I backed the kickstarter as part of Zinequest #4 I think? First peered in for the Evlyn Moreau art then backed it when I saw floating islands.
Art by Evlyn Moreau
First impression is of a surprisingly chunky set of zines in a stuffed packet of things. The cardstock is nice, the whole thing has a great tactility. As mentioned multiple times throughout the zines, these are also meant for colouring in and they have that arty feel. The interior lay outs have lots of white space and easy to absorb. The art by Evlyn Moreau is a treat, as always. Favourites for me were the Emobeast, the Crystal Kingdom and the Goosedemon.
So what is all this stuff that came in the package?
Skyrealms sourcebook - a bestiary
Adventure pamphlet: a full-length adventure
Almanac: encounters, weather, rumors and locations
Two adventure cards: quickstart your one-shot sessions in just a minute.
Atlas: a detailed map of the Skyrealms and their creatures.
Solo Adventure mini-zine
Going through these individually we find:
Creatures and Folks comes in two bits - creatures who are NPCs only and folks who can be player characters. Each entry is illustrated and has three key words, a description of the folk or creature and descriptions of their aspects/powers. The creatures are a good collection of evocative beasties - a QR links out to stats for Troika, DCC, Cairn, DURF - the DCC stats are broadly BX compatible which gets you all you need for any D&D system. The folks and their cultures are sparely described, enough to intrigue but no great buckets of lore a DM has to learn.
Almanac: events in the misty realms, encounters, weather, rumors, etc. Up to p18 is general conditions of the Skyrealms and descriptions of each of the three main islands Eye, Tooth and Skull. Then we get eight pages on colour magic and how to use it. Next comes a three page random stuff table - always good for portraying a world. The remaining 16 pages of the book are an adventure site, a furling nest with a problem - a missing war sigil. The site is described in detail and we get a dozen or so NPCs to populate it.
Adventure pamphlet - The Chromatic Flute - we get some set up and most of the pamphlet is the location where the quest object is located, with a camp of antagonists. We get some interesting details and the table of potential additional encounters has some good stuff to expand on the quest to get to the key location. I felt I missed something with the camp itself - there was more space given to the locations but not a great deal of risk in the places and the meat seemed to be in untangling the argument with the NPCs and we did not get a great deal on them. It seemed like the whole affair had some interesting things happening throughout but we zoomed in on a slightly odd part of it.
The two adventure cards I got were Stranded in the Skull and The Return of the She-Goddess. Stranded in the Skull is a depth-crawl for solo or GM+1 set up - neat, quick, light and does exactly what it says on the tin. The Return of the She-Goddess is a mini-campaign set with a ticking 'heat-clock' that advances every day unless players act to stop it. Player actions can also up the heat - I think there is interesting potential here to have this running in the background to start and then fore-grounding once players notice something is not going well - reminiscent of chaos-indexes elsewhere, this is a great hook to set the tone of the setting. I liked these more than the pamphlet.
Atlas is a fold-out A3 map - ample space for colouring, lots of interesting details and good to have out to give everyone a sense of where they are. Not so detailed to be confusing but with enough to keep you searching to see what is there.
The solo adventure is the zine-within-the-zine, 14 A6 pages plus covers - a much more meditative piece, reminiscent of old Myst game - wander about, soak up the scenary and colour things in according to how you find them.
Wrap up - for all that Skyrealms might have been pitched to kids somewhat, I think there is useable stuff in here for lots of campaigns. Certainly you've got a foundation of some interesting realms, peoples and mysteries that you could then tailor the hazard level to your table. I think it would mesh well with Skycrawl or be found as part of Coliar in Realmspace. The mood is somewhat whimsical but there are real conflicts lain in here and some terrifying Grimms Tale type monsters wandering around like the Exomorph who will dismantle you. All together you get plenty of building blocks to drop into whatever tone of game you are running.
The tone of the adventures points to the writers having a relatively benign exploration and chatting game in mind but that is not the only way you could play this. There are not hugely complex conflicts in here which makes it very portable but those conflicts that exist have teeth to them. A nice set up for exploring, I could see some folk arriving here and having a very jolly time, other folk lifting a few more rocks and it all getting a bit fierce on them. Good, sandboxy stuff.
There is a busy Skyrealms community cranking out stuff on itch.io if you want more.
Other reviews can be found on TTRPGkids or Dicebreaker - note both from when it was funding.
No comments:
Post a Comment