Monday, 26 January 2026

Campaign '26 – Exiles of a Thousand Islands: Session 2

Campaign '26 is a challenge issued by RPG blogger/epic poetry enthusiast N.Bateman in this post: in short, participants pledge to run or play a game for most of the year. I have sworn a sacred oath to run a PARIAH Campaign using the ATTI zines (and accompanying adventure, Reach of the Roach God) for the whole of 20026, details of which can be found here and here.

Sumatran Tiger caught on trail cam, courtesy International Tiger Project https://www.internationaltigerproject.org/

Alone in the Wilderness

Real World Date: 15th January 2026

We were 3 payers short this session (2 due to unforeseen life stuff, 1 who'll be AWOL for at least 6 weeks due to travel) but still had 3 players ready to go. We picked up the morning after an uncanny visitor in the night had interrupted the youths, departing with a wooden pangolin but leaving some interesting information about the nearest settlements: Quiet Lake and the Death-Rolled-Kingdom.

ATTI Date: Day 2, 1st Month of Dry Season

With the player of the wooden pangolin's owner absent, it was left ambiguous as to how the elder Cautious End responded to the youths handing over the ancestral relic. There was some apparent response from the Spirit of the Forest in the form of a dung deposit at the site of their impromptu shrine. Note: I decided to do this as a gentle indicator of the spirit's unhappiness at losing the devotional object to another entity, but the players seemed to unanimously take this to be an indicator of approval so I rolled with it (literally, 2d6 reaction roll = neutral). I at least no what to get them each for their respective ebirthdays should I be short of gift ideas.

With the band as shorthanded of healthy adults as this session's group, it was decided to take a broad view of the band and see how they performed across the coming months using the Alone in the Wilderness Rules.

In brief:

Players assign band members to foraging and roll to see how much they procure
A labour surplus is calculated based on the amount foraged and the amount consumed across a month
This is used to carry out other tasks

In the abundant forest, there are enough resources to ensure that the whole band can eat three meals per day while still finding time to forage for firewood, build shelter and search for herbs and entheogens.

In addition to foraging some fern sori (identified as having the properties of an antivenom), the party also happened upon 6 doses of dawn mushroom.

Over the course of a month the band explored along the coast a little and identified the extents of the forest, though did not venture much further. They dammed up the pool where previously they had seen the rhino to insure they had a regular supply of water, and located a more substantial waterfall "downstream", towards the coastal cliffs.

After resolving tasks and activities, we addressed recruitment. With a reputation of "0" it was unlikely that many would be joining the band, but by the end of the month 2 new adults and 2 new youths had joined! Initially this established that the adults were a man and a woman, but we elected not to roll them up just yet.

The next procedure was to roll a monthly event: this generated the possibility of a 1 in 6 pregnancy for any child-bearing adults. Since this only covered one of the new recruits, I asked the players if they wanted to roll. They agreed to do it for "the drama" and we were all sad to not see the dice fall on the side of an imminent infant.

Reputation was then adjusted: though they encountered no other human communities (nor any significant spirits), their reputation had a chance of improving, though on this occasion it di not. Reputation affects recruitment, as well as the reaction roll of other human communities.

Finally, morale was deemed to have improved owing to the fact that NO ONE DIED and they had eaten well.

2nd Month of Dry Season

With two adult pariahs providing additional foraging the wilderness yielded its bounty to the pariahs, and they once again had adequate surplus. With adult labour on hand they were able to erect some permanent timber structures to augment their temporary bamboo-and-palm-leaf shelters.

Unfortunately all the additional dice increased the odds of a mishap and… well, there’s a reason why the thumbnail for this post is a Sumatran tiger. One of the new youths was killed while out collecting water.

This formed the focus of an ancestral shrine whereby they might yet be remembered: their clay water pot (left in the ground without a drop I spilled) becoming the relic by which this fallen comrade — and all future fallen comrades—would be remembered .

Though they one again failed to encounter any other human communities (nor any significant spirits), their reputation improves from zero to one. Two new youths replace the one that does (name incoming), and they held a feast to celebrate/commemorate the loss of life.

GM Session Notes

Session ended after nearly two hours. It was a comfortable session between myself and three other players, though fairly low stakes (bar the death of an anonymous band member). We had agreed to take part in some "between trips" or "zoomed out" activity, but it did feel a little like this might be worth doing between live sessions – or a t least after a series of especially high-stakes exploration or combat sessions and a breather is required to rest and recuperate both players and characters.

A not insignificant chunk of that was taken up by generating two new pariahs. I realised that for the Dragonmeet game I came prepared with a stack of pregens. The real bottleneck is rolling for starting items and skills: an ODND character just needs a set of stats and a decision about class, and the other bits (starting P, items) can be done in the background while we get on with the rest of the game.

Pariah on the other hand requires slightly more rolls, but somehow felt really slow- possibly because we have to look items and skills up on a table? Possible solutions:

have pregens to hand
Package up the additional skills and items (so just one dice roll instead of 4-6 dice rolls)
rework one of the generators

I definitely want players to be able to make decisions with a full team of healthy adults at their disposal, so I may see if they want to generate more characters in advance or if they want use Perchance:

https://perchance.org/pariah2026atti

I feel like with the wilderness preparation I've done I can pick up the pace a little and keep pushing choice towards the players, whereas previously I've been a little placid/passive. Think the game will benefit from me representing a more dynamic environment.