#vaults of vaarn

[franciscolemos]

Exploring more science-fantasy in strange worlds. Inspired by UVG and Vaults of Vaarn In risogrpah style.

[vintagerpg]

This is the Vaults of Vaarn deluxe edition (2022), which collects material originally published in the first three Vaults of Vaarn zines by Leo Hunt. It is essentially a setting toolkit, but one that operates withing a set of clear aesthetic boundaries.

Vaarn is a post-human world — people are still around, but, they aren’t really recognizable as human anymore. The line between organics and machines is blurry. Ruined arcologies dot the desert. Petty gods and magic compete with science. It’s a very strange, very exciting world defined primarily through random tables that generate the things you find and the folks you encounter in the wasteland. The only conventionally firm details in the book accompany the character types (True-Kin, Synths, Newbeasts, Mycomorphs and Cacogen), some description of the city Gnomon and the handful of example adventure sites. Beyond those borders, Vaarn is infinitely mutable.

The game’s influences are quite focused, to the point that I feel like the era of the game is meant to be considered a late point on a timeline that includes the events of the Dune novels and Wolfe’s New Sun novels — there are archlictors and massive AI gods (all dead, thankfully) and other features that seem like direct references. There’s stuff firmly outside those novels too (what NPCs we encounter feel peculiarly Gormenghast-y; they are also accompanied by advice on how to run them as friends or villains, which is a nice feature).

Vaarn was conceived for Knave, but there is not a ton of system specific material here; you can honestly adapt it to just about any D&D-derived system, lite or otherwise. And you should! Vaarn is the most exciting world to come out of indie RPGs since the Ultraviolet Grasslands.

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played Vaults of Vaarn ?

By Leo Hunt

The sun is dying and the wreckage of countless eons litters the parched wastes of Vaarn, the desolate country that common folk call the blue ruin. It is said that these sky-coloured sands hide the graves of the Autarchs; have swallowed the buried arcologies in which the true seed of humankind was preserved through the Great Collapse; conceal forgotten crypts of memory, decaying crystalline lattices of ancient ego-engines upon which the dusk-blue dunes encroach without pity.

Vaults of Vaarn is a rules-lite osr roleplaying game set in a drug-infused, psychedelic Desert wasteland. Think Jodorowsky's Dune meets Mad Max at the Burning Man Festival. All of which framed in a blue painting by Moebius. A surreal and colourful world; a post-apocalyptic, post-human landscape, where the dividing line between flesh and machinery has blurred and the borders between magic, science, and faith have likewise become obscured.

Have you played ?

Yes i have played it

no but I've read it

no but I've heard of it

never heard of it

Voting ended onMar 5

[dandibuja]

I tire of playing Autarchs of old, my friend! Next time I should be a gallant knight on a quest to rescue his lady love!

A behind-the-scenes sequel to this illustration I did years ago.

[acrisius-ii]

vaults of vaarn had this really good system for making weapons where instead of choosing from a preselected list of items where you could choose what kinda flavor you had on it, you instead rolled on a table-- first was for aspect (something like Leaden, Gilded, Gnarled, etc.) then form (spear, sword, dagger, etc.) then profile (mechanical damage, how many slots it takes up)

In some ways, maybe bad. You don't get the choice of exactly what type of weapon you want, it might not fit with your character, it might be too goofy. So for the average high fantasy heartbreaker with OCs and such, it may fall a little flat.

In the sort of madcap world of Vaults of Vaarn, however...

The randomness of these tables lends a real nice flavor to the world as a whole, because you're playing a weirdo in a world of weirdos. character weapons feel strange because you are strange.

Anyways, I could see that type of system work pretty good for a medieval levy game where you're a volunteer levy fighting for your local lord with borrowed weapons, or maybe a crime game where the weapons you get from the black market have some... after-purchase modifications made by previous owners. You know, the corpses the vultures picked them off of.

[chaosgrenade]

Putting this intent out there, as a sort of an early 2023 Gamer Resolution: When friends pressure me to run D&D in any flavor, I'll fucking run Vaults of Vaarn. It's such an evocative setting -- you want weird sci-fantasy? This is the good stuff. It's the right balance of gonzo, mysterious, silly in place and grim in others. So many lush tables, such macabre encounters. Leo Hunt has written one of my favorite "dying world" games. Check it out for yourself.

[dandibuja]

Deep in the wastes of Vaarn, a Sourcerer bargains with a Quantum Daemon

[dandibuja]

Gaudy jewel of Vaarn’s southern badlands, the city of a thousand shaded bazaars, a thirsty, bustling morass of dusty courtyards and guild halls and artisans’ workshops. If there is something to be sold in Vaarn, then Gnomon is the place to buy it. Everything within the crumbling blue walls of the city has a price: water, food, song, love, and death.