Friday Fantasy: Bloodwood

The Bloodwood Forest is a dense, semi-tropical forest that lies down the length of the Severed Valley, bisected by the river Sunder. The Bloodwood Forest is inhabited by Fey, who slip into the world from the Unseelie Court and prey on unwary travellers… There is a guaranteed safe path through the forest, the Fey Road, mostly unmarked and purported to be haunted by ghosts. The impenetrable forest is said to be full of riches, including rare woods and plants, seams of gemstones, and animals to trap for their pelts. Rarest of all are the Blood Trees, whose resin can be bled and collected for its magical value. Two towns stand at opposite sides of the forest, one of which is Redstone. Once a sleepy little village, in recent years it has been transformed into a bustling town following investment by Lord Julian Vasco. He even attempted to build a road through the Bloodwood Forest, but it was barely half built when its sponsor disappeared and it has fallen into disrepair since… Worse the Bloodwood Forest suddenly expanded rapidly and encroached on the town, the trees and plants piercing buildings and forcing people out. With what were once beautiful buildings in ruins, the inhabitants of Redstone were driven out or fled, and the boom town was reduced to a shadow of what it was before the arrival of Lord Julian Vasco.

This is the set-up for Bloodwood, a scenario for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition for a party of Sixth Level Player Characters. Published by Crow & Crown, best known for Herbarium: A Botanical 5th Edition Supplement, it is nominally set in the Forgotten Realms, between Lushpool and Sheirtalar, on the shore of the Shining Sea. Alternatives are suggested, but Bloodwood need not be set in Faerûn at all and can be easily slotted in a Dungeon Master’s campaign. Several reasons are suggested as to why the Player Characters might travel to Redstone, including a simple matter of being hired as caravan guards and a thief answering the call of his thief’s guild to aid a fellow thief in the former town. There are rumours abroad that suggest that Lord Vasco was orchestrating bandit attacks on the merchant caravans to sell the stolen goods and that he possessed a magical amulet which enabled him to ward off the forest fey. Both hooks are prosaic, and the situation does lend itself to others. Perhaps there are families wanting to find relatives gone missing in the Bloodwood Forest, Lord Vasco has creditors who want his disappearance confirmed, or even Lord Vasco’s family want to know where he is? Once the Player Characters get to Redstone, the options and motivations open up. NPCs will want the Player Characters to enter the Bloodwood Forest to obtain some resin from the Blood Train, locate the rare treasures that he was said to possess, and so on.

Investigating Lord Vasco begins at his estate, which apart from a single room, is as overgrown with the Bloodwood Forest as Redstone is. This is his office, which the Player Characters will have relatively access to and thus be able to search for possible clues as to his whereabouts. In a nice touch, these are easily found and point towards some of his activities and contacts made in the fey forest which has overtaken his home. The clues—consisting of pages from his journal—also point to his being a highly ambitious and manipulative man. Also here is the atrium, the centrepiece of Lord Vasco’s villa, once open to the sky to let the sun in, but now under a wild canopy of trees and plants. At its centre in the floor is a giant stone slab, said to hide the entrance to his treasure vault. Following the clues given in Lord Vasco’s journal, the Player Characters will make their way into Bloodwood Forest, following the Fey Road into depths, hoping that they do not get lost. The best time to do it is at night, when the Fey Road can be best seen by the ghosts that walk upon it, though the Player Character be careful lest fear drives them back out of the forest. With the treasures gathered, typically after facing some nasty denizens of the Unseelie Court, the Player Characters can return to Lord Vasco’s estate and potentially discover what secrets he was hiding.

On the surface, what the Player Characters have to do in Bloodwood is far from complex—discovering the clues at Lord Vasco’s estate, recovering the treasures he has hoarded in the Bloodwood Forest, and returning to discover his real secrets. There is more to the scenario than just this. The players and their characters do have choices to make in terms of which potential employer they decide to take up with since as they will quickly learn not all of them are moral, upstanding characters. Further, they are bound to discover hints that Lord Vasco was not quite as rich as he was supposed to be and that he was manipulating affairs deep into the forest. Unfortunately, the full extent of this manipulation is not revealed until after the climax of the scenario and the Player Characters have no chance to interact with the victims until then. At that point, the Player Characters do have some interesting choices to make and the Dungeon Master should prepare for what should be a good roleplaying scene.

