Play report: Kala Mandala and Stirring the Hornet's Nest at Het Thamsya
I ran Kala Mandala for the first time tonight with some fellow regulars at the Sword & Board. We got through a big chunk of Stirring the Hornet's Nest at Het Thamsya. I want to jot down some notes quickly while it's still fresh.
I'm flagging my own rulings relevant to Kala Mandala or the setting with marks, usually where I made or asked for rolls that weren't in the print. I was pretty generous with a few hints and rolled the encounters less often than I might have: we had limited time, and it fit the mood ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Set up
3 players, all had passing familiarity with Cairn and/or Into the Odd so everyone was down with the NSR experience even if not experienced. All experienced with OSR. We took some time at the beginning to go over the main characteristics of the ruleset, using Cairn as a frame of reference and then some of the key aspects of Kala Mandala (the skills, hit protection vs. hit points, prayer, opposed checks, advantage/disadvantage, stacking damage, no scars). We're using the most recent version of the playbooks, Early Access 0.13a.
I had also created a dozen pre-gens (using the delightful Meddling Sign Up Forms, which I folded as brochures) and each player picked one pretty quickly on vibes without feeling the need to interrogate the skills or mechanics. Among the 12 pre-gens, there were 3 with each skill type as a first skill (determining loadout) and 3 with each skill set as a second skill. With only three players (thieving-thieving, healing-magic, magic-healing) I offered them the opportunity to take a fighter along as an NPC but they declined, agreeing that they were fine if they got annihilated. We then spent some time discussing the specific mechanics of their skills, inventory, and heirlooms.
Right off the bat, we hit a question that highlights that the game is in early access: what do first aid kits do? I ruled that they could pick from two options for first aid kit mechanics: either a) first aid kits were required to stabilize a character with Critical Damage, or b) anyone could stabilize them, and a first aid kit would restore 2 lost ability points. We went with B.1
At this point I should add that none of us are SE Asian. One player did express hesitation about how free he'd be to play his character for fear of leaning into racist tropes out of ignorance, and we had another discussion around how we felt about our lack of direct connection to the cultural setting. I won't go into that here, but we agreed that we share the desire to approach the setting in a spirit of respect and curiosity, and also to explicitly flag moments when we felt uncomfortable about acting or interpreting a situation. As an aside, I should say that what draws me most to Kala Mandala and to Munkao's work in general is his contagious love and enthusiasm he has for the history, societies, and cultures of South East Asia, and how effective he is as communicating that both with his art (absolutely incredible) and his writing. It's very inviting.
Characters
Kingee Hok. Lizard folk. STR 8 DEX 12 WIL 8 HP 6. Skills: Thieving (Ventriloquism), Thieving (Sleight of Fist). Random item: fishing net. Heirloom: chatty theatre mask.
Mongolang. Lizard folk. STR 12 DEX 6 WIL 12 HP 2. Skills: Healing (Healing Dance), Magic (Rote Learning). Random item: picture book of epic poem (the Ramayana?). Heirloom: guardian spirit in a shawl. Ruling: could start the adventure with another character's scroll memorized.
Sur Luruang. Bearcat folk. STR 9 DEX 9 WIL 15 HP 4. Skills: Magic (Manuscript Monster), Healing (Healing Doll). Random item: lock and key. Heirloom: tiny torch. Scrolls: Water, Pit, Gold. Ruling: gave the character one more scroll due to Manuscript Monster (this is already in the skill description).
Playing the adventure
SPOILER ALERT for Stirring the Hornet's Nest at Het Thamsya from this point
Onto the game. Railroaded to the temple gates: characters were sent from Bawan to Lashin, where they boarded with a guild associate (a local farmer who didn't know much about anything but was happy to take a retainer to board the occasional traveling meddler) and then went to Het Thamsya the next morning. Sumgan was great for a lore dump. The PCs asked about the automata and the commands, I ruled that one of the monks could give them a brief primer on the commands per p.7 of the adventure. They asked about subverting the commands and monk hinted this would work. Gave each player a copy of the handout map.
