So I did some research over the weekend on Celtic druids and discovered some pretty cool druidic lore.
i) There were druids (Fenian) who had hazel wood shields – the lore says they were magical and could destroy fairies over a wide area.
ii) Fairies existed. Some weren’t so good.
iii) Some trees were believed to be haunted by fairies and demons – Elder Trees specifically
iv) Trees were related to the ogham language and represented a set letter.
v) I found a cool story about a hazel tree with no leaves. It was believed that this tree was evil, it dripped poisonous milk and was the home of vultures and ravens and was called the Ancient Dripping Hazel.
vi) There was a constant battle between the Holly King (won during winter) and the Oak King who won during summer
This got me thinking. I was originally going to stay with my potion idea, instead having the players being Druids harvesting ingredients and so forth. The Dripping Hazel really caught my attention however and I’ve gone in a totally different tangent.
What if the game board represented a grove of trees, aligned in a circle. At the heart of the circle, is the Ancient Dripping Hazel. This once pristine Grove is now infected and players will represent different Druidic roles, such as the Fenian Druid, in order to fix the forest and destroy the Ancient Dripping Hazel.
My ideas:
1) The Trees of the Grove will represent the key trees of Druidic lore (oak, yew, alder, Rowen, etc, etc.). These trees will be double sided. One side is healthy, the other infected and diseased. Healthy side has positive effects, infected side negative.
2) Each round, the Ancient Dripping Hazel sends out its Ravens and Vultures into the grove to do horrible stuff. This will be represented by a deck of cards. This deck will be full of creatures of lore, animals and infections. Infection cards flip trees from healthy to infected, fairies haunt trees or mischievously annoy players somehow (maybe attach to a player and slow movement down or remove actions?), animals go wild and generally make it hard for players to complete their goals.
3) Players will have distinct roles and only by working together can players win
4) The end goal is to visit each tree and learn its ogham word/letter in order to heal/destroy the ancient dripping hazel? This is the one bit I am not sure on yet. Maybe a number of trees. Perhaps there are a number of Ancient Dripping Hazels, one of which is randomly chosen at the beginning of the game. Each has a unique ogham name that the players need to learn in order to win?
5) If all the trees in the forest become infected, Players lose. If the Ancient Dripping Hazel deck runs out they lose, maybe?
It’s a beginning to work on.
Sounds like you are progressing in the right direction!
Thank you Quest - your pushing is what has got me this far.
I'm just trying to work out what the players are trying to achieve, for the endgame. I like the idea of the ogham letters to spell a name and this way you could have some difficulty levels in there too with some Hazel's having more lettering than others. I'll look for some ogham wording I think and see if there is anything 'magical' that can be used to heal the Ancient Dripping Hazel.
Still a bit more work to go - a lot more research to get ideas for how I can have fairies interact with players. Some will definitely haunt trees - basically players can't learn the ogham lettering until the tree has been cleansed.
I'm not sure if a tree can be healed once it becomes infected yet, but that'll be play testing both sides to see what it does balance wise and if it is too difficult or too easy.