Geektopia Games have released a free version of Fearsome Wilderness: The Roleplaying Game.
The two authors, Matt Cross and Ian Baaske, are calling it a trial version, but it’s actually a preview. It’s not a trial like a computer game and shouldn’t expire after a certain number of days, and it is a sample of a larger game.
The trial version of Fearsome Wilderness is a generous sample, though, and weighs in at 158 pages. That’s more than enough to bring the Zero Year Engine powered RPG to life and give you a good idea of the core rules when they’re ready.
Marooned on an overgrown planet choked with forest and wildlife, you’re forced to hack out your existence by the sharpness of your axe. No people live here, no civilization. Only you, woodland animals, and other things lurking just outside the edges of your perception. Creatures of legend and folklore, their shapes dart between the darkened trees. You can’t help but tremble as their unwholesome howls fill the night.
Fearsome Wilderness does not just include a setting – a wild planet – but a situation – prisoners escaped from a crashed ship – as the default for the game.
While there are monstrous creatures in the wilds surrounding the crash site, there’s another horror the PCs must face. Long-term hibernation can mess with the mind, and it’s this that the characters have been so dramatically pulled.
The game’s cover art certainly seems to suggest its other prisoners and perhaps a warden or two that PCs might well want to worry about!
Included in the preview are;
- Character creation guides for 6 of the 16 Archetypes
- 6 pre-made character sheets
- A gamemaster section
- The Wilderness Map with hexagons designating Sectors to explore
- A prologue scenario to introduce players to the characters and setting
- 3 wilderness location scenarios to investigate, one of which holds clues to the game’s plot twists and endings
- 11 of the 25 critters that players may encounter in the wilderness
- 11 of the 36 interaction nightmares for characters to experience, along with the game’s rules for all 8 Nightmare Levels.
- Over 50 potential projects to upgrade the character’s shelter
- Quick reference charts that can randomly generate wilderness Sectors
It’s funny how quickly life can change.
Take what just happened to you. You were peacefully hibernating in suspended animation, your prison sentence on pause, while civilization figured out what to do with you in its increasingly overpopulated communities.
Your hopes of one day waking up in utopia were dashed as you found yourself groggy and aboard a dingy prison transport ship, handcuffed, bound for a penal colony planet called Xanathia.
The game is inspired by Richard Proenneke, a self-educated naturalist, conservationist, writer and wildlife photographer who built and lived in a log cabin near Twin Lakes.
Quick Links
- Free preview of Fearsome Wilderness: The Roleplaying Game.
Replying to other comments to this article with helpful observations can boost your karma.
