Seedling Games

[seedlinggames]

A Gathering Storm for Cairn is out

Hopefully it works this time because I managed to crash the editor. A Gathering Storm is an adventure for Cairn. It probably takes about 2 sessions unless your players really don't like talking to people. There is a village that will have to be abandoned if nobody figures out why it won't stop raining, because the rains are flooding everything. There's a strange and isolated monastery with a famous library which is being weirdly unhelpful to anyone who comes around asking questions. There's a forest which is also a god. Most of the adventure takes place in this forest.

This is my first time doing not just all of the writing and layout but also the art. It took way too long but I'm pretty proud of the results. There's no dungeon crawling, but it is very exploration focused. There are also hooks to start a larger campaign based on these locations, a bunch of new bestiary entries, and tables of 36 books, 24 names, and 10 types of merchants.

You can find the pdf on #itchio https://seedling.itch.io/a-gathering-storm-cairn

or on #DriveThruRPG : https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/437505/A-Gathering-Storm--Cairn

You can also get physical copies from the Cairn store: https://store.cairnrpg.com/products/a-gathering-storm

Third Kingdom Games: https://www.thirdkingdomgames.com/product-page/a-gathering-storm

And (soon) Ratti Incantati, in Canada (will update when they're available there): https://rattiincantati.com/

[littlestpersimmon]

Free Ornamentation III. This work is dedicated to the public domain ♡

[seedlinggames]

My train heist themed adventure is kickstarting

The Sierra Express

An Adventure for Knights of the Road or other OSR-ish modern-ish game systems

(art is public domain with some editing) I've been working on this for about a year. It's for Knights of the Road, a very zine-y Into the Odd type system, but could work for other vaguely OSR-ish games that have guns. Maybe some Western-type games. Maybe even some PbtA type games with some adjustments? It is fairly socially oriented as such things go. The train is basically a dungeon: two stories, multiple ways to cross it.

There are three factions, which you can fight or join, including a shady private investigator company, the railway union, and also a small skeleton army lead by a vampire. The writing is done. I'm keeping things very simple, black and white and free art, art from patreons I subscribe to, or art done by me (no AI of course). Mostly at this point it's a matter of layout.

[binarystargames]

NULL_SPACE IS ITCHFUNDING NOW!

My hard sci-fi space game, about 3 years in the making, is finally released!

You are freelancers in the solar system of the 24th century. Experience the faded glory of Earth, the industrial warrens of Mars, and the futuristic dystopias of Ganymede; but especially, try to survive in the no man’s land between it all, Null Space.

The solar system of the 24th Century has seen many advancements, to be sure; but ultimately one thing has never changed: the little guy is going to get squeezed for every drop of sweat available. There are no replicators or laser swords here. It's just people, what they're willing to do to themselves and one another, and the uncaring void.

Mechanically, the game uses my Total//Effect system: rolling involves using nearly every part of a 3d6 roll, both component dice and the Total.

Simple challenges are addressed with a single roll or a smart action at the right time. Complex challenges, however, are defined by complications: these are descriptors like Stuck or Hungry or Bulletproof. These can be chipped away by brute force, but if you have either something with a feature that offsets it, you can just fully bypass them. (Armor-Piercing might bypass Bulletproof, for instance - and offering some food might bypass Hungry.) As you might guess, this can be applied very rapidly to any kind of problem - technical, social, violent, etc.

Your characters are freelancers, probably not by choice, but definitively: you're explicitly not employable. The good news is you were professionals, so you had some tools and expertise from your working-stiff days, and you start with a ship! The bad news is that this means you also start with Trouble. This is a campaign-scale mechanic that sums up the grand total of everything that can go wrong - bounties, debt, expenses, favors owed - and lets you know if something on that list is going wrong right now. You can get out of it, eventually, but it sure is easier to get into it!

Now let's talk about this itchfund. To get this out the door after 3 years - it started life in late 2022 under the name Liminal Void, this is total rewrite #4 - I've invested a lot of time and some money in making the game better. What this gets me is the ability to recoup my costs, and also a general idea of how many people want this so I know what to print and what projects to prioritize in the future.

So to that end, you can get:

The PDF of the game, and a digital pamphlet Job, for a delightful $15. (More Jobs are on the way during the crowdfund!) Every tier gets you this - no matter what, you'll immediately get the game.

A promise that I'll send you keys to any supplement in the future - I have a few planned to add both Jobs and mechanical subsystems for focus on specific kinds of play, like combat or technical or ship-based.

A physical copy of the game and/or those pamphlet Jobs

All of the above, and a copy of its sister solo deckbuilder card game, VOID_SHIFT!

