Travellers On A Red Road

Travellers on a Red Road
What is this game about?

22ND JANUARY 2019 ~ LUKAS
Travellers on a Red Road is, as has been mentioned, a flintlocks and sorcery game.
But what does it mean? The contents of the game will support the following:
Exploration- and fiction-focused gaming: This game is focused on having
characters explore the setting, with the players interacting with the fictional world.
This also means that there are certains thing that is doesn’t do. To preserve the
suspense in exploration, I have opted to forgo mechanisms that let players take over
out-of-character narrative functions. Likewise, to focus on interaction with the
fictional world, the game doesn’t focus on system mastery or complex tactical
subsystems to any significant degree.
Weird, non-Eurocentric fantasy: The setting of the game takes its inspiration from
many areas, but mostly the parts of the world surrounding the northern Pacific Ocean,
from the Nootka Sound to Manchuria. However, it isn’t an attempt to recreate any
specific culture, but rather a general inspiration for a setting whose technological level
is loosely reminiscent of Renaissance Europe or Song China. This is combined with
tropes from the weird fantasy genre; when describing monsters, magic, and other
supernatural phenomena, I have opted to aim for the unfamiliar rather than the
commonplace.
Compact, flexible rules: Travellers on a Red Road uses a simple rules system that
can easily be expanded or contracted depending on need. Running the game on the fly
is not too complicated, and neither is creating new subsystems if one should so desire.
The game contains a number of such subsystems to provide examples, such as
combat, sorcery, travel, downtime, and so on.
Character creation grounded in the setting: With a setting that uses unfamiliar
influences, it is important that players do not find this too intimidating. Therefore, the
character creation process is designed to let players discover the setting bit by bit.
Each step of the procedure is potentially random, but with different options balanced
against each other. This makes rolling an entirely random character just as viable as
picking and choosing what to play.
A dynamic setting: Kalaga, the region the game is set in, is changing: rulers seek to
centralise power, philosophers question traditions, popular uprisings shake the
foundations of society. The book contains many different factions for the players to
ally with, struggle against, or play off against each other.
Upcoming post will delve a bit more into details from the rules and the setting.
Influences
29TH JANUARY 2019 ~ LUKAS
Writing a game means looking at the tings that have influenced you: what is it I like
about them, how do I recreate it, and how do I make it fit together? Travellers on a
Red Road is influenced by any number of games and my experiences with these.
An important part of the influence comes from the OSR movement, especially the less
orthodox parts of it (i.e., the ones not married to conventional fantasy or antiquarian
recreation of rulesets) – what Patrick Stuart has referred to as “artpunk OSR”. If any
specific products stands out as inspiring me it’s Yoon-Suin, with its complex setting
utilising parts of history that are not frequently at the centre of attention in RPG
products. I’m not doing straight-up OSR, though: while some of the principles inform
the game design, and I greatly enjoy OSR gaming, class and level systems aren’t
actually my preference.
Other influences on my setting writing has come from blogs such as Straits of
Anián and Against the Wicked City, who both touch upon my main sources of real-
world inspiration, the Pacific Northwest and Siberia. Reign and Empire of the Petal
Throne also have wonderfully inspiring settings that have provided some impulses in
the creation of this game.
Apocalypse World has been a big influence on my writing in the past, and whatever
embryo of a game started this project was more or less a pared-down gritty AW hack
in the veins of Ghost Lines. However, a lot of my process over the years has consisted
of removing artifacts from this that don’t really work with the more traditional style
I’m aiming for.
The grittyness of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has always appealed to me, so I
wanted to reflect this in my game. The protagonists are desperate paupers,
opportunistic scoundrels or disgraced nobles, not heroic figures destined for greatness.
Some Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu can also be found in the game’s DNA.
To make a game, then, I have attempted to take what I enjoy about all these sources,
as well as many more, and define what makes it work. Creating a framework that
encompasses all of this without turning it into a patchwork monstrosity has been
among the most interesting parts of this project.
Organisations
30TH JANUARY 2019 ~ LUKAS
The setting of Travellers on a Red Road, Kalaga, is an area with many different
organisations that are likely to play an important role in your future adventures. Crime
syndicates, philosophical movements, trading companies, secret cults, and many
others all make an appearance. Today, we have a preview of three of these
organiations, alongside some art by our illustrator Filip Petersson.
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What is this game about?

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