Merry Hexmas 101 - Coal Mountain

Prismatic Wasteland has announced a new Blog Bandwagon. This time, it's adding hexes to a hexcrawl based on the Christmas movies of Rankin & Bass. For my entry, I thought about where Santa might get the coal he gives out to naughty children. My answer was a classic cartoon villain, complete with an exciting but dangerous casino lair.
 

 

 

COAL MOUNTAIN (HEX 101)

 

Rugged, hilly land with countless small peaks and summits. The ground is covered with loose slate tiles and scree, the whole region cracked like an eggshell. The sky is forever overcast with black clouds of burning coal smoke. Stunted, gnarled candy canes eke from the impoverished earth. Rivulets and streams of ashy, polluted water flow southeast to further contaminate the Poison Swamp (hex 201).

 

Mine entrances bore into the valleys and hollows. Small wooden miners' shacks cling to the slopes in clusters near each entryway. On the largest plane of smooth level ground towers The Coal House. Blinking red neon signs announce its name and the entertainments - Drinks! Live music! Dancing! Gambling! - found within.

 

 

 

Adjacent Hexes

South - Miserable Mountain (hex 102)

Southeast - Poison Swamp (hex 201)

 
 

 

Wilderness Encounters (roll d8)

 

1 Weary, gnome-sized elves in faded blue work suits carrying picks and shovels march to a mine entrance to start their shift. Everyone here used to work at Castle Claus (hex 302) but was fired for some form of incompetence or disobedience. (1-3) Bermy, a cross-eyed elf who just needs a pair of glasses, was fired because all his toys were crooked and wonky; (4-5) Fermi, a former Italian physicist before the elfing process, was fired for powering his toys with uranium; (6) Shermy, an ordinary red-headed human child, sure hopes his friend Mr Peabody comes back to rescue him soon. No one can stop to talk long; the overseer will dock their pay.

 

2 Pipes emerge from the rock face expelling greasy grey water, which collects into a new stream flowing downhill and southeast.

 

3 Elf shepherdess Frilly leads her flock of Wooloo sheep to graze on the stunted candy canes creeping up between the rocks. She thinks the Coal House is a naughty place, and does her best to discourage anyone from going there.

 

4 Elves on strike! A mine entrance is blocked by a half-dozen elves with little wooden signs demanding safer working conditions, shorter hours, better pay. Orc labor activist Scabkiller (escaped from the Orchish Toy Factory hex 603) leads their chants. Middle-aged elf taskmaster Maestro Tasckrow is outraged as though every reduction in others' misery will cause equivalent pain to him personally. He cracks his whip and exhorts the elves to get back to work.  

 

5 A huge, chest high pool of freezing, stinking, fetid water collects outside an obstructed culvert. The giant pipe is covered in a metal grate, which is visibly blocked by leaves and scraps of broken wood. All paths through this area are obstructed. The water's too deep for a elf to unclog the drain. 

 
6 A wild herd of Dubwool rams block the way. They're territorial and fighty.

  

7 Exhausted elf miners, covered in coal dust, trudge wearily back to the Coal House after a long shift, dragging their tools behind them. (1-3) thoroughly jaded Grumble has complaints about everything, but argues against any suggesting that things could or should be improved; (4-5) disorganized Jumble wears his shirt on backwards and carries a gardening rake, he means well but everything he says is incorrect; (6) supernaturally delicate and beautiful  Melnibonean elf Yorrick Zweihander was never meant to perform manual labor, but he's trapped in the wrong story. They'll happily trade information for a bowl of soup or a stiff drink.

 

8 The wooden frame is partially collapsed around the entrance to this abandoned mine. This can serve whatever function you need it to. The tunnels could act as a secret entrance to another mine or the cellar of the Coal House. If you have a treasure map, it leads here. If you're looking for someone's lair or hideout, this is it.

 
 
  

THE COAL HOUSE
 

A great warrior's stronghold, converted into a raucous nightclub that never closes during the endless night of the arctic winter. The exterior still looks like a keep, but it's been dressed up with blinking red neon signs announcing THE COAL HOUSE and the many sins and vices found inside - drinking, live music, dancing, gambling. Pictograms depict a liquor bottle, a trumpet, a dancing girl, and a pair of dice for the benefit of the illiterate.
 
