The Gardens of Ynn is now available in print on demand and in PDF on rpgnow.
The PDF is currently only three dollars and an exceptional value. Billing
itself as “A delightful horticultural adventure for use in old-school
roleplaying games” it consists of about 79 pages broken into five sections. I
was pleased to discover upon reading that this is far more than just a single,
linear adventure, but instead a very fully-fledged and versatile generator that
can easily be used to populate several session worth of content. It is easily
compatible with the traditional flavors of D&D and the assorted
clones/rulesets with only the minimum of modification/conversation necessary, most of which could easily be
done on the fly.
The setting presented
here is very adaptable, as Ynn is defined as a “perpendicular world” and serves
almost as a separate/discrete plane. This makes it very simple to drop into
almost any campaign setting and the novel means of ingress and “hooks” provided
within the introduction facilitate this use. Ynn’s history and nature
is sufficiently fleshed out without becoming overbearingly precise/specific and
it could very easily function as a less typical/more flavorful stand-in or
whole-cloth replacement for a variety of some of the more traditional/prosaic extraplanar
jaunts (it could just as easily be a unique spin on the mythical Otherworld, a
darker and more dangerous Fairyland, or even a pseudo-Elemental plane of Florae)
in addition to its specified origins. I tend to enjoy the versatility of the ideas a purchase like this can produce,
more than static setting information, but the information here is intriguing
and far from boring.
The Introduction sketches
a light touch on these origins that is further expanded with additional tasty
tidbits throughout the work. I enjoy adventures and settings like this that
provide “just enough” to whet the appetite and trickle out more information as
the reader continues through the content. Always a welcome change of pace from
a massive upfront lore-dump that will either be impossible or tedious to
adequately communicate to players anyhow. The meat of this section outlines the
procedures for the use of the tables that follow, and it was at this point that
it started to become clear to me that this wasn’t intended as just a single
adventure, but more akin to a toolbox for spontaneously generating interesting
locations, events, and encounters that could serve as the backdrop for a myriad
of distinctly different forays and
adventures within the Gardens.
These procedures function
almost like a point-crawl or hex-crawl but dispense with the needs to define destinations
in advance or rigidly map. They are simple, elegant, and most importantly easy
to follow “on-the-fly.” They implement or generate more of a flow-chart
approach than a rigidly bounded map. This is important because of the mutable
nature and chaos inherent within Ynn, and pains are taken to stress that attempting to
make definitive maps to meticulously navigate the Gardens
is largely futile. The points and links generated through these procedures are
somewhat ephemeral, only remaining consistent for a single visit, as no two
trips to the Gardens need be, or should be identical.
For the verdant, shifting
world of Ynn, attempts to define inflexible geography and
distance are unnecessary in most instances and this kind of minutia can only
seldom prove fun for players in most situations. This puts the emphasis on the
act of exploration within the
environment rather than cataloging it. When something is fully mapped and
explored it becomes known and familiar. The Gardens of Ynn bristle
and laugh at these attempts.
This procedure makes
navigation less directional and more of a binary player choice of either “Go
Deeper” and “Go Back,” relative to a starting point that is defined by a
Location. Less choices to contend with = Faster Play, but one should not
mistake this for railroading or agency removal. Destinations are points that
are defined by Locations (flavored with Details) and a third dimension of
“depth” designed to escalate dangers, treasure, and the out-of-the-ordinary.
These are not rolled in advance, creating an opportunity to surprise not just
the players, but also the Referee. As specific/notable locations are
re-rolled/repeated the “map” can link together and doubles back on itself.
Navigation uses the resource of time, taking a turn and the players can always
opt to “Go Deeper” from a given Location to discover more Locations that branch
from the current one.
This section also covers
some additional and welcome information on navigating blindly (perhaps when
fleeing The Jabberwock or The
Questing Beast), when and how to
trigger Events, Camping, and Time Passage and Weather within Ynn.
Here you will also find some additional background in the form of the
structure, some peculiarities with how certain Magics work in the world, and
tantalizing sketches of the inhabitants and primary architects of Ynn
before reaching the tables used in the navigation procedure.
There are five key tables
that reference the following sections of the book and provide handy page
numbers for their entries. The first two are used to generate the points/places
mentioned above (Location + Detail). Upon entry, and after exploring “deeper”
into the Gardens, one rolls on the Location and Details table in
order to generates a new point. These rolls are later modified upward based on
“depth” to produce more and more chaotic and unusual results the “deeper”
players explore. Although I didn’t see it expressly spelled out, it does seem
that each “Location + Detail” generates a defined and singular place, and the
same Location with a different Detail rolled later could serve as either a
distinct/different point, or as a previously visited location that has
undergone changes. Not including the
possible influence a few “special/notable” locations that can only be found
once per expedition, the combinations of rolls on these tables could probably
produce over a thousand distinct “places.” Combining these with rolls on the
third, Events table, helps to ensure that even doubling back to revisit a known
location can still be interesting.
