The Wyrd Lands

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...

 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...

Swords and ale, magic and monsters! It sounds like pretty run-of-the-mill stuff, but The Wyrd Lands looks more odd when you scratch beneath the service.  One of the challenges in writing content for the setting is that it is trying to represent a world that doesn't really tie to the standard late medieval/renaissance that most fantasy/pseudo-historical settings do. This typical setting is predicated on the idea of a knight-like adventurer in a world that is quite like our own: written laws, nation states, international trade, industry, recognisable classes etc.  My setting of The Wyrd Lands is inspired by what's called the migration period. This is the time and the land of Beowulf: the isles and shores of Scandinavia and northern Germany before the Vikings, before the English existed as the Western Roman empire declined and fell.  This is a land about which we know incredibly little. There are almost no historical records and those that do exist are written much later. Bu...