What is a literary RPG?

Snow is hosting a Literary RPG Jam on Itch which I actually think I have something to submit to: a medieval, vampire hunting scenario. My background is also English Literature and I am a fairly avid reader/writer of what is sometimes called Literary fiction so this jam is right up my street and I am excited to see what people submit.

I thought I would take this opportunity to discuss, in my opinion, what could make an RPG “literary”. It is not a simple question, particularly because the term is tied up with so much baggage of status/seriousness/quality and discussions of “high” culture. In short a great many people can see the term literary and simply decide it is not for them.

There is also an interesting overlap with the idea of the Lyric Game, an interesting jam of which was recently held by BreathingStories on the topic of birds. What that overlap is, is perhaps worth discussing in its own right. But I think we definitely can distinguish these two things. In short we might say while most lyric games are literary, not all literary games are lyric. I actually think a traditional dungeon crawling adventure has as much “chance” to be literary as any other game.

Let’s start:

What is the genre of “literary fiction”?

In the world of fiction writing “literary” is a term used by publishers and booksellers to denote a specific genre. It is a genre that tends towards human dramas, often with some kind of social-issue setting, typically set very much in the “real world”. It also often means that there is a slightly higher chance that you are going to get more complex language, or less standard structures.

Open Water by Caleb Mzumah Nelson is a good example of a recent popular piece of literary fiction. It is a novel about a young black man in London, structured around a burgeoning relationship, grappling with his identity within the context of his gender and his race. It is written in the second person (the protagonist is “you”) and an, at times, essayistic manner: ‘You said to trust is not to fill time, but you would like to say to trust is to fill that time with each other. The heart does the same, in the immense darkness of the body, filling with blood, clenching it out, tight as stiff fist with nothing in hand.’

This is, undoubtedly, literary fiction.

But - I would contend that the literary nature of it is tied less to the “genre” elements of the subject matter and more to two other features: the language and perspective. A traditional “genre” piece (sci-fi, fantasy, etc.) can be equally “literary”. Therefore for me, the more human drama elements is not a requirement to call something “literary”. Instead it is aiming for something like ‘non-representational writing’ and, more importantly perspective.

What is “literary”: non-representational writing

Representational?

Non-representational writing is slightly hard to explain. We might also think of it as “evocative” or “stylistic” writing. This is in contrast to writing that tries simply to directly refer to a real world object (even if the world is imaginary).

Let’s take a simple example from Robin Hood: The Roleplaying Campaign. This is p.77 and is describing a gatehouse in an abbey: ‘The gatehouse is a small arched extension of the Outer Buildings, kept by two monks and two lay members (porters). They greet anyone arriving, keep accounts of stuff brought into the Abbey and bar the gate at night.’

This is language that we might think of as straightforwardly descriptive. It is telling me information in an unambiguous way about a place that the language assumes I will trust is “real”. The choice of language (apparently) conveys nothing about the place except for the literal details it provides.

Let’s take a second example, this from Transmission for Them,‘Space splintered before you. Warring fleets reduced to shards, like glass, frozen at the moment of its shattering.’

This is not supposed to be a simple description of an objective world. In the language choice the images are more self-referential: that is, they are more ambiguous in meaning, the language asks you to look at it and consider its meaning: What does it mean to say space is “splintered”? The images you generate here, the meaning that possesses will depend on your past experiences of the language or of things being “splintered”. The unpredictable leaps that your mind make in combining terms you may not have come across together (space, splintered) before. The language is not trying to suggest that there is only one interpretation, it is inviting multiplicity of interpretation. It is not tied to one “real world”.

Now, You might think on reading these two examples that perhaps the difference between them is only a matter of perspective. Perhaps we could find the same “multiplicity of interpretation” in the meaning of “greet” or “anyone” in our example from Robin Hood: what does greet really mean? Are they really greeting “anyone”?. Our second feature of literary helps us explore this and perhaps helps us to see that truly referential/objective language is perhaps a bit of a myth.

What is “literary”: writing from a perspective.

For me, this is the crux of what makes writing literary. It is when writing considers the perspective of the speaker and changes based on that perspective. A lot of RPG writing (and we might say GMs - though that is a topic for another day) follows the pattern of a lot of fantasy writing in that it attempts to present an objective perspective which can claim “this is what the world is”.

Let’s take an example from Rebellion talking about the intergalactic wolf-like race of the Vargr: ‘IDEOLOGY: Plunder. The Vargr have no real ideology with which to support their actions. Many explanations and justifications can be presented for their actions, but all are fluff to cover the basic pack instincts of the Vargr. Given a leader and a target, the Vargr will seek it out.’

That is, they are baddies. They handily have a skull and a nazi-like uniform to aid this impression:

Now this is presented as factual, and no where else does the writing try to present a contrast to that nor point out the inconsistencies in its description of this group. However, there are inconsistencies. The rest of the spread on the vargr talks about their interrelationships, their political beliefs. The writing is at pains to tell us they are baddies, but nuance leaks through and shows us that there is something else going on. Who is it who is saying they have ‘no real ideology’ who is it who explains the ideas away as just ‘fluff’?

There is a phrase from the cognitive biologists Maturana and Varela that I always bear in mind in instances like this: ‘Everything said, is said by someone.’

Literary writing does not try to hide or occlude this fact. It recognises and leans into it, allowing for spaces of multiple perspective, of disagreement with dominant perspectives (including the narrator). There is a clear link here to RPGs. Some RPG texts try to tell you how the game must be played, the only correct interpretation of rules, setting elements and so forth. Some RPGs, point out the uncertainty and openness to multiple perspectives.

I’ll give a brief example from The Morose Society: ‘Necromancy is not the most well regarded of art, detested and feared by many. And it is all these fuckers fault’. Here we have two perspectives being shared the second (in italics) is clearly expressing some kind of in-world perspective that is not explained but opens up play to different interpretations. But even the opening sentence is showing some kind of perspective that hints but does not determine the nature of the world.

Writing a Literary RPG

If you want to set out to write a literary RPG we might some up what these ideas suggest into a few thoughts:

1. Evoke the world rather than describe it: when giving details use language that is open to (mis)interpretation, try to avoid language that is too “objective” and trust the analytical powers of your readers (which are vast, if we allow them to be).
2. Think about who is speaking: when you write, ask yourself who is saying this. Another way of thinking about this is asking yourself who in the fictional word you are writing about is the information in a piece of writing “accessible to”. If you look back at all of the examples I have given with this question you will start to identify myriad perspectives lurking beneath the surface.

My submission: The Unburied

The game I am going to submit to the jam is called The Unburied. It tells the tale of a medieval village, seemingly plagued by the arrival of a vampire. The players are people from the village charged with hunting down the vampire. But who is telling the tale, and what really is the vampire?

I’ll write about it soon.

13 August 2024 The Wyrd Lands RPG theory

Making a Medieval Manuscript Layout

I have been trying to develop a working layout which I can use to release bits of (the eternally forthcoming) The Wyrd Lands. This is a game inspired by the world of Old English poetry - of Beowulf, The Wanderer, etc. As such I want a layout inspired by the medieval manuscripts that capture this writing. This is a slightly challenging source of inspiration and in this post I am going to talk about my initial forays.

