How to Have Cold Comfort
Some GM tips for the Longwinter RPG setting
The Barony of Brezim awaits!
My play-by-post group and I just finished a year of playing Longwinter, the RPG module and setting by Luka Rejec. We had an incredible time, with the players delving into the political and social turmoil of the setting, fanning the flames of rebellion, and proceeding through a series of escapades.
After GMing it for so long, I have some suggestions that might help other GMs decide how they want to tackle it.
First, however, I just want to praise the material. Luka really needs no praise; the quality and beauty of his products are well-known. Longwinter presents a beautiful mountainous region that is believable despite its fantasy elements. Its early 20th century European vibe allows for more “realistic” gameplay even if the cars are autogolems and there are wolffolk and wizards wandering the barony.
There are many moments that stick out in my mind. My players climbed a mountain to visit an old wolffolk couple in their cave/home, as snow fell, in order to try to negotiate a truce between two factions. While they were up there on the mountaintop, they witnessed a baronial raid on a wolffolk position in the forest that the mountain overlooked, complete with fiery explosions in the night.
That moment came about because of my players’ determination to take action in a number of different ways (in fact, to strengthen the wolffolk) and a number of their choices, and also because of the opportunities the setting gave me to improvise and create interesting events. And there were many such moments, almost entirely driven by their choices interacting with the material.
I definitely recommend it as a module for people looking for a flavorful sandbox setting that can sustain long-term play but also comes with a built-in timer for the ending of a campaign.
But there are several aspects of Longwinter I want to point out for GMs who are wondering whether and how to run it. Of course, everyone will run it differently, and the things that were important for me may not be important or relevant for you. Thinking about them may be helpful in any case.
There are spoilers from here on in, for Longwinter.
Here are my suggestions for GMs planning to run Longwinter:
1. Figure out which ruleset you're going to use.
We used SDM, Luka’s ruleset for his Vastlands setting, but I don't think that there are good reasons to do so. It’s unclear to me whether Longwinter was written with SDM in mind, but if it was, it was for a much earlier version. I needed to convert the level stat that he provides for NPCs to SDM, because it did not match the levels used in SDM. The level of technology and magic in the Longwinter setting (the Lastlands setting) doesn’t quite match the Vastlands setting, either, and that makes some of the material for SDM an odd match.
Luka does mention D&D 5e in the book and that could be something you could use. And while I have seen people mention using Electric Bastionland or Into the Odd to run Longwinter, you'd need to find a way to use spells and magic items with those rulesets, to run the book as written. You will also need to come up with a list of spells and magic items appropriate for the system.
2. Witchburner is helpful for some added info and names for NPCs.
Longwinter is part of a larger setting, known as the Lastlands, which shows up in several other works by Luka. The only one that I found truly helpful for running Longwinter was Witchburner. It was a good place to quickly grab names from, and there was just a bit more setting information that I felt was useful for riffing on for Longwinter. While Luka creates anti-canon settings, where there is no set canon, having something to hold on to can be helpful.
The module Holy Mountain Shaker that Luka wrote for Old School Essentials is set in the Lastlands, and Luka has said that he has run it in Longwinter. I didn’t find it helpful for my game.
3. You'll need to create your own dungeons.
There are no dungeons fleshed out in the Longwinter books, but they are clearly useful and important for the module as written. Each village, mountain and river mentioned in the player’s guide includes references to things that could be dungeons (such as barrows, ancient palaces, and so on), but it's up to you to create them. I wrote my own dungeons.
4. Decide how you'll use cold.
My players never really interacted with the fun cold mechanics that Luka has written, even though I mentioned the cold level every day. They always had enough clothing and it never got wet because I let them have rain gear. You should probably find a way to use those cold mechanics, especially if you’re planning to run the game as a survival game.
5. You need to figure out the supply of goods in the region.
There are some resources in the books for buying supplies, but there is no list of prices or clear explanations of where items can be purchased. I wrote a list of prices of items and services that were generally available everywhere and also said that certain supplies were cheaper at the markets that are open in the big towns on certain days, each town having specific items for sale.
Beyond that, you’ll need to eventually decide how you are going to handle the dwindling of supplies as the winter gets worse. How do you decide whether food or other supplies has run out? I didn’t have a system and just worked it out based on the fiction. That worked for how our game went, but I would have probably needed a more robust system if my players hadn’t been focused on changing the winter’s course. It might have been interesting even as we played it (though a heavy resource management game didn’t feel like it would be fun in play-by-post).
6. The setting has a lot of great flavor, but you may need to prep to use it.
The flavor of the setting is very specific, and I wasn’t always prepared to utilize elements from it, even though I was running an asynchronous, pbp game. It might be worthwhile to dig pieces of the flavor out of the books into a list to use as you go along, because it's hard to do that on the fly.
7. The factions are a major factor in the setting. Decide on how you’ll use them.
The conflict between the baronials, the oldsettlers, and the wolffolk is a core theme of the game. Decide on how you'll adjudicate who is getting the upper hand at any point. Decide on how you'll adjudicate negotiations between them or which other factions they'll focus on.
Mausritter faction rules might help you with the "upper hand" question but not the other questions. I made a bespoke system for interactions, which helped me feel as though I was not just making ad hoc decisions. But hey, maybe your ad hoc decisions will be great for your game.
8. Decide how you understand the wolffolk.
To be clear, they aren’t wolves. But what are they, and how do you understand the powers that some of them have? There are skinchangers and shamans among the wolffolk, and nailing down how you believe they work is a good idea. There are hints to how Luka was understanding them throughout the books, and it may not always be consistent, because of the anti-canon nature of the books.
On Discord, Luka has said that the wolffolk are similar to fey, while he sees the baronials and the oldsettlers as basically the same type of people, with the same essential lineage, just separated by class, history, etc.
9. The hook you use will matter.
I used the first hook in the players' guide, of your cousin Viktor Bluntstone being missing. That sent the players around the map. First they had to visit his lawyer in Vreley, then they traveled to the chalet he bought in Pey Dimna, which they could use as a base, etc. Along the way, they became more aware of the larger faction issues, which turned out to be related to Viktor's disappearance, and they eventually decided to take sides in the faction fight, etc.
On the other hand, I know someone else who had their players just come to the region for a vacation. Only once they were there did strange things start happening.
The book is really more of a setting than a specific adventure, and your hooks will have to do the work to snag the players.
10. Make a plan for the endgame—maybe.
Assuming that you're planning on running the entire thing, with the full winter curse, etc., it's good to have a little idea of how you want the endgame to go.
Do you want to allow your players to figure out the backstory of the curse? My players wanted to find out, and I let them find historians and shamans who helped them piece it together.
Do you want to allow them to stop the curse? The book (under the faction advances of Winterwhite, in the GM's guide) does suggest a way they could (and Luka has a one page map thingy that he published that has another suggestion). There are multiple places that the book suggests (in the players' guide) that Winterwhite could be found, so you may want your players to visit her—or they may decide that on their own.
My players decided to bring the baron and his daughter to Winterwhite, after they found them, and they eventually sacrificed the two of them (despite my feeble attempts at giving them some personality) in a mystical underworld beneath the iron palace on the Motherberg. That ended the curse, so we never got into the endgame.
Your game will undoubtedly go in wildly different directions. Longwinter is a great opportunity to have a wild and unexpected adventure in a frozen, flavor-filled mountain region. I hope your game is as fun as ours was.
Are there any suggestions you would recommend specifically for in-person gameplay versus play-by-post games?