So don't delay! Head on over to https://binarystar.games/null-space-itchfund and go get it.

[prokopetz]

The OSR movement may have its issues, but ultimately we've got to reckon with the fact that, to a large extent, it's merely reacting to the broader indie tabletop roleplaying sphere's tendency to lose sight of why many people take up the hobby in the first place: for a safe and budget-friendly way to satisfy the natural human impulse to put one's friends in some kind of fucked up labyrinth.

[seedlinggames]

And sometimes the fucked up labyrinth is made of trees!

[historyisntboring]

2,500-year-old Siberian 'ice mummy' had intricate tattoos

The woman, aged about 50, was buried in a Siberian ice cave and discovered millennia later.

She was a 50 y.o. Siberian woman from 2500 years ago, living a nomadic lifestyle, and look at her tattoos...

Look...

I'm going to cry

[burins]

here is the full open access article from the researchers! one big takeaway for me is that almost every mummy we've found from the Pazyryk culture has had these intricate tattoos (although these are a particularly beautiful example.) the older the person, the more tattoos they tend to have. so this was a widespread cultural practice, not just one rad grandma! highly recommend giving the article a read - there's a ton of really neat details about how the researchers (including a modern tattoo artist) analyzed the art styles and techniques (relatively similar to modern stick and poke, but with a multi-pointed implement for all but the smallest details)

The absence of overlapping images or compositions in the corpus of preserved examples suggests that the construction of tattooed bodies in Pazyryk culture was approached in a structured and deliberate manner throughout an individual’s lifetime. This implies both planning and intentionality in tattoo placement and design. The confirmed use of multiple tools and stylistic variations on a single body also reveals that tattooing in Pazyryk culture was associated with a high degree of craft specialisation and was probably performed by multiple individuals. In this regard, the collaboration between modern tattooists and archaeological researchers has been invaluable in not only illuminating the techniques used by ancient tattooists but also in fostering a deeper appreciation for their artistry and skills, enriching our understanding of past societies and their intricate relationship with body modification.

the whole thing just kind of made me emotional about the great continuity of artistry across space and time. humans love to change our bodies and we put time and effort into making those changes meaningful and beautiful to us! a modern tattoo artist was instrumental in helping understand what some of the finer marks might signify about methods and practice!

also don't sleep on her rooster thumb tattoo

[seedlinggames]

I am yet again looking at public domain art

[seedlinggames]

This wasn't the post I was looking for but I can't believe nobody liked this one

[propalahramota]

They should add "On Horseback" option to Google Maps. For writers.

[kotitontunmanaaja]

"Hevoslinja" (Trans-Horse) is a European art project started in 2014 by Finnish artist Eero Yli-Vakkuri - according to his own words 'skilless in riding and afraid of animals' at the start.

The aim of the project was to travel 270 km / 168 miles between Helsinki and Turku in Finland, and to highlight the possibility of horse travel in modern society. Since then they've took to promoting horseback efforts in urban landscapes with several European collaborators and artists.

Yli-Vakkuri and collaborators first spent eight months practicing riding to become safely self-sufficient in saddle, and bought a Finnhorse gelding Toivottu Poika ('Awaited Son'). The route followed, as closely as possible, the old coastal royal country road of the premodern era, Kuninkaantie/Suuri Rantatie, and took 9 days.

Toivottu Poika is a very average example of his breed, standing at some 155 cm / 15.1 hh tall. The Finnhorse is a relative of for example the North-Norwegian Lyngshest breed, the Icelandic horse, the Swedish Gotlandsruss pony and the Estonian landrace horse and Tori horse breed. It is a mid-sized light draught and trotter, a sensibly realistic mediaeval country travel horse equivalent.

For more hardcore short-term treks, looking into competitive endurance riding can be helpful. Mongol Derby might be one of the most intense races, as it recreates the Chinggis Khan era postal system of swapping horses continuously over a 1000 km / 620 mile route.

By only including skilled endurance riders, keeping up a constant fast speed and swapping horses every 40 km / 25 mil, the Mongol Derby route only takes 10 days even though it's several times the length of the Trans-Horse project. This is the speed of highly organised imperial messengers with the supporting cultural infrastructure, professional marathon runners where Yli-Vakkuri and Toivottu poika were leisure hikers.

The Mongolian landrace horse is a very distant relative of the breeds above, but much lighter and smaller than the agriculturally focused modern Finnhorse - typicaly standing at 142 cm / 14 hh at most. (This would've also been common for Finnhorses before the 19th century.) What really differentiates them from Western breeds, however, is the way they're trained and raised in semi-feral herds, and it's said that while the rider may decide where the pair is headed, the horse is the one to decide how to get there.

