Today we will look at Xaetamin’s entry, Ride the Winds!

Xaetamin’s entry is a grab bag of spells, techniques, magic items, and monsters, almost all focused on the Ever Upwards theme. Many of these are useful, but balanced, a quality that no doubt helped this entry win first place!

Here are Xaetamin’s thoughts:

I’d there’s one thing I love about ttrpgs, it’s the sheer number options you have for playing the game you want. That’s why I made my contribution a variety pack aimed at providing players with plenty of extra options as well as expanding a particular archetype of Techniques.

It was a fellow player of mine in one of Viyers games that gave me inspiration for the expanded Jump Attack related Techniques (thanks Bucket). Adding additional options for more damage, additional targets and the ability to convert any of this attacks into a small AOE was a lot of fun.

The other half of my inspiration was adding some extra “Wind” magic into the system. Wind may not be an official damage type in this system but it has been a commonly used element for many Zelda games. Each Wind Spell and Technique has the goal of knocking your enemies around or just protecting yourself by deflecting attacks, as is the case with Vaati’s Dark Wind Barrier.

Fi’s Dancing Blade was honestly just thrown in for the Skyward Sword reference. The obvious star of the show for Spelltechs is obviously Dragon’s Flight. I’m honestly surprised that no one had created a flight Spell before this but I suppose that there was always concerns of encounter balance.

Back on the topic of providing more options, I wanted to give GMs more choices as well as players. That’s why I included the Magical Tools, each naturally themed around jumping, flying and wind respectively, and a link to a second sheet with a series of monsters that are just as good as jumping and flying as the players could be if they used any of the options in this variety pack. There’s an even balance of basic and BOSS monsters I’m there as well as a friendly companion in the form of the Loftwing.

Overall, I’m quite happy with the amount of work I put into this. I’m genuinely surprised I won first place but I can’t complain either. I just want to thank everyone who voted on my submission and I hope you all have fun using it in your games!

If you want to try out any of these options, go check out Xaetamin’s Ride the Winds!

Today we will look at Viyers’s entry, Reclaim the Wind!

Viyers’ work epitomizes the “Ever Upwards” theme of this homebrew jam, containing rules about creating your own airship and exploring a sky with it. It’s no wonder that it won the “Most Upwards” category!

Here are Viyers’s thoughts:

Like pretty much everyone else I got really inspired by the ToTK trailer and the possibilities of a campaign taking place high in the air. Totally not because I planned on doing a PbP with it otherwise Meï might hit me.

I was inspired by all the JRPG with flying ships and wanted to do something similar. I based myself in a mix of what I had done with Rail the Wild and the experience I had with Reclaim the Waves. Both have the concept of the players making themselves what is pretty much a mobile base they use to travel around. I did want to keep it pretty stream-lined though, with stations that feel pretty one-piece ish and an event system that would be easy to mod for any situation rather than having complex rules for all the possible challenges. I also took from Starfinder and their ship system.

Now that the game proper is out, I really want to mod it to add Zonai tech related content.

I got a bit short on inspiration with the races though.

If you want to explore an endless sky, check out Viyers’s Reclaim the Wind!

Today we will look at Ramos’s entry, Cleaning the Wild!

For me, Ramos’s entry came out of left field with its emphasis on a cleaning and rearranging terrain. Given how skillfully this was made, no wonder it won Developer’s Choice!

Here are Ramos’s thoughts:

When I originally started working on an entry for this jam, I started with an adventure that would double as a Christmas special. It was meant to be pretty humorous and would arrive at the convenient time of just before December as a nice way for groups to have an unusual one shot. Unfortunately, life then happened and I didn’t have nearly enough time to put together such a large project. So instead I shifted my focus to something smaller and more mechanically focused.

So Cleaning the Wild spawned from two different sources. One, the Halloween one shot I ran for my friends two years back where the gimmick was the maps were randomly generated (along with the characters, enemies, etc). The maps should have been a horrifying mess but thanks to Reclaim the Wild’s terrain system, they were not only usable but very functional and robust. Combine that with using sprites from the Gameboy Zelda games and you’re able to convey a lot of visual information succinctly without overwhelming players.

The second thing on my brain was a new anime series that came out at the time, Akiba Maid War, which despite its name, is a dark comedy crime drama show that pulls from Japan’s long history of Yakuza stories. But mostly I was thinking about maids. What do maids do? Cook and clean. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to get cooking in there (mostly because Reclaim the Wild pretty much covers all the bases already) but cleaning logically slotted into picking up stuff, picking up stuff like… terrain squares.

It was such a simple concept that everyone I mentioned it to immediately intuitively got the idea behind it. Granted, that’s also when everyone started mentioning that sounded like Minecraft and yeah, it is basically Minecraft but I was already enamored by the cleaning theme, so much so that I just scratched off the maid bits because they distracted from the core idea.

If you ever feel like using this system, I’d suggest using a virtual tabletop or a dry eraser mat you can draw on and several different colors of markers. That way terrain can be changed around easily and quickly without too much fuss. And if you do feel like using this system, thank you! I’m glad it proven interesting enough to add to your own game.

If you want to clean the wild using your own two hands, check out Ramos’s Cleaning the Wild!