The Realms I Never Knew

 

"Elminster's Tale"- Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide

Howdy, Farmhands- 

    I almost didn't blog this at first, wanting the opinions and input of people more learned than me. After typing out the third paragraph into the group discord, though, I knew this would just save everyone's time. 

    In the same 24 hour period, I encountered two separate author's works of writing that aligned together in a way I can only describe as serendipitous. I want to walk you through my thoughts about them, as something deep and burning within me insists there is something of value to be learned or discussed, if only for my own personal growth as someone with TTRPG opinions.

    Firstly, a rabbit hole of blog links lead me to Dwiz' 2019 4-part series "The Differences in Mystara, Greyhawk, and Forgotten Realms". Though my personal history with Dungeons and Dragons didn't BEGIN until late in the same year this series was posted, I still feel a sense of regret that I missed out on it as it was being released. What's important for my current Thought is this: I've never really needed to engage with Mystara or Greyhawk as settings, outside of passing curiosity with D&D's wacky lore. Dwiz' summarization of them; where they shined and what elements needed to be emphasized to fulfill their fantastical conceits, finally gave me a moment to appreciate how "D&D" evolved as a set of fantasy worlds alongside it's mechanical changes. This post was ALSO where I finally understood what the Forgotten Realms as a setting was before it became the de-facto sandbox for every cool dnd concept ever, as Fifth edition expanded and stuffed more and more ideas into it's confines. Having begun my experience with the game in the latter half of 5E's life cycle meant I had only ever seen it as a generic fantasy-land, where all the greatest hits were played.

    The second work I found, "Knaves of the Realms" by Seba G. M., took the kindling provided by Dwiz and ignited it into a flame. This series of Tri-fold pamplets, a GM and Player facing duo for running Ben Milton's Knave in the Forgotten Realms setting, and "Knaves in the Mist", a similar supplement for GMs running Knave in Ravenloft, does something incredibly similar to Dwiz's blogposts, in a smaller, more gameable way. They begin with something of a mission statement, declaring which Four or Five key concepts the setting should enforce, and follow with tables and procedures to facilitate a game that makes use of those concepts; even if the system being used wasn't written with those settings in mind.

    And this just

    Fascinates me.

    But it also somewhat concerns me, on a personal level. I am on the record as having significantly negative opinions about Fifth edition D&D, D&D as a brand, and Wizards of the Coast as a company- but a good amount of my vitriol is aimed specifically at the "Just Homebrew It" mentality that has seen countless players become laser focused on only ever playing a game system that isn't designed to support the genres they would like it to. Sure, Knave is a considerably smaller and less mechanically complex system compared to 5e, but Knaves of the Realms rebalances the existing magic system wholly. Is there not an obvious contradiction between my loud and public distaste of a practice and my sudden appreciation of it here? If I were cheeky, I'd say No; but I genuinely don't know.

    The distillation of the themes and tone of a fantasy setting down to their basic elements, limiting choices or emulating and promoting the choices of entire other games intrigues me and by highlighting them in their respective works, both Dwiz and Seba manage to endear me to these settings where their official releases have failed to. And my mind races with the possibilities of similar works being made that distill other settings down for use with... Who knows? I've seen conversions of stats and items to allow Vaults of Vaarn to be played with Cairn; but nothing that explains to me why that should excite me. Starfinder is continually marketed to me as THE sci-fi ttrpg, but I don't understand it's lore anymore than I understand actual rocket science. Is there something in this concept that could go beyond specifically adapting these two official D&D settings into this specific OSR game system, something that promotes why these fantasy worlds became remembered so fondly outside the game they were created to sell?

    I have no fucking idea.

    Until next time,

        -Farmer Gadda

The Nether - A Depthcrawl for OSR/POSR games

 

Welcome to the Underground
(Minecraft Dungeons via Minecraft.net)

 

Howdy, Farmhands

    Yes, The Nether. Yes, like in Minecraft. No, I don't ever tire of making half-baked adaptations of media I enjoy separately from the TTRPG hobby. Here's what a Depthcrawl is. Here's what the Nether is. You're basically all caught up now.

    The purpose of introducing such a thing into an OSR game is twofold. Firstly - the option to take a quick kip to HELL is just fun. There's resources and adventures to be had without needing to invest in a whole campaign centered around the setting. Second of all - the Minecraft Nether is famous for its ability to act as a shortcut for travel. In-game, every 1 block is equal to 8, allowing you to blaze (heh) past difficult terrain, so long as you're willing to risk a fiery death in exchange for time saved. In an OSR game where an area may be straight up impassable, a dip into the Nether might get you onto the other side of that mountain range, supposing you survive it.

