For a little while now, I've had a powerful itch for a certain type of game. The simplest way to describe it is that I'm craving a Zelda-like, which - like all good genre terms - becomes completely useless the moment you put any thought into it. So what exactly am I getting at?
Well, I don't necessarily mean an official Legend of Zelda ttrpg, or a fan project which is intended to be run in the Zelda setting. Either of those things would be fine, but it's not a necessary criteria for the game I want.
Neither do I necessarily want a game which seeks to emulate the mechanics of a Zelda video game. I have a lot of opinions about adapting video game mechanics to the tabletop, which we'll come to in due time, but for now it will suffice to say that any game which attempts to translate the gameplay of a video game into ttrpg form isn't to my taste, and probably won't fit the mold.
Thirdly and finally, I don't think a Zelda game needs to be a trad game. I like trad games, and I think that the Zelda franchise is perfect for just such a format, but as we'll see, there are plenty of ways to handle it in interesting, experimental ways.
As an additional piece of groundwork, I want to make a couple things clear. Firstly - this little adventure should absolutely be understood as me recommending games to you, if you're reading this. I might dislike some design choices that others make, and I might decide that a given game isn't for me, but if I talk about a game here it's because I think it's worth talking about, and worth playing if you think it fits with you and/or your table's tastes.
Finally, this series will also be an opportunity to promote my own work. It goes without saying that I've been making my own ongoing contributions to the field, and I happen to think that so far I've done a decent enough job. So at various points, I'll be talking about, and even linking to, games I've published that I think do the kinds of things I'm looking for in other titles.
Let's get to it then, shall we?
