My second book for the Basic Fantasy RPG project was published this week. Here’s the marketing copy.
What Secrets Lie Mouldering in the Estates of the Eliari?
Long ago, the enigmatic Eliari merchants settled in these lands, raising peculiar estates to house their families and fortunes. Then, as suddenly as they arrived, a mysterious catastrophe called them home, leaving their holdings to crumble. Today, these forgotten estates are the subject of fearful local legends, whispered to be the dens of bandits or the haunts of restless spirits. Brave adventurers may seek the riches left behind, but few are prepared for what they will find.
Estates of the Eliari is an innovative adventure creation kit for the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game. More than a single scenario, this book represents countless unique adventures based on a single map. With comprehensive tables for each area, the Game Master can create a new experience every time. Will your players face a cunning gang of bandits, or will they contend with a terrifying infestation of the undead? Your choices or the rolls of the dice ensure abundant replayability.
Will you craft an entire adventure before your players arrive, or roll the dice on the fly, discovering the secrets of the estate alongside them? With thousands of possible combinations, no two expeditions into the Estates of the Eliari need ever be the same. Open the gates, and let the dice decide your doom.
Print copies can be obtained from Amazon or Lulu.
This started as an experiment in seeing how far I could take the idea of random tables. I began with a map which I started keying, and with each location, I kept coming up with alternate results in a table. There is one, major fork where the old house is either populated by bandits or undead. Otherwise, the choices are all mix-and-match but work together. There was a fun challenge is making each option stand by itself while still working the the greater framework.
You can see development notes for EotE on on the BFRPG forum.
I had hoped this book would have been more collaborative, but I ended up writing it all myself with a few suggestions that came in early. Naturally, the text benefited greatly from the editing crew on the project and Chris Gonnerman’s leadership. I purposely held off from producing any art beyond the map, a contrast to Terror in Tosasth, in which I produced all of the art. A few people contributing interesting pieces.
Here’s what it might look like if you stumble into the basement, thanks to Hadrien Riel-Salvatore.
I used the text once in my ongoing campaign, and it worked well. I used the LibreOffice text, rolled results and cut out parts as I went along, thus preparing the whole adventure ahead of time. It should work to roll results in the moment, but I haven’t tried. At some point, I’ll translate all of the text back into my One Dice Six engine so that a whole instance can be built in one go.
There’s an fun conceit here in that the estates are all architected identically due to the peculiar traditions of the Eliari (about which nothing further is revealed). This gives the players a slight advantage after they’ve been through one of these places. This encourages some heist-themed planning. I could see a party spending months searching for these estates, clearing them out one by one.