<< Endless Rime Actual Plays Index | Session 0, Part I
This solo-play will be known as Endless Rime and is set on Earth in the Upper Paleolithic era.
Endless Rime features mature content: there is wanton violence, sex, and occasional brutality, but there is no cigarette smoking. No animals were harmed in the creation of this story Some animals are harmed in these stories, but usually they are wild animals targeted by hunters.
In some portions of this story, the action pivots back and forth from ~33,000 B.C. to some future time that is clearly far in the future. You may wonder why, given the story's setting. Gradually, some readers will develop insight. Think Clan of the Cave Bear meets Severance (by Netflix)...
I'll be loosely using rules from the Würm RPG. I take liberties when I feel like it, but I'll try to channel those liberties into predictable patterns.
Different people format their actual play reports in different ways. I will provide the code-behind/rpg-mechanics, but in order not to disrupt the narrative flow of the story, that data will be given in footnotes.1 This will also keep the narrative portion of Actual Play write-ups isolated from the mechanics, which will be helpful if I decide to novelize this story.
To prepare for this solo-play, I read three books: Clan of the Cave Bear2 (Auel), The Dog Master3 (Cameron), and Cro-Magnon : How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans4 (Fagan).
Other influences: Wolf Packs & Winter Snow
Themes explored:
- Man versus Nature
- Tribal Dynamics
- Interspecies Relations
- Bear Men & Long Men
- Megafauna Interactions
- Migration & Exploration
- Evolution & Technology
- Emergent Culture
- Early Mortuary Practices
- Rigid Gender Roles
- Artwork
- Storytelling
- Natural Disasters
- Landslides (think the Storegga Slide)
- Tsunamis
- Volcanism
- Totemism
- Paleolithic Animism
- Shamanism
- Vision Quests
- Dream Interpretation
- Appeasing the Spirits
XP earned for Part II of Session 0 is: 0.25, bringing total XP to 3.50 (he began with 3 XP at character creation).
1. Example footnote; I host my blog using HTMLy, and unfortunately it does not always save HTML markup, just markdown. If I write a post in HTMLy once, save it, then never touch it again, all is well, but if I re-edit an HTMLy MD format is retained by HTML markup is sometimes lost.
2. Jean M. Auel's 1980 instant classic
3. W. Bruce Cameron's 2015 novel about the first dog
4. Brian Fagan's 2010 non-fiction title