The interior of the Coal House is sweltering and clouded with a mix of tobacco and coal smoke. The music alternates between a lively brass swing band (for dancing) and a quieter jazz trio (for business), both playing arrangements of classic Christmas songs. The audience is mostly exhausted elf miners trying to indulge as much as they can afford. The staff are mostly elves too; like the miners, they've been rejected from Santa's workshops.
 
Most prices are denominated in Company Scrip, a worthless paper currency the overseers use to pay the miners. A silver coin will get you any drink on the menu. Some of the better-off miners can afford to buy a single silver coin, and can offer d6+6 CS in exchange. 1 CS buys a bowl of soup or gruel, a small loaf bread, or a glass of the cheapest drink.
 
The Coal House is the domain of Jazz King Coal, a giant of a man dressed in a black suit and ermine-trimmed red cape, smoking a pipe the size and shape of a saxophone. He thinks of himself as an important businessman. He buys all the coal from the mines and sells it on the Santa and several others, while technically employing none of the miners or overseers. He has a big, outgoing personality to match his great size, and will sing to introduce himself:
 
Ho ho ho, I'm Jazz King Coal
And a merry old king is me
So let's have us a drink and have us a smoke
And let's hear from my Fiddler's Three!

If he's asked about his business, he'll snap his fingers, and the miners will sing in unison to explain:

Do you remember?
Naughty children get coal in December
So these mountains must all be dismembered
And we dig must every night and day!
 
 
 
Events in the Coal House (roll d8)  
 
1 Jazz King Cole's aging elf overseers attend to front of house business. (1-3) fastidious chef Keugal is bringing Christmas cake on a cart to the boss, he'll sell a round of Christmas cookies to any table along the way for 1 silver coin; (4-6) band leader Fleugal is showing off his brand new authentic who-hoober horn, wants to know what you got for Christmas so he can tell you why your present was worse than his.
 
2 The band is hot right now! (1-3) the brass band is on fire, Fleugal is playing the best horn of his life, the whole audience is on their feet dancing; (4-5) The Fiddler's Three are playing a love song, and dime-a-dance elf girl Violet really wants someone to give her a silver coin for a slow dance; (6) there must have been some magic in that old top hat he found, because Michigan Frog is actually performing a rousing round of "Hello My Baby" for an adoring crowd.

3 Jazz King Coal encourages everyone to try out some gambling. The nearest gaming table has (1-3) roulette!, costs 1, roll 3d6, payout is 30 CS for triples; (4-5) blackjack!, costs 1, 5, or 10, player and house each roll 2d12 and try to get the higher score, house wins ties, payout equal to bet, payout double on player roll of 21, player loses all rolls of 22 or higher; (6) yahtzee! cost 5, roll 5d6 and try to make the best hand, house wins ties, player can buy a reroll by raising the stakes (but house gets one too), payout equal to current stake, payout double on a yahtzee. Each game costs either 1 Company Scrip or 1 silver coin. If you wager in silver, the payout is d6 × the listed amount, but all prizes are awarded in scrip.

4 Unruly customer causing a ruckus. (1-3) aging elf Clarence has been annoying the staff by asking for drinks and gaming not on the menu, and now he claims not to have any money anyway; (4-6) addled elf Harvey Harko is talking to his imaginary friend the invisible rabbit again.

5 Jazz King Cole is conducting a major coal sale to an important buyer at his VIP table. (1-3) Jingle, a representative from Castle Claus (hex 302), is here to place Santa's monthly order, plus a little extra to be delivered in secret to Mrs Mary Claus; (4-5) butler automaton Fetch-Kvetch is here from Kubla Kastle (hex 102) to buy fuel for Kubla Kraus's latest Keh-Night army; (6) cruel elf Caduceus is buying supplies for the Orcish Toy Factory (hex 603), he wants coal to fuel the orc-conversion process, and a supply of "volunteers" who owe debts to the Coal House. 

6 The elf dancing girls are putting on a real show. (1-3) a dozen elf ballerinas are reenacting scenes from The Nutcracker Suite, (4-5) dime-a-dance elf girls Violet and Viola are working the room, pulling people up out of their chairs, dancing with each other, giving away a quick twirls; (6) the ballerinas are performing a cancan, and the audience is losing their minds, hooting and hollering, howling like wolves.

