Vestiges of the Past - Phantom Cogs and Forsaken Easter Eggs

Everything people make builds on what came before. The original edition of Dungeons & Dragons built on miniature wargaming rules as well as other recent attempts to repurpose wargames to explore imaginary fantasy worlds, attempts like Braunstein, Blackmoor, and the Dungeon! boardgame. Since then, there have been countless roleplaying games built off of D&D, both a few official new editions and iterations, and innumerable attempts by professional designers and interested amateurs alike to make their own bespoke version of the game they love, one that plays the way they want it to.

 

Our adventures too, build on what's come before. If you want to go explore a fantasy dungeon, well, you know what that's supposed to look like. You have examples in mind that show what a dungeon is supposed to be, along with maybe a few others that show you what not to do. The specifics may vary from person to person, but I bet each of us could make a list of the dungeons that inspired us, and I bet there'd be a fair bit of overlap, and also that your inspiration and my inspiration would both hearken back to some of the same, even earlier things. We know what dungeons are supposed to look like, and thus how to draw them correctly. We know what's supposed to go in them, and in what proportions. 

 

(This is true of any form of culture, really. If you're hoping to make a named kind of thing, then the idea of that thing already exists, and what you're making is a variation on that idea. This is fine. There are very few truly new things, and a lot of satisfaction to be found in making your own version of something, done the way you want it. Cultural change caused by iterations within genres isn't precisely the same as biological evolution, but it's not entirely dissimilar either.)

 

 

a "Nail House" in China - image source

  

So, when you're building off of something else, whether one game that you're updating, a pile of games that you're recombining and mashing up, whether it's something that someone else wrote, or just your own earlier versions and drafts, it's possible that things will get left behind. Things that made sense at one time, that maybe still seem to have a place, but that no longer serve their intended purpose, or don't serve any purpose at all.

 

Collectively, I think of these kinds of things as vestiges of the past. They're elements of a game that are vestigial, analogous to the human appendix or the goosebump response to cold or fear. Recently a couple of bloggers have started identifying and naming specific types of vestiges.

 

Clayton Notestine from Explorer's Design identifies phantom cogs - game rules that only serve to connect two other mechanics that could more easily be connected directly. Clayton defines phantom cogs as "any rule, mechanic, or procedure in roleplaying games that doesn't relate to the imagined world, its characters, or audience and instead obfuscates or manipulates other rules, mechanics, and procedures." They're "inelegant or 'extra' mechanics that only relate to other cogs."

 

Two of Clayton's examples are ability scores in D&D 5e and the difficulty scale in Numenera. Both are numbers that are theoretically supposed to be primary, that are supposed to be used to derive other, secondary numbers that will be used in play - the ability modifier and the Difficulty Class, respectively. But in practice, you'll often just know the secondary number you want to use in play and then have to work backwards to reverse engineer the supposedly-original primary number.

 

Nova from Playful Void identifies forsaken easter eggs - things hidden in a dungeon or other adventure that there's no way for the players to find, because they're not hidden in a way that anyone would guess, and there are no clues that would indicate that they're there. Nova explains that they "do not help the referee better run the module, but they are referee-facing rather than player-facing. They’re easter eggs, because they’re a secret message, and they’re forsaken, because they’re the one so well hidden that they’ll never be found by the kids on the hunt."

 

Instead of being left behind and getting in the way like phantom cogs do, forsaken easter eggs are left behind without any way to interact with them, because the information that would let you find the hidden thing never made it out of the previous draft (and I think most likely, never made it outside the dungeon designer's head). If you've written and are running your own dungeon, you might remember to include clues in your descriptions that aren't written on the page, but in published adventures, where the person refereeing the dungeon isn't the person who wrote it, forsaken easter eggs are like buried treasure with no X and no map.

 

 

a "Nail House" in Shanghai - image source

 

Can we think of any other types of vestiges? In video games, it's fairly common for glitches, hacking, or player access to the source code to reveal hidden areas of the map that there's no way to reach through normal game play. There aren't many examples of abandoned levels in pencil and paper games though. There's one Choose Your Own Adventure book with an ending that can be found by paging through the book but can't be reached by following any of the narrative pathways, but only one. I suppose you could create an abandoned level within a larger dungeon, by accident, if you made a level or sublevel on your map and then forgot to include any doors, staircases, or other connectors that would let the players reach that area. I'm not aware of any published examples of that sort of thing though.

