Fireside Tales

This weekend I downloaded the two supplements for 'Palaeo Diet' - 'Fireside Tales' and 'Palaeo Diet - Pulp'. I read through them yesterday and they are chock-full of fantastic stuff to add to the basic game. The pulp stuff I will have to try another day when I have sorted out some suitable figures and a setting. But 'Fireside Tales' is still within the original prehistoric settings, and I have the stuff for that.

'Fireside Tales' consists of five scenarios, and a range of new beasts, plus their reaction tables. But it's structured in the form of a narrative campaign in which a mysterious hunter called Herc is trying to impress a tribe of strangers by telling them tales of his adventures. Each adventure takes the form of a scenario and the campaign requires Herc to complete the goals of all five. 

I decided to try it out this afternoon. 

Here's Herc.

Herc has a number of companions, and he can use two or three of them to assist him in each adventure. I generated skills for each one to give them a little more personality. The companions are limited; if one is killed then they are unavailable for the rest of the campaign, and if wounded they may not be available for the next adventure. So you have to be careful with them.

For the first adventure, Herc was accompanied by Frygga, who carries a spear and Fergg, a wielder of fire. 

They were looking to kill what the scenario calls a lion, but which ended up being a giant wolverine. It had to be done within a time-limit.

Behind the hunters you can see a bull aurochs; this was a secondary objective. each adventure has one of these, and a couple have to  be completed in order for Herc to impress the tribe of strangers. So Herc and his companions could ignore it (as far as you can ignore such things in Palaeo Diet), but would have to do more work in later scenarios.

In fact I decided that this was a straightforward pair of kills. Herc sent Fergg to distract the wolverine with his flaming brand, whilst he set off to kill the aurochs and take its impressive horns as a trophy.

Frygga joined in as well, and with two hunters on its case, it looked like curtains for the aurochs.

Except that it wasn't. Frygga botched their attack, and the aurochs struck back, wounding the hunter.

Another attack saw Frygga gored to death.

The wolverine was closing in warily on the bloodshed, as Herc finished off the aurochs with his club and took the horns.

The two surviving hunters closed in on the wolverine. Fergg's fire kept it wary and, more importantly, less likely to attack.

Fergg closed up, looking to scare the wolverine towards Herc, but it held its ground, and took a wound for doing so.

Herc attacked with his club, and still wary of the fire the wolverine backed off again.

Herc closed in and slew the wolverine.

So Herc's first tale impressed the tribe of strangers; he'd killed the wolverine, and had some aurochs horns to show off as trophies.

The second adventure involved gathering some sacred fungus from an island in a swamp. Herc and his companions can be seen here on the edge of the swamp; this time he had the archer Tark and Rarr with his trusty club. 

On the other side of the swamp was the island where the fungus grew. But in the swamp were some nesting sites ...

... fore some spectacularly aggressive birds.

(I didn't have any models for the birds, so made some counters. The birds are a new beast type in 'Fireside Tales' - the Angry Critter.)

All of the board, excluding the hills, is swamp, and is therefore slow-going. And as the hunters plodded through the morass, they disturbed the birds, which attacked.

The birds were persistent. Herc killed one, but two others were pecking at him.

Rarr took one down as well.

But the birds kept up their attacks, and soon both hunters were wounded. 

Tark hung back, using his bow to try and take down the birds, but the damp must have got to his bowstring, because his aim was appalling.

More furious attacks on Herc.

Herc and Fergg finally made it to the island, but Herc went down beneath another attack.This ended the scenario and Herc's tales of adventure.

This second scenario is a tough one, and I'm going to have to have a think about the best way to approach it when I run it again. Part of the fun of Palaeo Diet as a solo game is deciding how best to solve the puzzle each scenario presents (albeit that any solution is subject to the vagaries of chance).

I should point out the the scenarios would all work as one-off games as well; even from just these two games I feel that 'Fireside Tales' was well worth the purchase.