It’s finally here! Starting today, you can sign up for the Far Away Land 10th Anniversary Kickstarter pre-launch. If you are interested in being notified when the project launches on August 6th 2024, you can sign up here. 

If you’re familiar with Far Away Land from the original rules or the different expansion books (all of which met their individual Kickstarter goals), you know that we are verified Gold sellers on DriveThru RPG and have a 5-star rating. If you’re not familiar, then all you need to know is that we deliver what we promise - not just on Kickstarter but at the table where you can be assured of an awesome time with friends. 

Far Away Land is a rules-lite, fantasy & sci-fi tabletop role-playing game that is set in a quirky, colorful, serious and sometimes absurd world that is also filled with a deep lore and dangerous threats. The gameplay is designed so that new players can jump in alongside experienced gamers and begin creating stories as they explore the world, confront monsters and villains, set and achieve goals, and (most important of all), enjoy themselves.

One post topic I wanted to revisit as we get closer to the Kickstarter launch, especially for people who may have missed it the first time around is the revised action system for the Second Edition. There is a fine balance between too crunchy and not crunchy enough when it comes to actions in an RPG, and I have always felt like FAL rides that fence pretty well. That said, the actions in the original FAL have long bothered me because I came to feel they lacked elegance. In the First Edition, different actions used different amounts of action points. For example, an attack might use 2 actions while sheathing a weapon might use one. Casting a spell might use three or more. This has always seemed fiddly and overly complex for a game like FAL (especially with opponents who have 8,9,10+ Actions). How many actions to get up after a fall? How many to cartwheel down these stairs? It’s tedious for the sake of tedium. Live and learn.

Granularity can add some nuance and strategy to combat (how will I spend my points?), but in the 2nd Edition, actions have been simplified. Most PCs begin with 2 actions and basic things like an attack, bluff, grapple, shove, etc. use a single action while more complex things like spells, aiming a shot, complicated tasks, etc., use two or more actions. The main goal in this revision was to simplify the action system so that players and GMs no longer needed to reference a chart. Less referencing leads to faster gameplay and FAL is meant to be fast. Strategy still exists in combat without the referencing and math required to keep track of multiple actions and costs.

 

 Announcement! The Far Away Land Kickstarter will live on Tuesday, August 6th. The campaign will run for 30 days. We are offering up a nice mix of rewards for various tastes and budgets.We will detail all of the rewards with specifics in an upcoming post. For now, just know that rewards will feature books in both physical and digital format, GM support materials, a digital set of generators, and Kickstarter Backer’s only rewards made available exclusively through the project. Can’t wait to share all of this!

 

You may have noticed in a few posts I sometimes use “we” when talking about the parts of Far Away Land and the upcoming books. It might feel like a royal “we,” but it’s actually more specific. For the last year I have had someone working alongside me on Far Away Land. Their help has come in many forms including scheduling social media posts, helping me focus and prioritize tasks, proofreading various drafts, generating ideas, talking through the structure for the 2nd Edition, etc. They also helped me get back into running games. In addition to all things mentioned here, they have been a tremendous help and creative influence on the Book of Lore, having written many of the stories, inspired much of the art, or created text based off the art I provided. I say all of this in the interest of transparency and as a reminder that collaboration (between creators, or even between players and GMs) can be a great thing. This has been a massive project and having someone to work alongside has taken off much of the stress and made the entirety of the journey more exciting.

 

Following up on the post of the Core Rules Cover: Another of the available books in the upcoming Kickstarter will be Bestiary I which features 350 creature entries. This book compiles creatures found in the Tome of Awesome, Creatures Vol. 1 and 2, Seas of FAL, and some entries from Adventures in the Materiosphere. Here’s the cover that features a Velveteen Worm and some wormknappers!

 

I posted an image of the Enchiridion of Awesome cover last month. That book contains both the core rules and the bestiary and comes in around 470 pages. But, folks will have the option to get the core rules and the bestiary as separate books as well. Here is the working cover of the core rules.

For those who may be unfamiliar with Far Away Land, I wanted to share some notes on where it currently resides in the gaming landscape. On DriveThruRPG, the Tome of Awesome (which is the core rulebook for the First Edition of the game) is a Gold bestseller with a 5-star rating. In addition to the Core Rules, each of the expansion books are Silver or Gold sellers, also with 5-star ratings. Along with these ratings and sales are a handful of reviews from various places, each of which praised Far Away Land’s design, mechanics, and aesthetics. And there are a bunch of free adventures that support the game. 

My goal with the Second Edition is to continue this trend. My company, Simian Circle Games, is small and until the last year, has consisted only of myself doing all writing, design, layout, art, etc. My goal with Second Edition is to create an awesome game, to build an awesome fantasy world that feels new and unique and fun, to swallow the viewer in visuals and artwork and lore that makes them interested in something I have spent so many hours creating. Far Away Land is my passion project. I love the FAL universe, and with the Second Edition, I hope this love and passion shows through and extends to others who have taken the time to get to know the game and the world.