This is also a place for me to share a lot of links which might be the most useful thing in the post - just like an online recipe, they are at the bottom after the guff. A lot of these are taken from things people have shared on the NSR Discord, so thank you to those people.

A note on variety

One of the issues with anything about medieval manuscripts is that it can make you think they were a homogenous whole but really they occupy about 800 - 1000 years of production across the world (if you include non-European manuscripts). So there is a lot of inspiration to draw from and not a lot of consistency. If you want a glimpse of just how many there are, this database of digitised manuscripts gives a sense of scale.

My particular starting point is the Lindisfarne Gospels, for the main reason that they were written around the time Beowulf was likely composed and they are stunning. They were once fully digitised by the British Library but following a cyber attack the entire collection of digitised manuscripts is unavailable.

The Layout

There are a great many layouts used in manuscripts. Here is a pintrest link to a selection that shows some of that variety. I originally wanted to follow the Lindisfarne Gospel which has a model of two columns with the right hand column slightly thinner than the first. This is interesting but it reads so oddly to modern sensibilities that I couldn’t use it.

A lot of manuscript pages have quite large, often a-symmetrical, margins. This may have aided with holding the book but perhaps more interestingly it leaves space for annotations, comments, indexing and so forth. This is one of the most interesting parts of medieval manuscripts: their use over time and the fact that later scribes and users have added comments, explanations, tranlations and so forth. Therefore I decided I wanted a large margin on one side. Something like this 15th century book:

In order to figure out the proportion of the text to the margins, I wanted to use some kind of grid system. The layout for these books was very carefully designed and developed. In some cases it may have been following principles that have been lost and (potentially) reconstructed. These are the so-called canons of page design (explained well here). However, I didn’t just want to use one of these and be done with it - both because they didn’t give me the look I was going for, and I think the actual historical reality of them is pretty dubious, I found very limited mention of them in academic writing on manuscripts.

However, the mathematical element of manuscripts is they build on is obviously valid. There is a grid system underlying a lot of medieval manuscripts (even where it is broken), such as in this example:

In some cases this sees image and writing wrapped around each other in ways that today would feel baffling to read. I spent a bit of time looking at the grids of some manuscript pages, but just fell back on working in 3s. So I split my page vertically into 12 and horizontally into 9. The margins are 1/9 on the left (outer), 1/12 on the top, 2/12 on the bottom and 3/9 on the inner. Which looks like this:

I might end up changing this but for the time being I like it.

Paragraphs and Headers

One of the big challenges for taking medieval manuscripts as an inspiration is the fact that standard ways of showing paragraphs and headings are different from today. Let’s take for an example this page from the Moore Bede from the early 8th century:

This is the marker for a new paragraph (I think)

Another pair of examples from the late 11th century:

Which become the much more elaborate designs we often think of as in this 14th German example:

Now in my own writing, I need a nice line break between paragraphs, normally I don’t even like an indented paragraph (itself an interesting left over from manuscript production). So I keep a line break between paragraphs. Therefore I am indicating a section, rather than a paragraph. The most commonly used way of doing this seems to have been with the initial character or with the initial line. Typically with a colour difference, font or size difference, offset, or with the use of an illumination.

I have been a bit stuck on this but this is where I have settled:

I have tried with a sort of initial character, but I think it gets lost on the page and doesn’t clearly indicate change enough to a modern audience used to headings.

One of the challenges here is with balancing the fonts, and the additional use of an “annotation” almost functioning as a heading.

Fonts

Ah Fonts, the never-ending well of decision-making. We have got a number of fonts to think about here: the body; the “heading” or bolding fonts used to mark sections; and (multiple) annotation fonts.

The body font has to be a relatively modern font and I have just followed my own tastes witha light serif font. The one I am working with is Cormorant Garamond, though I may switch to Elstob partly because it can handle medieval characters. Anything that looks any more “historical” just impacts on readability.

Because of using a modern font for the body, selecting a font for the “heading” is tricky in that the historical fonts look older than the modern, even though they are supposed to be later additions. For the initial character, I have taken the initial font from the exter book, which is a truly fantastic set of fonts that I am also using in the annotations. However, as before I don’t think I will use this as it just doesn’t match modern tastes.

For a while I also switched between Uncial Antiqua and Lombardic. The issue with using both of these fonts is that they look so different from the body that they feel disconnected from it. They have to be different from the annotation fonts as they were written (theoretically) by a different scribe. However, using a historical font for the heading clashes with the ones used in the annotations. Therefore I have just settled on a bolded form of EB Garamond, which gives a heavier weight but is still obviously written by the “same hand”. I’m not fully satisfied with this but it’s enough to start working on.

Annotation Fonts

The annotation fonts are theoretically coming from multiple different scribes. The first “The Index Scribe” went through and put useful notes to aid the reader in going through a text. There is an interesting video on discontinuous reading which is something I want to work with and this kind of annotations works to do that. We can example of this here:

This kind of work seems to be typically done in handwriting as some later user has put this in for the contemporary users of a book (in the image below you can see where a later user has put in page numbers, it looks like in pencil). However, I want this to support the function of being a “heading” in the text and nowadays this style of font, the looser more handwritten, essentially means ‘less important’. Therefore, I wanted to use a historical font which that still looks like a heading for a modern reader.

This takes me back to Uncial Antiqua and Lombardy. At the moment I am settling on Lombardic because it has a lightness that fits better with the page. However the Uncial is closer to the font of the Lindisfarne Gospels and does also look more like a modern heading.My initial draft of this was just a pretty standard structure with subheadings using this. It looked good (maybe better!).

Lombardic Annotation

The second annotation that I am using is replicating the idea of ‘glossing’ where a later scribe has come in to explain, translate, or comment on an original manuscript. For example:

For this I am using the font called BeowulfOT. This is version of the text from the Nowell Codex which has the right look but doesn’t include the long S or r of other facisimile fonts like EBH facsimile and Pfeffer Medieval. I love this font.

Colours

The use of coloured writing is called ‘rubricing’ which literally means “reddening”. I have however decided to use a blue for the headings. Rubrics didn’t only happen in red, blue and green seem common as well. Red also looks like a grey in a lot of cases of colourblindness (you can check this on this fascinating site) whereas blue stays mostly blue and so may standout. For the indexing I will use red at points because it doesn’t need to contrast with the text around it, so it becoming grey doesn’t matter.

I’m also probably going to put the annotations in different colours to help them stand out as not being written by the same hand.

Page number, Tables and Lists etc.

I have put the page number in an odd position in the middle of the outer margin. This is the position for the first ever printed page number (which came in very late). I’m probably going to repeat it alongside the section title in the top margin, just to help with readability.

I haven’t done too much with lists etc. I am probably just going to keep them fairly standard and modern as, along with the rest of the body it needs to be readable. I’ll probably try to do something prett for the table.

