Summons Unexpected - Procedural Opening Adventure

Dear Heroes,

I'd been planning to release this procedural adventure for a while, but ... it kept needing a bit more work. It's designed to generate characters for Our Golden Age and hurl them at a first location in search of a mutual acquaintance who has asked for their help.

It's a very vanilla opening, but it's somewhat necessary with a setting book like this, which presents a baroque, complicated, and alien world of strange technology and machinery. It also leaves some things pretty open:

Who is the mutual acquaintance exactly? What precisely are they up to?

Who is the nemesis? Are they a villain, a potential ally, both?

And who are they—the organization opposed to the sender? What do they actually want?

I'm not completely happy with the opening, I might cut the story and replace it with a big picture, but ... that's a job for a day when I don't have total frybaby-brain.

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My idea is to use three loose adventures like this to structure how the PCs can engage with the big setting. This first one presents travel and exploration. It opens up visiting other locations and engaging in weird shenanigans. If your goal is to simply have an "adventure of the week", dropping a Dyson dungeon somewhere, theming it to fit the location, and sending the heroes off - this is pretty much all you need. The simple travel mechanic offers a way besides carousing to loosen the PCs' grip on their hard-won cash in exchange for in-game benefits.

The second adventure is a more focused location-crawl ("dungeon"-crawl) that unlocks the PCs' house as a shared character / base they can use and upgrade.

The third one is going to tackle ... well, I'll share how the jubilee works soon enough.

Next Update

I'm not 100% sure what the next update will be ... I might flesh out the Red Land with an updated map, finished Rust Backcountry, and RLD ... or I might tackle the Green Land ... or even the Yellow Land. Thoughts and suggestions welcome. I'm at a bit of a hinge now with the writing / drawing, so there's space for your ideas to make me see my notes and ideas in a different light and redirect me towards something quite unexpected.

Anyway, I'll try and ready it for later this week.

Hardcopy Books

I can confirm that, yea, before this summer is out, we shall have a crowdfunding for the physical book of Our Golden Age and the guide book. And dices. And other pretty things.

And on that topic, let me trial a title by you: VLG.

The Vastlands Guidebook (summer, 2024) 

Domestic News

Otherwise, I have little to report from Korea. It's been a lovely spring, the least air pollution since I got here. I'm not sure what that means, but it was good to see. The baby and the dog and the wife are healthy and I'm getting nearly as much sleep as I used to ... on a good day.

I do have a little less time for drawing and writing than I used to, and I thank you for your understanding. I must say, however, that overall the experience of a child and hound is much nicer than movies and TV led me to expect.

Oh, hang on ...

[diaper event]

... right, where was I? Ha. Well, jokes aside, we're all well, and I have to thank you also on behalf of all three ladies for your support. It doesn't mean a lot just to me but also to them.

Oh, and this image? You've seen it before, but I've expanded it a bit. I'll probably add a few more characters sooner or later. Any of you have a Personal Wally or a Hidden Hadrubal that wants to visit the Minister's Pyramid?

~~wishing you all a lovely Sunday and Week,
Luka, Seoul, Spring 2024