7 The Robot Devil arrives and demands that everyone have a good time in his honor. Drink! Smoke! Dance! Make merry, dammit! Merrier!! Anybody seen not enjoying themselves risks being thrown out.

 
8 Disturbance at the door, somebody wants inside and the bouncers don't want to let them in. (1-3) elf deerherd Nilly is blocking the door with her mixed flock of Stantlers and Wyrdeer, exhorting everyone to leave the Coal House, trying to bring her deer in to crowd the customers out; (4-5) orc activist Redgold (escaped from the Orcish Toy Factory hex 603) has a satchel full of labor rights pamphlets, she wants to organize a union inside the Coal House; (6) seemingly harmless and feeble Grandpa Dracula can't come in unless he's invited, but c'mon, how dangerous could this old man really be?
 
 
 
Drink Menu 
  

1 Company Scrip - Grog Nog - cheap beer mixed with sweetened milk with a sprinkle of nutmeg

 
2 Company Scrip - Wassail - a teacup of steaming hot punch served from the communal bowl
 
5 Company Scrip - Mine Shine - strong, harsh liquor distilled from coal tar
 
1 silver coin - Jingle Juice - a spicy whiskey and cranberry drink with a miniature candy cane stir stick, served in a collectible novelty glass (Periwinkle Bartholomew hex 201 collects these)
 
 
 

(A final note on coal - Everyone knows that coal is for naughty children. It can also be purchased for individual, household, or industrial use - but never mind that - everyone knows you must have really gotten it because you were naughty. Coal is an admission of guilt! It's also cheap and plentiful, it burns warm and bright. For many residents of the region, coal is their dirty little secret. They don't want anyone else to know they're using it; they're each certain everyone else who uses must really be naughty.)

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.

And the Gold Ennie for Best Supplement Goes To...

By now you've probably heard the good news, but just in case you haven't...

 

Barkeep on the Borderland won the Gold Ennie for Best Supplement in 2023! 

 

Video of the awards ceremony is below. The Best Supplement segment starts at 2h 50m 20s, and the announcement of the gold winner starts at 3h 00m 36s.

 

 

Congratulations first of Charles Ferguson-Avery and Alex Coggon at Wet Ink Games for winning the Silver Ennie with Into the Cess & Citadel. 

 

I also wanted to thank and congratulate everyone else who worked on Barkeep. This was a very large project, and I contributed a small part of it. I'm proud and honored to have been on this team.

 

Once again, big thanks to WFS of Prismatic Wasteland for originating the project and including me on the team.

Thank you and congratulations to the other co-authors - Ava Islam of Permanent Cranial Damage, Ben L of Mazirian's Garden, Chris McDowall of Bastionland, emmy verte of Spooky Action at a Distance, Gus L of All Dead Generations, Luka Rejec of Wizard Thief Fighter, Marcia B of Traverse Fantasy, Nick LS Whelan of Papers & Pencils, Ty Pitre of Mindstorm, and Zedeck Siew. 

 

Ava, Nick, and Ty also helped edit. Gus and Luka also provided art. KT Nguyen proofread and did layout.

Thank you and congrats as well to all the other artists who worked contributed to the book - Acid Lich, Amanda Ho, Artie Esquire, bertdrawsstuff, Caleb Nelson, Conor Ricks of Mighty Spark!, DemiDevilQueen, Emiel Boven of Lizard Mail, Guy Pradel, Hodag of No Foes No Traps, Keny Widjaja, Norn Noszka, Sam Mameli of Better Legends, Sam Miller of Save vs Worm, and torthevic.

Hurray for us all!

Barkeep on the Borderlands & the Brazen Boulevardier

The last time I wrote about Barkeep on the Borderlands, it was but a young Kickstarter with dreams of fully funding, and my own involvement was merely the future promise of an as-yet unmet stretch goal.

 

But since then, Barkeep has been released! It's available in print, and pdf, and it has a map! And coasters!

 

And even more exciting, it's been nominated for an Ennie award for Best Supplement!

 

That means that you can help Barkeep win an Ennie, by voting before the election closes on July 23rd.

 

 

Brazen Boulevardier logo by Caleb Nelson

 
My own contribution is a single pub for Barkeep's pubcrawl - The Brazen Boulevardier. The Boulevardier is a refuge for emigres from the Elemental Plane of Fire, who fled to the Material Plane to escape the Tyrant of Ashes and Tears, whose anhedonic regime forbids happiness and pleasure generally, and specifically alcohol, meat, and sex. 