Illuminations

At some point I will have some dedication illuminations for initial characters for chapters, margin illustrations, borders and so forth. But that is time and money down the road. My working style for this will to combine elements of framing and composition from later medieval things, but using the images and patterns of anglo-saxon or celtic art. I want some marginalia and doodles as well. Here is a very rough example:

Conclusion

There we go, this is an endless pit of thinking but an enjoyable one! Below are some of the links and resources that I have used (and will continue to do so). But this is a full page:

Manuscripts in general

• Nottingham University’s guide on how to research manuscripts which gives a lot of simple explanations of terminology etc.
• A nice libguide to manuscripts with videos, recommended reading
• Some videos from the University of Leiden giving a fascintating overview

Collections of Manuscripts

• A big repository of links to digitised manuscripts
• A pinterest collection of many different layouts
• The Cambridge collection of digitised Anglo-Saxon manuscripts

Layouts and decorations

• An overview of margins and the canons
• A short overview with examples of decorations
• An overview of the history of the pilcrow
• Summary of the first page number

Fonts

• A directory of fonts that handle a huge range of medieval symbols
• A second directory of historically inspired fonts all by Peter Baker, including the versatile Elstob
• Another example not part of this is Elstob
• A great set of fonts taken from the Exeter Book
• BeowulfOT, a font based on that from the Nowell Codex (Beowoulf)
• A ‘Golden Type’ font for a strong victorian-medieval look
• A site allowing you to analyse colours for colourblindness

28 June 2024 The Wyrd Lands

Pandora’s Box: The Last Province’s Review System

In the old RPG magazine, The Last Province, they used a standard format for their reviews, based around a 6 categories with each getting a score out of 6: Writing, Art, Usefulness, Playability, Production, Value. To start off a series of random thoughts on old RPG products (purchased on a rainy June day from Glasgow’s Static Games), I am going to review that review system.

Here is the review system. It is applied to games, campaigns, and even dice in the first volume that I picked up.

• Writing: how well the book is written, not only in terms of attractive prose, but also how clear it is to follow.
• Art: not just the quality of illustrations but how appropriate they are.
• Usefulness: the value of the book out of context of its game system.
• Playability: describes how well the game works, either in terms of system or scenario plotlines.
• Production: whether or not the game will fall apart in your hands and how good it looks
• Value: can you live without it or not?

Usefulness

For me I really like the inclusion of usefulness in a review system. There is something accepted across the reviews that they are not being written for system adherents or fans. So many different products are reviewed and each is treated as interesting or potentially valuable in their own right. There is little to no comparison to other games in the reviews and a refreshing absence of acronyms and labels (ah, the past). Obviously there are unspoken assumptions of what types of games people play, but it feels as though the core of the reviewers is that people are playing before they are playing a style/system/genre etc.

Some ways this is used in Pete Strover’s (the production designer for the magazine) review of Tales from the Floating Vagabond (which has a recently released sequel). The reviewer loved it, giving a 5/6 for the writing and playability but only a 2/6 for usefulness. This is because of the setting’s chaotic gods mean ‘the laws of reality tend to get used like Plasticine, being kicked into the required shape whenever dramatically appropriate. The game system copes fairly well with all this… When the universe turns a blind eye to the players antics, the system does too.’

In this Strover seems to think that you need a free flowing and quick system to help handle the chaotic nature of these warring gods. Without that the product is less “useful” for someone looking for materials for their, say, Call of Cthulhu game.

A review that gives a very high usefulness is Angus Boylan (The Art Editor, which is praise - the art is great in the magazine) who gave Werewolf - the Apocalypse a 6/6 for usefulness. The main reason seems to be that, in reading this, Angus discovered that he is Team Jacob, and likes werewolves more than vampires ‘or Leeches as the lupines call them’. In other words, the world that the game provides about these different creatures is so useful as to make any system almost irrelevant, and of that he gives only the briefest of allusions to.

The usefulness seems to be a measure of the “worlds” focus in any given text. For instance, the system-oriented Mythus gets a 3 for usefulness. This is a catgory I can get behind.

Art (over Writing?)

One of the things in reading through this magazine that I had cognitively known, but not fully felt before, was the impact of art. This review system’s mention of the ‘appropriateness’ of the art somehow struck a chord. This came partly from the review of Mythus Magick, the spell book for the newly released Mythus.

In this review, lupine fancier Angus Boylsn, talks about the spell descriptions as ‘usually dry and described in terms of game mechanics rather than how the spells are cast, and the rituals performed.’ This is coupled with ‘hardly any artwork to break up the monotony of page after page of spells.’ It gets a 2/6 for art, and a 3/6 for writing. But what he does like are the ‘very minor details’ that describe how mages must behave (‘being naked, bathing in salt water, or being seated in a pyramid which acts as a magic accumulator’). It seems this evocation of the world is the thing that Angus likes the most.

The Last Province properly showed how art achieves that. A lot of the “articles” or games/adventures are descriptions of worlds and people (not unlike a certain short-lived zine), for example De vere natura vis by Kay Dekker, is an in-character letter from a wizard to their colleagues on the development of some magic essence. This is a large block of small-fonted text, but it gains woodblock-style prints by Mike Middleton:

Call me a crackpot would you!?

The “game” here is the world, the art is the shortcut into the text and is its evocation.

Another example comes from a scenario for Pendragon called And then there were Nun… by David Barras. This is a rather mundane adventure about knights escorting some young women to a nunnery. The magazine was published in 1992 and you can feel it in this adventure where the women are, um, not perhaps treated as well as they could be. At one point Isidore, in her husband’s armour, joins the knights: ‘if women of this type are common [i.e. female knights] play her as an intrusion, a needless weight around the neck of the party. They should be encouraged to feel protective towards her, in a typical patriarchal manner.’

Now lets look at the illustration of this character from David Brown:

She looks like a fucking badass. Before I read the article I was like “this woman is going to be such a cool character”. The other art gives this really imposing sense of the darkness and danger of the scenario (the slaughter of a nunnery) which elevates the writing to something more. I personally feel that I could just take the pictures and run an adventure off of those and ignore the written adventure itself.

A sample review of And Then There Were Nun

• Writing: 2/6. Overlooking the sexism, the writing is fairly shallow though easy enough to read. It is both very rail-roady and not particularly evocative: ‘…strange noises coming from all around and the echoes of heavy footfalls. Scary, Scary.’ If you say so.
• Art: 5/6. A good range of images, from those evoking mood, others showing place and characters. There is also a pretty and simple map for one location. Another map or something similar would have been good for the nunnery, though the writing gives little inspiration for the reason for such a map. There’s also all this writing that gets in the way of the images.
• Usefulness: 3/6. The basic premise of the story would be interesting with a more nuanced treatment and more interesting motivations than “find the baddies, kill the baddies”. The art alone is what gives this its score.
• Playability: 1 or 4/6. It is a very simple adventure that if your players are used to very closely following only one route through a scenario would be easy to follow and lots of advice is given on how to get the players to the next scene. If your players in anyway want to scratch beneath the surface or take unexpected actions very little about the written adventure allows for that.
• Value: 1/6. The good part of the game is the art (and I have shown it here) otherwise, I wouldn’t hunt down an old gaming magazine just to get this. Though I picked up my £2.00 copy from Static Games and so having paid, I guess, 10p for its 4 pages, I can’t really complain.

Well there we go - maybe a useful guide for thinking about quality in RPGs, maybe, like most systems of evaluation, a way of dressing up subjective taste in the authoritative cloak of quantity.

