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!