Today's read-through and commentary will be on the third zine for Vaults of Vaarn.
I was going to say this will be the final entry in this series, but as I was gathering links for the itch.io page, I noticed that just this last week, a new issue has dropped - so once I purchase it, we'll have one more issue to look at!
As discussed previously, this is a setting ostensibly created to work as a stand-alone game or to be integrated with rule sets like Knave or any other OSR product. In the prior two read-throughs, we got a sense of the setting, which has some very fun psychedelic far-future post-apocalypse vibes to it. The blue-sand deserts of Vaarn are teeming with old ancient tech, strange magic, and wild mutations. It's a fantastic setting, and I'm excited to dive into this third issue and see what goodies are available for GMs and Soloists.
Vaults of Vaarn returns for a third issue of science-fantasy RPG content, providing further support for referees who wish to set their game in the blue deserts at the very end of time. Issue three focuses on the Vaarnish Interior, the endless sand-sea that intimidates even the hardy souls who live in the dry and dangerous badlands.
No accurate map has ever been drawn of the Vaarnish Interior: the territory seems to defy rational organisation. This is a place without borders, the horizon between blue sand and blue sky no longer a stark dividing line but rather a molten membrane that swims and drifts woozily in the sun’s wine-red heat, the land making and remaking itself just as a lizard sheds its skin. The blue sands retreat from the wind, revealing structures that have lain dry and deathless and undisturbed for aeons, and then those same restless dunes shroud the ruins once again, before a living soul can name them. This is a country vast and blue, as deep with secrets as the ocean and twice as capricious.
As stated in the page blurb above (pulled from the itch.io description for this issue), we'll primarily be looking at another point of interest today (the Interior) and some of its denizens. I'm also seeing a focus on wilderness travel rules, which is exciting.
Back in the days of oldschool D&D, everyone just knew (or made up) how to deal with wilderness travel - it was a fairly core component to the game. These days, not so much! A lot of travel is hand-waved or glossed over in current editions. When I first started playing OSR games, wilderness travel was one of the implied rules that I had to really work at understanding because it didn't come naturally to me. I still probably could improve on that front, but what I have learned, I've managed to take into my D&D5e game and that has been enjoyable for everyone so far. I'll probably talk more about that in a separate post, as I've got a few additional little products that have helped make travel more fun and interesting and I've yet to mention them on Hive at all.
Anyhow! Back to the actual focus!
The bulk of this issue is concerned with a region-generation procedure, which will quickly create entire regions of Vaarn’s Interior, ready for your players to adventure there. You will also find travel procedures, new vehicles, monsters that reside in the desert, and new Exotica to be looted from the vaults beneath the sands.
We open the actual meat of this issue on Page 4 with a description of some of the cultures living in the vast blue desert of Vaarn's Interior.
Folks like the Faa Nomads, who have a distinctly DUNE flavour to them. I'd be willing to bet that the Fremen of Dune were a direct inspiration, tweaked and updated to suit the setting of Vaarn.
This section is full of some really fun worldbuilding, which by itself provides an experienced GM with plenty of plot hooks if any of these cultures were going to be important in your home game.
This then transitions to providing new Ancestries for our three new cultures. One of which I'll show below:
I really like how the author balanced what could easily be an overpowered skill:
Crystalline Flesh - You are made from living crystal. Your minimum Armour Defense is 16. You do not need to eat or drink. You do not take damage from fire, cold, poison, radiation, electricity, fungal spores, or suffocation.
And balanced that with a much higher than usual health pool, but no ability to heal. Sure, you could conceivably start with 800HP... but when you consider that nothing will ever bring back a point of HP, how much risk are you really willing to take? It makes a very fun character dilemma to play with. The longer your character adventures, the more pressure you'll be under to mitigate damage and that is a fun concept. And, thanks to the randomness of a D8, you're unlikely to start with that maximum value. I really really like this idea, and might just whip up a Knave using this once I'm all finished reading the series (and possibly printing it out - I do prefer to not work off of tablets when I'm playing).
Travel Rules
Now we get into the section with travel! As is fairly standard, the system boils down to two resources: Travel Days and Rations, which makes a lot of sense.
Travel Days are exactly what they sound like - how far you can move in a day on foot.
Rations are also exactly what they sound like. Unless you're one of the cool crystal dudes or some other Ancestry that doesn't require food/drink, you need to eat every day, and that costs Rations.
If they do not, they become Deprived, and cannot recover lost HP. Characters who are Deprived due to hunger and thirst will die after three days.
We can also decide to push our characters at the cost of Exhaustion, which will let us move further in a day (doubling our distance) at the cost of an entire day spent resting. In Vaarn and in games like Knave, your character has a specific number of slots for inventory items, and you can stack Exhaustion up to the maximum number of slots you have available. Once your open slots are filled, you'd have to drop items to continue pushing at that speed.
I think that is a fairly well-designed way to gate how far you can go - a lot of the time you'll effectively be capped at 4 stacks of Exhaustion, which is still a ton to work off in downtime. I would personally like to see some additional penalties for pushing yourself to exhaustion for say... more than 3 days in a row, but that's very easy to house-rule so I'm okay with it not being part of the Rules As Written.
We also get an Encounter Roll Table, which is simple and fun:
Vigilance is a new bonus provided where the Players collectively roll a single d6 each morning of travel. If they get a 6 on that roll, they are guaranteed to spot the next Active or Passing encounter first (ensuring they're not going to get surprised). The other side of that roll however, is that if they happen to roll a 1, we flip that, and whatever Active or Passing encounter is next rolled is guaranteed to surprise them.
We get some rules for desert Pursuits, providing mechanics to get away from someone pursuing them, or catch up to someone they're pursuing. It's a simple three-roll opposed CON mechanic that is very familiar for anyone who has run skill contests in the past.
Finally, we have some rules for Night Watches. This works similar to any version of D&D you'd like to think about, excepting that you specifically choose one of the PCs to stand watch and unlike D&D, you can't cheese your way to a Long Rest for everyone. Whoever is on watch misses out on that benefit. They do still get to recover HP, but it is more limited (d8 + CON), similar to burning a Hit Die on a Short Rest in modern D&D.
Weather
Next we move into various weather effects during travel. I won't cover most of these in-depth, but I will point out one I really like:
After the Weather, we're provided an example Hex Map showing some various terrain types and how a person might choose to map them. I would definitely chose my own icons for each type of terrain modifier, but that's just me. These are perfectly serviceable and provide a great example.
Region Generation
The vast majority of the rest of the Zine's remaining ~40 pages are dedicated to generating your own regions.
These are a ton of valuable roll tables that I can absolutely see myself using outside of just Vaults of Vaarn games. I reference Starforged and Ironsworn tables in a lot of the other games I play, and I can definitely see myself referencing these as well. I may end up printing out this section independently of the rest, just so I can easily flip through and use these tables on the fly without having to remember what part of the book contains the tables I'm looking for. We'll see.
I think that will wrap up my read-through of this issue of Vaults of Vaarn, as I don't want to dive too deeply into the roll tables here since I think my geeking out over roll tables is something that won't interest a reader - but trust that I am in-fact geeking the heck out over these tables. There's some really great content in here, and I'm very glad I snagged this Zine a few months back.
Which reminds me to mention: The first three issues are Pay What You Want. I recommend at least tossing a buck or two if you snag them, but if money is tight and you can't afford that (thanks garbage economy!), it's totally feasible to pay nothing and download the Zines.
For convenience, you can find them all here:
https://graculusdroog.itch.io/
Thank you for reading, and, as always: Happy Gaming!