Yours, The Wyrd

You can give me your thoughts, comments and follow what I’m doing on itch, twitter and tiktok!

15 June 2024 The Wyrd Lands

Beginning Lino-cut: Simple art for RPGs

Lino-cut art is a relatively cheap, easy and effective way to produce art for a game or adventure module. This little guide shows you the steps I made in producing the back cover for FEUD with a suggestion of the times and costs. At the end I will include a simple list of tools and materials you might get to get started!

Step-by-Step

I am going to walk you through how I produced this image, used on the back cover of the FEUD zine:

Draw the design.

Time: Approximately 4 hours, mostly while watching TV
Cost: Practically nothing, some paper and a pencil

This is potentially one of the most time-consuming parts and some people go far further on this than I do. I tend to be relatively rough and then use the lino itself as a canvas that I draw directly on to.

Transfer the design

Time: 10 minutes
Cost: The lino

Some people do exact designs and then transfer them using tracing/carbon paper. I am finding I enjoy things most when I use the lino itself as a form of canvas. In this case, I very roughly drew my design, knowing full well I would need to figure stuff out as I carved.

You’ll see my lino is pink, this is because its been painted with an acrylic ink that makes carving a bit easier. I find this helps, but it isn’t necessary.

Carve

Time: 45 minutes Cost: The cutting tools

This is my favourite bit. There’s is something very fun about the immediate feedback of your use of the tools into the lino. I used two of the cutters here - a V mostly and then a U or curved one.

I start by cutting out the outline of the things I want to be white. I did this quite roughly with the V. The good thing about this tool is it isn’t designed for doing curves so when you try to do them them you get a very rough line, which is what I wanted here. The times here can really vary. This one took about 45 minutes, the longest I have spent is about 3 hours.

Then I cut away the majority with the round gouges, in some bits I do this quite shallow, so that ink will be more likely to accidentally touch and give some texture; and then deeper where I want that clear white.

For the teeth I went back to the V and just cut away from the base quite roughly so they keep some darkness while the tips are deep. The lettering was the hardest part but not due to the carving but because I didn’t layout the text properly and everything got a bit squished.

Print Prep/Test Print

Time: 30 minutes

Cost: The ink, paper and tools used to print.

Printing is the bit I find the most challenging and the kit is the most pricey. I have yet to learn enough to be able to mix inks or get consistent results. But this one is only black and white!

Here we start by setting out our kit and then inking up the roller - you put on a thinnish layer. When I started I didn’t do enough ink and so got bad results. I’m doing it slightly tacky and getting better results.

Then you can put them in a little frame called a registration board. Mine is cardboard held together with tape. This just helps to hold it in place when you’re printing and so you can line up your painting.

Put the paper on and then rub the back, here you can just see me using a spoon. It works great. Getting the knack of this stage is a bit tricky, and I have got to a point where I can get fairly consistent results. Probably got to a point where I was happy enough the second/third set of prints I did.

Peel it away - if you keep everything still you can peel, take a peek, and put it back if you want to re-print or even a sneaky extra bit of ink.

Then repeat and you’re done.

If you’re only looking to do this for art for your game you might repeat this till you get one key piece that you’re happy with.

Digitise

Time: 30+ minutes

Cost: your phone and editing software

This is the bit I need to work on next. Currently I take a photo on my phone and then edit it to reduce the saturation and then I delete the “white” in order to get an image just of the dark parts. I use Krita to do this but I need to either find a better way or buy a scanner. This works (and it is what I did for FEUD) but I felt it wasn’t consistent. I’ll take any advice that people have to offer.

Total

In total this print took around 5-6 hours, a lot of which was just coming up with the design hich i was doing while commuting, watchig TV, etc.

The cost additional to all the tools I already have is about £2.00 for the ink, paper and lino. I have spent about £50 on the tools i used for this. If you’re in the UK the site handprinted do a bundle for £44.00 that will get you printing straight away.

Tools and materials

Only a few tools materials are needed for lino-cut. In short we need the following two things: carving materials and printing materials.

Carving materials

Some knives: Here you can spend £4.00 or £125.00. The tools that the shop I am linking to here recommend are the £12.00 Japanese woodblock tools (which work on lino too). These have been fantastic for me - so much that you can get from these tools, and so much more. In particular there is one knife called a kiri dashi that I think is probably one of the most sophiticated tools if you spend the time to learn it. There are quite a few conflicting guides on how to use it but this manufacturer’s video shows it well.

Something to carve. At around £0.45 to £1.00 a sheet, lino is fairly cheap. I bought about 10 bigish pieces when I first started and that was enough to do all the art for FEUD.

I also bought a bottle of acrylic ink for about £3.50 in an art supply store. You can use a little to stain the lino and it makes cutting a lot easier. Regular cheap acrylic paint works for this too.

Something to lean on. I use a bit of an “anti-slip” mat for drawers (this kind of stuff) to rest on when I carve. You put a lot of pressure into the lino and you don’t want it to slip. Bench hooks exist if you have flat-edged tables (I don’t).

Light. Just bright light makes things easier, big windows, torch on your phone, a work lamp etc. I have a fantastic set-up of a phone tripod with this cheap light from a homeware store.

Printing Materials

Ink. I bought one £8.00 tube of burnt umber that I have barely made a dent on in producing around 80 prints. I have found this ink great so far and my next steps will be to experiment further with colours and more sophisticated, multi-layer prints.

Roller. The basic “blue” rollers are great at around £9.00. I ended up getting a fancier one which I love but I didn’t really need. Basically I wasn’t using enough ink but I thought it was the roller’s fault.

Paper. The paper! SO beautiful some of it. I bought this Hosho paper pad for £18.50 and I have some more straightforward paper for testing and when I want a more uniform result etc. The Hosho paper did all of my prints, I have loads left and creates this lovely textured effect in the print. There are all different types you can get, and experimenting to choose the right one is going to be a fun past time over the coming years.

“Press”. I use this simple barren for £3.95 and the back of a metal spoon. Really the spoon alone would do!

There we go! I highly recommend trying lino-cut if you want to produce art for your game and can’t afford to pay someone. It is fairly easy to learn, and though it does require some time, the results are great. Lino cuts automatically create this strong expressive style that can be great.

You can give me your thoughts, comments and follow what I’m doing on itch, twitter and tiktok!

If you’re on Discord I also mostly hang out on the FKR Collective and NSR Cauldron.

19 April 2024 The Wyrd Lands

The Wyrd System

The Wyrd System is a system to support resolving the outcome of events. It is designed to handle any type of event, to be quick to interpret as the GM or in solo play and to allow for the results of rolls to be hidden from players.

Wait what is Wyrd? Wyrd is an Old English term meaning something like: fate, chance, destiny, luck. In Old English it was something that was both determined or which could be resisted via Will (or Ellen, fire). In popular culture you can think of Lord of the Rings and the Will of the characters. Those whose will is weak get swept up in events or controlled by others, those whose will is strong resist and forge their own path (for a time at least, the Wyrd will always get them in the end). This system is designed around these concepts.

