The Stymphalian Bird Hunt
Like I mentioned in my previous post, I paused on the core rulebook to focus on writing some Firetaker scenarios. This way, players can have a jumping-off point when I ask them to test the game.
I thought I’d write three, distinct scenarios highlighting three different types of gameplay:
- A dungeon delve
- A hexcrawl
- A ticking-clock city adventure
Back during TripTech³, I actually started working on the dungeon delve. Since TripTech is specifically a Mothership trifold game jam, dozens of pages for a Panic Engine riff didn’t qualify as a submission. The organizer was very kind to allow me to use a Firetaker trifold as my entry.
The problem? I had a now-or-never mentality for drafting the game itself, so I scrambled in the final hours of the jam to cobble together a scenario. It was tremendously bad, and I got last place in the competition. If I could go back in time and do it again, would I change anything? Probably not. I’ve sustained the momentum for Firetaker specifically because I had the rare opportunity to throw myself at it wholeheartedly alongside remarkably talented designers working on their own submissions.
Firetaker was playable after TripTech finished, but my dungeon delve was decidedly not. I wasn’t ready to touch it again, so I figured I’d work on the city adventure or the hexcrawl. Since I had just listened to Mystery Quest’s Mythic Bastionland miniseries, I was hyped about hexcrawls.
What would the crawl be about? The Calydonian Boar Hunt immediately came to mind. In my opinion, it is the original hexcrawl. The adventurers even come with their own convoluted backstories and dramatic inter-party dynamics. I wanted to do something other than a boar. First, it was going to be a giant centipede (because they’re scary). Then, it was going to be a wolverine (because they’re dangerous). I even briefly considered using a honey badger (because they’re scary and dangerous). In the end, I remembered some Stymphalian Birds escaped when Herakles chased them off during his Sixth Labor. How neat would it be if one grew enormous and terrorized an island?
For my island, I wanted to pull from Greek Mythology with an offhandedly-named island. I’m currently reading The Aeneid, and Aeneas mentions the island of Olearos. As a supposed part of the Cyclades, it would be under the control of Crete. King Minos has enough baggage associated with him, so I wanted to use a different quest giver. The grandson of Minos, Idomeneus, is driven from the throne by Leucas. Leucas has a sordid origin story, but I don’t know how his tale shakes out. He was my guy.
I have some tables to finish and illustrations to do, but the bones of the scenario are here. Fingers crossed I get to run it for some pals at Galaxy Con in two weeks.
