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Solasta: Worldbuilding an Award-Winning D&D 5e Setting
It all started in 2018, when I was contacted by Mathieu Girard, a game developer based in Paris. I had worked with him briefly some years before, when he was a producer at Ubisoft and he recruited me as a contractor for a third-party game. Since then, he had left Ubisoft, founded Amplitude Studios and sold it to SEGA, and now he was preparing to realize a long-held dream: to create a Dungeons & Dragons video game that would be completely faithful to the game rules and would bring the tabletop experience to the screen without compromises. And he was going to do it using the 5e OGL.
Over the course of a rainy week in December of that year, I met with creative lead Antoine Guillaud and lead game designer Xavier Penin at the offices of the newly-founded Tactical Adventures and we hammered out the basics of the world of Solasta. It was to be a high fantasy world with comparatively low magic, which was slowly returning after a great cataclysm.
Solasta had been a very magical world, dominated by a tyrannical elven empire but populated by many other peoples. It had no humans, no gods, and no clerics – until it collided with Tirmar. That world was Solasta’s opposite in many ways: humans were the only sentient species, and there was no magic except for that provided by gods and their clerics. A rebel god had opened a rift between dimensions, causing the two worlds to smash together; by the time Solasta’s greatest magicians had managed to close the rift, Solasta was studded with parts of Tirmar that had been pressed into it like two colors of clay kneaded together. There were humans, there were gods, and there was divine magic.
The elven empire fell. Whole lands and peoples were re-arranged, and after a century of chaos, a kind of stability was achieved. The area around the rift is still a monster-haunted wasteland, where adventurers search for lost magical treasures among the ruins of the fallen empire. As the new nations jockey for power, such relics are vital. Even as the nations plot against one another, they must face an external threat: the Sorr-Akkath, reptilian shapeshifters dedicated to serving the rebel god, who is trapped on this plane as a result of the cataclysm and plots to return to Tirmar – or whatever is left of it. Widely believed to have been wiped out during the cataclysm, they are becoming active once more, though few people believe they are anything more than a legend.
Solasta: Crown of the Magister was released for PC on Steam in 2021, and as part of the build-up to the game’s launch, a Kickstarter campaign offered a 5e tabletop sourcebook as one of the rewards. It made sense: we had designed everything using that ruleset, so the information was there; the world had been designed in enough detail that the book’s text was 90% ready; and there was a plentiful archive of concept art that we could use as illustration. The only thing TA didn’t have was expertise in laying out and producing a tabletop rpg sourcebook, but I knew someone who did.
At the same time as working on Solasta, I was working with Rookery Publications, an indie tabletop rpg publisher founded by Andy Law, who had been running the WFRP 4th edition line for Cubicle 7, former Games Workshop and Blizzard artist Mark Gibbons, and writers Lindsay Law and Andy Leask. With the Rookery’s help the sourcebook was released, looking every inch a “proper” 5e supplement.
The project had already caught the eye of Wizards of the Coast, who were not expecting anyone to produce a video game using the OGL, let alone a whole setting that straddled electronic and tabletop games. After a brief correspondence through lawyers, it was agreed that the sourcebook could go ahead, so long as it was only distributed to Kickstarter backers.
Crown of the Magister carried on, winning a Pegasus award from the French Academy of Video Game Arts and Technologies in 2022 alongside rave reviews across the board. An XBox version was released, and regular downloadable updates expanded the game and the story.
Relations with Wizards improved, and it was agreed that the sourcebook could be re-issued for public sale. Again thanks to the Rookery, it was revised and updated with new classes, creatures, and other information from the downloadable expansions, and it is now available to all from Modiphius Entertainment. And I couldn’t be happier.
I don’t know whether I’ll ever have the opportunity to return to Solasta, but I’m incredibly proud of what it’s become. Building fantasy worlds is one of my favorite things to do, especially with a great team like the ones at Tactical Adventures and the Rookery.
Links
The Solasta 5e sourcebook PDF on DriveThru (affiliate link)
The Solasta 5e hardback from Modiphius: US | UK
Crown of the Magister on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096530/Solasta_Crown_of_the_Magister/
So there you have it. On Saturday, I’ll return to Advanced Heroquest with the monsters from my 1991 “Advanced Heroquest Undead Supplement” manuscript that didn’t make it into “Terror in the Dark.”
Making Monsters: Chupacabra
Thanks to everyone for your responses to my earlier posts on the Jersey Devil and the Water Leaper. I’m continually developing my system-agnostic monster description format, and I’m grateful to everyone who has helped so far. Soon I hope to make the official #secretprojects announcement and you’ll see what my plans are, and how you can help further. Meanwhile, as always, I would love to know how you think the format could be improved. Let me know in the comments section.