 

We can also imagine an opposite counterpart to vestiges, to describe things that used to be present in earlier games, that might still be useful, but are simply no longer present, although I'm not sure what to call them. All the biological equivalents I can find, like blind cave fish losing their eyesight, are called things like "devolution" and "degeneracy," and it kind of seems like eugenicists and other racists care way too much about them. I might use a term like "phantom rules" where the analogy is the phenomenon of a phantom limb, a thing that is no longer present but still felt and missed, but that would sound too much like Clayton's term, and create confusion.

My Barkeep Jam Entry - The Cockatrice Tail

This is my entry in the Barkeep Jam hosted by Prismatic Wasteland. I wanted to write something as different as possible from my previous pubcrawl location. Among other things, my other pub was kind of out of the way and disconnected from the rest of the Raves of Chaos, this one is right in the thick of things. And I took a bit of advantage of the unlimited space afforded to blog posts. Fitting a full pub on a two-page spread requires brevity, and really good editing. Here, I let myself sprawl a little.

 

 

 

The Cockatrice Tail

 

A former sculpture garden, enclosed and used as a warehouse, forgotten, lost in a bet, then converted into a pub by its new owner. Now it's an artists' hangout, popular for its pastoral interior and abundant inspiration. Grass floor, park bench seating, lampposts for light, and dozens of statues of all kinds supply an artificial crowd even when the place is empty. Rumor has it the Medusa barkeep has ties to the criminal underworld... Located halfway between Three's Company and The Birdcage.

 

 
 

 

When the jolly crew enters the pub, roll 1d6 on the table below. If a character's number is equal to or below the result, they are in the pub right now. 

1d6 - GARDEN PARTY-GOERS

1 - The Medusa works as a bartender for her aunt, the absentee owner. She knows she could run her own place better, if she could just get a chance!

 

2 - Down-on-their-luck Bard trying to write a comeback play about the Raves. Thirsty for gossip about events around town, and loves monologuing about what they already know.

 

3 - Chauntecleer and Pertelote, a canoodling pair of married chickens who love matchmaking other pub patrons, so everyone can be as happy as they are. Are any crewmates single?

 

4 - Delicious Dungeoneer only wants to talk about food the jolly crew has eaten at the Raves. Wants to know exactly how it tasted, will buy drinks for advice about where to get specific meals.

 

5 - Slow-moving Living Statue is maudlin and nostalgic for the good old days of the original Caves of Chaos. Unending list of complaints about kids today. Why do things have to change?

 

6 - The pub's owner, elderly Auntie Echnidna checking in on her investment. Everyone's doing everything wrong, and her whole body aches because she's pregnant again.

 

 

 

If the Risk Dice rolls a Setback while the jolly crew is approaching the pub, roll 2d6 on the table below.

2d6 - SIDETRACKS

 

2 - Hobgoblin baker supervises 1d6 chalk-white goblin lackeys as they crush white rocks and pour the dust into burlap flour sacks.

 

3 - Hypnotized 'snake charmer' plays imaginary flute at slithering, hypnotized human 'snake', luring them back toward Somnambula's. Encourages bystanders to "come see my performance!"

 

4 - Blindfolded bachelorettes' party stumbling through the street playing Pin the Tail on the Platypus. The slowest crewmate makes a Dex check or gets nailed for 1 damage and a beaver tail they can't take off.

 

5 - Gambling impresario clearing a path and taking bets for an off-track cock race. Certain to run afoul of the Tuck Mob if they find out...

 

6 - Trio of living statues perform slow-motion reenactment of The Murder of Gonzago. Claudius poisons the King and marries Gertrude. Bystanders wonder, is this what happened to the Monarch?

 

7 - Haughty tailor judges a jolly crewmate's outfit as "hideous!" Starts taking measurements, cutting cloth, stripping off old clothes, and oh by the way, this will be 50 gold coins...