Overview

Whenever the outcome of an event is uncertain or dramatic, the GM will roll a d12. One or more of the players will roll a d8; the smaller the difference between the two numbers the “better” the outcome of the event for the players. The result on the d8 can be shifted towards or away from the number of the d12 based on the actions or skills of characters.

The System

Events and Willed-for Outcomes

When the outcome of an event is uncertain or dramatic use this system. This event might be as small in scale as a single action, or as grand as the outcome of a battle between gods.

The event will have at least one “willed-for outcome”. Typically this will be what the players or characters want to have happen in an event. It is important that the willed-for-outcome is quite clearly established by the GM and players,to ensure that resolving the event is happening in an open way and to aid in understanding the event fully.

Where there is a contradictory willed-for outcome, the event can still be treated as only having one outcome, which if not achieved, leads to the contradictory outcome. For example in a quick draw pistol duel, the willed-for-outcome of the player is “shoot the bady guy first”; and the bad-guy’s is “shoot the character first”. In this event we can act as though there is simply one outcome, the player’s that is being competed over.

The dice roll

The GM rolls The Wyrd Dice, a d12. This is rolled either in secret or in the open. For each “willed-for outcome” in the event a player rolls a Will dice, a d8. The results of the two dice are compared. The smaller the difference between the dice, the more the willed-for outcome comes to pass.

For each significant character acting upon or influencing that outcome nudge the result on the d8, moving it 1 point towards/away from that on the d12, effectively increasing or decreasing the difference depending upon the support or opposition of the willed-for outcome.

The dice roll - suggested results

A difference of 0 means the willed-for outcome comes to pass
a difference of 1 means it comes to pass with a downside or complication
a difference of 2 means it comes to pass with a significant downside or complication
a difference of 3 means it comes to pass but in such a way that you might wish it hadn’t or that sets up a huge complication a difference of 4 or greater means that the willed-for outcome does not come to pass and, as the difference increases, its opposite does.

Some Comments

Above is the system in its entirety. Below are some thoughts about some of the decisions you might make in using this.

Nudging, Narrative and Outcomes

The nudging of the Will die towards or away from the outcome should happen fairly sparingly. For each player character who explains how they are affecting an outcome, or how their knowledge etc. is valuable then nudge by 1. Players must give some narrative/fictional description in order to achieve nudging. They do not need to (and for my tastes, shouldn’t) declare “I am nudging”; the GM can interpret their actions as nudges independently.

The average event may apply from a nudge of around 1 - 3. The odds (discussed below) in this system seem harsh, but a nudge of just 1 takes the odds of a difference of 0 from around 8% to around 35%, and a “success” of any type from around 56% to 66%.

The descriptive/narrative details given as part of nudging, or the wider description of the scene, also play a role in helping the GM to decide on the nature of an outcome. If a player emphasises their strength, then a failed outcome might involve damaging a muscle or being humiliated by a stronger opponent.

It is important to emphasise that as a GM you are not playing the game on your own, if you cannot think of ways to adjudicate these distinctions then ask your players for a pause, or to help with your thinking.

Nudging “beyond” zero

If you naturally roll a difference of zero, you may be applying enough nudge to go “beyond” zero. In these cases you might consider treating this either as described above in the table, or as some form of “critical success”.

Nudging as the GM and the environment

As the GM, it may be best to limit the amount of nudging you do on behalf of the non-player characters. Your nudges will tend to be functioning to simply remove the nudges of the player and you want to avoid a situation where the players make the effort to describe their cunning actions and brilliant insights and you wordlessly ignore that effort because the three of them are fighting three baddies.

Try to limit nudging to particularly important, significant or powerful features of a character.

The landscape and other environmental factors should not “nudge”. Instead you can think of these things as defining the nature of an outcome. A bad outcome having a fight on a flat plain might see you fall to the ground, the same thing on a cliffside may be far more significant.

Actions and Events

It is important to note that Actions and Events are not synonymous. An event might involve multiple actions which feature either as “nudging” or as narrative details for an event. For example, imagine a group of adventurers trying to shut the door on a charging minotaur. The barbarian and fighter heave on the ancient stone door; the ranger fires arrows to slow its charge; the wizard casts a spell of sealing to hold the door when it closes. This four action (five including the minotaurs) but only the one outcome is significant: the door is shut or it isn’t.

Events are defined by the outcomes being significant. In some cases that means an individual or small set of actions should be treated as their own event as they dramatic enough to warrant the attention. In the example above, the GM or players might want the ranger’s action to be resolved as an event as the outcomes of that attack will impact on the outcomes of the next event where everyone is acting together.

Secret rolls

An advantage of this system is that the player rolling the dice doesn’t need to know the outcome of an event. For example, if an event requires lying to someone in a “roll high” system, a player knows their likelihood of success even if they don’t know the exact target number. In this way, the intepretation of the dice roll supersedes the “reality” of the fictional world even in situations where the outcome of an event shouldn’t be immediately visible.

In the Wyrd System a 1 may be just as “good” as an 8.

The specific way the dice can be rolled can change depending on the tastes of the group or even individual players. A simple question of “do you want to know what number you are trying to match?” gives the player that choice. The players may not want to roll at all, in which case the GM can roll both the Wyrd and Will die. Or, the player may want to roll both dice. All approaches work and have slightly different feels in play.

Optional: auto-success

In this system the GM may be aware that success in an event is totally impossible. The odds tend towards complicated successes but sometimes a player will roll a will dice for 1 and the Wyrd dice shows a 12. These no-hope-of success outcomes are built into the system - the wyrd is more powerful and wide-ranging than will. However, I personally find that players should have the option to auto-succeed if they want. In a future release I will share a method I use when playing in The Wyrd Lands setting.

Solo-play and wider uses

This system is a strong way to quickly tell the outcome of events. I have found it works well in solo play and when deciding the outcome of events with no player characters involved. It is easy as the GM to establish simple “willed-for outcomes” that allow the dice to function almost as an oracle.

Imagine a player or one of your characters has asked “is this book in the library” and you don’t know the answer. If we imagine the willed-for outcome is “yes” then a quick drop of the dice might tell us straightaway that it isn’t; or maybe only fragments of it; or it was never returned and so forth.

I have used this for deciding on things like the course of a rive over the millenia, the emotional reactions of spirits and gods and so forth.

It can also help you to narrow down outcomes when using other systems. For a while in a 5e game with its binary success/fail outcomes I was also rolling The Wyrd and Will dice, and doing some nudging based on the 5e result, to help me decide on the degrees of success/failure and other complications.

The odds and playing with them

This system seems to have quite difficult odds for the players. However, because of the wide band of “partial success” this result is more likely than not, particularly when we take into account nudging. Just rolling a d8 and a d12 without nudging the chance that you will have a difference of 3 or less in the results (which still sees the willed-for outcome come to pass, albeit in a complicated way) is around 56%, each point nudge increases that odd by approximately 10%.

The basic odds for a perfect result (a difference of zero) is about 8% but with a nudge of just one, that odd becomes about 35%. These numbers are not exact but they demonstrate that in-play it is more likely that characters will progress in complicated manners rather than being stopped outright.

It may be that you want to play with these odds somewhat. For example, if you have only one player character you might decide to give them a basic nudge of 2 to ensure that they are meeting their wills more regularly.

