Glade of Solitude

A GM-less game for 3 players.

1. The Glade

The Glade of Solitude is a place that would be strictly forbidden to young witches-in-training, if the elders had imagined that you would actually find it. But they did not, and now, led astray by harmless delinquency, you find yourselves within it and completely unprepared. Or perhaps, it’s yet one more test.

Upon entering the glade, a sickly sensation falls upon each of you. Your elders, had they warned you about this place, would call it the Curse of Solitude, an affliction that isolates each person from all means of communication. Looking around, your companions appear as faceless ghosts, swaying ambivalently. Your senses seem intact, but you are incapable of conveying your thoughts: you cannot parse each others’ expressions or gestures, your words vanish into the mist when you attempt to speak.

You gather around the only other thing you found in the glade: the crumbling remains of a long-dead witch…and her sturdy old cauldron.

2. The Cauldron

The curse cannot be fully lifted until you escape the misty, ever-shifting woods surrounding the glade. Unable to communicate, your only means of unraveling your fate is to work together: gather ingredients, wordlessly combine them in the cauldron, and brew potions to help you survive the dangers of the forest and begin to dispel the curse.

Begin by marking your location on the Path of Trials. You begin on the hex labeled “Start”. Trials have brief prompts and suggest mysteries to solve, obstacles to overcome, or threats to defuse.

Each turn, one player will take on the role of Cauldron Keeper. This role rotates to the next player after the turn ends. They take responsibility for choosing the trial, elaborating on its prompt, and describing the brew that results from the night’s potion-crafting. They still participate as normal when Brewing Potions.

3. Escaping the Glade

Each day, your witches will gather ingredients in the relative calm of daylight:

  1. On the first day, all players draw 3 cards. On subsequent days, all players discard their hand and then draw back up to a max of 3 cards.

Each night, follow these steps:

  1. The Cauldron Keeper moves your group to any adjacent hex in the Path of Trials that has not already been successfully completed. If you failed the most recent Trial, you may stay where you are and retry it.

    If it’s a new one, briefly describe what the trial looks like. If you’re attempting a failed Trial again, explain how the problem has worsened or changed since the previous night.

  2. Brew a potion:

    1. You may not communicate in any way, except using methods that you’ve unlocked via Progress. Choose a card that represents the ingredient you’ll contribute to the potion and place it in front of you, face down.
    2. Once everyone has chosen, take turns revealing the cards and naming the ingredient they represent. Ingredients can be whatever you choose to imagine.
    3. The Cauldron Keeper consults the Potions section below and describes the resulting brew, including what it looks and smells like and what effects it might have.

  3. Determine whether the potion met the Requirement for this Trial.

    1. If the potion that was brewed meets the requirement, the Cauldron Keeper describes how the potion’s effects have partially circumvented the curse. Check the Reward column.
    2. Otherwise, the Cauldron Keeper describes a way in which the potion backfires, exacerbates the problem, or endangers one of the witches. You manage to defuse the problem, but the night is wasted and the Reward remains unclaimed.

Once you successfully complete the Requirement for the Trial on Hex #12, you’ve succeeded. How do you react when you can all see each others’ faces, hear each others’ voices again for the first time?

If at any point you run out of cards while replenishing your hands, your supplies have dwindled and despair begins to take hold. Who comes to save you before it’s too late? What stern words to they have for you?

4. Potions