 

8 - Pair of living statues engaged in an exhibition wrestling match. Bystanders are eager to gamble, oblivious to risk of being crushed.

 

9 - Annoying rooster minstrel whistles, strums lute, and narrates the jolly crew's recent deeds in song, and will only go away if they can pawn him off on someone more interesting.

 

10 - Drunken fairy wizard flings curses around the crowd. The unluckiest crewmate makes a Wis check or gets the features of a donkey (roll 1d6): (1-3) tail, (4-5) head, (6) braying "heehaw" laugh.

 

11 - Desperate wizard fraternity pledge chases goat-chicken mascot, stolen from a rival frat, toward Ship of Thesis, offers free drinks to whoever can help catch the nimble beast.

 

12 - The Heir's royal baker describing cake decorations to hobgoblin chef, orders the jolly crew to assume various heroic poses for visual reference.

 

 

 

If the Risk Dice rolls a Setback while the jolly crew is inside the pub, roll 2d6 on the table below.

 

2d6 - SITUATIONS

 

2 - Chalk-white goblins who've been hiding motionless amongst the pub's statues scream and jump to life, startling everyone.

 

3 - Pair of off-duty gargoyles from the Royal Palace relaxing after work. They'll fly the jolly crew to any other pub in just 1 turn in exchange for a round of drinks at the next stop.

 

4 - Love sick, half starved art student, produces sketch after sketch of the statue they're obsessed with. Begs the jolly crew to buy a Corpse Reviver so they can finally be together (roll 1d4).

 

5 - Reform parliamentarian dressed as hedgehog and Royalist dressed as flamingo playing official croquet match to determine a crucial point of order, keep accusing each other of cheating. They demand the soberest crewmate act as an impartial referee.

 

6 - Catastrophic breakup between a disillusioned rave-goer and her paramour, a giant rooster wearing a disguise. She's just now, suddenly, spontaneously realized that he's not a human, he's her chicken beau.

 

7 - Someone (roll 1d6) urgently wants to hire the Medusa for her side-hustle turning people to stone! (1) dutiful child wants elderly parent to become their own grave marker, (2) pair of degenerate gamblers will petrify the loser of their high-stakes coin toss, (3) star-crossed young lovers vow to stay together forever, (4) Tuck Mob enforcer proffers a squirming body in a burlap sack, (5) doctor reassures dying patient they can be un-petrified once there's a cure for their disease, (6) narcissist wants to be immortalized on their most perfect hair day.

 

8 - Vain but self-hating snake woman throwing a screaming, glass smashing temper tantrum. She's hired yet another artist to draw a sketch or paint a portrait of her, and once again she's inconsolable and furious at the result.

 

9 - Boisterous bout of lawn darts in danger of flying out of control. These louts won't quit until they're beaten! Score hits on AC 10, 12, and 14 to win, the opposing team aims at the drunkest crewmate instead of their own target. Oops!

 

10 - Hyper intelligent white swine, the Pigmalion, an escapee from the Dreamlands, studies the statues and sculpts miniature likenesses of the patrons from living clay that mimic their models' behavior. One of the figures depicts an NPC important to the jolly crew.

 

11 - Obnoxious oread tourists from the Elemental Plane of Earth amuse themselves by talking to the statues and pretending they're old friends from back home.

 

12 - Sentimental Heir commissions 1d6 living statue thespians to reenact their sibling's final battle. The jolly crew are invited to help block out the heroic yet tragic scene.

 

 

 

PRICE - SIGNATURE DRINKS

 

1 silver coin - Fountain Drink - Day-old sparkling wine pours from the mouths of swans, giant fish, and cherubs into a central basin. Grab a glass! Free refills if the Medusa is distracted.

 

2 silver coins - Tail of the Cock that Bit You - Whiskey, coffee, lots of hot sauce, and a raw egg. Might wake you up, will definitely clear your sinuses.

 

4 silver coins - Yes I Amphora Good Time - Red wine with a hint of pine tar, served in a Grecian vase.

