Month: September 2021

Thoughts on A Thousand Thousand Islands (Upper Heleng & Korvu)

by goobernuts

I regret not buying Zedeck Siew and Mun Kao’s zines earlier. Once I picked one up, I could not put it down. Must be some powerful magic involved in crafting these worlds.

For the uninitiated, A Thousand Thousand Islands is a series of zines detailing various adventure settings and prompts, all inspired by and based on South East Asian legend and myths. The text itself is not long; only a few paragraphs and even just sentences are given to describe places, characters, items, and concepts. Still, Zedeck Siew’s few words evoke such vibrant worlds.

The spaces in between the text are filled with the beautiful line art of Mun Kao. With the minimal text and the black and white illustrations, each zine is so easy to digest and jump into.

With my tight budget, I only got to buy two zines, Upper Heleng and Korvu, because they seemed like the ones most relevant to the setting I’m writing. I’ll definitely buy the other zines in the series in the future!

Upper Heleng is a forest in a relationship with time, space demons, and giant leeches that steal different parts of your identity. Korvu is a sea-bound kingdom with fish sauce demons, geese kept as dogs, jellyfish parasites in host bodies, and marriage between captains and ships.

Perhaps my most favorite thing about these places are the myths connected to them. In Upper Heleng, the Forest and Time are married, so Time is a motif the zine goes back to again and again. The seasons of man and states of being are called different Times. To be wise and elderly is to be in the Time of the Monkey. To be free is to be in the Time of the Kite, and to be duty-bound is to be in the Time of the Dog.

My favorite one is the Time of the Bee. It’s a wonderful South East Asian allegory for the harvest season.

The myth behind Korvu is one of a boastful King who challenged the Sea and lost, becoming its vassal forever. Their years are split into the Rainy and Dry Seasons. In the Rainy Season, they live on barges, boats, and floating houses. They travel the seas in war and trade. But come Dry Season, they go back to their Kingdom, which has now completely dried up. It is now time to settle and farm.

These settings come with boatloads of prompts and seeds for adventures. One could help a boatwright retrieve the materials demanded by picky boat souls for them to inhabit a warbarge. One could help a prince look for the Leechspawn that has his Liege’s face. Though I think exploring and immersing yourself in these magical places is an adventure in itself. A generous amount of random tables, each with interesting entries, make every encounter different.

In my setting based on the 16th century Philippines, I made an allowance for foreigners aside from its colonizers to have a presence in my setting. If my players would want to visit a foreign nation, I would place them in these places detailed in A Thousand Thousand Islands. If only I can get a campaign started…

Creating a 16th Century Philippines-inspired D&D World – Ships and Naval Vessels

by goobernuts

My setting is an archipelago, it’s islands and people are surrounded and connected by the Sea. So of course I would need a nice collection of naval vessels to populate these waters. It’s nothing extensive, but a good place to start.

The Baroto is a dugout canoe carved from one piece of wood. There are smaller boats but one that can carry the whole party seems like a good baseline.

The Paraw has a range of boat sizes, but it pertains to boats that have double outriggers. For my use, they will pertain to fishing vessels with outriggers and sails; boats that can support a dozen or more people, but not equipped for war.

A smaller Paraw

The Balangay is perhaps the most well-known type of ship in Philippine history. We were taught in elementary that our ancestors sailed to these islands on Balangays. From Balangay came Barangay, which is used to call villages.

In my setting, the Balangay is a ship with outriggers and sails, but larger than the Paraw. Large enough to have platforms for detachments of warriors and sea raiders to shoot arrows or spears from.

A smaller Balangay

The Karakoa is the warship of the ancient Filipinos. Larger than the Balangay, with even more room for warriors and platforms on the outriggers themselves. On these platforms sit up to 40 slaves on each side, who would row in sync and increase the speed of the vessel.

This is what the Spaniards had to say about the Karakoa: “The care and technique with which they build them makes their ships sail like birds, while ours are like lead in comparison.”

A Karakoa illustration from W.H. Scott’s Barangay

The last type of naval vessel is not something that can be bought on the islands. It is the Galleon, based on the ships that the Spaniards used to circumnavigate the globe. They were ships made for hauling product and trade, but were also drafted for use in naval wars. This means they weren’t a slouch in combat, and compared to the firepower of the Balangay or Karakoa, they are beasts on the Sea.

The arrays of cannons the Galleon had could (and did) overwhelm anything the ancient Filipinos had. They were even used to bombard river-side and sea-side settlements, softening the battlefield before the colonizer forces entered the banks.

The Galleon

If it sounds like that gives too big of an advantage to the colonizers of the setting, then good. The Sun Priests of my setting shouldn’t be a pushover, or else why should they be here. The colonizer problem is not mine as the GM, but my players’ problem to solve and overcome, if they so want.

