Traverse Fantasy

From my personal play packet! Possibly the laziest setting ever, but it’s honest. All the gorgeous art shown here is by the delightful Norn Noszka ! World of Faia Faia is the setting of my home campaign, a sort of cosmic crossroads between worlds. Portal-hopping dwarves meet star-sailing terrans on a planet otherwise populated by a species known as faians—some elves, others orcs. Though Faia is a usual fantasy world, it is written to explore realist themes about society and history. Cathedral of Light Elves are faians who were baptized under the Cathedral of Light, a religious institution established by the Snow-White Queen. The elves were initially unified by this swordseer to defend their continent against the dwarves of the Midgard Company. However, they eventually opted to split the Dark Lands of Faia between themselves and the Company. This coincided with the Crusade Against Darkness, a declaration of all uncivilized faians as demons (orcs) from myth-times. They worship Qesem,...

Free adventure or whatever? This is my prep for the first two proper sessions of Turtle Island ( S1 , S2 ). There's only one statistic of note: that Bokor is a "champion". In my house rules, this means he is a figure who by himself is of medium difficulty in combat (a mini-boss, so to speak). That might make him equivalent to an ogre or troll? Idk. Locations These are the bare bones of the adventure site; it wasn’t until after the first session that I expanded upon the site’s story based on what seemed interesting. Entrance → Crop Fields, Big House Crop Fields → Entrance, Slave Quarters, Driver’s Home, Engines 3 farms: sugar, cotton, cacao. Actively being worked by 150 enslaved zombies, who go to “sleep” at night. No overseer to be found. Slave Quarters → Crop Fields, Provisions Gardens, Big House Not been lived in for quite some time. Some mementos of the once-living: Amulet of birth control (treasure). Bible overwritten with cultic depictions. ...

Zombies and vodou and marital drama oh my! Crew Roster Participants this session are in bold! Nicole: Elf arrested for bodysnatching, now a knife-hoarding edgelord; 4 experience. Nolan: Orc stand-user raised by elves, arrested on accusations of spying; 4 experience. Makandal: Orc maroon and voudonist ratted out while carrying out a raid; 6 (+4) experience. Queen-sama: Elf prostitute, arrested after being caught by a client’s wife; 8 (+4) experience. Xen: Amnesiac dwarf magician following strange dreams to the land of Flo’Rida; 6 (+4) experience. Downtime I let Xen spend 1 treasure so everyone present could do the research action (add 1 rumor to the map, or ask the game mother to ‘clarify’ 1 rumor already on the map). In the future, I think I’ll have individuals spend their own treasure; I just wanted everyone to participate this time. Queen-sama asked for clarification on the sea serpents rumor. I said that there have been multiple sightings of the sort of flying sea cre...

No one understands Euphoria like I do. Obviously, I'm exaggerating haha. It was one of the most popular prestige television shows of the late 2010s / early 2020s. I actually didn't watch it until just last year, when a friend and I were drunk after going to Texas Roadhouse (they have really powerful margaritas) and she asked if I wanted to watch the show since we'd been talking about it. I tried watching it a couple years ago, but I couldn't get through the first episode because of the extended 9/11-based prologue (felt tacky) and the sexual assault scenes (more self-explanatory). Watching it with my friend, though, I could sit next to her and grip the couch and sit through it. That night I got totally hooked, and I finished the show later that month. Euphoria is a high-school drama written (hm) and directed (hmm) by Sam Levinson, who lifted the  premise from an Israeli show (hmmm) of the same name but reworked to reflect his own personal experiences of adolescence (h...

I read so many books that I enjoy that sometimes I wonder, or worry, whether I just accept whatever I read. Thankfully, I’ve had critical reactions to certain books for which I thought I would have at-least-sort-of positive reactions ( Debt: The First 5,000 Years , The Conquest of Bread , Transgender Warriors ) and positive reactions to books for which I thought I would have a negative reaction ( Quotations from Mao Zedong ). So, at least even if my little gray cells are lacking, they at least don’t go out of their way to confirm what biases they have! That’s good. I hope. I’ve been interested lately (for a while?) in the interactions between political movements and religious self-narration , for lack of a better word. It seems like the emergence of new politics always accompanies the mass embrace of a new religion. Though, it’s the other way around, isn’t it? The new religion serves as the ideological form of material interests underlining the political movement and—like how such a n...

Hashtag OSRisOverParty, Hashtag RIPBozo, etc etc. The initial… “edition” of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition tried to present itself as a reactionary return to some ideal past paradigm of D&D —be it Third Edition to win back territory lost prior to Paizo’s Pathfinder , or an even older Gygaxian edition to get in the pants of the sort-of nascent OSR. Practically, this resulted in a final product that was like a simple Third Edition with dogwhistle-like nods to OSR conventions (since the play-style’s influence in the end was tenuous at best and mostly abandoned after the public test phase). It’s maybe more succinctly described as a people-pleasing game, with the caveat that people-pleasers don’t please anyone. So, how did it become popular? And how does the new 2024 not-edition reflect major differences between then and now, in terms of how D&D is perceived and played? This is my ramble. Sent from iPhone. Fifth Edition: Born in 2014 Of course, nobody plays D&D as ...

The official “first”, i.e. non-introductory, session of Turtle Island! Unfortunately, Makandal (played by Ènziramire ) couldn’t make it this time, but Xen joined us for the first time! Our roster, with participants this session in bold : Nicole: Elf arrested for bodysnatching, now a knife-hoarding edgelord; 4 (+2) experience. Nolan: Orc stand-user raised by elves, arrested on accusations of spying; 4 (+2) experience. Makandal: Orc maroon and voudonist ratted out while carrying out a raid; 2 experience. Queen-sama: Elf prostitute, arrested after being caught by a client’s wife; 4 (+2) experience. Xen: Amnesiac dwarf magician following strange dreams to the land of Flo’Rida; 2 (+2) experience. This is going to be a quick and dirty session summary, more for our use. Blog's just convenient! The crew was contracted by Captain Polly, an orc pirate and revolutionary, to raid a plantation on the island of Xamaka to connect the eastern maroon territory with the sea. They encount...