Latest / Story Games / Episode 15: The Librarian's Apprentice pt 4 FINALE
Transcript
- Maggie Studio: And welcome back to Story Games, a podcast all about your favorite narrative-driven games. My name is Memo and I will be your host. Today I am bringing you the finale of the Librarian's Apprentice. I won't spoil it for you, but this is the last episode of this particular playthrough. I really hope you've enjoyed watching me go on this journey through this magical library, and I hope you enjoy the finale. Without further ado, here is the Librarian's Apprentice. Friends and welcome back to another episode of The Librarian's Apprentice. I am so happy to have you back today. I believe we're on episode four of The Librarian's Apprentice now, which is super exciting. I am worried that this will be the last episode, but we will see what happens. So, to recap, we are playing The Librarian's Apprentice, which is a solo journaling role-playing game. I'm having so much fun with this game. We've definitely been telling a tale, but if you have not gone back and watched the first three episodes, I highly recommend you do that now. Also, if you would like to get a copy of the Librarian's Apprentice for yourself, you can absolutely do so through our website. I will have that linked down below. Without further ado, let's get into the actual gameplay. Let's do a recap first. So I have my journal here. And I open her up to my title page. And then I've got my character sheet here. This is Wisteria. She is a changeling, and she is trying to become a full-fledged librarian. She's just an apprentice for now. On the next page, I'm not sure if you guys have seen this, I'm not sure if I've shown this part to you. This is where I have the documents. Now, this is a completely optional step that I took upon myself, but I wanted to record all the documents that we found. So we have the size of a butterfly, the form of a coin, and the whispers of trees written down here. And then I have three more slots because we need six documents in total to actually complete the game. Then you turn the page, and I have the actual gameplay where I have everything written down, all the locations we've been to, all the adventures we've had, and then we can move on to location number seven. Now, last time we had a bit of a harrowing adventure where we met an acolyte of the scriptworm. It was a complication, and we almost died. Failed. We almost failed, which is a bummer, but we didn't fail, which is less of a bummer. However, we do have three fatigue. Our familiar has one fatigue. And that means if we get one more fatigue, we do lose. We have one more fatigue slot and s three more documents to find. So I am losing a little bit of hope, but not all hope is lost. We're gonna figure this out. We're gonna we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. So let's get into the game, shall we? The first thing we need to do is take the travel action, which, if I remember correctly, I don't have my dice. Let me go get my dice. Dice acquired. Okay, so we draw two cards from the deck. We pulled a two. Okay, I think we lost. We might have just lost. Nope, wait, I'm nope, not yet, not yet. We found a document. Okay, it's not over. It's not over. Okay. Then we roll. And I got a four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. No, eight. Sorry. I got an eight. So that is a shadow. Add either card to the map and discard the other. Okay, so not too bad. I add the king to the map. And then I discard the two, which means we find a document. So we are at location number seven. And now we can roll on the descriptions table to find out what exactly we've got going on in here. Okay, so gonna roll once for the descriptor, and I got a two and a five, which is eldritch. Ooh, that is very cool. And then for the feature, we've got a two and a two, which is feathers, and then for the category. We've got one and four, which is contains a hidden letter. ⁓ Ooh. That's fun. So how to put together eldritch feathers and a hidden letter. Maybe the room is like a museum, like kind of like a museum exhibit. And part of this exhibit is I know we did taxidermy before, but I'm thinking taxidermy again. And it's a big taxidermied, like eldritch feathery. Monster, and hidden within the feathers is a secret letter. And maybe that secret letter tells us where to find the document. I like that. I'm gonna write that down. Okay, so here's what I wrote. I find my way into what looks like a museum with shiny pedestals displaying all kinds of oddities. The biggest exhibit is a huge monster. It's covered in feathers and has far too many eyes for me to be comfortable with it. But as I look closer, I spot a letter hidden within the feathers. Alright, so now we're gonna find a document, which is exciting. So we're going to roll on the documents table, which is back here. And we're going to roll once for two and six, which is images created by. And we're gonna roll again. Three and four. A pool of water. Ooh. How will that? Okay, images created by a pool of water. Maybe the way that the light reflects off the pool of water casts light onto the wall behind it. ⁓ and that is what the document is. Yeah, that sounds cool. And now we have to roll again on the events and secrets table. Three and four. Three and four. Uh-oh. Thick fog fills the area. Minus one to travel and conduct research roles here. Okay, so our next travel roll we will have a negative one, which is unfortunate, but it is one of those. Ooh, okay, I have an idea. Maybe as I'm reading the letter, this thick fog kind of rolls in, which makes the images created by the pool of water almost take on a ghostly kind of form. That could be fun. That could be cool. Okay, I'm gonna write about that real quick. Okay, so here's what I wrote. I pick up the letter, and immediately a thick fog rolls into the room. The letter is full of runes I don't recognize, some sort of long-dead language that's foreign to my eyes. I glance around me, suddenly uneasy in this massive room full of eldritch oddities. The shapes almost look as if they're moving in the fog, heads turning to watch me as I pass. Eventually I come upon a pedestal that holds an ornate basin of water. A light emanates from it, cutting through the fog. I suddenly begin to see new shapes take form in the fog, images projected from this magical water basin. I recognize it as my fourth document. I fish out a glass bottle from my bag, dip it in the water, and cork it. The light surrounds me in a gentle glow, and suddenly I feel a lot less scared. Yay! Okay, that was cool. I had fun writing that one for sure. Okay, so we found a document that's amazing. We are now going to travel to our eighth location. Alright, and we're going to take the travel action again. So we're going to Flip a card, a queen. So another document, please below. And a nine. Ooh. A nine. Okay. And then we have ⁓ we have a negative one too. This might this might do us in. This might do us in. ⁓ I rolled