The Conjunction of Spheres

Year of the Witcher Days 1-3

This post was supposed to be written two days ago but SUBSTACK would not let me in, and to quote another grizzled protagonist of a fantasy series (yes I have a type), you have be realistic about these things. So I’ve changed the subtitle to be all-inclusive of three days of the year of the witcher and will aim to keep this relatively brief.

Day 1 Recap:

I started with the game that prompted this idea, Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, a game that is absolutely fascinating and is almost always a joy to play, mechanically. What is less of a joy is starting it over repeatedly and going through the same opening story beats, which in the spirit of this “challenge”, I did. I have decided to stream my Witcher 3 play on the Pe Metawe Twitch Channel, though unless there is strong uptick in interest, it will be without commentary.

So we entered White Orchard in search of Yennefer of Vengerberg, who will hopefully put us on the trail of Ciri, our adopted daughter who is being pursued by the Wild Hunt, an otherwordly cadre of warriors who seek Ciri for redacted for spoilers. It was an interesting excercise this time around to be cognizant of the potential for viewers of the stream so I did not skip through the dialogue, which did help with immersing myself in a story that I’ve seen several times including less than a month ago. Despite that, I think restarting for Day one of the YotW was the right call and I’m eager to dive into the game and get caught up with where I have been previously.

Later I sat down with the second book in the Witcher series, Sword of Destiny, another collection of short stories introducing us to various elements of Geralts life. The first story is called “Bound by Reason” in which Geralt finds himself in the company of a crude sellsword, Borch “Three Jackdaws” and his hired companions, both of whom are Zerrikanian warriors. The backdrop of the story involves a gold dragon, a monster which is against the Witcher code to kill. There’s some implications of political intrigue tied to the war by the Zhentarim, but it’s still showing it’s relative age and potentially translation barriers. regardless, I have (re)read the the first three chapters and am fully invested.

Day 2 Recap:

Day 2 was a bit lighter in Witcher fare, but a few days earlier in the YotW prologue period, I had broken out my older and largely unplayed copy of The Witcher Adventure Game, originally published by Fantasy Flight Game in 2014. I’m not entirely sure when it entered my collection but I suspect it was on the heels of me discovering the Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings. In the game, you take on the role of one of four characters, Geralt, Yarpen, Dandelion or Triss and are tasked with collecting clues which can be converted to evidence, which can then be used to complete quests in three different categories. Each character has their own unique deck of “development” cards, with Geralt focusing on signs and potions, Triss on Magic and trinkets, Dandelion on Allies and subterfuge and Yarpen on Items and followers.

Much like Sword of Destiny, the game definitely shows it’s age in design. A lot of the game is moving around the continent collecting a type of token, to trade in for another type of token, which gets you points. Layered on top of that boiler plate design however, is a strict hewing to the spirit of the Witcher universe, in which we are not heroes on grand adventures but people (or dwarves, or mutants) who are caught up in a war bigger than us, and monsters who are roaming the world, a threat to everyone. This manifests, mechanically, as “foul fate” and monster tokens, both of which create an ongoing oppressive environment for each player. It certainly isn’t an ideal design for a tabletop board game but it does feel like it honors the Witcher. I did enjoy the game enough that when we wrapped up and I had some alone time, I immediately loaded up the digital version (which is on sale for a short time) and played a match agains the computer. I think the rating on Board Game Geek is a little unfair, but I understand why most folks who aren’t subjecting themselves to 365 days of Witcher activity might not find it appealing. I also gifted several copies to friends to encourage them to join me in my journey!

Day 3 Recap:

My third day (and the day of writing this) was lighter still, but saw the opening of the Witcher TRPG which I was able to track down from Amazing Stories in Saskatoon, a store I have visited several times and is the second best game store in Saskatoon. The price was very good, the shipping was very quick, and the book was packed with extreme care. I want to go into more detail of the RPG because I am very excited about it, but this post is already longer than I had anticipated and I still have many hundreds of days to go. I’ll say this for it though, I’m not sure if it’s because of how enthusiastic for Witcher content I am, or if it is just really well written and accessible, but I was able to really dive into the book and only put it down because I had other demands on my time. It has some really interesting approaches to character design, and does a great job of helping onboard new players into the Witcher universe while still providing solid fan service. It also seems to be heavily influenced by Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings which is a game that will always hold a special place in my heart.

I had initialyl wanted to talk about the Conjunction of Spheres, what I love about the Witcher world building, and to talk about a silly thing I did in pursuit of my Year of the Witcher, but I will save that for some future posts. For now I’m going to read a little more of the RPG and debate on whether it’s worth trying to play The Witcher Enhanced Edition, a game that is dated, but that has alwasy vexed me for not having been able to parse it out. I might instead just play a little Thronebreaker on my Steam Deck with Ted Lasso playing in the background.