The chupacabra (Spanish: “goat sucker”) is a creature with a fairly short history. According to Wikipedia, it was first reported in Puerto Rico in 1995. Since then, sightings and attacks on livestock have been reported from Maine to Chile and as far afield as Russia and India.
In the real world, the mystery has been solved. The sightings were of coyotes or dogs suffering from severe mange, which altered their normal appearance. I blogged about that some time ago: here’s a link.
In a fantasy or horror setting, though, the Chupacabra could be a completely new kind of creature, just as the various reports suggest. Or one could take a middle-road approach. A Chupacabra was once a dog, a coyote, or some other kind of canid, but it was changed by exposure to toxic waste, or a virus (perhaps the dreaded zombie virus), or through exposure to particular magical energies, or some other force. The possibilities are endless, but I have tried to cover a broad range in this description.
The Chupacabra
Sometimes called goat-suckers, these predators are as big as a medium-sized dog. Their skin is grayish and slightly loose. Their backs are sharply ridged and some have spines erupting from their vertebrae.
They stalk the night, attacking livestock under cover of darkness. They retreat from bright light, and will not normally attack humans unless cornered. However, it has been known for a pack of the creatures to attack a lone child or a sick or wounded traveler.
The bite of a Chupacabra will infect any canid with a virus. Transformation will begin in 24-48 hours and last for 2-3 days. First, the unfortunate victim becomes savage and unpredictable, losing the ability to recognize its former friends and owners. Then it loses its fur and the skin of its face draws back, leaving it with a permanent snarl. Unless shut in somewhere, the new Chupacabra will abandon its former life to join its maker – or to live out the rest of its existence alone.
RANGE
Image by Alvin Padayachee. Wikimedia Commons
Real World: Puerto Rico, North and South America. Normally alone.
Fantasy World: Warm temperate and high desert. Lone or pack (2d6).
TYPE: Animal
SIZE: Small (3ft/1m long)
MOVEMENT
Run: 50 feet (15m) per round
ATTRIBUTES
Strength: Animal, small (e.g. medium dog, coyote, wolf)
Dexterity/Agility: Animal, small (e.g. medium dog, coyote, wolf)
Constitution: Animal, small (e.g. medium dog, coyote, wolf)
Intelligence: Animal, small (e.g. medium dog, coyote, wolf)
Willpower: Animal, small (e.g. medium dog, coyote, wolf)
Hit Points/Health: Animal, small (e.g. medium dog, coyote, wolf)
ATTACKS
Bite: Animal, small to medium (e.g. medium dog, wolf)
WEAKNESSES
Light Sensitivity (Optional): Repelled by daylight and strong light sources.
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Spines (Optional): Sharp spines, up to 1 foot/30 cm long, erupt from the creature’s vertebrae. They confer a slight armor advantage against attacks from that direction. Any character trying to grapple the creature must make an appropriate skill or attribute test (wrestling, dexterity/agility, or similar) each round: failure means the character suffers damage as from a successful dagger or short sword attack.
Virus (Optional): Bite carries a virus, requiring the victim to make a constitution save or similar roll or suffer effects according to their species. Canids begin to transform into Chupacabras. Humans may transform into the humanoid form of the creature (see below). Other species suffer wound infection, fever, and/or other symptoms according to what the chosen game’s rules support.
Undead (Optional): The Chupacabra has all the normal traits and weaknesses associated with corporeal undead in the chosen rule system. If in doubt, use zombies as a model. Its bite carries a form of the zombie virus. If a saving throw vs. disease or other suitable test is failed, a canid will become a Chupacabra and a human or humanoid will become a zombie.
Humanoid Chupacabras
Image by user LeCire. Wikimedia Commons.
A human (or humanoid) bitten by a Chupacabra may be transformed by the virus that the creature carries. All hair falls out, and the skin becomes warty, dry, and scaly – not reptilian as in some artists’ impressions, although it may appear reptilian at a distance in bad light. Eyes become deeply sunk in the sockets, giving an appearance of large, black eyes in poor light. Spines may erupt from the back.
The character’s mental attribute scores drop to the same level as those of a canid Chupacabra, and most mental skills are lost. He or she loses all memories and ceases to recognize friends or family. Fear and hunger are the only drives. All saves against fear suffer a severe penalty (-30 in a percentile system). The victim gains night vision at the same level as a dog or cat, but daylight or equivalent illumination causes severe discomfort and fear.
The unfortunate victim keeps to the shadows, avoiding all kinds of threats and surviving by scavenging and killing small livestock such as chickens, sheep, and goats.
There is no known cure for the condition, either in humans or in animals. Researching the condition and developing a cure will be a very difficult task, requiring a high level of medical and/or traditional healing skills. At the GM’s option, powerful healing or curse-removing magic may be effective.
Graeme Davis 