The Great Glass Mountain Masterpost

Shishkin

 

...euhemeristic view that the Myths are exaggerations of real historical events. The Beast began as a real animal, a boar or bear or auroch that achieved local notoriety by killing a warchief. The Goblin was an outlaw or social bandit with a physical deformity. The countervailing view holds that the myths are allegories for societal ills or vehicles for moral lessons, with each chronicler adding successive reinterpretations according to the social mores of their age. In this view the mysterious arrival of the Legion late in the tale smacks of an early modern poet inserting their caricature of man under protoindustrial capitalism into the mythic setting: the herd of identical semislaves who speak only in obedient grunts and trudge forward to hack away at their foes with mass produced weaponry.

The paucity of written sources from the period when the events in question allegedly took place makes archaeological evidence difficult to interpret. The chained effigy in the chapel at Widowsgrove, which Lazenby initially believed was the actual resting place of the character from the tale, may postdate the earliest versions of the story. A tomb decorated with images of by-then already mythical heroes every child grew up idolizing and every ruler wished to emulate. The image of the Horned Knight likewise appears in later manuscript illustrations but primary source carvings are difficult to disentangle from similar images of...

-Seekers of Seekers of Myths. Messer, Ishizaka, Kadminion et al. The Archaeological Survey, vol. 55 

 

 

Bocklin 

 

WHAT IS THIS? 

The Great Glass Mountain was a fifteen session game of Mythic Bastionland that I ran for three friends starting at Gencon 2025. I don't think of RPG books in terms of value for money because everyone I know just pirates whatever game they want. The real cost is the work of mastering the rules, creating the game world and, crucially, the social capital spend necessary to bring the players to the table. With that in mind, Mythic Bastionland is the best value proposition of fun vs effort that I have run since I picked up Delta Green in 2016. It equals Delta Green in ease of running but equals the best of Unknown Armies in emotional payoff. I doubt it has the longevity of either, but fifteen sessions felt like the perfect length for this game.

 

GAME SESSIONS

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

 

Hendrich

 

WHAT I DID DIFFERENTLY

Blasts are rolled once for everyone in the area of effect, not individually vs each victim. If you use a gambit, you use the same one vs everyone. This spares you rolling the same fistful of dice six times when you unleash a blast vs a group of people.

 

Dreams show you visions of people and places across the realm. Sometimes they show you what's going on in a Myth hex. This is a great way to give the NPCs interiority and share information that the players would otherwise never get. If I only kept one thing I'd keep this.

 

Myths are sometimes checked in inhabited places. The way it's supposed to work, Holdings and Dwellings follow real world rules while the wilderness is a place of myth. That's fine, but I like it when the myths have a chance to interact with the people and places of the Realm.

Vigor is restored by one night of hospitality, not a full day. This was a mistake but I decided to stick with it. Requiring the players to spend a whole day in an inhabited hex would have meant more time to interact with NPCs. The Knights were already claustrophobic and eager to resume adventuring after just one night apiece.

 

WHAT WE DIDN'T TRY

Advancing to another Age 

City quest 

Domain management

Warband scale combat 

 

BONUS

The Flying Swords

Music