A Preview of Coming Attractions

Aside from writing posts here from time-to-time, I have a few TTRPG projects I am bouncing back and forth between. I wanted to talk about these projects (with some previews), not only in case they pique anyone’s interest but also to keep me committed to them—when I shout into the void that I am going to make X, surely it will embolden me to actually follow through, right? Only one way to find out. These projects are listed in the order I expect they will come out, not in order of importance—the most important game, predictably, is “Prismatic Wasteland” but it will probably be the last one to find its way into the hands of happy strangers. My eyes are typically bigger than my stomach, but hopefully these plans aren’t too grandiose. I’ve really enjoyed working on all of them so far!

1. The Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl (July 12 Update: It’s out now on itch.io!)

Estimated Length: 1 Page

Estimated Launch: Early Summer 2021

This project is intended to be used for relaxing and pleasant excursions to a land where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night. It will be a system-neutral, one-page hexcrawl that faithfully recreates the Big Rock Candy Mountain and environs from the folk song of the same name, complete with a random encounter table and weather table. Because of the tight scope, I should be able to finish this one pretty quickly after finishing my beta rules for Prismatic Wasteland (more on that below). Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl will be pay-what-you-want on Itch.io. This is the most low-key of my projects, but I am excited that HODAG RPG will be providing some art for it! If you somehow missed out on HODAG RPG, he is an overflowing font of cool pamphlet RPGs—I particularly dig NOW! THIS IS HOVER-RACING!, which is an homage to a wonderful N64 game, and WHO! IS THE TOUGHEST MAN IN WISCONSIN?, which may or may not be about my friend and Wisconsin resident, Gareth, but is definitely about tough guys and Midwestern bar fights. I’m excited to see what he draws for this folk music-inspired romp!

2. The Barkeep on the Borderlands: A Pub Crawl Point Crawl (March 2022 Update: This Project was Funded!)

Estimated Length: 20-30 Pages, more or less

Estimated Launch: ZineQuest 4 (February 2022)

This is a point-crawl adventure where a group of friends have a rollicking time going from bar-to-bar, getting in all sorts of trouble until their night ends. It also serves as a d20 table (or d66, depends on my scope—I may have other people contribute depending on how the kickstarter does) of random bars for any campaign. The setting is of the generic fantasy milieu but more of a late-medieval (or early enlightenment) period, a few centuries after the original The Keep on the Borderlands module. The conceit, beyond having a pun for the title, is a maze of bars were constructed in an entertainment district built atop what were once the Caves of Chaos but have now become gentrified by an expanding city that was once a humble keep after the Caves of Chaos were cleared by ne'er-do-well adventurers. Here is a preview of some random tables for one of the bars. Random tables are one of my favorite ways to convey setting information, and I make heavy use of them in The Barkeep on the Borderlands.

3. Unaccredited Magic User Boarding School

Estimated Length: 20-30 Pages, more or less

Estimated Launch: Soon after Barkeep on the Borderlands is fulfilled (2022)

This is a funnel adventure for would-be magic users. A funnel adventure is a variant for character creation where each player runs 3 to 5 0-level characters through a deadly adventure. Survivors of the funnel may become wizards or sorcerers, or even dropouts (i.e., fighters with a couple spells). It will be system neutral with an optional random spell system that can be ported into most OSR-ish systems with relative ease. This is inspired more by Community (the earlier seasons) and my own experiences with post-graduate education than from other magic boarding schools (although I eagerly await Troika!’s take on the genre. with Academies of the Arcane As of this posting, you still have a chance to back that kickstarter). As a preview, here is one of the steps for producing a roster of different characters for the funnel.

4. Prismatic Wasteland

Estimated Length: 200 Pages, more or less

Estimated Launch: Late 2022? Early 2023? What is time, really?

This is my main passion project, a post-post-apocalyptic setting and system, although it is more in the whimsical vein of Adventure Time than the dark-and-gritty aesthetic of other post-apocalyptic properties. If you’ve been to the “About” page on this blog, that is what I’m referring to, so I won’t repeat that whole spiel here. Like Electric Bastionland by Chris McDowall, the setting is delivered primarily through 100-ish character backgrounds and other random tables. If this isn’t your first time on my blog (and if it is, I am sorry, I promise the other posts have much more gameable material and approximately 50% less self-aggrandizement), you have already seen previews of the game: rules for generating random equipment, language rules, how it handles ancestry, push-your-luck rules for dungeon delving, abstract wealth rules and rules for hacking computers by smacking them until they work. If I’m talking about a TTRPG project, it is usually this one. I started on it last year, and have been “alpha testing” it by using it to run UVG. I hope to have a beta-version of the rules done in about a month or two (fingers crossed) and will start testing those as I work on all the aforementioned projects. I am trying to put all the love and care into this as I can because this is the game I am most excited to run and play in. It is my Post-Apocalyptic Science Fantasy Heartbreaker (a loaded term that seems to be getting reclaimed a bit. Luka Rejec has a great blogpost on his reflections on the idea of a Fantasy Heartbreaker). I already have cover art for Prismatic Wasteland by the super talented Sam Mameli AKA Skull Boy AKA Better Legends, which I use for my blog’s header and my header and PFP on Twitter, but as a preview, here is the full thing. I hope to work with Sam on all the interior art as well because (A) he was great to work with and (B) his style really fits the whole vibe I am going for.

If any of these projects sound cool to you, the best way to keep up with them and not miss them is by following this blog or following me (@PrismaticWastes) on Twitter. If you aren’t on Twitter (a wise choice) and would like to get an email when I put out any of these, you can sign up for those limited updates.