Rolls on the Events table
are triggered by exploration turns (time as a resource that needs to be
managed), I particularly enjoy how the die used to roll on this table changes
based on how thoroughly the players are interacting with a location, with
Events that call to Encounter tables more weighted with more frequency to the
lower end of the table. To uncover/spark the interesting entries the high end
of the table, exploration (and the larger die roll) are necessary. This is a
wonderful way to handle these triggers.
The remaining two tables
are Encounters, and I appreciate the decision to divide these into separate
Daytime and Nighttime tables. Encounters
with some of the inhabitants outlined in the Bestiary are more logically or
vastly more exciting to run nocturnally, and the use of the separate Encounter
tables almost seems to give the diurnal Gardens a different “feel” than their night-time counterparts.
The Garden by Night seems to have an almost-more
supernaturally sinister and stygian impression from being surrounded not just
by lush, overgrown vegetation but also the claustrophobic indefinites of
darkness. During the day one may have to contend with the unnerving
ministrations and keening of the Rose-Maidens, but when the night falls, the meme-prone Myconid
clean-up crews roam the Gardens in search of valuable compost. Other decidedly
nocturnal encounters like the Hopping
Lantern and Candle Golem find their rightful place on the appropriate table, allowing the
night to provide a separate setting that creates chance meetings that seem very
fun and more appropriate to narrate.
The next three sections
(Locations, Details, Bestiary) serve as keys for the preceding tables. The
Locations and Details get more elaborate treatment, including evocative
descriptions and often additional sub-tables or specialized mechanics to
further flesh the location out with more specificity. Detail explanations stir
the imagination and leave plenty of room for the Referee to either define or
leave mysterious the “why” in most cases. Beneath the bushes, more snippets of
lore and background for the Gardens and their inhabitants lurks here. My only minor complaint
is that it can be somewhat difficult to find a specific Location or Detail
without the use of the handy page numbers provided on the referencing tables,
as they are intentionally out of alphabetical order. Perhaps including the
table number and the table reference here would assist in findability on a
flick through?
The Bestiary is
wonderful, and I had high hopes with a description of “Moa-sized Peacocks”
piquing my interest earlier in the book. I love Moas and I love Peacocks.
Combining the two into some sort of resplendently plumed Jurassic Park
Velociraptor is inspired, and there’s more where that came from. Each Bestiary
entry provides some description and a simple, compact and eminently compatible stat-block for ease of reference. Even
some more-familiar monsters show up, but each is given a slightly Ynnian
spin by virtue of appearance or even mechanics. The treatment of mechanics for
petrification with The Basilisk is particularly nice, and The Idea of Thorns is magnificent.
The final section is
chock full of useful tables that can greatly assist the Referee with set
dressing (Unusual Flora, Horticultural Styles, Foraged Food), treasure tables
(including the ever-helpful “I Search the Body” and its Garden-specific
adjunct “I Search the Flowerbed”), as well as a great Rumor table that can help
facilitate non-combat encounters and conversations with some of the
less-hostile inhabitants (always convenient to have on hand for those favorable
Reaction Rolls!). I found myself greatly
enjoying how the “Dreams and Portents in Ynn” table interrelates and calls-back
to the rest of the book’s contents, making it incredibly promising for
foreshadowing some of Ynn’s mysteries and lethal dangers to the players.
These miscellaneous tables are followed by a new Character Class that helps
address character death given the capsular nature of adventures in the Gardens
and seems like it would be enjoyable to play in its own right without trickling
out too many secrets.
The Gardens of Ynn is rounded out with some brief advice on how one particularly aspect
of the Garden (the aforementioned Idea of Thorns) might impact a Referee’s larger campaign setting/world. The author
has placed this information online here
if you would like to get a taste.
I highly recommend the Gardens of Ynn if you’re looking to expand your campaign toolbox to include a useful
resource for some potentially perilous and imaginative “planar” jaunts with a
decidedly naturalistic bent. One could easily use it as a convenient stand-in or
re-skin for the plane that Druid’s visit on their spiritual sojourns, as “what
happens when you die from Nymph voyeurism”, or even something akin to Dwarf-Hell
or simply exploit the helpful hooks and plop it in “as-is” if you find yourself
at the start of a session with little prepared. The choices made concerning the
illustrations and art are fitting, of good frequency, and evocative. The heavy
hitters of Rackham, Clarke and Beardsley help to convey and inspire the fanciful/fairy-tale
qualities, with some of the beautiful Art Nouveau selections hinting at the
more subtly sinister other-worldliness of the Gardens throughout.
It’s discrete and
versatile enough to drop into any campaign and could easily serve up an evening
(or several) of exciting session. Gardens of Ynn contains a surprising amount of delightful brainfood and inspiration
for the current low PDF price of three dollars.
One interesting thing to
consider is its use as an alternate route between far-flung locations within
your campaign world. In this fashion it could easily become a distinct campaign
feature, frequently visited by the players. Just be careful: What happens in Ynn might
not stay in Ynn.
