January, 2019 - The Legend of Zelda: Reclaim the Wild

26 Jan

Version 1.02

I’ve gotten lots of feedback, and that’s resulted in a lot of minor tweaks, fixes, and changes to Reclaim the Wild.

One big change I’m looking to do, is to alter how monsters are made. However, that’s going to be a bit of a bigger change – and I didn’t want all the other improvements to have to wait on that.

Check out below for the full changelog!

Adventure Ideas: Granting Property

Using the Rebuild the Wild supplement, Heroes can gain homes or become business-owners. But there are more ways to gain property than just planting a flag in the ground and deciding to construct a building! In fact, Heroes might prefer to own property in a cozy village or a bustling city – places where you can’t just claim a plot of land willy-nilly. And where there are NPCs, and rewards to be earned, there’s opportunity for adventure.

The Heroes have been tasked by the Rowen Trading Guild to remove a corrupt member of theirs, Gesimund, who owns the only Weapon Shop for miles. Gesimund controls a band of back-alley brigands, preventing others from buying or selling weapons in his territory (and also, unbeknownst to the bandits, ensuring there’s always a demand). The Guild is sick of the complaints from other merchants, but can’t afford the fallout or the risk of directly acting against him. The Heroes could deal with him by roughing up his ruffians, cutting off his supply chain, or even buying him out. Once Gesimund is gone, the Rowan Trading Guild might decide to give his old shop’s license to the Heroes – not just to reward them, but to keep them close at-hand.
Clearing an Inn of unwanted monsters is a rite of passage for many novice Heroes. In this case, the Inn has been abandoned for more than a year because of those fiends. They might simply be an infestation of rats, a group of bandits who’ve set up a hideout in the Inn’s forgotten basement, or ghosts who need to be put to rest. Whatever the cause of the Inn’s abandonment, once it’s cleared up… well, if nobody is able or willing to claim the Inn, maybe the Heroes can take it for themselves.
Old Man MacGregor was a farmer with the heart of an adventurer. Before he passed away, he created a scavenger hunt, and hid the deed to his farm as the prize at the end of it, in the hopes that at least one of his children would feel the call to adventure… But whether for lack of interest, lack of skill, or lack of love for the old man, all of his children failed, and the farm fell into disrepair. But the tale of Old Man Macgregor’s trail of clues is still told in pubs and inns for miles around – and if some enterprising Heroes were to come along and follow those clues, they could claim the farm’s deed for themselves.

15 Jan

Queen’s Cane

One of the most fun parts of a Zelda game is finding the cool new Magical Tools you’ll use to solve puzzles and navigate the world. And of course, tabletop game players love finding new items – and using them to circumvent the GM’s plans.

In posts like these, we want to share Magical Tools made for Reclaim the Wild games. And the first one we want to share is a totally original item, the Queen’s Cane!

QUEEN'S CANE
Magical Tool - One-Handed - Wooden
By tapping the tip of this wooden cane against a surface (including your open hand), you can create fresh beeswax. It was originally used to help build this hive, and was then used to seal individual honeycombs or otherwise perform ceremonial bee-duties.

Cost: 1 Stamina (Bind or Burn)
Range: Self
Effect: You create or destroy a single dollop of beeswax, up to 1 cubic square. Created wax persists until your next Short or Extended Rest. This can be used in a number of ways, limited only by your creativity. Some possibilities include:
• (Bind) Seal an opening (up to 1 sq. in size) with thick, hard wax. This seal is water-tight, but is not heat resistant (it will hold back water, but not lava). The wax is sufficiently sturdy to support a person's weight. A wax-sealed square can be broken through with a test of Athletics v. the cane-user's Arcana, or upon contact with any Fire attack or fire source. If the wax is destroyed, the Bound Stamina is Burned.
• (Burn) Create a single Candle or bar of Soap. Items created this way last until your next Short or Extended Rest. The item is ephemeral, and obviously both magical and temporary to anyone who observes or handles it.
• (Burn) Seal a letter, Bottle, or package with a crest or sigil of your devising. This seal persists until the object is opened. (The seal doesn't prevent anyone from opening the item, but may reveal if it was tampered with.)
• (Bind) Coat a single object in a thin layer of wax. This functions somewhat like using Oil on a piece of equipment, preventing (but not removing) Rust, or lubricating the moving parts of a machine. This wax coating persists until your next Short or Extended Rest.

The Queen’s Cane is a perfect item to put in a tree- or bee-themed dungeon. While it doesn’t provide any combat utility, it gives clever players lots of ways to solve puzzles and overcome challenges. They can clog up pipes, unseal honeycombs, or even create small platforms.

However, the Queen’s Cane could also be in the hands of a noble, using it to affix – and alter – the wax seals on their correspondence. They could also use it to seal bottles of wine, or poison, without touching the object in question.

Finally, since the wax from the cane can be used as a lubricant for moving parts, anyone interested in large-scale machinery might want to get their hands on this Magical Tool, if only to save a few Rupees on bulk Oil orders.

12 Jan

Version 1.01

So of course, as soon as 1.00 was out the door, I started finding little things to update or fix. Some people don’t think it be like it is, but it do.

A lot of this update is simply clarifying existing rules, resolving edge cases… and adding Castles. So now you can build those – if you’ve got the treasury for it.

Below, you’ll find the changelog – what’s different between this version, and the previous release (good ol’ 1.00).

Sample Characters: Mazili, Noir, Savelle, and Torvan

There are a few places in the Core Rulebook where I reference a couple of prototypical player-characters: Mazili the Rito wizard, Noir the Twili songstress, Savelle the Hylian rogue, and Torvan the Zora knight. I’ve had these four in mind as ‘sample characters’ since the beginning of development, I never fully statted them out for play.

With the release of Version 1.0, however, I figured it was time to bring these four characters to life. Not only would it serve as a nice coda on the development process for me, but they might serve new players well: both as examples to follow, and as characters you can grab and immediately begin using.

Check them out below!