Another option to change the odds is to change the bands of success. This could even replace the use of nudging. For example, you might say that a very hard outcome requires a difference of 2 to hit even the complicated success, or a much easier one might require a difference of 5 (approximately 75% of the time). I personally prefer the use of nudging when running as it requires me to look at the details of the players and the world which can help with the narrative of outcomes.

A worked example

The characters have confronted the lord in the hall. She, realising that her treachery is about to be revealed, makes a run for it. The GM asks the players what they want to do, establishing the “willed-for outcome” as well as the actions that they are taking in the event. Character A is a wrestler makes a leap at the lord to grapple her; Character B has a long spear and tries to trip her. These actions match their characters’ skills and so the GM will nudge by 1 for each.

This table has agreed that they don’t want to know the number on the Wyrd Dice (d12) that the GM rolls. The GM rolls the d12 in secret and gets an 8. One player rolls a Will die (d8) and gets a 7. The GM privately nudges the result by 1 (to a 6) for the Lord who has been described as a nimble character, but nudges back 2 for the player characters.

This creates a difference of 0 and the GM says something like: ‘Character A, you slam into the lord but she just seems about to slip through your grip when Character B’s spear comes in and trips her and you end up pinning her in place.’

Now consider the same event with a roll of 6, with a difference of 1: ‘Character A, your hands just slip as you grab the lord and you slam painfully onto the ground, just dragging on her; B your spear flies in tangles on her legs but it isn’t until she stamps on your spear haft and snaps it that she loses footing and falls.’

A roll of 5, a difference of 2: ‘Character A, there is a nasty crunching sound as your head crashes into her armour as you tackle her, she is pushed away from you but you don’t hold her; B your spear comes streaking out and trips her but she manages to right herself and draws her sword. You have held her here, but she is about to strike.’

A roll of 4, a difference of 3: ’Character A you crash into her and she staggers forward, B your spear catches her and she flies to the ground. There is a horrific cracking sound as her head strikes a bench and she lies still. You consider the fact that you haven’t yet proven her guilt as you hear the others gathering outside.

A roll of 3 or less, a difference of 4 or greater: ’She gets away…

19 April 2024 The Wyrd Lands Core System

Defining good roleplaying; or, How to play Horsey

What is good roleplaying? This is a question that doesn’t get explicitly discussed nearly as much as the near endless discourse on “what is good X roleplaying”. For X substitute your name/label/acronym of choice: Horsey/OSR/NSR/FKR/Trad/Story/5e/lyric/etc.

Why is there this disparity in what people talk about? Without getting lost in the weeds of human desire for categorisation, I am going to take the line that people talk about “how to play Horsey” as opposed to “how to play” because the latter has an incredibly obvious answer and potentially one that actually invalidates the former. I’ll get to my answer after I take a running leap off the spring board of yet another interesting post by Weird Writer.

In the post Weird was writing against a specific set of statements that an original author was trying to present as objective features of OSR. These statements, along the lines of “we explore dungeons, not characters,” Weird clearly demonstrates are not inherent in the aesthetic/products/community of OSR. Instead they suggest that the original author is engaging in that common trope of conflating their own personal tastes with the definition of a term: “what I like = OSR”.

This is the logic of how to play horsey: “I like to play Horsey this way = this is how you play Horsey”.

How it feels when people play horsey wrong (Bing AI art crap)

I would suggest that one of the reasons why we as the ttrpg community engage so frequently in discussions of what a thing is or isn’t, is because our emotional investment in an idea. At times that becomes strong enough that we begin to conflate the genre/aesthetic of an acronym with our view of what good roleplaying universally is: “what I like = OSR = good roleplaying”.

We’re getting a little closer to my answer for what good roleplaying is but I want to get there by describing where I got it from.

In the earlier days of the application of free kriegspiel to roleplaying, there was an evocative sense of promise. This emerged from its general approach to “hard mechanics”, that is resolution systems, character sheets, stats, moves etc. This approach, and the promise, was that: ‘you only need to use the mechanics that are needed at the moment that they are needed’.

This is a freeing idea. It draws us out of the adherence to labelled/acronymised systems, games or playstyles. It pushes us to see that play is the centre of the experience and the way that we play, the how/tools/mechanics, is a product of the table of players in the moment. The game we play is not pre-ordained but is being generated in the moment of play.

Free kriegspiel perhaps gives us more than this, but I would suggest it is the main thing. Even some of its associated ideas such as “play worlds” are almost a natural conclusion of the introduction of freedom into the relationship with mechanics: If you can’t rely on the published/pre-written rules, you can rely on the rules of the shared imaginative world.

There used to be a sense of excitement about this idea, that pushed one towards an even broader idea. A definition, if you will, of what good roleplaying is: good roleplaying is playing the way the table wants to play.

There it is. My answer to the definition of good roleplaying. If it is in any respect true you can see why people never talk about it and instead talk about how to roleplay in X style. There is very little to say about “play how you want to play”. What this suggests to me then is that discussions of definitions of types of play (Horsey/Ponies/Unicorns/OSR/etc.) are engaged in because it is a way of interacting with the freedom and openness of play in a way that can be argued, discussed and (perhaps at worst) made objective. By talking definitions we are in fact engaging with the general discussion of how I as an individual enjoy playing in a certain style: “I like to play like this = this is Horsey”.

How it feels when people play Horsey right (More Bing stuff)

The value of this understanding to me touches on a couple of things. The first is that I find I can always get something from peoples’ different definitions because I never feel they are talking about a real thing in the world, they are only talking about themselves; the second is it highlights again, as does so much in life, how useless a lot of labels are. I feel that what people are really saying when “we play 5e” is “we play in this way”. There is no way for me to know what “this way” really entails until I sit down to play with that group. I have played games that called themselves OSR that have made me want to die of boredom and others that have matched my tastes exactly.

My conclusion is then, that debating the definitions of things is simply another way for people to discuss how they like to play horsey. People write “good X is Y” or “proper X is Y” but they are really always saying “I like to play horsey this way”. And, if we want to learn new and interesting ways of playing horsey then debate and disagreement is simultaneously potentially valuable to oneself as an individual, and utterly meaningless to any true or external definition.

PS

When I have made this point in the past it has been suggested that without strong definitions dialogue breaks down and becomes impossible. Though I personally think I have seen the opposite far more — that adherence to definitions interrupts dialogue — the sentiment is clearly true for a lot of people.

Itch: thewyrd.itch.io Twitter: @TheWyrdLands TikTok: @TheWyrdLands Email: wyrdrpgs@gmail.com

8 January 2024 The Wyrd Lands RPG theory

FEUD - Cairn Adaptation

Below is an adaptation of FEUD to Cairn first edition. It goes from character creation to some monsters and NPCs.

Anything that is unchanged from the original is to be used as is.

Character Creation

If you wish your characters to be from the region itself, keep the same except for starting gear and below. Each character starts with access to as much food as they need and other tools that might be lent to them by their community.

If you wish your characters to be wandering adventurers, keep everything the same except for the below.

Name and Background

Roll once on the table above for a single name, twice to join the names together. Use either the original or “translated” word. E.g 1 and 5 is ‘Mot-geb’ or ‘Wrath Gift’.

