genuinely worked out this way as the Fangwitch finally managed a roll to break the gold, then failed the roll to reach the fissure in time.
The party celebrates! They’ve saved the world! Or at least the Fang Woods! And it doesn’t hurt that they technically still have the Masks and access to a vault filled with potentially limitless gold and riches (and a very angry Fangwitch).
Thoughts and Review
GM’s Opinions
I love this module. As I mentioned before, it hits a really good balance between providing information and leaving “blank spaces” for me to fill gaps. Having said that, I do think the module would benefit from more procedural “heft”. Even if I’d be likely to run things my own way, having a set procedure for travel, using the encounter table, and similar would improve things. Less experienced GMs may flounder a bit when presented with something as open ended as this without more structure for guidance.
One actual complaint about the module content I have is that despite the party spending 4-5 days within the area, only a single one of the calamities occurred. The calamities are a very cool mechanism, unique catastrophes that can occur at each location, but they happen only every 1d6 days. Maybe this is due to the travel rate I decided (6 hour blocks) but that goes back to a lack of provided procedure. On the same topic, I think having some mechanism that clearly communicates the time limit aspect of the calamities would be nice, rather than having them simply occur randomly.
Overall though, the Fangwitch’s Falls is fantastic. All of the NPCs are a genuine joy to meet and play. The art is adorable and does such a great job of setting the tone (one player described it as reminding him of Hollow Knight). There’s so much going on, and once you get dug in it’s easy to tie everything together and go hang out with all these weird guys in the weird woods. It’s flexible enough that you could run this as a one shot, or let it stretch out into a longer campaign. I highly recommend picking this up if any of this sounded like a good time.
Player Opinions
Since this was also a playtest for Brighter Worlds, I sent some feedback forms to my players after the session. I included some questions about Fangwitch’s Falls, which I’ll reproduce below.
It’s worth noting that my players only experienced the Fangwitch’s Falls through the lens of my GMing, and I took a fair degree of creative liberties. So feel free to distribute blame or credit between myself and the author as you see fit.
(Someone didn’t send me their responses yet, so I’ll edit those in when they arrive.)
What was your favorite thing or moment from the Fangwitch’s Falls?
Mercutio: Earthquake and how fangwitch affected environment. Mask was also cool.
Pele: The arc of the Seer from poorly rhyming skeleton to flying chicken demon was quite entertaining.
Tibbius: I enjoyed the world overall. It felt very real and full of life. Everywhere we went there was something going on.
Granny: Pretty solidly fun all the way through.
What was your least favorite thing or moment from the Fangwitch’s Falls?
Mercutio: First session, it was hard to know where to go, what to do and why. There should have been a more engaging conflict and stakes to get things rolling
Pele: The frog/ghoul area was a little anticlimactic. We couldn’t do much with the frog and mostly avoided the ghouls. It might’ve been different if we went back with the frog amulet we got later.
Tibbius: I loved it all!
Granny: Scheduling
Any other thoughts on Fangwitch’s Falls?
Pele: Lots of funny characters overall. Lots of unique creatures (fishbear, prawn fangwitch, demon chickens) to interact with.
Tibbius: I loved the feel of the world. It was cute, but dangerous. Weird, but didn’t feel forced.
Brighter World’s Playtest Notes
I got some good feedback from my players about the system from this (I won’t repeat it all here just for length considerations).
Overall the system is working as intended, with the Eulogy XP system in particular being well received. One repeated note that I agree with is that characters don’t start the game with enough equipment or tools. So taking a page from all of the RPGs I’m already stealing from for Brighter Worlds, a number of equipment tables to roll on at character creation will be added soon.
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