The Wyrd Lands

  FEUD is a project of a system-neutral adventure that is currently live on Kickstarter ( https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thewyrd/feud-0 ). This post is about designing FKR-y, system-neutral adventures. Adventure summary: In the shadow of the mountain of a half-forgotten god, a new horror is stirring: blood-feud has come to the land. This dark-age inspired adventure puts you in the role of ordinary people struggling to survive the outbreak of blood-feud. Here are three things that I think help in system-neutral design: Clear organisation Clear but evocative language Inspiration over direction Clear Organisation One of the un-sung roles of mechanics in adventures is that they are key structuring elements. When I read system-based adventures I tend to flick between the sentences where mechanics come in ( Make a DC:15 stealth check, on a fail... ). The reason for this is that these are the moments of action where I as GM will actually have to act. I have often found that I would...

Designing a game inspired by the Dark Ages presents a range of challenges and rewards. Chief among these is that we know very very little about it. What people do think often comes from our much later notions of nations, power identity and more In this post I am going to talk a bit about how I have tried to bring some of the "history" into FEUD, a system-neutral adventure module that will be live on Kickstarter September 18th. Follow now to be notified when it launches ! Some of the books that influence FEUD It's not the Dark Ages There are many names for the dark ages, but I use the term Migration Period. For me this name captures better the realities of this period. It covers around 300 - 600AD (definitions differ) and covers events from across all of Europe, the Mediteranean and North Africa.  It is the time when the Western Roman Empire changed and eventurally fell, the empire of Atilla the Hun, rose and fell, new kingdoms emerged and fell. Throughout it there was cha...

A game is a setting. My game is The Wyrd Lands. Across roughly 100 pages about 4 describe a suggested mechanical system to play with. The rest is all description of the setting. The whole "book" is trying to build the character and identity of this world so that people can play within it.  At its core the book is the tool to create four things: a region, a settlement, a household and a character.   This post is about the Perchance random generators I decided to make of these four areas. These have been shared on the itch page for this project.  The Trondle-Papa entreats you enter How The Wyrd Lands might be used I envision that any campaign of The Wyrd Lands would start with the players taking the (as-yet-unreleased) pdf/book alongside some (as-yet-uncreated) character sheets, and working together through these four stages. By working through these we create a broad context of a region, and then increasingly narrow contexts of settlement and household before we...

 FKR might look from the outside like the perfect mindset for storygames. Its advocates talk about 'narrative', 'fiction' and 'diegesis' as founding principles of the playstyle. But, on the surface FJR-ish games and storygames look quite different.  In this post I am going to take my upcoming adventure FEUD and think about what it tells us about FKR and storygames.  When I say storygames... I fall into the camp of people who think "all games are story-games" in fact in my own head I think of adventures etc. as "RP-stories" rather than "RP-games". What my definition of storygames here is then is this: games which are broadly about characters, their internal lives and "real world" issues and which can incline towards uing "meta" elements that structure the play experience. This is in slight contrast to what we might call "adventure games" whereby the shared problem-solving of situations is emphasised and...

In the shadow of the mountain of a forgotten god, people awake to a new horror. Blood-feud has arisen between two villages. It will trigger schemes and treachery, ambitions and hopes among the various peoples, monsters and gods of this land. You can now follow the Kickstarter campaign for my first print product: FEUD, an RPG adventure of War and Revenge.  The Kickstarter is funding to pay for a print run for the 60 page zine. It will go live September 18th 2023. FEUD is a system-neutral adventure set in a low fantasy, dark age setting. Players will take on the role of ordinary people faced with a terrible situation. A blood feud has come and the players will need to use their skills in combat, tactics and political ingenuity to protect themselves and their loved ones.  This is my first attempt into producing a product applying the principles of RPG design that I have been developing over the last few years. With editing help from the incomparable Matthew K , I feel that I ha...

In the Wyrd Lands RPG, the GM is not a neutral arbiter. They are the Wyrd. The Wyrd is fate, luck, chance, design and chaos. They are are the world and its people.  However, despite being the embodiment of the spirit of nature and existence, they also need to run the game. This post overviews my first draft of my GM guide, for the Wyrd Lands . Please excuse the formatting on this, it is early days.   This GM guide is supposed to be a single side of A4 that you might print out and have with you in any game to help you handle unexpected situations. I feel that you can start any discussion of this by asking two questions: What things do you want to hand to run your games? What things do you want to track as you play? Let's start with things I want to hand:  This table is a way with coming up on-the-fly with attitudes for characters, including creatures and even whole communities. I always find this the hardest thing to think up in the moment: how characters act and reac...

Actually, I am not trying to make a walking simulator RPG but a going-for-a-walk simulator RPG. Going for a walk/hike in the countryside engages a level of gentle imagination, concentration and variety that is a natural fit for the experience of playing in an RPG.  A key thing we are doing on any walk is engaging with the landscape, step by step you respond to the challenge of the terrain and the weather. This blog post explains my reasonings for my first draft of my environment rules which i posted on itch today . The game this is part of, The Wyrd Lands , which is a game inspired by the Dark Ages/Migration Period. It doesnt have a lot of the conveniences of the medieval fantasy world, including: few major roads, horses are a rare and prestige possession. When people travel across land, they are relying on their wits and their body. An image of The Valley of Brothers in The Wyrd Lands Outside of dungeon rooms, RPGs are typically concerned with getting to action rather than the jou...