The Drowned Isles: A Scrap Game

I’ve got an RPG campaign burning a hole in my pocket. It’s a fantasy adventure setting, with a little world of my own devising seeded with smaller adventures and modules to ease on prep. The only problem is that none of the rulesets I’ve played or run have hit the vibe I’m looking for in this game. So instead I’m going to cobble together a ruleset^[1] I find acceptable, out of other games, blog posts, and spare parts. Along the way I hope to blog through the process, because it’s fun and might even be useful for other people embarking on similar projects.

Setting Highlights

• The setting is a time impossibly far off into the future where “everything has been tried, and everything has failed.” What is inherited is a total mess of human history: relics of all sorts, magical technology, and a completely muddled history. This is my excuse for having Atlantis bump up against an industrial port city which is uneasily eyeing the neighboring wizard college
• There’s some kind of hand-waved-magitech (nanomachines or something, idk) called Aether which permeates the world. Anyone with sufficient training can tap into the Aether to achieve superhuman feats
• Climate change raised sea levels to ruinous heights, but further effects seem to have been mitigated or halted by Aether.
• Storms and the ocean seem to have an odd effect on Aether; hurricanes often bring a host of other magical effects.
• The titular Drowned Isles are an archipelago coated in a magical fog, which sometimes release Old World wonders and horrors onto the mainland
• Spreading through the forests that coat the mainland is a fungal hivemind called The Garden. Sometimes symbiotic, sometimes parasitic, sometimes outright hostile. Its origins and goals are unknown
• The game starts in Twill, a coastal city that is the nearest port to the Drowned Isles
• Players take on the role of Wardens^[2] of Twill, sort of a catch-all adventurer social role. Their responsibility is kind of like a coast guard: protect sea-based travelers, investigate disturbances upriver or out in the bay, and brave the fog surrounding the Drowned Isles when necessary

Inspirations

Hopefully this mélange helps capture the vibe I’ll be going for:

• The Northeast Woodlands: the climate, the geography, the wildlife, the pre-Columbian civilizations, the modern urban centers
• The Arles Amphitheater, which was a Roman theater that became a fort town during the Middle Ages
• Spring in Hieron and Twilight Mirage, by Friends at the Table
• The Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein, and to a lesser degree the Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
• A Wizard of Earthsea and Always Coming Home, by Ursula K LeGuin
• Debt by David Graeber and The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow
• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
• The Quiet Year by Avery Alder
• Dead Astronauts, Ambergris, and Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
• Caves of Qud by Freehold Games
• Dark Souls 2 by From Software
• Unjust Depths by Madiha Santana

Also I’ve got Hunter x Hunter on the mind because I’m watching along with Media Club Plus.

Die Rolling

In the spirit of “everything has been tried”, what rules can I steal borrow for rolling some dice? Without even looking around I’m pretty sure I want a basic “core” rule to fall back to, one that isn’t too fancy. Just enough to make adjudicating uncertain situations a little easier. The games I initially considered were Stillfleet, 2400, Blades in the Dark, the GLOG, and Cairn. Usually I’d throw a PbtA in there, but my last two campaigns were Fellowship 2e and Armour Astir, so I’m looking for a change. I like any game where I don’t have to set the DC, which makes roll-under or a dice pool appealing. But roll-under was unsatisfying for my group when we played Whitehack 3e^[3], and I’m arbitrarily avoiding dice pools for this game. I also want to avoid having any kind of arithmetic modifier, which leaves me with dice-as-stat. Looking good for 2400, right?

Eh? Sorta? I ran a fun one-shot session with a lightly modified 24XX game, but felt myself struggling a bit with the mixed success option. When the game isn’t providing interesting support for a middle option (like moves in a PbtA game), I think I prefer a binary result. That knocks 24XX out of the running.

For a moment it seemed like I might need to have an original thought and do some design work. Fortunately I was reminded of Brighter Worlds, which elegantly fulfills my criteria. Time to steal take inspiration! As of right now, characters have four attributes (Toughness, Agility, Finesse, and Presence^[4]). Between these players assign a d4, two d6, and one d8. When rolling an attribute test, a four or higher is a success. If I have any situational modifier or boost-your-roll mechanic, I’ll use a dice chain^[5] just like Brighter Worlds.

What’s next

This is definitely the kind of game where characters have fun abilities. Currently I’m in the prior-art-gathering stage, looking at both fantasy games and superhero RPGs. I want to thread the needle between “cool” and “game-breaking”^[6]. So far I’ve been surprised by how hard that is! I’ll probably blog about that process soon.

Related reading:

• “OSR Aesthetics of Ruin”. While I’m not necessarily interested in old-school for old-school’s sake, the “aesthetic of ruin” is animating this project in much the same way as it does the OSR
• TraverseFantasy’s evolving home rules, Cinco. Marcia’s evolution of a minimal game for OC-style play is the kernel of my decision to embark on a similar project, though I think the end results won’t look much alike
• “The GLOG”, Goblin Punch’s unfinished set of house rules that have evolved into a community of hacking and blogging. I’m not too keen on the Glog itself, but more the spirit it represents
• Brighter Worlds. This game is honestly 75% of the way to what I want; it may serve as the basis for future rules. Like, the pet-having-class is called the “Animal’s Companion”. It’s got the whimsy that I miss in most OSR stuff