Ruled that the monk was uncertain whether automata would accept command slips in combat, which the players wondered several times throughout the session. Still haven't made up my mind on this. It could take a player's action do feed an automaton a command, while not stopping it from taking a hostile action?
The PCs decided to pray to a small shrine at the gates of the temple. Mongolang danced while Kingee Hok and Sur Luruang each donated half their gold for a Good Offering. I rolled their blessings and kept them to myself (1x reroll for Mongolang, -2 save bonus for Kingee Hok, 2x reroll for Sur Luruang).
Onto the temple grounds, then.
R1: they spent the most time in a single place outside from the front door as they noticed the tortoton patrolling and spent time trying to figure out the parameters of its engagement. A few rulings here:
- the tort does a regular circuit of the room unless alarmed
- when confronted with the PCs, automata will blare out their commands
- the tort has an approximately 90° field of vision and will not swivel its head (note as well p.6: "They perceive surroundings by sight" - they will not hear or otherwise sense things they can't see)
- when the PCs stepped foot in the doorway to bait the tort, it would recite its commands and then charge. PCs had to make a DEX save to avoid being stomped by stepping outside the temple again. Once activated, the tort would charge to the doorway, blare its commands again, and then resume its patrol.
The PCs tried subverting the tort by crawling and I ruled that crawling would be somewhere between convincing and okay as a subversion to the role chance of failure would be 2:6 - but rolled a 1 anyone and the tort charged. Unfortunately, that led them to assume that no subversion would work on the "Steps No In" command.
Ultimately, they decided to slap some mud on the tort's eyes and sneak around it. Ruled that they had to spend a ration (using the water) to make a handful of mud and roll a DEX save to avoid getting trampled. They succeeded and snuck by. There's opportunity to rule on whether or how long the mud would continue to cake the tort's eyes.
I also ruled that they could dump another ration to make more mud, and use the Everfresh leaves to carry one application of mud. They did this once.
Sur Luruang decided to be comically avaricious and to use his Gold scroll to replace the contents of the donation box with fake gold so he'd have an alibi for stealing the real stuff.
R2: didn't search the detritus. Scared of the bats. Threw a rope over the rafter to dislodge the Command Slip. Ruled via die of fate that this worked.
This led to a bit of a discussion about whether they could create their own Command Slips. I ruled that they could try but it would take time to procure materials elsewhere (watches or days) and they decided to treat the adventure as time-sensitive instead.
R7: PCs clocked what the pilltons are doing and decided they'd be able to delay them by bringing other, wrecked automata to delay them. A PC tried to grab one (DEX check) and they scattered to other rooms. PCs went right.
R10: first random encounter, with a rhoomton. PCs won initiative and smashed it in on shot. Dropped the smashed corpse in R7 to try to distract the pilltons. Took the rope and usable Command Slip.
Combat ruling: I find the Kala Mandala RAW for "who goes first" ("DEX saves for everyone to determine order of action") to be confusing so went with straight initiative, going clockwise around the table from the winner.
R11: found the hidden door and Kingee Hok picked the lock to reveal the secret passage. No one had torches except for Sur Luruang's heirloom, which he used to light the way. We also stopped to discuss the mechanics of his heirloom: player decided it was affixed to a long, thin bamboo stick coming out of his belt - which kept it from burned him, but might burn other things as he passed by. Kingee Hok also picked the lock of the far door.
R12: Sur Luruang used the Manuscript Monster to identify the scrolls, while Mongolang clocked the weird wall quickly. They looted the books and scrolls, and took down the wall.
R13: they meet Bookworm, fall in love, and take it with them even though it doesn't have satisfactory answers to any of their questions. They get it to agree not to talk to Satur when they find him. Mongolang let it read his picture book.
