Field Guides - Intro

26 November 2023

Background

Over the last year, I cut my teeth on tabletop writing by making a few adventures. And I loved it! Specifically I loved the writing part. Actually putting everything together, laying it out, and presenting it sucked ass. Those jobs are not in my skillset and truly I did not care to learn.

In the grand scheme of this hobby I'm a fresh-out-the-womb child, but I've still tried with the time I've had to focus on finding the fun as a GM and player. There are a billion ways to bog yourself down in each of those roles if you allow it. But I think if I can gravitate towards low prep, big energy, and ease of use as somebody running games, I can do the same as somebody writing them. Plus, you don't have to playtest a blog post.

What are Field Guides?

Vivid, dreamy setting gazetteers in blog post format, focused on presenting enough information to inspire cool shit at the table and just leaving it at that.

I've got a few goals here:

And I'm statting for Electric Bastionland + generally utilizing the larger setting (Bastion, the Underground, Deep Country) since that's my vice right now.

In case I don't list it elsewhere, assume unlisted stats to be these default: 3 HP, 10 STR, 10 DEX, 10 CHA.

How do I use them?

Each one's going to have a few fleshed out locations, NPCs, hazards, and hooks, with suggestions for more. Enough for a session or two out the box. Personally, I'll use them to inform creating boroughs.

What else?

I'm not the first to do this by any means. My initial inspiration was stumbling on Straits of Anian, but much more recently Gulch came out and knocked it out of the park. And even if it wasn't directly on the mind when I decided to do this, Ultraviolet Grasslands is almost certainly in the idea's geneology somewhere. I'm excited to walk in their footsteps and add a few prints of my own to the trail.

That's about all that's worth saying here. If you know any other blogs in this vein, let me know below. I'd love to see them!