 

5 silver coins - The Green Ferryman - Hallucinogenic liquor, known to knock your head off and send you across the river to wake up dead.

 

1 gold coin - Everybody Must Get Stoned - A granite punch bowl big enough for the whole crew. Served so cold it makes its own fog, with straws for everyone.

 

10 gold coins - Corpse Reviver - A hangover cure strong enough to bring statues to life! If you roll 4-6 on your Sobriety Dice, it upgrades by one step.

 

 

 

 

This work is compatible with Barkeep on the Borderlands (found at prismaticwasteland.com), written by W.F. Smith and published by Prismatic Wasteland, LLC, pursuant to the Barkeep on the Borderlands Third Party License.

Congratulations to All the Summer Lego RPG Setting Jam Participants!

The Summer Lego RPG Setting Jam has officially ended. Congratulations and thank you to everyone who participated! Nineteen people submitted entries between May 8th and July 8th, including my own entry makes an even 20! I'm so pleased and happy to see them all. Let's take a look at what everyone turned in!

Unofficially, if you still want to make an RPG setting based on Lego, there's no reason not to go ahead and do it. I received so many messages from people about how much fun they had writing theirs - you might enjoy writing one, too! And I hope, in the fall, we'll see a few play reports from people who manage to put one of these settings to use at the table.

 

 

 

Legojam Castle Hexcrawl map by Rise Up Comus

 

The first entry came from Rise Up Comus, who helped get the whole project off to an exciting start! He wrote the Legojam Castle Hexcrawl, a regional sandbox based on Lego's original line of Castle sets. Playing with the idea that Legos are toys, this is a setting where all the NPCs are dressed up in costumes and forced to reenact a child's idea of a rollicking medieval adventure, complete with knights, bandits, and a dragon.

 

 

 

Azure Archipelago map by Tales of Escia

Tales of Escia wrote the Azure Archipelago, a wavecrawl full of early modern pirates and an imperial navy ... and advanced magitech Atlanteans. The three factions are competing for control of the region and access to arcane crystals, and their conflict has the potential to determine the fate of an active volcano on the brink of eruption!

 

 

 

Lego Adventurers Dino Island map by Farmer Gadda

 

Farmer Gadda gives us their take on more recent theme with Lego Adventurers Dino Island, a pointcrawl setting where freelance archaeologists compete against mustache-twirling aristocratic villains to find treasure on an island full of dinosaurs, and another active volcano.

 

 

  

Canton of Ochesbad by Tales of the Lunar Lands

 

Tales of the Lunar Lands wrote Cedric the Bull and the Canton of Ochesbad. The canton is a region at war, full of siege engines and war machines. It's medieval, but a very different feel from the Castle Hexcrawl. At the heart of the chaos is Cedric the Bull, a bloody-handed warlord who wants to be an honorable nobleman, which is a nice sort of internal conflict for a villain to have with himself.
 

 

 

6411 Sand Dollar Cafe via Brickset

 
Switching genres in a couple ways, Prismatic Wasteland wrote a modern-day murder mystery at the beach in Trouble in Paradisa. He treats us to nostalgia for the Lisa Frank neons of the early 90s, and the plethora of vacation-themed prime time soap operas of the 1980s. As a bonus, the whole thing is formatted as a trifold zine! He also wrote a nice retrospective about his design process.

 

 

 

Creatown map by The Lonely Firbolg

 

The Lonely Firbolg gives us another modern entry, Creatown, a neighborhood designed following the principles in Electric Bastionland, and using a dozen of Lego's multipurpose Creator sets to produce some truly quirky and memorable city encounters.
 
  

 

Challenger Crater by Xandeross

 

Taking us into the future, Xandeross wrote Moon War 2199, a small setting of warring cities and factions surrounding a large crater on the moon. Xandeross used some of the same Lego Space sets I grew up with, and provides us with a couple tables of random events to help feed the escalating tensions as the situation worsens.
 
 

 

Slizer / Throwbot Planet map by Faber Files

 

Arch Brick draws on a theme from Lego's Technic sets to bring us the World of Seven Slizers. This is a world divided into seven elemental realms - where two of the elements are energy and city!

