One day master Liù asked his student: what’s the sound a single d20
makes in your hand? The student could not reply. That same evening
the student saw master Liù rolling 2d6 at the gaming table and was
enlightened.
Not long ago, I noticed that the spectre of plagiarism was raising its head again. Oh no! Here's Marcia:
Just over a year ago, I heard whispers that Unconquered plagiarized
locations, encounters, and setting-elements from previous, more
prominent science-fantasy setting books: *Ultraviolet Grasslands and
the Black City* by Luka Rejec (2020), and *Vaults of Vaarn* by Leo
Hunt (2021). This was very frustrating on one hand, but I also
missed doing critical analysis of texts. Seeking justice and wanting
to exercise my little gray cells, I challenged myself to produce an
intensive comparison of these texts as well as a history of how
*Unconquered* developed. – Plagiarism in Unconquered
(2022)
Plagiarism in Unconquered (2022)
I read Luca's post on the topic, too.
The broader solution, beyond any one case, is for all of us to
promote, encourage and celebrate artists and writers, designers and
all the people whose creativity inspires us. I know this from my
experience and heart. – On Creative
Theft
That reminded me that I have a copy of the Ultraviolet Grasslands 1.8 on my bookshelf. And I started reading again… It really is like a *colour spray* spell cast right into your brain. I remember now why I felt unable to run it. It was vague. It had inspiration but no foundation. I wanted rooms, characters, quests, and this was just pictures and words. But this time, it was different.
I had played and run some Classic Traveller. And as recently discussed Traveller on the Internet Office Hours Podcast, prep for a typical Traveller game might involve an A5 page page of scribbling at most. Your ideas are being generated as you fill the subsector with text. And my take-away was that I needed more patrons in my game.
So… suddenly it seemed like playing Ultraviolet Grasslands was a go. It wouldn’t be a game like the games I run with Halberds & Helmets with a mapped environment. I still have a bunch of non-player characters I prepare ahead of time, with (some) stats and an agenda, but there is also a lot of improvisation. There are daydreams of buildings and environments but no exact maps.
I'm going to give this a try! Let's play Ultraviolet Grasslands with Fantasy Traveller.
If you're interested, let me know!
Resources:
The game starts all the way to the east and it gets weirder the further west you go.
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#RPG #2d6 #Halberts #UVG