 

The Tyrant is based somewhat on the laws and aspirations of various real-world theocrats, though it's not modeled closely on any particular regime. It's also based on my own struggles with depression, especially when I was younger.

 

As you might imagine, visits to the Boulevardier can get pretty spicy! If you play Barkeep on the Borderland, I hope you'll stop by. Just watch out for those phoenix-women!

 

I want to thank WFS from Prismatic Wasteland for involving me in this endeavor, Ty Pitre from Mindstorm for his editing and project management, and all the artists, especially Caleb Nelson, who designed the Brazen Boulevardier logo, and illustrated one of my favorite possible encounters.

 

 

And if you're reading this before July 23rd, please remember to go vote for Barkeep on the Borderlands for Best Supplement!

My Brilliant Friends - A Conversation with WFS of Prismatic Wastelands and Barkeep on the Borderlands

My friend and Bones of Contention coauthor WFS is kickstarting a pointcrawl adventure called Barkeep on the Borderlands. I got added as a coauthor thanks to a successful stretch goal, and most of the Skeleton Crew will also be writing bars for the crawl, along with OSR luminaries like Chris McDowall and (potentially!) Luka Rejec.

As the final weekend of crowdfunding approaches, I chatted with WFS to ask him some of his inspirations and his feelings about real-world barcrawling.

 

 

Anne - So Barkeep on the Borderlands and the Raves of Chaos are obviously inspired by the widely owned, widely played, and widely criticized D&D adventure, The Keep on the Borderlands, and the Caves of Chaos adventure site. There have been a couple of interesting responses to the original Keep in the last few years. Alex Damaceno's Beyond the Borderlands zine and Greg Gillespie's Forbidden Caverns of Archaia spring to mind immediately.

You've actually written before about your thoughts on Keep, but if you'll indulge me, why did you decide to make your barcrawling adventure a kind of response to this classic?

WFS - Many of my best ideas begin their lives as puns, which was the case with Barkeep on the Borderlands. I typically have a few score ideas swirling around in my head at any given time, and in this instance two of those combined. On the one hand, I had been rereading some classic modules and found The Keep on the Borderlands very interesting - as evidenced by my blog post you referenced. On the other, I was nostalgic for a simple pre-pandemic pleasure that I had taken for granted, which is hopping from bar to bar with a band of friends. Somehow the two ideas slammed into each other and I thought of two puns, both the title “Barkeep on the Borderlands” and the more descriptive subtitle “a Pubcrawl Pointcrawl.” From the title alone, I felt like I had a lot to work with. 

I think combining two disparate elements into a cohesive whole is a really helpful creative exercise. It’s why the spark tables in Electric Bastionland are so genius. You have to figure out how the two ideas fit together and come up with something totally unique. For Barkeep, I had to figure out how a pubcrawl fit into the world presented by Keep on the Borderlands.

Anne - And why do you think it's such a popular adventure for people to respond to? Is it just that it was included in Holmes' Basic Set at a key time? Or is there more to it than that?

WFS - I don’t think one can discount its inclusion in the Basic Set, the gateway for so many into the hobby, but there does seem to be something special about the adventure itself. After all, they replaced In Search of the Unknown with The Keep on the Borderlands for a reason. And I think it is because the adventure is itself so basic that made it so useful to early gamemasters and so beloved. It has all you need for the core game loops of D&D: a starting town, a surrounding wilderness and a dungeon filled with monsters. 

But just as important as what it includes is what it doesn’t include. There are no proper names in the module: people are just called the Priest, the Castellan or the Taverner. The political environment is just a sketch: the Keep exists on the border of some civilized land to the west and untamed wilderness to the east (which sounds like the classic West Marches in reverse), but there are no details you might get in later products that tied themselves to Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, etc. The motivations of the monsters and cultists in the module are also hazy at best. And all of this blank space allows for the gamemaster and player to project their own ideas onto it! After I wrote that post on the module, I heard back from a lot of people how they interpreted it differently, like viewing the chaotic bandits as a scouting party of some evil human empire to the east, or deciding to raid the Keep instead of the Caves of Chaos, or playing the adventure straight as Gygax seems to have intended. The Keep on the Borderlands’ flexibility to contain all of these competing narratives and motivations is its abiding strength.