 

 

 

Darth Skull, Foreman Mike, Astronaut, and two Ninjas by Benign Brown Beast

  

Instead of a setting, Benign Brown Beast takes us on a nostalgic tour through The Bootleg Lego Star Wars of My Youth. It's fun getting to see the idiosyncratic way he interpreted Star Wars as a kid, misremembering and reimagining key characters and scenes, incorporating elements from other Lego sets, blending it all with kid logic. Although my own childhood fantasy world looked totally different from this, it was assembled from mismatched parts in exactly the same way; reading this really took me back!

 

 

 

Big Mouth by Save vs Worm

  

Half Again as Much gives us a deep cut, with The Monster (Pod) Manual, featuring 20 different monsters, all built from one of Lego's short-lived X-Pod sets. Save vs Worm provides some nice illustrations of each of the monsters.

 

 

 

Dragons High map by Seed of Worlds

 

Seeds of Worlds gives us a delightfully thematic conflict in Dragons High. We get a world that's home to nature loving, dragon riding elves, being invaded via interdimensional portals by an unstoppable army of mechanical sea monsters!
 
 
 

Towers of Trumbagar zine by Leviathan Crossing

 

Leviathan Crossing wrote a very old-school little zine with Towers of Trumbagar, which includes lists of towers, simplified vertical maps of three, as a few encounter tables to liven them up.

 

 

 

Aquanautica map by Old Grog

 

Old Grog made a zine as well, and it's amazingly professional looking for a first effort! This might be someone to watch. Aquanautica is another wavecrawl, this one based on Lego's undersea Aquazone sets, which look a lot like underwater spaceships, which is to say, they look really cool.
 

 

 

Something Bricked This Way Comes by Rogue Wave Arcade

 

Rogue Wave Arcade also brought the professionalism when making Something Bricked This Way Comes, a pamphlet adventure that collects some classic monsters for spooky monster-hunting action!

 

 

 

6160 Sea Scorpion from Brickset

 

VDonnut Valley actually wrote three posts to describe an underwater setting. The first post describes the general setting, Sea Scorpion. In the second post about Sea Scorpion Locations, we see a half-dozen locations, their resources, and how events unfold in each one over time. The third post, Sea Scorpion Crews, introduces us to several different undersea adventuring groups, who again change over time. The temporal component here seems interesting; I'd like to know how it works in action at the table.

 

 

 

A Legend Returns map by Noriksigma

 
Noriksigma wrote an impressively detailed setting, A Legend Returns, based on the Matorans from Lego's Bionicle line. I think he wanted to write something longer, including barrens outside the city, but there is plenty to see and do here already.

 

 

 

Island of Tyn Mava map by Noise Sans Signal

 

Noise sans Signal also hoped to write something longer, but still produced the Island of Tyn Mava, City of Weather Vanes, a pointcrawl with a dozen locations. A fuller setting may appear someday! One thing I find really interesting here is that this isn't based on childhood memories of playing with Legos, but rather viewing random Lego sets and using them as sparks for creativity.

 

 

 

Knights on the Borderlands map by Scriptorium Ludi

 

Scriptorium Ludi put together a zine, Knights on the Borderlands, that pays tribute to Lego's Knights Kingdom series and the classic D&D adventure Keep on the Borderlands. This is the second entry that comes with a helpful companion post describing the design process!

 

 

 

Scary Monster Madness map by Knight at the Opera

 

Knight at the Opera uses, I think, the same classic monsters as Rogue Wave Arcade, for the pointcrawl adventure Scary Monster Madness. Here the players take on the roles of documentarians, reporting on the way a major movie studio is exploiting a rural, monster-filled European backwater to make horror movies with no special effects. Like Rise Up Comus's hexcrawl, I think this one is playing with the toy-ness of Lego, depicting an environment where many of the NPCs are themselves acting an playing roles.

 

 

 

I will share my own Lego-inspired setting soon, but I wanted to share the list of other entries as soon as possible. I'm so glad that so many people participated, and felt inspired to make something of their own. I also received a lot of messages from folks asking questions, sharing their favorite Lego tips and resources, and reminiscing about their childhood favorite Lego sets. This was no Dungeon 23 or Gygax 75, but it was small, and it was fun, and I'm very happy with the outcome. 