a three. So I get a plus one to navigation and a minus one to navigation. So that equals out to three. Which means we run into another complication. okay, okay, okay. ⁓ So first let us describe the room that we're in before we move on. We're going to roll six and a six, which is well traveled. And then we roll again. Three and a three. Two doubles, that's fun. Three and a three for instruments. And then one more time for category. Three and one for libraries. Okay, so immediately I'm having a pretty clear picture of what I want this room to be. It's like a library of instruments from all over the world and all over the different realms. So there's instruments that like I've never seen before, instruments that I probably can't even play, ⁓ like don't have like the correct anatomy to play, even. I'm thinking like very, very foreign instruments, but it's like a library of instruments that have been collected from all over the place. Fun. Okay, I'm gonna write that down. Okay, here's what I wrote. The next room greets me. It's full of instruments, neatly organized and catalogued. As I investigate, I notice there are plenty of instruments I've never seen before. In fact, most of them are completely foreign to me. Some look like I wouldn't even been able to play them if I tried. So we've got that, and then we've got okay, we have to do our complication. No So we're going to roll on the complications table, and I'm going to hope I roll low. I want to roll very, very low for this. And I rolled a s five. Or I got a two. Okay, the black one is two and five, which is an intruder, which is a level five complication. Ugh. Okay, so let's write a little bit about what kind of intruder finds their way into this room. There is something I haven't done before. And that is roll on the peoples page. The peoples tables. ⁓ so if there's an intruder, there's like a whole bunch of s like stuff we can use here to kind of create this person. And I think I'm going to just roll on the descriptors table. So the first one is appearance. And I rolled a six and a six. Which is winged. Ooh, so we have a winged intruder. And their attitude is two and five. Furious. Great. And their impulse. Oopsie daisies, I'm throwing dice. Alright, and their impulse is three and five. Explore. Okay. So they are furious. They are winged and they want to explore. Maybe it's some kind of imp. Like. A winged imp with like leathery wings, and it's mad and it's trying to explore because it's trying to find a way out. So it's intruding, but now it's trapped, and it's furious because it wants to leave now, but it can't. I like that. And then my goal is to try to get it to leave, to find an exit for it to leave through. Okay, I'm gonna write a little bit about that, and then we're going to try to solve our complication. Okay, so here's what I wrote. Suddenly I hear a cacophony of noise as an imp Brushes out from one of the hallways. It looks like it's got itself trapped in a stringed instrument, its limbs tied up in very thick string. The imp looks furious, its wings beating madly to try to untangle itself. So I changed my idea a little bit. It's actually caught in an instrument, and that's why he's furious. So now we have to try to solve the complication. And we have only one fatigue left. So let's see, let's see. Let me find the complications. Okay. So we need to get light five times in order to fit to to to in order to beat this. I don't have a lot of hope, but we're gonna try. So I pulled a seven and a ten. ⁓ boy. And I do have plus two to lore, so that is good. And I rolled four, five, six, seven, eight. Which is not higher than 10. Which means I mark a fatigue and my game is over, unfortunately. That is a bit of a bummer. We kind of went out really quickly at the end here. We were going so strong. We had four documents. We had four out of six, but alas, it was not meant to be. ⁓ So I am going to write a little bit about how I failed to do this, just to kind of wrap up our story, and then we will debrief. Okay, so here's what I wrote. I tried desperately to untangle the imp, but he stuck pretty severely. I could scratches all over my hands, and before I know it, I'm on the floor, exhausted, tears welling up in my eyes. Night has fallen, I haven't found my last two documents, and the imp has destroyed half the room in a furious attempt to escape. I will have to try again tomorrow. So that is where our play session of The Librarian's Apprentice is going to end. Unfortunately, we did not become a librarian, which is a bit of a bummer, but I still feel like I won because I really enjoyed playing this game. I think we have some really cool imagery here that I can pull from if I ever want to do another creative writing project. Specifically, I liked the cathedral room with the floating crystals, I liked the fog room. ⁓ the acolyte of the scriptworm was cool, how we communicated through the birds. We have a lot of really cool imagery and a lot of cool little mini stories in here that I'm really proud of, actually. And this game was just a lot of fun. It was ⁓ a really cool creative writing process for me. I got to doodle a little bit, I got to draw the documents and draw wisteria, which is always a fun time. So yeah. That is the Librarian's Apprentice. I think the game is also really smartly designed. I was looking over the directions again and I did kind of miss something. ⁓ you can also perform the research action, which allows you to try to find cards to remove fatigue. So when I play this again, I will remember that for next time. So I can hopefully get more resources and then I can use those to clear fatigue. So that is a bit on me that we lost so quickly. I could have fixed that a little bit, but I that's on me for not reading through the directions as closely as I should have. But that's okay because that means I get to try to play this again and I get to try to win next time, which is really exciting and fun. So yes, I'm very happy with our playthrough. I hope you guys had fun watching me play The Librarian's Apprentice. Let me know if you like this style of video, if you like this format, if you want to see me play more solo journaling games. Like I mentioned in episode one, solo journaling games are some of my favorite games to play. I find them so endlessly enjoyable, and I really had a good time sharing that with you. So yeah, let me know if you want more of this, and I would be happy to make another series exploring one of my other favorite solo RPGs, because I've got a lot. I think that's gonna be it for me. That's gonna be it. That's gonna be the end of our playthrough. So I will take up no more of your time. If you would like to get a copy of the Librarian's Apprentice, and I highly recommend you do, you can get one through our website, heartofthedirnacorn.com, or the link will be in our bio. All right, say bye to Wisteria, say bye to the Librarian's Apprentice, and I will see you guys next time for something different. Bye, friends!