AAJ Interview Series 3: Forlorn Skulk
The third installment in the AAJ interview series is with Forlorn Skulk, who blogs at forlornskulk.blogspot.com/ and has an itch store at forlornskulk.itch.io.
Skulk joined the jam fairly late but ended up writing a richly detailed region with over 150 hexes. I'm a really big fan of his "Moebian Directorate", which we discuss in the interview. He also contributed a large number of excellent rooms to the collaborative AXIS MUNDI dungeon at the south pole.
Map of the Tiger Coast drawn by Hags
Idraluna: What is your ttrpg background? How did you get started, and what games are you playing today?
Forlorn Skulk: Wild story actually: I remember visiting my mum's friend's place and hanging out in their kid’s room reading their AD&D books. The kid wasn't there at the time, and a bit older than me, so I just assumed playing D&D was extremely cool. This was in New Zealand and since then I've sort of deduced that that kid was probably Scrap World. Scrap World, hmu. Let's collaborate - we're practically childhood friends.
But I didn't actually play until my late teens. I ran a 3E session with two friends in my hometown. I distinctively remember the one guy showing up really sweaty and saying “I can't tell if my sweat smells like weed”, and at some point in the game he said “I get my dick out and put it on the monster”. A lot of my D&D experiences were like this.
Remember when your two choices were to play with knucklehead friends, or to try the lucky dip of meeting random weirdos in person? I played 3E and 4E with some straaange people.
Eventually I took a long break and only got back into it during the pandemic. I DM’d 13th Age for a bunch of friends on Discord, and tried running the module UK1: Beyond the Crystal Cave for them. That's what got me interested in playing old school systems. I could feel that modern systems weren't allowing our table to properly interface with the module as it was intended.
Now I mainly play OSE and MoSh. I'm running a weekly OSE campaign set in and around the area described in UK2 and UK3.
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Idraluna: That's wild!
Moving on to your AAJ entry, what tools did you use to write it? Were there any random tables or writing techniques that you found particularly useful?
Forlorn Skulk: Writing up all those hexes was an endurance race. I used loads of different techniques to keep myself going. For generating the basics of the hexes, I used Into the Wild by Third Kingdom Games, and a bit of the Wolves Upon the Coast Hexfil procedure. But that only gives you the basics, you still have to make it make sense, and there's only so many abandoned towers with a random monster that you can be arsed to write up.
So, I also tried to think about overarching themes for the chunks of land. There's a conflict between a native society and an expansionist colony, if players want to get involved in a more political campaign. Then there's two distinct untamed wildernesses that the players can just go and romp around in if they want something more explorative. Having that framework helped me get a bit more specific.
Another good technique is asking your girlfriend who doesn't play RPGs at all to make up some hexes. She riffed, I detailed them.
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Idraluna: That expansionist colony is one of the things I wanted to ask about -- one of your regions concerns The Moebians, a quasi-totalitarian society with an economic system based on a convoluted derivatives market. Aside from the obvious (how on earth did you come up with that?), I'm curious about your thought process for writing hexes for this kind of regimented society where more conventional hexcrawl adventures are less apt.
Forlorn Skulk: The Antarctica setting is wide open for interpretation. That gave me the confidence to explore outside of the regular fantasy constraints.
Current world events inspired me to explore themes of colonisation. The Moebians are borrow from Moebius’ The World of Edena. But I added a lot of weird elements on-top of that too. I thought the arbitrary nature of how derivatives make investors money would help reinforce how blockheaded the Moebians are. Almost none of them understand why they're doing anything that they do. The profit incentive of the derivatives is driving them double down on environmental destruction and warfare.
But as you identified, none of that makes for very exciting hex crawling! So I added “fallow zones” - zones the Moebians avoid because they’ve farmed them to the brink of environmental collapse. The borders of those zones are guarded and the zones themselves contain dangers and treasures. I also tried to give each Moebian town some sort of intrigue or local danger to get involved in.
Plus, the players can buy derivatives themselves and make bets on certain things happening in-world (crops being destroyed, merchants not making it to their destination) and there’s nothing stopping them from meddling with those odds…
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Idraluna: Buying (or being referee during the sale if) a Moebian derivative is 1000% on my Antarctica bucket list.
If you were to do it over again, or write another large hexcrawl in the same vein, is there anything you'd do differently or any lessons you'd draw from writing the Tiger Coast?
Forlorn Skulk: I'd probably schedule in time to do it rather than binge writing and neglecting everything else!
It would also be cool to run a hexcrawl and write it at the same time. I think that would lead to something very immersive.
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Idraluna: Yeah, that would be really cool. It will be interesting to hear from EvilTables, who (I think) went the farthest in the build-while running direction.
One thing that I really appreciate about your contribution to the jam is that you joined relatively late but really embraced the collaborative aspect and brought a lot of energy into those last few months. Do you have any tips for people joining an collaboration that has already accreted a lot of material?
Forlorn Skulk: Yeah, I still really want to play in their game sometime. But the time zones are punishing. And cheers, I think that's also down to the quality of the jam, and the people taking part in it. It's a very collaborative environment where everyone's cheering on each other's ideas. Plus there was the "stuff-swap" channel where the whole point was to drop in little tidbits for others to integrate into their region - items, monsters, characters etc. And towards the end of this round of jamming we had "adopt-an-idea" where you could leave half baked ideas for others to run with. I think anyone doing a collaborative jam should include that sort of channel to encourage interconnectivity.
In general though I think if you're joining in on the Antarctica Jam, or any other collab that is already underway: try and understand the vibe, and then see if you can plug into anything that's already happening. I was just always thinking about how cool it would be for players to organically find connections between different areas and factions. The denser the network of connections is, the richer a hex crawl feels. And cheer people on when they share something as well. That way it snowballs.
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Idraluna: The penultimate question I'm asking everybody: of the hexes you wrote for Tiger Coast, which are your favorites?
Forlorn Skulk: I can't pick a favourite child, but how about a little itinerary for aspiring adventurers:
Let's start in the Moebian Directorate. You won't want to miss the bustling glass tower of the NAAED market (337-368). Place bets on a coming catastrophe and don't be surprised when a brawl breaks out in the waiting line: It's all part of the local colour.
Head knorth into Big Mesa Country (331-367) where the Vinsaahri elders are debating how to drive back the Moebian settlers. Oops… One of your hirelings stumbled upon a sacred site and touched the 9th Bezoire. She saw an endless sea of salt - the vision somehow painful, as if it exposed a psychic nerve. Godda go!
Eestwards to the Fire Scorn Mountains. The appropriately named Ice Giant Fortress (333-370) is home to 55 ice giants who are known for their gargantuan methamphetamine consumption habits. The gate of the ramshackle fortress bursts open and 55 enormous leather clad madmen burst out atop 55 gorgons. They ride into the sunset, destination unknown. I hope they locked up all their treasure... Hey where are you going?
I haven’t even shown you the Dark Atomic Forest yet: sentient mycelium networks, abandoned riverling villages, a dragon bone mecha, and a nuclear missile silo with the potential to wipe out entire hexes. Oh well, another time.
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Idraluna: Fantastic. Last question: aside from your blog and itch, any projects or links you'd like to plug?
Forlorn Skulk: Nope. https://forlornskulk.blogspot.com and https://forlornskulk.itch.io are where you'll find me 🙂