 

If you have the time and energy and to try want another summer project, why not join Prismatic Wasteland's Barkeep Jam, which is open until August 14th?

Helpful Links for the LEGO RPG Jam

Hi everyone! I have two announcements about the ongoing Summer LEGO RPG Setting Jam, still open until July 8th. First, several people have reached out to me with links that might be helpful for anyone working on their own entry. And second, the first few entries have been submitted!

 

 

71469 Nightmare Shark Ship image source

 

I'll talk about those in just a moment. But first, my friend and colleague Prismatic Wasteland is also hosting an game jam this summer - the Barkeep Jam, which will be open from June 14th to August 14th, inviting you to add your own location (or other contributions) to the already-overflowing Barkeep on the Borderlands.

 

I wrote one of the original bars, but I'm going to try to come up with another to enter in the jam. I'm thinking of playing with the similar sounds in cocktail and cockatrice, although I'm not sure exactly where that will lead yet...

 

In the mean time, let's talk about Lego!

 

  

6494 Magic Mountain Time Lab image source

 

I have been using Brickset as my primary interface for locating and looking at older Lego sets. It's not the only way to search them, but I've found it very helpful.

Certified Lego fan Farmer Gadda has a few recommendations! First, Rebrickable is a site where people can post instructions for their own fan designs, reusing old pieces in new ways.

Next, Brick Owl is an online marketplace for buying and selling Lego pieces and minifigures.

 

BrikWars hosts a community of people who use Lego to play wargames. There's a complete ruleset, a wiki for lore, and forums where people talk about and post pictures of their games.

And the BrickLink Studio is a downloadable program from the official Lego website that allows 3D modeling of Lego pieces and sets, and can output .png files.

Knight at the Opera discovered that the official Lego website also has some great history articles, including accounts of the original Castle, Pirates, and Space lines, along with plenty of other topics.

I also got a great link from Mindstorm -  a really detailed overview of the Lego space factions from the 1990s and 2000s from the almost overwhelming Rambling Brick blog. This covers the period when I was most into Lego as a kid, as well as the time right afterward.

And finally, Prismatic Wasteland found a link to a review of the inspiring 1992 Lego catalog, and discovered that Brickset also has a way to browse old Lego catalogs, from 1966 to 2011.
 

4970 The Chrome Crusher image source

So far, there have been four contest entries (that I know of! if you've seen others, please share them in the comments!) 

The first past the finish line is Rise Up Comus, who wrote the Legojam Castle Hexcrawl. This is 27 hexes of medieval adventure, populated by people forced to reenact and relive the same heroic drama year after year, with only the player characters able to break free from the eternal recurrence of the same.

The aforementioned Farmer Gadda wrote Lego Adventurers Dino Island, which pits pulp-style explorers and criminals in a race against one another to capture a dinosaur before the volcano explodes...

Dr Curious VII went a different route and found monster designs from a Lego boardgame. In The Monster (Pod) Manual, DC7 offers ideas on how to describe and use 20 of these little beasties as roleplaying adversaries. I'd really like to encourage this kind of creativity! If you don't want to write a setting, but have another idea for adapting Lego to use with D&D, please know that you're welcome.

 

And in the most recent entry, for now, Tales of Escia gives us The Azure Archipelago, a 36 hex ocean setting where pirates, ghosts, and a royal navy all compete with ancient high-tech Atlanteans to find arcane crystals that will fuel their various factional goals.

There's still plenty of time to join the jam, and plenty of room for more ideas. Don't feel discouraged if you want to write something smaller, or if you too want to write about pirates or knights! I'd love to see what you can make!

Summer LEGO RPG Setting Jam

I want to officially announce the start of the Summer LEGO RPG Setting Jam! The goal of this game jam is to design a small roleplaying game setting based on the Lego sets we enjoyed in our youth. The jam will run from Wednesday, May 8th to Monday, July 8th, 2024.

 

6075 Wolfpack Tower image source

What is the Summer LEGO RPG Setting Jam?

