The Branching Mysteries of Revoca

[A new Revoca Hill Cantons book chapter, featuring the Tarn Tomb of Morvna (a dungeon), is about done. If you would like to help support that project and/or find this blog helpful, please consider backing my Patreon right here.]

One of the things as a budding GM that I dug about my fave classic Traveller supplement, 76 Patrons, was that each patron encounter/mission/hook came with a d6 chart that made each of them variable in nature. Even better most of the higher rolled entries became progressively more of a twist—often more dangerous or messed up.

So an eloped couple of aristocrats on a roll of one are in fact just being paranoid, no one is following them. On a roll of two agents of the woman will try and kidnap her, and on a six agents of both families will try kill the opposite members of the family and kidnap their own!

It's an elegant, creative-GM-friendly way to bake in not just replayability and non-linear feeling choice but also scenarios to keep players on their toes. I used to love how it would like any great random table introduce a layer of self-surprise for you as a GM. That oh wow moment and malicious little chuckle.

So that gets me to the new tentatively-titled book Ground Down in Revoca Town. One of the reasons the Hill Cantons books always end up considerably longer than I originally anticipated is that the broken brain DIY tinker in me can't just write the damn books straight—inevitably I always want to explore something whether its pointcrawls, chaos indexes, or how to present urban adventures, etc.

Revoca has been no exception and one of the things I've been currently obsessing about is presenting 76 Patrons-like variability when it comes to some of the mysteries of Revoca Town, the mythical wilderness and Great Aviary (big dungeon) nearby.

Example, one of the abiding mysteries for more than a year was why the local ruling family (the Morvnas) has had only female heirs for 17 generations. The party in the original campaign became quite tight with the teenaged current Lady of the castle, living under her staircase and tempted by the tripled locked steel door leading down into the underworks.

That's how it worked in the campaign but in the published manuscript I am working to weave in “but wait it get's worse” scenarios (and a few better). So on a roll or DM choice of say one it's just a simple run of incredibly improbable bad luck, the males die in childbirth with an escalation up the “oh it's getting worse” scale to a very dark and dangerous roll on the six. Each “mystery path” in turn has some effect on the adventure locales so a party going to the Tarn Tomb of Morvna (small dungeon in the lake) will encounter a few markedly different rooms/themes.

It's a fun way to play with things and I am enjoying its execution. I have a feeling that it will be used more and more at my own table as I develop new material.

Morvna and Blue Bear

[The following is an "origin story" of sorts for the Revoca Hill Cantons Book and a fatherly love letter to my son, Sammy, who is the original Blue Bear creator. If you find this blog helpful and most of all want to help me get a new Hill Cantons book out please consider backing my Patreon.]

The Revoca Chant of Morvna and Blue Bear (Modrý Medvěd)

So it came to pass in the lands of Morvna the Callipygian, first and last Petty-King of Revoca, that the lord felt lonely and ill at ease both in his heart and viscera.

“I feel jejune,” said the crapulous monarch. “Send onto word to my hirsute brother-in-arms in many a quest, the mighty and semi-divine master of the Dunes, Medved, that we can make merry again and find pleasures in the struggles of man versus antagonist.”

A fortnight passed and in reply, the godling in much apology said: “Oh but great and puissant friend. I am but busy this decade with my vexing war with the race of newts, I will send onto you in my stead my nephew, Modrý Medvěd (Blue Bear), so that he can attend in your hall.”

And lo before him stood a great bear. And his color was of deepest blue and his axe poled. “I come onto you as a friend and bearer of arms in your household,” said Blue Bear. And Morvna embraced him mightily and welcomed him to his hall and many oaths were sworn under the shadow of the house-sabre.

Their adventures were many and many a foe fell. [The Stuzika Cycle, undoubtedly of later origin in the Revocan oral folk tradition, accounts for the many travails and deeds the duo had in their struggle in that the ancient forest.]

And so it was on the fifth year that Ute the Great King of the Nemec came with his immeasurable host to the hill-border of Revoca. “Send homage to me and ye shall keep your lands in my service. For I must must have my army feed and cross your lands to that of Marlinkh.”

In reply Morvna and Blue Bear sent terse and cryptic word, “deese nuts”

As so a great battle ensued. The arrows fell dark in clouds so that our beloved Sun Lord was not seen. The host of Revoca, mighty in elan but not in numbers, fell. Only Morvna and Blue Bear stood weakened on the field.

Thus strode Ute in his breastplate golden to them. With a mighty swing Morvna was laid low.

Woeful Blue Bear wept. The Sun Lord moved in his own grief and finally he spoke, “oh Ute, great lord of all you see, today a man dies and I am verklempt.”

Ute's glory became grief. He wept and embraced the body of the fallen. “Heroic Morvna will find rest under the leaves of the ancient beech. His body will lie adorned with gilded orb, trident mighty, and many a stone precious to guide his husk-spirit to the heavenly firmament. Come Blue Bear, ye shall be Het-Bear of my realm and Morvna's sons shall rule as vassals in fair Revoca eternal.”