R9: PCs went straight to Kin's defense. Per rulings at R1, they were able to surprise the tort. Mongolang jumped on its back and hacked it, Kingee Hok got in front and attacked it to draw its attention, and Sur Luruang used his mud to blind the tort. I ruled the tort would get a Difficult attack on Kingee Hok before he got out of the way. Once they were clear, the blind tort continued to walk into the wall.
The characters chatted with Kin. Sur Luruang bribed her with (fake) gold to find out how she got in and what she knew about the place. Ever avaricious (and the player stubbornly committed to the bit), I ruled he could pull some fast talk to get her to swap some real gold for his fake gold with a successful, opposed DEX WIL check. He failed the first one so I had him reroll per his Blessing (using one of two), and he succeeded. Kin then ran off.
PCs also clocked the doorton to R14 that would need a suitable Command Slip later.
R8: PCs wanted to go south to check out the west wing (R3-R6) before going north. Rolled an encounter here and got the sparrow dropping a Command Strip in the middle of the room. Kingee Hok passed a DEX save to grab the slip and return to the doorway before getting trampled. Torts now focused on PCs.
PCs lured the torts to the secret passage in R12 and then closed the door, returning to R13. Ruled that the torts would not break the door and would return to R8.
A PC decided this was the time to resolve the R14 doorton problem. Initially they wanted to use their kin type as a trigger, but I hinted that the monks' robes in the room were pretty distinct so they put those on. Ruling: monks' robes not an item slot when worn.
The PCs then went back to R10 and to R7, where I rolled another die of fate in the PCs' favour and ruled that the pilltons had fixed the rhoomton instead of moving the tarantuton's threat clock forward.
R4: BIG RULING TIME because just walking into R4 can wake Satur with the Screeching Cobra's warning scream. I gave the PCs one round to act first, and Sur Luruang decided to read the scroll of Reptile Speak and succeeded a WIL save to get the cobra's attention before it screamed. Asked what it wants, the cobra told him it just wants food for it and its babies.
So, the PCs decided to back to R2 for some bats. Kingee Hok used his Ventriloquism to scare them down from the ceiling and his fishing net to catch a bunch as they flew by. For the mechanic, I ruled that Kingee Hok would make a DEX save to determine the number of bats caught: success would catch 1d00/2 ("100 glowing eyes watch the party), failure 1d100/4. He succeeded and caught 33 bats.
Back to R4. I ruled that not enough time had passed to move the tarantuton clock forward, although maybe I would have played it by the book if we were all feeling a little more fighty.
Cobra mother accepted the gift of bats and allowed the PCs to pass.
R3: took the money, ignored the broken tort.
R5: Sur Luruang tried to use his lock and key item to keep killton bound while being able to transport it but failed a DEX save (despite me applying his Blessing) and went to combat. Killton smashed on first hit. The doorton to R6 saw the monks' robes they were wearing and let them in.
R6: looted the room and read the instruction manual on Command Slips. This gave me the opportunity to review the text on page 7 and realized I had oversimplified a little! Clarified that each slip could only take one command, and that the new slips would replace the old ones one at a time. Was challenged on whether a new order would come in at the top (moving the others down and dropping "Automatons in Temple") or the bottom (dropping "Steps No In") and ruled via coin flip that they would come in at the top. Also used their reading the book to explain subversion, subversion failure, and misinterpretation mechanics.
PCs then decided it was time to go into the north part of the temple. Returned through R5 and R4 (where I ruled and rolled d100/2 to see how many bats were left - it's good that the cobra was still distracted by them and didn't want to confront the PCs again, because the Speak scroll had worn off), then R4 where the tarantuton clock had moved forward, and then the long way around the east wing to avoid the torts in R8. I also chose not to roll encounters or a more traditionally Cairn-style dungeon event when they returned through previously visited rooms.
Die of fate ruled that the tort in R9 was still blinded. They fed the doorton the command slip to admit only monks to enter R14.
R14: Mongoland immediately grabbed the rattan child carrier for Bookworm. Kingee Hok identified the real gold statue and Sur Luruang decided to just hump it out over his shoulder. They ignored the gold paint.