A few years ago, I wrote about how the Lego Castle sets that came out when I was a kid formed an important part of my fantasy imagination, and helped to shape what I want from fantasy roleplaying games. I know I’m not the only one who feels like this, and that childhood Lego sets continue to inspire many of us who enjoy designing and playing RPGs today.

 

So, the goal of this project is to design a small game setting based on a few Lego sets. I encourage you to draw on sets that you remember from your childhood - either ones you owned and enjoyed, or ones you saw and wanted but never got to play with. Now is your chance! 

 

(Since this is a celebration of Lego's original sets and settings, I think it will be more fun if we don't try to riff off of Lego's licensed interpretations of other company's characters.)

 

 

1492 Battle Cove image source

 
 

What Kind of Setting Should I Make?

 

Create a setting where the players can be heroes or scoundrels, and let them decide how to act. Set up rival factions with conflicting goals, make a powder keg, ready to explode, and hand the players a match they can strike. Give them a safe home base, a dungeon to delve, a wilderness to travel, monsters to fight. Make the game you want to play!

 

I encourage you to think small, to be expressive and concise, and to write a setting that will fit on 1-2 pages of 8½ × 11 paper when printed out. You can reference the game mechanics of your choice, or save space by leaving your setting systemless or system-neutral.

 

Anyone who uses your setting will have to do additional work to get it game-ready, so help them out by making something exciting and inspirational! Basic guidelines are more important than fine-grained distinctions. Be clear and coherent, use motifs and themes, and trust that the person running the game will make decisions that are shaped by the tools you've given them.

 

 

6878 Sub Orbital Guardian image source

 
  

How Do I Participate in the Game Jam?

 

Once you've created your setting, go ahead and put it online! If you have a blog, make it a post. Upload it somewhere as a pdf. Then, share your links here, as comments on this post!

 

Once the game jam closes on July 8th, I'll write a new compilation post that has links to all the entries. I'll also create a companion document that combines all the pdf entries into a single file.

 

I'm going to create a setting too! I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with!

 

 

6879 Blizzard Baron image source

 

 

Anything Else I Should Know?

 

Please credit the original Lego sets using their official names and set numbers. That way, everyone will know what inspired you, and anyone who likes your setting can look up the same sets you drew from.

 

Please do not include racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, or islamophobia in your entry. I reserve the right to not share or promote any game jam submission that I think is being used to harass or bully.

Lego trademarks of the LEGO Group. The names and images of all Lego products are copyrights of the LEGO Group and are used here without permission. All names and images of Lego products used here are intended to represent Fair Use under the 1976 Copyright Act. Their use is non-commercial, and is part of a transformative artistic project, which is not a substitute for the original products, and should not affect those products' value.

So please, share your Summer LEGO RPG Setting Jam entries in the comments below!

Actual Play - Death by Dragon in The Incandescent Grottoes

My regular Friday night gaming group has been playing through Gavin Norman's The Incandescent Grottoes. It's a dungeon that's full of caverns of glowing crystals, which is what it's named for, and also classic D&D monsters like fungi, slimes, and the undead. And, oh yeah, a dragon!

 
Leighton Connor from Akashic Library volunteered to be our referee for this one, since he's run this particular adventure before, for a group of kids and teens. Peter Kisner from Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop is the other player besides me in this game. 

 

I want to shout out a fun incident that happened in one of our recent sessions. As ever in these kind of situations, it's not possible to tell this story without spoiling a few possible surprises from the adventure, although I've tried my best to keep that to a minimum.

 

After our initial party of four got cut in half by some early dangers, Peter and I each rolled up two characters to accompany Gone Girl the thief and Gildur the dwarf. One of my new characters became a terrible wizard, and I made the other into a pretty good elf. The elf got a bonus language, which I rolled to select at random, and the dice decided he knew how to speak Dragon. I decided to make that a focal point for his personality. I gave him magic missile as his lone spell, used his remaining cash after getting armor and weapons to buy oil, and named him Flamethrower. (The wizard also got a bonus language - Regional Dialect. Like I said, terrible.)