Starting Gear (d20)

There is a perchance generator for generating arms and armour in the world of FEUD.

Spellbooks

Most of these spellbooks should not be used. Those that can be specifically skinned as have an origin in the world of spirits or humans may be kept. That is, things that are “clearly magical” should be avoided. For example, telepathy or Summon Cube would not be appropriate, where Pacify and Hatred may be interpreted as the result of a poet’s wit or a hunter’s personality.

Prices and Equipment list

Gold and currency is not something that exists in the world of FEUD. Where things have a relative value the values given should be seen as a “category of value” that may have an effect in trade and bartering. For example, an object work 5 may be traded for another of similar value.

However, it is unlikely that these opportunities for trade will arise too often. Therefore you will have to rely on your neighbours who may loan you items, or you may have access to shared/communal equipment.

Monsters

The Alone

1 HP, 2 Str, 3 Dex, 5 Wil

• They appear to be humans who awake in the waters of Leoth’s swamp, choking and lost.
• Cannot be damaged by mundane weapons, are instantly obliterated by sunlight or fire light.
• Can talk and are knowledgeable of the spirits, gods and monsters of this region.

Foe-Spirits

2 HP, 6 Str, 15 Dex, X Wil

• Trickster spirits darting between the ancient trees, appearing as frightening visions depending on the viewer.
• Cannot be damaged by mundane weapons.
• Terrify: A PC exposed to a Foe Spirit must make a WIL save or be frightened or stunned.

Feorhnu’s Blood

12 HP, 2 Armor, 14 Str, 15 Dex, 18 Wil, Mistletoe boughs (d12)

• By day a woman’s body stuffed in an oak tree, by night a humanoid mass of shambling mistletoe, trying to regain her humanity.
• Feorhnu’s Blood will regrow after her death.
• Those who possess Feorhnu’s hand can communicate with this monster and learn her knowledge of the people and gods of this land.

Humans

Göt Warriors

4 HP, 1 Armor, 10 Str, 15 Dex, 14 Wil, Axes and spears (d8)

• All Göt tend to being honourable in battle and will avoid fights where they outnumber foes, surprise attacks and so forth.

Göt Lords and Heroes

5 HP, 2 Armor, 10 Str, 15 Dex, 14 Wil, Sword and long-axes (d10)

Herulic warriors

5 HP, 2 Armor, 10 Str, 15 Dex, 10 Wil, Axes and spears (d8)

• Herulic warriors are well trained and cunning and will use any tool to win the fight.

Friends of Yng

4 HP, 0 Armor , 8 Str, 15 Dex, 16 Wil, Old weaponry (d6)

• Poorly equipped but with the determination of zealots.

Lords and Heroes of the Friends of Yng

5 HP, 1 Armor, 12 Str, 14 Dex, 16 Wil, Sword and long-axes (d10)

• Often carrying uniquely powerful equipment and with incredible strength of spirit.

Hunters of The Fur and Bone Road

6 HP, 12 Str, 15 Dex, 18 Wil, Knives, short spears, fists (d8)

• These people live to their own code of savagery and survival. Unlikely to fight to the death except in defence to their people.

18 December 2023 The Wyrd Lands

Judging FKR Adventures

If you ask people for an “FKR game” they’ll tell you they don’t exist. They should however tell you about certain cool adventures you could use. But what makes a good aventure for FKR play? In this post I am going to present 4 principles (and a bonus one) that might help an adventure work well. These are principles of how adventures are written. It is not about the design in terms of monsters, locations etc. The post is also kind of tongue-in-cheek, I don’t really think there’s much value in systematising principles like this except for personal reflective reasons.

I’m taking two adventures I found on my hard drive: ADnD’s A Rod of Seven Parts and Theresa by Suzanna from the In Play second edition. For each I’ll preset the principle and then consider a bit of the adventure in light of it.

Principle 1: Assumption of creativity and imagination

An FKR adventure assumes that the table will be creative in their use of the adventure’s contents. This may look like: providing details of events and spaces but not defining their exact outcomes; potentially providing more detail than is needed; allowing for the world/reality to guide the adjudication of the events.

The Rod of 7 Parts

The sentry is one of several goat herders who have brought their flocks to one of the valler’s few springs. The man is on the lookout for predators and is not too worried about the party. If the PCs are invisible, they see the sentry before he sees them, and the party can bypass this encounter. Flying characters see the goats at the waterhole [over a hill] and the other goat herders when they see the sentry.

Here the writers feel that I need to have invisibility explained to me and also that obstacles block line of sight (I have included an illustration that I imagine was in the first draft). However, they haven’t explained what the sentry will do if the PCs arive singing disco music, or if they set themselves on fire and ride around in circles.

Sarcasm aside, the writing here is assuming that the GM and players (the table) won’t be able to imaginatively handle the nature of the world. This might seem a trivial thing that one could just ignore but actually there is an effort involved in that. Writing constrains. When as a writer, I tell the table that “these are the inputs and outcomes”, the table is either going to be inclined to follow these things or is going to have to make the mental effort to ignore them.

Theresa

In general, she still prefers to avoid combat, and teleports aways as soons she suspects any sort of danger, preferring to spy on the area and elminate assailants when the odds are firmly in her favor.

The comparison to our first example is not exact as these are very different styles of adventures. But the assumption of this one is so much that we, the table, will be able to figure out what to do in this situation. We will decide what “danger” and “the odds” look like to Theresa. There is no instruction of “if the players attack/cast a thrid level spell/when Theresa is sleeping”. We are being left to play imaginatively with the world.

Principle 2: Openness of outcomes

FKR adventures allow the play to determine the outcome of events. That is, they don’t try to limit or set deterministic outcomes. This may look like: specific outcomes not given; mechanics and other rules text not referred to.

Rod of 7 Parts

If the PCs attack the sentry and goatherds, the goats stampede them and then: Mounted characters who are not proficient riders automatically fall off their mounts and are trampled.

In this world as well as goats acting with suicidal violence at the merest hint of violence to their owners, horses are equipped with ejector buttons. When they sense the presence of danger and they can see on a rider’s character sheet that they don’t have proficiency they press the button and the rider flies off.

This is an example that builds on the lack of an assumption of creativity but adds to it that the writing is pre-determing the things that can happen in play. The writing is now telling me exactly how things will happen in our game. The horses cannot bolt, they won’t buck and kick, they won’t freeze in panic. Instead, 100% of the time the riders just fly off the saddle. We are essentially being asked to play the writer’s imaginination of the adventure.

Theresa

Theresa is going to liberate a village from an evil baron. She doesn’t know however that he has: set up ambushes and alarmed the locak knights. The characters must carefully navigate between wounding their ally’s pride and letting her walk in a deadly ambush.

Again this is an event happening at a different scale but again we see how the table is given the opportunity to play the game. We are given an event (a whole series of events) and left to see what the outcomes will be in-play. We aren’t playing the writer’s version of the story.

Image generated by Bing.

Principle 3: Simplicity of odds/adaptability of mechanics

AN FKR adventure should have odds that are easy to understand, or none at all. This relates to mechanics and their absence or simplicity. This may look like: no or limited maths and mechanics; simple, natural language description of outcomes and odds.

