Post-Con Deep Dive #1: Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland

Last weekend was my favorite event of the year, RinCon in Tucson, Arizona. More specifically, my favorite event is the Indie RPG Arcade at RinCon, a Games On Demand-esque “pitch and find a table” type thing that runs parallel with all the scheduled tables. I never bother with the tables and pretty much live in the Arcade for three days.

I ran one four-hour event each day. It’s a great chance to run things that don’t always fit well with my home group, so I got a chance to dig into lots of new stuff. I’ll talk about each over the next few entries this month. First up: Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland.

I’ve had this game through both its 2023 edition, in which Handiwork Games head honcho/warrior-poet Jon Hodgson worked “in conversation with” Midjourney to create its unearthly artwork, and its latest edition which features all handmade models and extensive photography. The entire time, I’ve felt intimidated by so many parts of this…game. Period. Experience. The whole thing! I’d crack it open, read, feel kind of dizzy after a while.

For starters, there’s the setting. It’s a sort of psychedelic fantasy set during the Mesolithic Era, in the long-drowned and forgotten area we recently discovered and called Doggerland. It’s a real place! All the -lithics are very light on documentation, so we can read almost anything we want into them. I’ve had long curiosity about these periods (see: Würm, Neanderthal/Greenland, Stonesaga) but also felt frustrated trying to imagine such a primitive mindset. The various -lithics (Paleo, Meso, Neo), being so under-documented, have also been subject to sketchy speculation shaped by the biases of scientists. We just can’t really know how things went down 8,000 years ago. I’ve treated this like a weakness (because I want to Get It Right) but can also be a strength.

Happily, historic Doggerland existed concurrent with Mesolithic cultures about which we know a bit more. Other shamanic practices of the Mesolithic, for example, can guide us a bit toward what life might have been like in this place. Noting of course that “shamanism” is itself a problematic, frequently appropriated idea.

Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland proposes that in this very pre-modern period, nomadic communities of hunters and gatherers summon forth ancient spirits when they experience personal strife. These spirits, lurking in the ice caves of the glaciers looming in the north, are drawn to strife and have utterly alien appetites. In the framework we used, The Meat Spoiler, the eponymous spirit spoils meat in a community because there’s a deep disagreement between a careful old woman who wants to gather and store food the normal way (even as it gets spoiled as soon as they get any) and a proud hunter who wants to bring in one big hunt from afar.

Enter the Maskwitches. These weirdo outsiders wear masks that grant them abilities they’re “good at,” ranging from mundane things like “good at convincing people” or “good at fighting” to literally anything you can think of, “good at traveling to the past” or “good at blowing up the sun.” While that stuff sounds powerful and interesting, it’s also hard to apply to everyday life. They also carry amulets that mark them “bad at” things, like “finding your way” or “speaking with the dead.” It’s wide, wide open, another intimidating bit of the game. Happily there’s a solid starting list of good/bad at things in the book.

The interesting twist is that to fight a spirit, you have to strike at them with your amulets, therefore doing the things you’re bad at. Maskwitches get beat up! And the longer they wander the land, the more masks and amulets they pick up and the stranger they become.

The shape of play is fairly conventional, but with unconventional tools. You come to a troubled community with a spirit problem so what do you do? Just go around and talk to people. Or the spirit that lives in the fire pit. Figure out what the strife might be, what they might have observed about the spirit’s activities, and where they might learn more. You need to prepare yourself against the spirit so you might seek out a cave in which to paint and meditate, and the painting might reveal information or even grant you a tool. You might raise a henge within which the stars and sun reveal their secrets, or speak to the ghost of an Elderwitch that embodies the landscape. Maybe you can craft a Witchknife out of a bit of meteorite metal, giving you a chance to strike at a spirit without suffering the consequences of being bad at things. There’s a good list of “Witch Activities” in the book that provide a jumping-off point for all this stuff, as well as the range of rewards you might get for doing them: tools, information, bits of the spirit’s name that can be used against it, and so on.

The system itself is nice and tight and storygame-y. Every roll is a single d6. If you’re good at something, you succeed on anything but a 1. If you’re bad at something, you fail on anything but a 6. If you’re not sure, just figure it out on the spot and make a note for later. The characters also have a Magic Number, from 2 to 5, which allows them to Butt In during the event if that number came up. Whatever the GM says, the Magic Number person can say “but…” and add a little twist. Cute! Oh: and characters can trade their masks around. Skills and powers are fungible within the Maskwitch cohort.

In our game at the convention, I had to quickly ramp up four players with the absolute weirdest setting I’ve ever attempted. There is no time, only rhythms and songs. Dreams and reality are interchangeable and equally valid. Everything has a spirit with which you can communicate, collaborate or fight. But also it’s a chance to put a stake in the ground about the things players believe to be universal human truths: people are petty, proud, brave, cowardly, confused, horny, loving, and so on. Finding that balance is an interesting exercise.

We made our Maskwitches on the spot, because it’s very easy: two things you’re good at and two things you’re bad at. Hodgson had just put together printable cards with masks and amulets, which I scattered around the table and let folks choose for vibes and aesthetics. We rolled through a quick table of origins, and could immediately see the modern interpretations: our warrior had followed a bird into the mountains and gone into a cave, where his mind became “flint made of felt.” Poor guy probably found a gas-filled cavern and experienced brain damage! Another one carved out her heart and made a mask of her pain. Heartbreaking story of trauma and redemption there, I’m sure. Stuff like that. Metaphor is just as real as anything else.

In the course of play I had to ease the players into the scope of the setting’s psychedelia. One old bag-lady-ish Maskwitch, traveling with a vast collection of memory-sparking little totems because she can’t keep a thought in her head, watched the stars all night and waited for them to point the way to an Elderwitch nearby. Later, a thunderstorm struck, flooding their camp and washing away a young hunter, but another Maskwitch who was Good At Fighting stood in the rain and faced the storm’s spirit in combat. Later, when they visited the Elderwitch, they found her skeleton in a cave filled with paintings, which the skeleton proceeded to explain. Odd, beautiful, scary stuff.

That’s where I ended up with Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland: Odd, beautiful, scary stuff. A singular vision hand-crafted by an auteur, and what’s more indie than that?

Despite my misgivings and early difficulty probing the text, the book gave me everything I needed. Indeed, I think my resistance came from feeling hypnotized, kind of, from the art, the long lists of possibilities, even the rhythmic language of the text itself. I think the subject matter opens itself up to all the same biased speculations as we find in more academic takes on the subject matter. You’ll want some good safety procedures before you start wondering how young was too young to have sex, or what gender roles might have looked like, or what sort of ritual body mutilation might have taken place. But if you want a strong entry into the short list of games that successfully address a premodern mindset, give Maskwitches a look.

Next up: Elder Mythos.