With great and rueful shake of cobolt head Blue Bear said “preved.” And with that vanished beneath the soaring trunks of the Stuz.

Details on the Revoca Hill Cantons Book

I wanted to give readers of this here blog a better sense of the Revoca book ahead, the fifth Hill Cantons book and the first non-SUD installment. If you want to support the creation of this book please consider supporting my broke writers ass at the Hill Cantons Patreon here.

The Revoca Book Elevator Pitch

The Revoca Canton book will lean in much harder to the Mythic Wilderness theme readers saw in Slumbering Ursine Dunes (in this case the old growth woods of beech of the Stuzika with its cycles dominated by the forest czar Leshi giants and the town and dungeon bordering and in synch with its reaches) again with deeper elements of the acid Slavic inspired but still peculiar Hill Cantons cosmology playing a much heavier role. It comes straight off of a campaign phase I ran in 2015-2016 with a mix of old and new players playing new low level PCs.

The wonderful Revoca Canton players map done by the talented Gus L. 

What You Can Expect in It:

• A return to the classic sandbox triptych of some of the best early D&D adventures like Keep on the Borderlands: small settlement, wilderness, tentpole dungeon (with some outlier smaller dungeons). In other words a small geographic mini-campaign that can be slotted in a forested mountain remote area of other campaigns and is capable of supporting either a short or long period of play sessions.
• A heavier dark Slavic fairy tale vibe. Drawing on much more of the supernatural creatures and folk magic of Western and Southern Slavic traditions. Currently the draft has 15 creatures taken straight from these stories (expect that to be expanded).
• A Twin Peaks/Local Hero/Northern Exposure local eccentrics in a remote small-town vibe (surrounded by a slightly menacing forest and wilderness with layers of mystery). There will be an NPC-driven (but not overly complicated and hard to run) dynamic sandbox.
• A long rumors and hooks section that will be presented in two optional ways:
• the traditional random table for those DMs who want to just jump right in.
• As an opening scenario—an annual “truce” party at the local noble lady's house in which the creatures of the mythic wilds rub shoulders with the local human notables—in which the party one-stop shop learns all the players.
• A pointcrawl of the Stuz, the mythic wilderness that has sandbox dynamics to keep it changing and feeling alive. The seasonal conditions of the forest change with whatever Leshi has control of the czar's crown at that moment and so do the relative fortunes of the weird denizens (and yes there is a Chaos Index related).
• A tentpole dungeon, the Great Aviary of Komius Otmar. The main adventure site sits on the opposite side of the wilderness from town. The upperworks sit under a vast glass dome and have a huge array of mythic bird like creatures (taken from a wide variety of world traditions or invented whole cloth by me). It also has some sublevels of extreme danger and reward. The underworks play with a lot of vertical connections and non-linear space with lots of entrances and exits to various places.
• A hidden payoff mini-wilderness area, Beyond the Mural, that lies...well behind a magic mural in the underworks. This is a whole square few miles of a lush orchid/lily field and rainforest pocket dimension with its own mysteries, sites, and creatures.

Fifth Hill Cantons Book is Underfoot, Come Be Patronizing

Marlinko hillscape by Luka Rejec

The cat's out of the bag in an interview today about the fifth Hill Cantons book, a yet unnamed project that covers the small settlement-wilderness-dungeon classic set up of tiny and weirder Revoca Canton. I'm 26 pages in, but boy howdy is my writing slow and creaky af.

Readers of this blog will also have noted the sheer, sad neglect of this space for going on three years. Between workaholic political day jobbery, dading (these aren't words), and hobby publishing it just squeezes your time/energy too hard. Unfortunately it has also squeezed the vital pipeline and ferment that comes from throwing out mad shit on the wall and having you fine folks riff and mutilate it in real time here.

But hey I'm at a crossroads after moving to Austin and other massive life changes when it comes to continuing writing and designing things ludic and fantastical.

Which gets me to the pitch, I just launched a Hill Cantons Patreon. 

This Patreon is pretty damn simple in concept:

• I will produce a “chapter” (roughly 5-18 pages) of new adventure locales, pointcrawls, weirdo NPCs, bizarre items, my usual shit in other words.
• Each chapter will mostly build toward a final published book or game, in this case Revoca Project X and will likely be released every 2-5 weeks.
• I will add goals as we go along to produce not just my own written content but also supporting illustrations, cartography, etc from some of our other starving artists in the milieu.

And guess what? You don't get dinged monthly if I don't make deadline. Your support only comes in when I finish a section—and like the Slumbering Ursine Dunes kickstarter I plan on doing right by those who do support this along the way and on the backend. And looky here Luka Rejec has already generously made this eye-poppingly lovely banner of Marlinko for the project above (you should also support his Patreonas he is trying to make a go of things too). 

It's a virtuous cycle upwards if you like the work I have done so far on this. Please click here to patronize.