The Rod of 7 Parts

When the goats stampede The PCs have one round to stop the goats… characters must successfully save vs. breath or be knocked off their feet and trampled for 2d4 points of damage.

Here I think we have a more FKR element with the simplistic “save vs. breath”. Obviously in the original rules this is something that is tied to an individual character sheet which we can interpret now in any way we want. The damage is a bit harder to understand though if we don’t know the stats of a character in the system (which I don’t). We can probably guess that it isn’t a lot of damage but we would still have to figure this out in play.

Theresa

Theresa is a grandmotherly figure… She tries to project an aura of warm friendliness, even when she is in a situation that would require a decided unfriendly approach.

We have here a clear description of potential odds. If we are figuring out her reaction we can say that in maybe 9/10 situations she remains friendly and the players would have to push much further to see her lose her temper. That leaves us with the option to have more “natural” odds that depend on the situation as it emerges in play.

Image generated by Bing. How many d4 of damage is this?

Principle 4: An emphasis on the evocative

An FKR adventure works to provide more to the imagination than it gives in words. This is very subjective but it may look like: giving details that have potential impact, without that impact being delineated.

Theresa

She is surrounded by a small retinue of undead servants.

Theresa is described in some detail as a character but this little detail alone gives us a lot to work with. It again allows us to imagine something more, the characters and personalities of the undead, the form they take. This is so much more evocative than “d6 zombies work as her servants”. We are free to develop the game in-play as we choose.

The Rod of 7 Parts

This is a slightly unfair example, as this adventure does have a lot of evocative writing in it. But it has some elements that are purely (in my opinion at least) anti-evocative. Let us describe what a genie is in this world of stampeding goats and ejector-horses:

Jann (Genie): AC5 (1 when invisible); MV 2, Fl 30(A); HD 6+2; hp 32; THATC0 15 (14 with Strength bonus); #AT 1 or 2; Dmg 2d8+4… or 1d6+4/id6+4… SA spell-like abilities; SZ M (6’ tall); ML champion (16); Int very (11)’ AL N (LE); XP 3,000; MM/126.

I’m sure you’ll agree that one can just picture this statbox floating through the desert air, casting its magic.

Image generated by Bing. Good job Bing

Bonus principle: An objective or very subjective narrator

An FKR adventure either takes a strongly objective or subjective narrator. It tries not to define the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of characters, either because it presents the world objectively or from a single, defined, narrative perspectice. This avoids language like “when the players enter the room they see… the players may feel…”.

This is my most personal and perhaps “literary” point. I think though it gets at something FKR that I have talked about here. FKR play is about play that emerges from the table itself. It isn’t about matching anyone’s pre-existing ideas and narratives. When, as writers, even in this subtle way, we try to determine what other people must experience when they play our adventures we are, in my opinion, taking a step beyond good writing, story-telling and “design.”.

I might return to this point in the future.

Itch: thewyrd.itch.io Twitter: @TheWyrdLands TikTok: @TheWyrdLands Email: wyrdrpgs@gmail.com

23 November 2023 The Wyrd Lands RPG theory

Adapting FEUD to Cairn

As part of releasing FEUD I wanted to try my hand at a couple of adaptions to other systems. This is partly because it was suggested by backers and partly because I have taken such a hard turn against “systems” in my design that I wanted to try and get back into thinking about RPGs this way.

I decided to start with Cairn as my first adaption, partly because of the designer’s incredible efforts in making it hackable (seriously, Cairn is the model for making a game system open) and also because the designer loves woods and forests and FEUD is set amidst the deepest of forests.

I live-streamed my design thoughts around FEUD and Cairn, and will be continuing to do so on The Wyrd Lands channel. The next step will adapting FEUD’s monsters and characters to Cairn.

When I started I immediately realised that in order to make FEUD be playable with Cairn that I needed to make a few changes to character creation to match the world of FEUD. This is because FEUD is informed by the very early medieval/late iron age rather that the medieval/renaissance world of Cairn. Therefore there is no currency, nor mass-produced metals etc.

Here is my current write-up of that, principally of the character creation. This will get a proper home, hopefully on the Cairn site, but I am putting it here while it is a work in progress.

Anything that is unchanged is unchanged.

Character Creation

If you wish your characters to be from the region itself, keep the same except for starting gear and below. Each character starts with access to as much food as they need and other tools that might be lent to them by their community.

If you wish your characters to be wandering adventurers, keep everything the same except for the below.

Name and Background

Roll once on the table above for a single name, twice to join the names together. Use either the original or “translated” word. E.g 1 and 5 is ‘Mot-geb’ or ‘Wrath Gift’.

Starting Gear (d20)

There is a perchance generator for generating arms and armour in the world of FEUD.

Spellbooks

Most of these spellbooks should not be used. Those that can be specifically skinned as have an origin in the world of spirits or humans may be kept. That is, things that are “clearly magical” should be avoided. For example, telepathy or Summon Cube would not be appropriate, where Pacify and Hatred may be interpreted as the result of a poet’s wit or a hunter’s personality.

Prices and Equipment list

Gold and currency is not something that exists in the world of FEUD. Where things have a relative value the values given should be seen as a “category of value” that may have an effect in trade and bartering. For example, an object work 5 may be traded for another of similar value.

However, it is unlikely that these opportunities for trade will arise too often. Therefore you will have to rely on your neighbours who may loan you items, or you may have access to shared/communal equipment.

16 October 2023 The Wyrd Lands

Announcing The Wyrd Lands

This site is the new home of writing about The Wyrd Lands.

The Wyrd Lands is a setting. Whenever my imagination wanders in search of adventures, monsters and humanity, it winds away among the forests and bogs of The Wyrd Lands.

The Wyrd Lands is a game or rather it is the tool for people to produce their own corners of this world and play within it however they see fit. It is random generators and descriptive tables of the cultures and land. It is individual adventures, stories and characters to populate your own stories and play.

This site is going to capture my on-going work with developing tales, legends and art of this world and ways to play within it. I hope you’ll keep track of what I am up to in order to get more from this strange world.

What is coming next?

FEUD has just funded. This stand-alone system-neutral RPG adventure was created using the tools of The Wyrd Lands RPG. This system is in some respects “completed” but is not yet released in full.

I am going to be working on releasing more of this system here and on my itch.io page. I will be starting by introducing the GM role for the game, that of The Wyrd itself.

I have also begun working on the next adventure. It’s working title is ‘She, The Peacock; It, the Empress’. This will tell the tale of one of the most important figures in all the Wyrd-Lands, the slave-girl become Empress, wand-bearer and invader. The Peacock’s story is the story of the beginning of the end of The Wyrd Lands.

I am also beginning to seriously re-write a novel set in this land. I wrote this first about 8 years ago but before I had the will to try and publish and share my writing. I now, finally, do and I am beginning to re-approach this tale. A tale of a wizard who returns with a new apprentice to The Wyrd Lands as it is taking its painful, breaths.

Please follow me on my socials to keep adventuring in this strange and dangerous land.

Twitter: @TheWyrdLands Itch: thewyrd.itch.io TikTok: @TheWyrdLands Email: wyrdrpgs@gmail.com

9 October 2023 The Wyrd Lands