 
So, when our newly enlarged party learned that there might be a dragon living in one part of the dungeon, obviously I had Flamethrower suggest that we should go visit it, so he could try talking to it. Peter agreed, because why not? How often do you actually encounter the monster the game is named after? Plus, we hoped it would go well. I thought Flamethrower might be able to engage the dragon in conversation, offer to do it a favor in exchange for treasure, that sort of thing.

 

We experienced one ominous omen on our way to the dragon's lair - a random encounter with a shadow monster. This was a pretty tough fight. Gone Girl used her only silver arrow, Flamethrower used up his one casting of magic missile, and Gildur made very good use of the magic sword he found earlier. I can't honestly say that this encounter changed the outcome of what happened next, but like, it was a very bad sign, and depleted us of resources that theoretically could have been useful.

 

Okay, so we leave the tunnel and enter the cavern where we think the dragon will be. It's not there, but we see another tunnel exit at the far end. In a loud voice, Flamethrower starts declaiming a polite greeting, "Well met, noble dragon, allow me to extend our most felicitous greetings to your royal eminence," and so on.
 

The dragon Kramers into the room, rolling up looking absolutely crazed with hunger and fury. It turns out the thing has only bestial intelligence. It shouts the only phrase it knows "EAT YOU!" and lunges for us, causing everyone to try to scatter.

 

I imagine this dragon looking like this angry weirdo from Shin Godzilla

We all wanted to run away, but unfortunately, the dragon won the initiative, and let loose with its breath weapon - a cloud of knockout gas. Everyone lost their saving throw except for Peter's gnome, Schnoz, and they all fell unconscious to the floor.

  

It turns out there was one spell left that the party didn't cast when we were fighting the shadows, and Peter had Schnoz cast it now, an illusion spell called spook that inspires temporary terror. And, in what I can only describe as a Looney Tunes moment, it actually works! Picture Droopy the Dog holding up a grotesque Halloween mask, and this big angry dragon suddenly recoiling in horror and scampering away at top speed, whimpering like a scared dog.

 

Who knows what terror lurks in the hearts of dragons? The spook spell knows.

The spell has a very short duration, so we only had a couple combat rounds of safety while the dragon ran away, came to its senses, and then came thundering back, even angrier than before. Schnoz managed to wake up Gildur the dwarf, and they each lugged another character to safety by retreating down the tunnel we came in. They took lucky Gone Girl and Peter's third character, leaving my other two behind, including Flamethrower, because this was all his fault.

 

The dragon came back into its main lair and started savaging my two unconscious characters, I think starting with the terrible wizard. Schnoz tried to wake up the two he rescued we are still sleeping, but to no avail. Gildur lights a torch and throws it across the cavern onto Flamethrower's supine body. You'd think being lit on fire would wake him up, but no.

 

The dragon wins initiative again, finishes killing Flamethrower, and starts advancing toward the rest of the party. When the initiative passes to us players, the torch lights Flamethrower's collection of oil on fire, and he explodes in a giant ball of flame, harmlessly, a safe distance behind the dragon.

I should note that at no point have we made any attempt whatsoever to actually fight this thing. After our attempted diplomacy failed, Peter and I have just been trying to get our characters to run away. Everything that's happened so far has been based on saving throws and initiative rolls. The dragon didn't even need to roll to hit our unconscious characters, just for damage, and even that was mostly a courtesy, considering they're defenseless.

 

As the enraged dragon stomped toward them, Schnoz and Gildur lugged the other two down a side passage toward and underground river, hoping that the current would quickly carry us far enough away, as long as we could all float until we got to shore. In the first bit of good luck we'd had in awhile, the shock of the cold water woke the two sleepers up. 

 

Now, swimming in armor is dangerous. Gone Girl was wearing leather, and got lucky again, so she survived to make landfall with Schnoz and Peter's remaining character. Gildur the dwarf was wearing plate armor, and he did not get lucky, so he sank and drowned, taking the magic sword (which was almost our only treasure up to that point!) with him.

 

This session was an absolutely magnificent failure, and I loved it!

 

 

The Incandescent Grottoes