Category Archives: Homebrew Jam

Next, let’s take a look at Ramos’ entry, Rotate the Wrench!

Ramos’ entry was,, it needs to be said, huge. Almost 30 pages of stuff! A way to introduce trains and tracks into your game, a new Magical Song, a new Enchantment, and even rules for fighting on (and with) trains!

True to form, when asked for their thoughts, Ramos had a lot to contribute. So rather than gush about their entry (which was amazing, and you should go read it), I’m just gonna let them take it from here:

Steam was a very convenient theme for me because two of my players wanted to play smart, mechanics oriented characters. With my setting already involving the start of an industrial revolution in Hyrule, trains becoming a common form of transportation, and guardians running about, it made a lot of sense. And really, what could be cooler than having your own car? So I started making a car and then thought, you know the single most underused but coolest item in all of Zelda is? The Spinner. But then I realize, this is a train setting, I should probably also include a train for when that invariably comes up in the campaign. Then I thought, yeah, but boats are common too. And it came to mind, well, there are a few flying constructs in the Zelda series.

I drew the line at flying machines, mostly due to the one month time limit. Given infinite time, my projects have a tendency to bloat and spiral out of control, so I’m grateful that this at least let me focus down to something reasonable, even if four different vehicles was a bit much.

I started with the Master Cycle from the book as a base and decided that just having a vehicle wasn’t particularly cool. Vehicles are essentially just horses you can park and the cool thing about horses in Reclaim the Wild is that they are companions that grow, gain stats, and even pick up techniques, spells, or feats. Naturally, this meant vehicles had to be able to grow as well. It makes sense, if you’re engineering yourself a car, you would probably be interested in refining it. And how best to do that? The single coolest way to present upgrades ever devised in video games: trees.

Upgrade trees are essentially a series of upgrades required by other upgrades. It gives you this cool feeling of building towards something rather than just steadily getting better. Reclaim the Wild also has trees, sort of, though they aren’t visually presented as such. For example, the Spin Attack is a requirement for Great Spin, which is a requirement for Hurricane Spin. That’s more of a single branch than a tree, but it gives the same idea where you are working towards a pinnacle, which is really cool. Super cool.

So here’s my one issue I ran into: Making things cool doesn’t necessarily mean it meshes well with the rest of the system. Making things into trees forces me to presume a lot about how a campaign will develop and a lot of the vehicles don’t really get going until rank 3, which for a lot of people, might be where the game ends. My group is looking to be going for quite a while but Reclaim the Wild benefits from steady, linear developments. Not to mention, some of the vehicles ended up complicated for the sake of it. My suggestion, if you want to use my submission, is to use it if you plan on going to rank 5. That gives sufficient time for the vehicles to really shine.

If I were to tackle this idea again, I would probably start with a weaker Master Cycle and then tie materials into upping very basic stats directly like durability and movement. From there, a laundry list of upgrades that look a lot like player feats could be implemented and everything could be limited by a player’s Mechanics attribute. That might still sound a lot like the trees I made but the difference is that it lets a vehicle expand more naturally to fit the needs of the party and also be a lot easier for other people to homebrew further rather than messing around with finicky trees. Basically, my advice is, cool is cool but nothing overrides simplicity when it comes to implementing new ideas into a tabletop setting.

If you wanna get on track to include epic train battles in your campaign, go check out Ramos’ Rotate the Wrench supplement!

First among our Homebrew Jam winners to be highlighted is Shines, with their new spells, Zelda’s Refuge and Zant’s Curse.

Some homebrew projects are vast projects, with tons of new additions. Some, though, are subtler – filling in niches that were previously unexplored, or only barely touched upon. So it is with Shines’ two spells here.

The first spell, Zelda’s Refuge, helps fill in the niche of a ‘master of disguise’ with an upgraded version of Impa’s Disguise. It’s more resistant to casual interference, allowing you to better navigate a crowded street or a close dance. It also allows for a more thorough transformation, including your size, which might help a Hylian present as a Gerudo – or as a Deku. All in all, it’s the kind of spell I wish I’d thought of, way back when we were first creating Reclaim the Wild.

The second spell, Zant’s Curse, serves double duty. On the one hand, it allows a player to provide this transformative magic to their friends, which can allow a whole party of Heroes to, say, enter a Gerudo town, infiltrate a cult, or hide their identity when pursued by the town guards. On the other, it works well as a spell primarily for villains, with its capability to force changes upon a foe. (Though in that capacity, I would encourage you to talk with your players before you use it directly upon them.)

Speaking with Shines, they were able to give us some insight into why they wanted to explore these spells as options for players and foes alike.

I’m a big fan of shapeshifting and transformation in stories and games, and I wanted to give those as options for both players and Game Masters. I was inspired by the changes seen in Zelda transforming into Sheik, as well as a number of terrible fates seen in the Twilight Princess and Majora’s Mask games. Hopefully this enables you to play a true master of disguise or shapeshifter, or offers another way for a Game Master to have a truly memorable villain encounter.

If you or your players would like to include Shines’ new spells in your game, check ’em out here!

We’ve counted the votes, and we’ve looked through the submissions to choose our favorites. Now it’s time to reveal the winners!

Milly and I had a blast reading all the entries! They were all entertaining and well-thought-out submissions, worthy of your time to read them – and of being included in any Reclaim the Wild campaign. I was also glad to see a few submissions dive into this year’s optional theme, ‘Steam’; I had worried that we might not get anyone to attempt that challenge.

This year, there were nine entries in all. Below, you’ll find links to them all, as well as the announced winners!