    This post is acting as a sort of proof of concept for now; some things like specific Adventure Sites will need their own pages with internal details, and I'm not about to sit here and write out an entire Minecraft Bestiary. What is going to follow is a series of posts where I take a Nether Biome, either from Vanilla or Modded (and won't that be a fun email to some poor coder, wondering what on earth I'm talking about when I ask permission to use their IP), and produce some simple tables with their unique content. Feel free to use as many or as few of these as you like for your own personal experience. I, for one, will be overloading myself until I burn out from the effort. Heh. Burn.

    Until Next Time,

        Farmer Gadda

Babidra! Dinosaur Racing (and Gambling) for Heroes of Cerulea

 

Tyrannomon, as seen in
Bandai's Digimon Analyzer

Howdy, Farmhands.

    During the Kickstarter campaign of my current ttrpg fixation, Heroes of Cerulea, one of the met stretch goals was for the creation of a proper Third Party License for others to make and sell content compatible with the game. At the time, reading through the unlocked content and my pledge already safely invested, a single thought came unbidden to me and branded it's words into my soul; "I must add Chocobos." Years later, and with the final product in hand, I seek to fulfill this glorious purpose.

    There is a number of problems I had to address first, the largest being "how can I shave off the fewest serial numbers without making Square-Enix mad at me," so I sat down to determine what EXACTLY I wanted to include for an experience similar to the one in classic Final Fantasy. Using them as Mounts for easier travel was more or less out. Heroes of Cerulea has no codified rules for Overland Travel.  What I had left was "funny bipedal bird fellow" with "Racing?" underlined multiple times in my notebook. But Heroes of Cerula already has the playable Avian Kin, so even the BIRD part of this formula wasn't going to work.

    After some tinkering and scrolling pinterest for inspiration, I've settled on combining a Racing minigame with a separate inventory space for storing Items, in the form of a bunch of bumbling little Dino-guys, The Babidra! I hope you like them!

Until Next time,

    Farmer Gadda

Disclaimer:

    This is an independent production, unaffiliated with Lucas Falk and Blackfisk Publishing, published through the Heroes of Cerulea Third Party License. Heroes of Cerulea is copyright Lucas Falk and Blackfisk Publishing.

Songs for Heroes of Cerulea

 

My mother didn't live to regret forcing me to take
piano lessons, so that honor goes to you ig

Howdy, Farmhands!

    So, Music. Music is like. A core element of video games. Especially Zelda video games.

    I'm gonna be honest that's the entire premise of this post. I wanted to add Songs to Heroes of Cerulea. 

    Here ya go.

Until Next Time,

    Farmer Gadda <3

Disclaimer:

    This is an independent production, unaffiliated with Lucas Falk and Blackfisk Publishing, published through the Heroes of Cerulea Third Party License. Heroes of Cerulea is copyright Lucas Falk and Blackfisk Publishing.

Dabloons and Hint Merchants for Heroes of Cerulea

I've been given this power and am about
to make it everyone else's problem

Howdy, Farmhands!

    Blackfisk Publishing released the 3rd Party License for works based on Lucas Falk's "Heroes of Cerulea," ahead of the game's public release and promised Itch.io Jam. I'm already super in love with the base game, and cannot wait for there to be additional content to fill out the empty spaces of it's overworld map. So much so, that I started working on this project the same day my kickstarter backer physical copy finally arrived at my door!

    The issue was in finding a foothold for which to insert anything new. Heroes of Cerulea is a game that flirts with being a Capsule Game, where both the game mechanics and campaign setting are cleanly laid out for you with limited room for expansion. There really isn't much the game system NEEDS outside what's already offered, barring those un-written squares on the World Map. I've chosen to come at this from the other direction, then. Instead of asking "What does this video-game adaptation need to be a better ttrpg", I'm wondering "What does this ttrpg need to be a better video-game adaptation?" 

    Heroes of Cerulea wears it's inspiration as a badge of honor, emulating the screen-crawly dungeon games of the 8 bit era. A time before internet and google, with secrets shared across the school yard at recess with no way to vet any of the information other than trying it out for yourself. I've decided to try and re-create the experience of having little but some cryptic dialogue from an in-game npc and your own common sense to try and figure out the game world.

    One thing before I begin, though- *ahem*

 This is an independent production, unaffiliated with Lucas Falk and Blackfisk Publishing, published through the Heroes of Cerulea Third Party License. Heroes of Cerulea is copyright Lucas Falk and Blackfisk Publishing.

Until next time,

    Farmer Gadda