All art this post by Marie Enger

I finally had the chance to run Marie Enger’s “occult western inspired RPG zine” Casket Land. I backed the Kickstarter from Zine Quest last year, and right now they are running a follow up, Casket Land – Cruach for Zine Quest 2. But you can find the rules and character details at https://www.casket-land.com/ for FREE right now! We had a blast playing and I highly recommend checking out this game. Go to the site, download the rules and if you like what you see and can spare some cash then back the Kickstarter so it can have more cool stuff for everyone!

Casket Land is Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) and runs off a (somewhat) modified version of the basic ruleset. I’ve never run a PbtA game before, though I have listened to The Adventure Zone: Amnesty and gleamed enough of the rules of that to run this with little problems. Casket Land is set in a weird western world where witches are real, the dead don’t always stay that way, and the town the characters start in is surrounded by thousands upon thousands of jet black caskets standing up out of the ground. Without further ado I’ll give you a rundown of how the game went and my thoughts on it.

My ragtag group of survivors consisted of Holiday the Sheriff, Morgan the Barber, Boone the Drifter, Rango the Gambler and Jessie the Undertaker. They started out in the Gather of the town of Noname, talking to Sedge the town Speaker, and the Madman known as Loam. Noname’s well was drying up and the town would die without an alternate source of water. Loam had come down from his northern hills to tell them about the Homestead, a travelling chicken legged house with a magical well within its walls. The Homestead was near, the only issue was that it’s owner, the Sage Hen, was as well. [A note about Loam is that he does not speak, and communicates solely through gestures and writing. This was a lot of fun to play out for me, I used a drawing app on my tablet to simulate a chalkboard but having an actual slate or notebook would be amazing for his interactions with the players.]

The players eventually agreed to go with Loam, but decided to go shopping first. I definitely should have prepared this better as the players all tried to get goods for basically nothing. If you play this definitely have some ideas for what goods will be there and how much they cost in gold or what they could trade for them. I probably let them get more than what I should have but they wound up forgetting all the stuff that they had by the end of the game.

Finally they decided to start their journey and reached the Casket Lands that surround their town. While I was describing the scene and how Loam was leading the way, one of the players asked if he was walking without rhythm. I had been debating which monster to throw at them in this scene and that joke sealed the deal. A giant Grave Worm burst out of the nearest casket and attacked. The worm was a surprisingly tough critter, but Boone put it down in the end.

The next major encounter was with the Madmen of the hills. I decided that Loam wasn’t sure where the Homestead was exactly but Salt, another Madman was. Salt was a lot of fun to play as, I really played up her madness having her ramble off on tangents before and after getting to her points. Somehow she got on the Chili’s baby back ribs commercial song and after telling the players what they needed to know she said goodbye with a creepily whispered “BBQ Sauce”.

The last thing standing between the players and the Homestead was the Chasm. A massive gouge in the earth that had three potential paths through it. The clear is a wide open path that goes straight through with no obvious perils or obstacles, the Tunnel is a dark path that goes underneath the Chasm, and the Tangle is a mass of trusting, thorny vines that crosses over it. The players took a vote and chose the Tangle. I had them roll to see how easily they traversed this mess of vines and thorns and took water or health from those that failed. Then they encountered one of the Sage Hen’s lieutenants: the Roadrunner. When Rango ran his mouth she attacked, and during the fight Rango wound up with an infected arm and with unstable reasoning. Holiday nearly took out the Roadrunner in one massive hit, causing her to split into seven roadrunners that jumped and scratched at the characters. She eventually got back to her human form and Holiday put her down for good.

The last fight left them pretty banged up and very low on resources. This lead Jessie and Rango to the idea of searching some nearby caskets for potential goods. While I would have let them find some ways to heal up had they done well on their investigation checks they kept failing miserably. Several Grave Worms later they were more banged up than before. Rango tried one more casket and finally riled a success, but his now damaged reasoning caused him to be looking for gold rather than supplies and that was exactly what he found.

With all the shenanigans we were running low on time when they finally reached the Homestead sitting in the middle of nowhere with nobody around. Rango started hooting and hollering about making a bet, while the others looked for signs of life and/or a potential way into the boarded up shack. Soon they realized Harpy Buzzards were landing all around them and that the Sage Hen had appeared on the roof. Rango wanted to bet his soul against the deed to the house in a game of chance, but the Sage Hen wanted the stakes to be higher…she wanted everybody’s soul. [I thought that would be a great way to end the session and figured if they lost they could still fight their way out of the deal. Unfortunately I did not communicate that clearly and when I had Rango roll against them to convince the characters and they all lost they didn’t take kindly to being forced into the bet.] Before that game could take place, Holiday used his Law of the Land power to force the Sage Hen to hand over the deed. She did so reluctantly and since he didn’t add any caveats to his order she then attacked him for the deed.

Five on one was never going to be a fair fight so some of the Buzzard Harpies joined in too. Jessie soon fell, having been badly wounded by the Grave Worms she kept unearthing. Morgan used a Hag’s Eye to see that the Sage Hen’s weaknesses and hit her with grave dirt to keep her grounded and opened her up to being struck through the heart. Rango’s growing madness lead him to attack Holiday for ruining his game, but Holiday still struck down the Sage Hen by shooting her through the heart.

In the end Jessie had fallen, Rango lost an arm to infection and became the newest Madman roaming the hills, and the rest of the players got the Homestead and saved the town…for now.

Casket Land was a ton of fun to play and we all had a good time. I had some stumbles in judgement and gameplay but even with a basic understanding of PbtA rules it was pretty easy and fun. There are definitely some things the GM will have to bring to the game and make up. The enemies has powers and vitality but don’t have stats [I don’t know if there is some rule in PbtA that explains what if any bonus they should get to rolls. I know in Monster of the Week the Adventure Zone guys played it with the GM not rolling at all and just using failed rolls to do damage. But the powers of enemies in this game made it seem very much like they got their own turns in combat. But I could have been playing that wrong.] There’s definitely enough in these rules to play the game, but there will be times when something comes up that isn’t covered. But I think that is true of any rules light game and don’t really count that against Casket Land. I don’t think my players or I will remember the lack in the mechanics, we will remember the amazing story that we told together. I can’t wait to get the rewards from the current [though only a few days left!] Kickstarter so we can return to this weird western game.

Thanks for reading! Leave any question or comments below!