Anne - I'm curious to know your thoughts on a recent drinking trend. How do you feel about amaro? I know that Brad Thomas Parsons is not single-handedly responsible for the rise of bitter Italian liqueurs, but he is more or less single-handedly responsible for getting me into them. I read his books, Bitters and Amaro, and that convinced me to try them, and from there I've just kept trying new bitter flavors.

WFS - I am really not up on any of the latest drinking trends; I prefer to stick more to the classics, old fashioneds, negronis, whiskey sours and the like. I have had a few amaro spritzes, but didn't find them particularly revolutionary. 

In terms of trends, I am of course aware of seemingly every brand getting into the hard seltzer business, but I'm not too keen on them. Something in that vein that I have enjoyed, however, are the Finnish Long Drinks, which to my understanding actually contains gin. It's no gin & tonic with a splash of St. Germain, but if I'm at a tailgate and everyone is chugging beers, it's probably my canned drink of choice. Any amaro drinks you'd recommend?

Anne - I actually would say the negroni is a good starting point! It's pretty easy to experiment with y swapping out one ingredient to see how you like the taste with a different spirit, or another liqueur instead of vermouth. Campari was my first amaro, then Aperol, then I discovered you can mix them, and by now, I've tried maybe a half dozen others.

I actually thought of White Claw and its cousins as a trend, but I almost never drink them, myself. Somehow almost all the ones I've tried have had a metallic aftertaste. That might just be a quirk of my palette though.

WFS - That’s exposes my ignorance - I didn’t know Campari was a type of amaro. I need to get on your level.

Anne - Admittedly, until I read the Amaro book, I didn't know the word, let alone any examples! I think bitter flavors have become more enjoyable for me as I've gotten older.

Okay, last question. Looking beyond Barkeep on the Borderlands, you named your blog for a campaign setting, the Prismatic Wasteland. You've mentioned before that Luka Rejec's Ultraviolet Grasslands was one of your inspirations. But could I ask you to pop the hood for a moment, and ask you to talk about another inspiration? What's something I could read or watch or listen to that would help me understand a part of the Prismatic Wasteland? And how does the source relate to the final product?

WFS - I’ll give you three, one being a science fantasy book old enough to be on the original Appendix N, the second being a children’s TV show, and the third is another classic D&D module - I have range. 

So the first (and potentially somewhat obvious) answer is Dying Earth by Jack Vance. The stories of the Dying Earth take place amidst the decay of an untold number of decadent civilizations but the stories are about wizards, and monsters and magic. However, what is understood as magic is really the ritual tinkering with ancient sciences and technologies that are no longer understood. This all rings true for the Prismatic Wasteland setting as well.

But the Prismatic Wasteland is bit less dark than the Dying Earth, which while light at times is not always so. I describe the Prismatic Wasteland as whimsical post-post-apocalyptic in genre, which aligns more with my second influence, Adventure Time. Adventure Time was a show that ran on Cartoon Network but garnered a following of adults due to its sense of humor. While it can read as just pure gonzo fantasy at first (with talking animals and a kingdom full of candy people), over the course of the series, it is revealed that the world is the way it is due to a series of apocalypses, and the remnants of the older civilizations, humanity included, are scattered and scarce.

For the third inspiration, we’ll move away from science fantasy and the Dying Earth genre entirely. The Isle of Dread is an adventure for B/X D&D and is only a few years younger than The Keep on the Borderlands. It is also one of the first adventures I ever ran. I have always preferred its flora and fauna (which includes dinosaurs) to the typical pseudo-medieval stock in most D&D settings and adventures. The Prismatic Wasteland setting is similar, but with a more science fiction spin: it takes place across an entire continent, which was terraformed by an advanced civilization to be the ideal vacation resort for an intergalactic populace. But now the island’s many spas, mega-malls, amusement parks, high-end dining and other amenities are unrecognizable, derelict versions of their former selves. And the AI-enabled robotic animals that were designed to be capable of reproduction run wild from the amusement parks in which they were once contained. I call these creatures “animaltronics” and they do include dinosaurs. So I guess I would be remiss in not also listing a fourth inspiration: Jurassic Park.

A book, a TV show, a TTRPG adventure and a movie. How’s that for a variety of sources!

cover art by Sam Mameli