Beyond its plot, Bloodwood is supported with an appendix that takes up a quarter of its length. This contains a wide range of new monsters and treasures. The treasures include the Cloak of Many Fashions, which can change its appearance to appear like any cloak; the Carrion Ring, which summons a swarm of beetles to aid the wearer’s attacks for one minute, though it leaves them smelling of rotting meat for an hour(!); and Dragon’s Blood Ink, made from the resin of the blood tree, which is used to enhance the effects of Glyph of Warding and other spells which need to be drawn for their effects. The new monsters include the Alraune, a homunculus grown from the roots of the mandrake plant which has a deafening scream and a taste for meat; the Gravebird, undead corvids possessed by wandering spirits that can mimic sounds and which likes to steal small shiny items from those it attacks; and the Tikbalang, an elongated, bony creature with a horse’s head that serves as a guardian for gates to the spirit world, that sometimes leads travellers astray or returns them to the path they were on, no matter how they have got. Several of the creatures given are taken from folklore. For example, the Alraune comes from German folklore, whilst the Tikbalang is taken from Philippine folklore.

Physically, Bloodwood is incredibly well presented. The writing is dense in places, even slightly overwritten, but the Dungeon Master is presented with a wealth of detail to bring the setting to life. The two maps are very nicely done, though more, including maps of the Severed Valley and Redstone would have been useful. The artwork consists of a mixture of the specially commissioned pieces and the creative commons, of which the latter is a problem. It is not that any of the creative commons selected artwork is bad. It is not. Rather that despite the text in Bloodwood describing the Severed Valley and the Bloodwood Forest as being semi-tropical, the artwork does not reflect that. Instead, it has a northern European feel, of a faded bucolic pastoralism that gives it an appropriate sense of fading decline that contrasts nicely with the sharpness of the Unseelie fey abroad in the region.

For the most part, the issues with Bloodwood—the density of the text and the partial lack of engagement with the actual backstory until the very—do not negate from what is actually an atmospheric and decently supported adventure. Bloodwood is a very likeable scenario that deserves a sequel to explore both the setting and the repercussions of its events further.

[Free RPG Day 2024] Garbage & Glory – Trashrun

Now in its seventeenth year, Free RPG Day for 2024 took place on Saturday, June 22nd. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

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Garbage & Glory – Trashrun is a preview of, and a quick-start for Garbage & Glory, the roleplaying games of raccoons—known as ‘trash pandas’—going on adventures, typically to acquire the best kind of trash dumped by humans and turn it into something useful. They will have to compete—and sometimes even fight—for this trash with other trash-mongers like Rat Bandits and Killoyotes. Of course, there is rubbish, which is rubbish and trash, which is useful, and the best source of waste is always guarded giant Ogres in flashing yellow outfits. Who knows why? Actually, the ‘why’ really does not matter, because nothing is going to stop raccoons from getting the best trash. It is published by Wet Ink Games, which previously published Heckin’ Good Doggos – Someone’s Last Day at the Track for Free RPG Day 2023, but is probably best known for Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall, the horror roleplaying game set in a Chinese restaurant in the 1920s. Designed to be played by all ages, it includes the roleplaying game’s +One System, six ready-to-play pre-generated dog characters, and a full adventure, ‘Beyond the Sewer Gate’. In order to play, a group will need a pool of six-sided dice and two decks of ordinary playing cards, each of which should be different to tell them apart.

A raccoon in Garbage & Glory is defined by a Title, Calling, Attributes, and Training. The Title is descriptive, but a Calling grants a raccoon a unique ability and a unique skill. For example, ‘Argentus’, one of the pre-generated raccoons in Garbage & Glory – Trashrun has the Title of ‘The Crafty Blade’. He also has the Calling of ‘Rubbish Ruffian’. This grants him the Calling Ability of ‘The Body Remembers’ which doubles the effect when negating damage or receiving healing, as well as the Calling Skill of ‘Attack Back’, which allows him a riposte if an attack against him misses. The three Attributes are Brawn, Smarts, and Guts, which start at three each, but can be much higher. Each Attribute has four associated areas of Training. For example, Brawn has Break, Scrap, Sneak, and Wriggle. Besides equipment, a Raccoon has rating in Garbage and Glory, which indicate the number of cards for each that a Raccoon has.

