Welcome back to Wilderfeast Restaurant! Our tasting menu offers a series of insights into the lore of the One Land and various aspects of the game mechanisms. In this third course, we will serve a spicy soup allowing you to savor another important game phase: The Trail, i.e., the rules for travel and tracking monsters.
When you explore the One Land, you cross Areas, one after another, until you find your target. Each Area has four attributes: Hazard, a number representing how difficult the terrain is to traverse, Distance, representing how long it takes to cross the Area, Traits, representing unique features about the landscape, as well as a list of all the Ingredients that can be harvested there.
Reaching a static location is as easy as crossing Areas, one after another, until you get there. But since you’re a wilder, your destination is often a moving target. Most Journeys focus on a single frenzied Monster. Wherever the Monster goes, it leaves Tracks which always have two attributes: a direction (pointing toward an adjacent Area) and an age (either Fresh or Old, where Fresh indicates that the Monster is 1 area away, while Old means that it is 2 Areas away).
During The Trail, you complete travel rounds one after another until you reach your destination. At the start of each travel round, the pack chooses to either gather supplies or move on. Gathering supplies means slowing down, gathering food from the wilderness, and recovering your strength. You won’t make any progress toward your destination, but it’s dangerous to strain yourself without pause.
Every Ingredient in the Area requires a Search in a certain Style to collect. For example, tubers buried in the hard earth require you to be Mighty. Mushrooms that are easily mistaken for their poisonous counterparts require you to be Precise. Fruits you must climb high trees to reach require you to be Swift. Small, alert rodents that dart away if they hear you require you to be Tricky. When you’re done Foraging, you Camp and the whole pack takes a rest and collectively cooks a meal.
If you move on, you lose the opportunity to cook or rest, but you can start a Travel Challenge and try to leave your current Area to proceed to the next one. This particular kind of Challenge represents the time and energy it takes to cross the Area, and you have a single round to complete it.
One wilder volunteers to Navigate, leading the pack forward and looking for Tracks, while the others Travel to clear the path, haul supplies over obstacles, and keep watch for hostile monsters. All wilders perform a Traversal test with any Style, and their action scores contribute to the pack’s average speed. Depending whether you use the same Style as the navigator or not, you will gain an advantage or a disadvantage.
While as players you might roll Tests one at a time, as wilders you move together. You make progress to the next Area no matter what, but the outcome of the Challenge determines what it costs you.
Once you finally enter the Monster’s current Area, the game transitions immediately to our next topic: The Hunt! We hope you have relished the flavor of this third course of our Wilderfeast tasting menu. Next time we will serve you a juicy jaegerschnitzel with mushroom topping and a side of adventurous salad.
If you want to share your Wilderfeast experience with other players, don’t hesitate to join our Discord server! We want to hear your thoughts!
If you didn’t play the Wilderfeast™ Quickstart yet, instead… wait no further! Here’s the link, just in case you missed it the first time around.
Remember, Wilderfeast™ is launching on Kickstarter on September 5!
Follow the project on Kickstarter to be notified when it will go live!
Wilderfeast™ is a game by KC Shi, writer for tabletop RPGs such as Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound, the Uncaged anthology, BEOWULF: Age of Heroes, and One More Quest. Cover art by Xulia Vicente.
