Trilemma Adventures Bestiary

Trilemma Adventures Bestiary

In my previous post I mentioned the Trilemma Adventure Compendium, available here - Trilemma-Adventures-Compendium-Volume-I. This post will go into more detail about how the Forbidden Lands version of the Bestiary came about.

What is the Trilemma Adventures Bestiary?

This is a long story, so I will try to keep it brief. In May 2019 Michael Prescott of www.trilemma.com ran a kickstarter to publish a compendium of his monthly adventures that have been published on his blog blog.trilemma.com. Michael has been working away at these adventures for quite a few years and was inundated with support, garnering 2,248 backers (unfortunately I wasn't one of them due to the shipping cost of the hardback book to the UK, sorry Michael).

Stretch Goals during the campaign were for Bestiaries of the creatures and beasties that appeared in the adventure compendium, there were individual stretch goals for 5E, Dungeon World and OSR, these stretch goals were smashed like all other stretch goals for the campaign.

Michael could have just done a black and white, quick reference document to fulfill the stretch goals but as well as finishing layout of the Deluxe Compendium, Michael set about commissioning stats, drawing new art and commissioning new cover art.  These bestiaries are moving forward, with the 5E PDF version now up for sale - Trilemma-Adventures-Bestiary-5e.

Ok, so where does the Forbidden Lands Version come from?

Well, I was aware of Trilemma, and the kickstarter, but thats as far as it went. Until late 2019 a post popped up on the Forbidden Lands FB group asking if anyone would be interested on working on a Forbidden Lands bestiary for this book.  I responded in the positive and then actually got in touch with Michael to start the conversation.  Life got in the way and the instigator unfortunately dropped out of the project.

In the meantime I had been working on a few things myself:

• A Forbidden Lands Monster Generator
• A Forbidden Lands Session Generator
• Guidelines for converting 5E to Fbl - 5E to Fbl converter

So I had learnt the intricacies of monster design, and how to convert across monsters between two RPG systems.

As I knew Michael was working on the 5E version of the bestiary I asked for an advance copy that he kindly supplied. I then spent a couple of months using my formulas to roughly convert all the entries.

So, is it just you then?

Definitely not.  As the project moved forward I contacted a few people who had created other things for Forbidden Lands to see if they wanted to work with me on this mammoth project, I also asked for volunteers that previously showed an interest in helping out.

In the end there were four of us working on the project, my good friend Doug Ruff, and two people new to me; Reilly Heijkoop-Logan and Simon Bokvist. We all worked on any entries that took our interest, I also took on the project manager role, and OCD taskmaster. I also have a few additional people looking through the entries and highlighting anything that doesn't work or needs further explanation. They have been really good at calling things out and helping to tighten things up, so thanks to them (you know who you are).

Is Fria Ligan OK with this?

Sure, Michael got in touch with Tomas from Fria Ligan and we have worked something out,  They are kindly giving permission for us to produce the book, as long as they get to see it before it is launched.

What's in the book?

The book contains over 110 (I can't be precise as the number keeps changing) entries of monsters, creatures and humanoids (or Kin in Forbidden Lands speak), and will also include a few artifacts (or oddities in Trilemma speak). It has a load of new art, a new cover and should be pretty awesome once complete.

When is it out?

The Forbidden Lands is going to be the last of the four bestiaries published as Michael rightly wants to complete his kickstarter stretch goals before moving on to do layout of this additional product.  The 5E version has recently been released, next up is the OSR (or B/X) version, the Dungeon Worls version.  My estimate is that the Forbidden Lands version will probably be ready sometime in July, but if Michael has time and I stop tinkering it might be ready a smidge sooner.

How can we get our hands on this?

The intention is to have both a PDF and POD (print on demand) versions up on https://www.drivethrurpg.com/.

How can I be notified?

If you want to be notified about the launch of the Forbidden Lands version or any of the other versions, either subscribe to this blog or better yet subscribe to the Trilemma newsletter by visiting the website.