[drev-the-procrastinator]

also it's not quite google maps, but there is a lovely site called Viabundus!

the last i checked, the map of roads stretches from Calais, France to Moscow, Russia west to east and from Košice, Slovakia to Tornio, Finland south to north. it doesn't cover all of Europe, for example Sweden and Norway are empty at the moment, but it is quite extensive and still being worked on! in addition to showing the old roads, you can calculate the distance and travel time from one city to another, and there are a lot of options:

and that's not all! here's a description from the site itself (emphasis mine):

"Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka's Hansische Handelsstraßen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways."

it's quite neat and also free! i hope someone else finds it as fascinating and cool as i did :)

[michaelnordeman]

Tangådalen, part of the Fulufjället national Park in Dalarna, Sweden (September 15, 2020).

[rederiswrites]

There used to be a lot of activities that took place around a populated area like a village or town, which you would encounter before you reached the town itself. Most of those crafts have either been eliminated in the developed world or now take place out of view on private land, and so modern authors don't think of them when creating fantasy worlds or writing historical fiction. I think that sprinkling those in could both enrich the worlds you're writing in and, potentially, add useful plot devices.

For example, your travelers might know that they're near civilization when they start finding trees in the woods that have been tapped, for pitch or for sap. They might find a forester's trap line and trace it back to his hut to get medical care. Maybe they retrace the passage of a peasant and his pig out hunting for truffles. If they're coming along a coast, maybe your travelers come across the pools where sea water is dried down to salt, or the furnaces where bog iron ore is smelted.

Maybe they see a column of smoke and follow it to the house-sized kilns of a potter's yard where men work making bricks or roof tiles. From miles away they could smell the unmistakeable odor of pine sap being rendered down into pitch, and follow that to a village. Or they hear the flute playing of a shepherd boy whiling away the hours in the high pasture.

They could find the clearing where the charcoal burners recently broke down an earth kiln, and follow the hoof prints and drag marks of their horse and sledge as they hauled the charcoal back to civilization. Or follow the sound of metal on stone to a quarry or gravel pit. Maybe they know they're nearly to town when they come across a clay bank with signs of recent clay gathering.

Of course around every town and city there will be farms, more densely packed the closer you are. But don't just think of fields of grains or vegetables. Think of managed woodlands, like maybe trees coppiced-- cut and then regrown--to customize the shape or size of the branches. Cows being grazed in a communal green. Waiting as a huge flock of ducks is driven across the road. Orchards in bloom.

If they're approaching by road, there will be things best done out of town. The threshing floor where grain is beaten with flails or run through crushing wheels to separate the grain from its casing, and then winnowed, using the wind to carry away the chaff. Laundresses working in the river, their linens bleaching on the grass at the drying yard. The stench of the tanners, barred from town for stinking so badly. The rushing wheel-race and great creaking wheel of the flour mill.

If it's a larger town, there might be a livestock market outside the gates, with goats milling in woven willow pens or chickens in wooden cages. Or a line of horses for the wealthier buyer or your desperate travelers. There might be a red light district, escaping the regulations of the city proper, or plain old slums. More industrial yards, like the yards where fabric is dyed (these might also smell quite bad, like rotting plant material, or urine).

There are so many things that preindustrial people did and would find familiar that we just don't know about now. So much of life was lived out in the open for anyone to see. Make your world busy and loud and colorful!

[alexanderwales]

You mentioned coppicing:

The coppice and pollard systems are one of my favorite pre-modern things, it's just so visually unique and sensible, but most people haven't heard about it.

When you coppice, you cut the tree close to the ground, so only the trunk is left, then the tree puts out fairly straight shoots that are great for firewood. They would typically have these trees harvested on rotation so new trees would be ready every year.

This is a coppiced tree:

When you pollard, you cut the tree to the trunk, but higher, and let the branches grow for longer. They'll be be nice and straight (depending on species) with fewer knots, and suitable to various crafts without much need to work the wood. Sadly seems to be etymologically unrelated to "pole", though the branches from these trees were used to make poles. Part of why you do this instead of coppicing is that the shoots are out of reach of animals.

This is a pollarded tree:

It's very likely that you'd see something like this as a sign of civilization as you came toward a town or village, depending on the species of tree that they have available, though note that this is something you do when you have a timeline of many years, rather than something you set up for the year after.