Mechanically, Garbage & Glory – Trashrun and thus Garbage & Glory uses the +One System. This involves rolling a number of six-sided dice each to the skill being used. Each five or six rolled is a success. Harder tasks require more Successes. ‘+One Manipulations’ enable a player to change the outcome using points from the Attribute associated with the Skill. Prior to a roll, a manipulation can be made to add a die to a roll or even gain a skill rating in a previously untrained skill, if only temporarily. After the roll, to increase the value of a die roll by one—typically from a four to a five—and to reroll any number of dice. In addition to skill rolls, raccoons can face Challenges, which are attempted by the whole Mask—as a group of raccoons is known—as a group effort. They simply need to roll a number of Successes equal to the target number for the Challenge for the whole pack to succeed. The scenario, ‘Beyond the Sewer Gate’, uses ‘Countdown Challenges’, which if failed, add a cumulative penalty to all subsequent Countdown Challenges in the adventure.

There multiple uses for playing cards in the +One System in Garbage & Glory – Trashrun and thus Garbage & Glory. It depends upon which deck they are played from. Cards drawn from the Garbage deck have two uses—crafting and healing. For the former, the suits represent types of trash. Spades for sharp objects, Hearts for soft, Diamonds for shiny, and Clubs for hard, with higher value cards representing better trash and Jokers acting as wild cards. Notably, very Shiny trash means that it might be magical. For healing one card is discarded per potential point of damage. Cards from the Glory deck can be discarded for ‘+One Manipulations’, healing, and to gain Initiative scores. Whenever a card from the Glory deck is discarded, the player is expected to narrate exactly how glorious it is.

Combat is kept simple. Participants have the one action per turn, initiative is determined by the highest-ranking card of Glory—card suits matter in the full rules to Garbage & Glory, but not in Garbage & Glory – Trashrun—and once a player has acted, then he gets to choose who goes next. At the end of a round, the player of the last character—or the Game Master—to act chooses who acts first in the next round, though it cannot be themselves. Attacks are made against the Scrap, Hurl, or magic values of the defendant as the Target Number. Overall, both the mechanics and combat are nicely explained in Garbage & Glory – Trashrun, and supported with innumerable examples as well as tone and using the X-Card where necessary.

Garbage & Glory – Trashrun includes six pre-generated raccoons. They include a fighter, a skills generalist, a brawler, a healer and skilled dumpster diver, a sneaky raccoon with sticky fingers, and a tinkerer who can delivered a barbed quip. Each has a full sheet, with spaces for each raccoon’s Attributes marked with bottlecaps!

The scenario, ‘Beyond the Sewer Gate’ opens with the raccoons outside the legendary Munci Wastedisp, ready to sneak in and search for its long sought after trove of trashy treasure. The Mask plans to explore its dark and twisty depths in search of good trash, all the whilst avoiding patrolling Ogres in their shiny yellow armour. There is a constant flow of water and rubbish—and perhaps some trash—into Munci Wastedisp, but there is also the chance that too much flows in and it has to go somewhere! Mechanically, if the players fail three Countdown Challenges, they are washed out of Munci Wastedisp. Inside, the Mask will find Rat Bandits, rooms full of all too shiny rubbish, and eventually way into ‘The Depths’ of Munci Wastedisp where they will find the best trash they have ever dreamed of. There they need to avoid the Ogres—and worse—search for the best trash, and get out again, likely chased out… ‘Beyond the Sewer Gate’ is a solid scenario, which hides much of what is going on to the players in the dark of the municipal waste dump, giving it an atmosphere that they unlikely to have thought much about, let considered a location to set a roleplaying scenario in!

Physically, Garbage & Glory – Trashrun is brightly, cheerfully presented. The writing is clear and the illustrated of the various raccoons and the threats they face are excellent. At the front there are illustrations of the weapons that the raccoons use, including a ‘Car Key Shank’, a Stainless Steel based on a steel ruler, and a ‘Pretty Gear Chain Sword’, which is essentially a bicycle chain turned rapidly using the pedals as handles! These are a lot of fun. It is a pity that none of the character sheets for the raccoons have illustrations, and it would have been useful if there had been explanations on what each of the pre-generated raccoons do.

Garbage & Glory – Trashrun is a good quick-start and a good introduction to Garbage & Glory. Its setting and its mechanics make it suitable for younger teenagers and older players and an experienced Narrator, especially one who has run some storytelling style games, will be able to grasp the +One System and explain how it works with ease. Overall, Garbage & Glory – Trashrun is cheerfully, cheeky fun and should give a session’s worth of raccoonish rambunctiousness.