The Chained Oak: TTRPG Behind The Scenes

Note: This post was originally a Twitter thread.

My solo ttrpg “The Chained Oak” is in the Ind Of The Year bundle! So I thought I would talk a little bit about what influenced the game and some of the choices I made while designing it!

The Inspiration

So, first things first. The Chained Oak is a real place! It is found in the town of Alton (which is a few hours from where I grew up) and you can freely visit it. Legend says that one night, the Earl of Shrewsbury was returning home. However, his carriage stopped when a beggar walked into the road. The beggar asked the Earl for a coin. But the Earl rebuked them.

The beggar then laid a curse upon the Earl. This curse was simple. Whenever a branch fell from the oak tree, one of the Earl’s family would die. Of course, the Earl didn’t believe the beggar. However, that night a storm ripped through the area and pulled a branch from the tree. Then, one of the Earl’s family mysteriously died. The Earl, shaken and scared told his servants to bind the tree in heavy iron chains so that no more branches could fall from the tree. And it is those chains you can see around the tree today.

The Mechanics

The Chained Oak puts you in the Earl’s shoes. You have to try and keep the tree standing while dealing with your guilt. All of this death and suffering is being brought about due to your greed. The game uses a deck of cards to simulate the tree and to give the player journaling prompts. At the start of the game, you make a tree-shape out of cards. This represents your tree and its branches.

During storms, you draw cards from the deck. If the face value of a drawn card matches a card in your tree. That card is removed from your tree. If parts of the tree end up unconnected to the main trunk, they fall and a member of your family dies. Every day the player is given a few cards to place on their tree. These cards represent the chains and they protect that part of the tree. But you’ll never have enough chains to protect the whole tree. You’ll always be at the mercy of chance.

See, while I love Jenga towers, you can often cause them to accidentally fall by twitching or bumping the table. In The Chained Oak, I didn’t want the player to have that excuse. Every branch falls because you made the wrong choice. It also leaves the player feeling slightly disconnected. With a Jenga tower, your fate is directly in your hands, The Earl is at the mercy of a curse that defies logic and defies control. His money will not and can not help him. The chains are a blunt implement.

The player is having to make decisions and hope they pay off. They’re at the mercy of the deck. If you’re lucky, the next storm will simply knock a chain off. If you’re unlucky, it will rip the trunk clean from the ground.

“Skill can help you, but not save you,” was a phrase I kept using while designing the game. A good Jegna player can keep the tower standing for ages, which works when the character is skilled and clever.

But the Earl is neither. He’s a rich asshole.

Falling Branches

Whenever a branch falls, you have to write a eulogy for the person who the curse killed. I spent a lot of time studying old eulogies to make this table fit the historical period the game is set in. I also wanted it to act as a constant reminder to the player. The Earl could simply have shown charity and none of this would have happened. This whole situation rests at his feet.

So as the game goes on, the player will be forced to make tough decisions while their page of eulogies grows larger and larger, showing how much damage their greed has caused.

Get “The Chained Oak” on Itch.