[homunculus-argument]

Random linguistic worldbuilding: A language with six sets of pronouns, which are set by one's current state of existence. There's a separate pronoun for people who are alive, people who are dead, and potential future people who are yet to be born, and the ambiguous ones of "may or may not be alive or aleady dead", "may or may not have even been born yet", and the ultimate general/ambiguous all-covering one that covers all ambiguous states.

The culture has a specific defined term for that tragic span of time when a widow keeps accidentally referring to their spouse with living pronouns. New parents-to-be dropping the happy surprise news of a pregnancy by referring to their future child with the "is yet to be born" pronoun instead of a more ambiguous one and waiting for the "wait what did you just say?" reactions.

Someone jokingly referring to themselves with the dead person pronouns just to highlight how horrible their current hangover is. A notorious aspiring ladies' man who keeps trying to pursue women in their 20s despite of approaching middle age fails to notice the insult when someone asks him when he's planning to get married, and uses the pronoun that implies that his ideal future bride may not even be born yet.

A mother whose young adult child just moved away from home for the first time, who continues to dramatically refer to their child with "may or may not be already dead" until the aforementioned child replies to her on facebook like "ma stop telling people I'm dead" and having her respond with "well how could I possibly know that when you don't even write to us? >:,C"

[homunculus-argument]

@witchofanguish it is also used in poetry and plays, ghosts talk like that. Imagine being in a folk story, staying overnight in an abandoned cabin and in the middle of the night there's a knock on the door and a bellowing voice going

LET ME IN.

and from the "me" alone you know that whoever is out there is not one among the living.

[rotationalsymmetry]

ok but also: imagine the mysterious stranger implying that they don't know whether they themselves are alive or dead.

Ghost stories where the characters don't know they're ghosts and keep referring to themselves by living pronouns, where the audience doesn't know they're dead for most of the story. Ghosts that signal that they're ready to move on by using I'm-dead pronouns.

[crazy-pages]

Referring to someone as "you" (dead) as a threat, to say they're living on borrowed time.

[marlynnofmany]

"I'm looking for my boyfriend; have you seen him (alive)?"

"Yeah, over there with with whatsherface -- ooh. Kissing whatsherface."

"Yes, thank you. I see him (dead) too."

[seedlinggames]

I am yet again looking at public domain art

[c0y]

a coyote tugs at the strap of a trail camera [source]

[seedlinggames]

I love coyotes

[jareckiworld]

Cat Johnston — "Moth Creature" (cloth, fur, paint, epoxy clay, 2024)

[prokopetz]

Maintaining a diversity of ongoing personal projects is important because it enables you to procrastinate on one by aimlessly tinkering with another, thereby creating the possibility that you'll finish one of them by accident.

[seedlinggames]

More public domain art

As before, cut out of existing public domain art. This time I focused on means of transportation, mostly because when I started doing collages with the last batch I decided I wanted to put some boats or wagons or something in the background. But also it turns out it's hard to find boats and wagons that are easy to isolate from their background and also large enough to work on their own. https://seedling.itch.io/modified-public-domain-art/devlog/1021855/new-images-transportation

[peregrine-coast]

Milk Bar: post-soviet sci-fi roleplaying in a poland that never was

Milk Bar: Cut Your (Milk) Teeth Edition is a 52-page condensed version of the full roleplaying game containing everything you need to get started playing immediately. There are only 200 copies of this one out in the world so get yours as soon as you can!

The Cut Your (Milk) Teeth Edition features:

Quick, simplified rules in the old school tradition.,

32 Character backgrounds, including vibes-heavy descriptions and burdens.,

Unique city setting in a retro-futuristic, alternate-timeline post-Soviet Communist Poland.,

Artifacts from the Belt. You can't have a condemned government research base without weird artifacts.,

Progression system tied to basebuilding. Want to stitch up those wounds? You better build an Infirmary and find a Doctor. Your Milk Bar is your home base.,

Logistics. Building a community isn't easy: set up trade routes and gather vehicles to set your Milk Bar up for success.,

Rules for exploring supernatural, changing spaces. Steel nuts in hand, stalk the wilderness.,

A Bestiary featuring robotniks and supernatural creatures.,

Pierogi. How many other games have a favourite pieróg table as part of character creation?

Milk Bar is inspired by Roadside Picnic, Annihilation, Stalker, Control, Pacific Drive, Disco Elysium, and Death Stranding.

Full edition coming soon.

You can also grab a text-only, entirely free version at the link below if you want to check it out!

Milk Bar: sci-fi roleplaying in post-Soviet Poland

After Ameripol pushed too hard, cut too many corners, and ignored one-too-many warning lights, The Belt was shorn in half and their sick exp