The map and the room descriptions are a bit confusing here. It looks like wasp nest has blocked the passage from R14 to R15 and filled much of R15, and that the holes have been knocked into the wall between R16-17, R17-15, and R15-18. So, the sequence of passages into the sanctum (R16) without cutting through walls is R14, R17, R15, R18, R19, R21, R16.
R17: rolled both half wasps as "human head, wasp body." Sur Luruang tried to use the Speak Insect scroll to identify himself as a friend but, per the hostility chart (p. 16), the half wasps instead identified him as foe. Combat ensued, and the two half wasps were killed. Sur Luruang didn't want to put did down his new gold statue so his one-handed staff attacks were all Difficult. Mongoland used Healing Dance to turn the ensuing Short Rest into a Long Rest, topping up everyone's stats and HP.
End of session
At this point we needed to end the session due to the store closing. We'll return to it sometime in the next few weeks. The players said they're all excited to get back to it, and may even be interested in keeping something going in the longer term.
Observations
From both myself and the players:
- Things started a little slow but seem to have settled into a nice flow as the players got used to the system and the tone. Lots here is potentially dangerous, but the adventure is giving the players ample ground for agency and choice.
- It's nice to be in a lit dungeon for once!
- The whimsy really carries through for me and it seems to be growing on the players. One said it's almost cozy.
- I read people complaining somewhere that some of the skills, scrolls, and items in Kala Mandala are "useless" and "banal." I didn't think they necessarily were but I was curious to see how things would play out. This group of players has really engaged with these in fun and interesting ways: Ventriloquism and the fishing net, the lock (even the use imagined for it failed). They're looking to their character sheets for creative ideas to respond to situations.
- The only thing that really bothers me is the snake in R4: its warning scream means you have to attack it or otherwise engage with it before it has a chance to act or else it kiboshes the main quest. If the PCs had entered through the secret entrance at R3 or turned left instead of right at R7 off the bat, I'm not sure they'd have had the means to stop it from screaming. The part of me that has internalized too many episodes of Between Two Cairns doesn't like that at all!
- It might be nice to use scars from Cairn.
- On one hand, I feel lazy and weirdly guilty for not using Cairn's rigorous dungeon exploration procedures, but on the other hand its nice not to be beholden to them: sometimes it feels like the game has natural momentum, and rolling for events all the time could interrupt that. It seems weird to me that so much of the Cairn mechanics want to avoid chance in the form of rolls, yet the structure of events in play are largely determined by it. I can't quite get the internal logic behind that.
Mechanics in Kala Mandala
As it says on the tin, the game is still in early access so I don't take these as failings. Still, you may need to address them to run the game in its current form.
- As asked above, what do first aid kits do?
- Rations: it seems like the game is halfway between two systems. On one hand, a ration is a replenishable inventory item meant to last for an adventure. On the other, characters starts with 2 or 3 in their loadout, suggesting that more than one would be consumed in a session - this would be unnecessary if a ration were replenishable, although introducing ration loss/consumption as a dungeon or wilderness event as in Cairn might require this. Also, it didn't come into play tonight, but the skill Fortifying Foods treats rations as one-off consumables (Workout Meal might as well, though not explicitly stated).
- How do DEX saves translate into an initiative order? Or is it simply, per Opposed Saves, that the lowest goes first?
- Does Cairn's full inventory = 0 HP rule apply here? I decided not and am letting PCs fill theirs without penalty. I'm also not charging inventory slots for gold.
I also had questions about specific skills and made up some house rules for these when creating pre-gens, but that's probably for another post.
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Now that I'm not on the spot and looking at the Cairn rules, I realize that first aid kits should probably be treated like bandages in Cairn to stabilize PCs with Critical Damage. Still, first aid kits in Kala Mandala have 2 uses while bandages in Cairn have 3, and PCs in Kala Mandala have fewer inventory slots. Still on the fence about how to have played this one.↩