Old Gods of Appalachia - All's Well

Old Gods of Appalachia (OGoA) is a Cypher system based game that focuses on an alternate Appalachia in the 19th century. The stereotypes of Appalachia are not welcome here. With only 4 players at the table and an older British GM, we were set to have a hoot.

The player next to me, Derek, was from Georgia, so we explained to the table what some of the most contentious discussions in the region are:

1. How do you say Appalachia? The correct answer is App-uh-LATCH-uh, or I'll throw an Apple atcha.
2. What do you put on your hotdog and if it isn't sauce (chili as you heathens call it) and slaw, then it doesn't matter.
3. What BBQ sauce you like best? Sweet with vinegar. The tangier, the better!

With all that settled, we moved onto learning about the game.

The Stat Sheet

The Snapshot

• Cursed ring doing arranged marriages thanks to a witch
• Had to travel through bog and cemetery to find witch
• Made friends with a ghost
• Made a deal with the witch
• Found a giant spider in a well with eggs
• Got curse removed

The System

The Cypher system utilize consumables as the main power rather than class abilities or equipment, so you're encouraged to use cyphers as you find more in the world and are capped with how many you can carry. Even character types (classes) who can't perform or understand magic can still use Cyphers, so it's an accessible consumable. This was my first time playing a Cypher-based game, and I think the setting did a lot to make me love it.

Something else that's interesting is rather than the GM making rolls, they have the option to do Intrusions. Intrusions allow the GM to add a complication to the scene, but the players receive XP for it. If a player accepts, they earn 2 XP, keep 1, and give 1 away to another player. Players can refuse the intrusion by giving the GM an experience point. XP can be used for other things like a re-roll or altering the narrative. At my table, they were primarily used for re-rolls, since it was a timed one-shot at a convention.

This mechanic reminded me a lot of Action Points from Modiphius's 2d20 system where complications rise from the players rolling poorly which the GM can use at any time without player consent. I think I like the added facet of player consent, because you often don't know how the GM intrusion will play or where it will take you. It provides player agency and a relationship with the GM that I find interesting rather than simply contested rolls.

A mechanic I found confusing about the system is Effort and Edge. Both of these are static modifiers to a player's Character Sheet. Effort allows you to do cool things like increased damage or ease the difficulty of a task. It's a single stat on your sheet to reference. Edge, however, reduces the cost of spending your Stat Pool. So Edge helps make the action cheaper when using Effort to reduce the difficulty of a task. Confusing, isn't it? You also have an Edge with stat, so there's a Might Edge, Speed Edge, and Intellect Edge.

I think because of how similarly named Edge and Effort are, it made it difficult for my brain to think of these as two distinct mechanics. I would have preferred Effort to be renamed Stamina or Labor, because you can only spend your Stat Pool based on how much Effort you have. Edge is clearly meant to denote advantage in some capacity which makes sense. It's a little convoluted, but once it clicked for me, it was fun to risk and manage my resources this way. Learning curve was real, though.

The Brief

The adventure we played was called All's Well which requires 2 of the players to be comfortable with intimate implications. Derek and I chose to be the characters with such an entwined fate. Basically, a cursed ring in my family that my pa gave me was meant to be some fertility ring but turns out it does arranged marriage and until we get married, the two people suffer damage.

Damage in the Cypher systems comes from player stats (Might, Speed, Intellect) which can be replenished through recovery rolls (limited number that take incremental amounts of time with each use). When one stat hits 0, you are impaired. When the second hits 0, you are debilitated, and finally when all 3 stats hit 0, you're dead.

We learn the ring was cursed by the Chester Witch, and we need to find her. Of course it requires going through a bog and past an abandoned cemetery. The bog has a nasty crocodile made of peat, sticks, and mud that tries to chomp it's way through us. Eventually, we "kill" it and make our way through the bog.

We head to the cemetery and feel like we're being followed. On the way, we run into a ghost that asks us to be led back to his tombstone, because his wife always visits his grave. It's sweet, but when we arrive, his wife is buried with him and has moved on. He moves on too but not before telling us about a cache buried in the corner of the cemetery. It has more Cyphers, and as we take them, a large creature stalks into the cemetery. We build a circle of protection, and I intimidate it into fleeing. Quickly, we head to the witch's house.

We do some surveillance before greeting her. We learn her intentions are not to hurt us, but she also doesn't seem inclined to help. A murder of crows hangs around the house and greets us, inviting us in. We head in and make a deal with the witch. She says to go to a small abandonded town near here and at the bottom of the well is a creature with eggs. Bring an egg back, and do not harm the creature, then she'll remove the curse on the ring.

It's dark now, and the well has a green glow from the eggs at the bottom. We see the creature is a large spider. Thinking it has sentience and a past with the witch, we tell it our mission. It willingly gives us an egge and tells us to take a letter to the witch, an old letter that's been waiting to be delivered for a long time. We do this, and the witch keeps her end of the bargain, lifting the curse off the ring.

The Takeaways

I discovered the GM really doesn't roll which has its own set of positives and negatives. I'll dive into this more on my post about running a session of OGoA with my own group.

Pros

• Loved the setting and Cyphers felt like a good fit for Appalachia
• Felt like I had agency and impact on the narrative

Con

• Confused by Effort and Edge early one, learning curve to understanding your character sheet

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