Creating a 16th Century Philippines-inspired D&D World – Barangay and NPC Generator

by goobernuts

Last week I shared the Treasure Horde drop table that I made, based on The Black Hack’s idea. I mentioned that The Black Hack had another kind of generator that I’m really fond of, which is the One-Roll Generator. I’m so fond of them that I made generators for creating Barangays or villages and NPCs for my setting based on them.

The Black Hack wasn’t the only system I took ideas from. Godbound and Worlds Without Number also have great generators and random tables that served as guidelines for me. The generators I made are not perfect and go back to tweak the tables every now and then, but here they are.

Barangay Generator

Let’s talk about a few things here.

I got the numbers for the population sizes from my college history textbook. The book said that villages and settlements vary in population sizes, going from around 50 to 2000 heads. I used that range as a basis for the first three sizes.

Pueblo is what I used to refer to colonies of the Sun Priests. In real life, the Spanish forced nearby tribes and villages to live under their protection and to center their lives around the church. This is why Pueblos in my setting are just more populated than your usual Barangay. And with this, I won’t need an extra roll to see if a Barangay is colonized, the size determines it.

1 out of 4 Barangays are under Sun Priest control, which sounds about right for my setting.

The Predominant Ancestry table is more for flavor than anything.

I added a Diplomatic Relationships table there because I want a sort of web of relationships between nearby Barangays. Relations of chiefdoms and tribes of the Ancient Philippines were impermanent. A lot of Barangays were independent, with loose federatioms between Datus (aside from the Sultanate in Mindanao I think?), there is a web of trade and war over the islands. I don’t know if I’ll achieve this web with this single table, but it’s a start. I’ll take any suggestion for improvement though, haha.

I really like the idea of a Special Defense table like in Godbound. It creates a lot of variety. Different Barangays would respond to threats differently, and it gives each Barangay a sort of showing of strength. Aside from the ones that get “Fleeing to Caves”, that is.

Godbound and World Without Number both have a table for Pressing Issues or something like it. I think it’s a great idea. It could be a prompt for a quest if players decide to do something about it.

NPC Generator

In the Social Caste table, I made Oripun more likely than the others, because rather than being straight up slaves, I think they were more of an existence in between slave and commoner, or something like a commoner with debt. So it makes sense to me that there will be more or them than a Timawa or Free Man. “Unaffiliated with a Barangay” makes for hermits and others who live apart from other people (or maybe a Timawa looking for a Barangay to devote himself to?)

I added Other-Folk in the Ancestry table because I really like the idea of bloodsucking Aswang or prideful Dambuhala living amongst other people. What are their lives in a village like? How do they achieve harmony?

The Relationship with Barangay table is an attempt to achieve with one table what The Black Hack does with their “How NPCs are Related” table. It might be too simple to do that, so I’ll have to go back to this later on.

The Odd Source of Power table is an idea from Godbound. It’s not all martial power or fighting prowess, because knowledge and connections can give advantages and different ways of solving problems too.

I had fun making the Goals table. The Barangay may be in trouble, but everyone also has their own thin g to deal with. And just like the Pressing Issues table for the Barangay, it could be a spark for a quest if the players decide to follow it.

Creating a 16th Century Philippines-inspired D&D World – Treasure Hoard Generator

by goobernuts

The Black Hack is a system and resource I go back to from every now and then. It has a lot of very neat ideas; for example, the Usage Die mechanic is one that I really like, especially for tracking ammunition.

Another thing I like from that book is its generators. It has one-roll generators, in which you roll one of each polyhedral dice aside from the d20 all at the same time to generate a settlement or NPCs, etc. I’m not sure if The Black Hack first used that concept, but it’s where I first saw that kind of generator.

There is another kind of generator from The Black Hack that I thought was a great idea is the drop table. There is a drop table for settlement buildings, for example, which is a whole page of sketches of buildings and establishments from a top-down perspective. You drop a number of d4s (the amount depending on the size of the settlement itself) on the table and whatever buildings the dice drops on, that’s what the settlement has. I think it’s a fun concept.

It also has a drop table for treasure, and that’s what I based this generator on. Here is a drop table treasure horde generator, based on what I think would be valuable in 16th Century Filipino society.

It has jewelry and gold, because ancient Filipinos LOVE their bling. It has textiles and clothes. It has foodstuffs and animal parts. It has broken weapons and old iron stuff, for melting down and making new weapons. It has imported stuff, like brass gongs. And it has items that should be normally found in a Barangay, but blinged up.

I might not actually use this generator as is because of it’s lack of “chance for magic consumables/items”, but I’ll still be able to use it for valuables ideas. At least I didn’t think up 72 valuable items for nothing. It was a challenge but it was also fun.