#roleplayinggames

One week until we launch!

I was looking through the Yeld rulebook trying to choose some monsters for my next game, and I kind of got lost in how much I like our monsters. I know this is a little bit of bragging. I did all the art for the game, and my brother and I wrote all the monsters, so its like "hey, isn't this thing I made so cool?" But... Hey, aren't these monsters so cool? Part of it is, of course, that I'm designing the exact kind of monsters I want to see. No wonder I like them! Anyway, please indulge me while I share my 5 favorite Yeld monsters!

The Shipwrecker Queen: A kaiju sized mermaid with squid hair who eats ships? I like her a lot! I designed her for the Yeld Summer Collection, which was a set of odds and ends content that we released a few years ago. My idea was that these giant mermaids support the armies of the Deep as living war engines who destroy enemy warships and sink fleets. I think at first she was going to be a giant squid? This is better.

Big Bad Beetle Boss: A crime boss in the Bug Mafia! This guy shows up as a Boss Monster in our Rank 1 Adventure Set. In that adventure the Friends are witnesses in a trial against some dangerous Spelling Bees. This guy bursts out of the floor in the middle of the court room and skewers the prosecutor! I really love the idea of an insect crime syndicate!

Witch Cult Priest: The Elves of Yeld are cats. They were banished deep under Yeld's surface after starting a war that almost ended the world. Elves are absolute maniacs, and while they aren't individually evil they come from a pretty crappy society built on oppression and hatred. The Elves we meet in Yeld all seem to be little murderous turds. They worship a long dead Witch named Jan Hoddan, who gave them hands and the power to build horrible war machines. I really like this drawing. I was trying to kind of do a Conan the Barbarian style cultist, and I think it works. She looks absolutely deranged, like she would very happily cut out your heart as a sacrifice to her Witch God. Just like every cat I know. You can find her in the Elves of Yeld expansion.

Hasatch: We didn't really create the Hasatch. We stole it from the internet. Do you remember? It was like a weird meme monster from the early 2000s? I always liked it. Its so dumb looking. I don't know if the original intent was that its head looks like a dong, but unfortunately every time I draw it that's what it looks like. Hasatch fit into Yeld really well. They're big and dumb and smelly, and no one likes them. And they eat everything. This illustration is from the Yeld rulebook.

The Facetoother: Nick and I write and design everything for Yeld. Except we have a monthly event where our fans can create new monsters. The Facetoother is one of those monsters, a creature that sneaks into your bedroom while you sleep to steal your teeth! I really like the art for this dude. He's very weird and creepy! He appears as a free monster on the Yeld Patreon.

Let me tell you about the characters of The Magical Land of Yeld! Yeld characters are called Friends. They're kids form our world who have discovered a secret door to a magical land, and then gotten stuck there. There are 10 canonical Friends that we use in the stories, comics and illustrations you'll find in our books.

Naomi, the Princess (She/Her)

Naomi was actually MY Yeld character in the very first game we ran, back when all the Yeld rules fit in a 10 page PDF. Naomi comes from a pretty wealthy family. She's a little wound up, and can be kind cruel without meaning to be. She doesn't WANT to hurt her Friends, but she sometimes says things that are mean without realizing it, and she doesn't always say she's sorry after. Naomi became the basis for the Princess Friend Type, as well as our iconic Black Mage. After discovering the secret door to Yeld, Naomi embraces her situation faster than the rest of her Friends. Going on an adventure is thrilling... but so is pushing a knife into something and watching it bleed. Not her friends, of course! But there are so many weird little things in Yeld. Some of them need her care and attention, but some she can just pick apart until they stop moving. Naomi embraces the Black Mage Job with so much enthusiasm its scary! The classic damage dealing Black Spell became "Hurt", a spell she cast with glee. (In fact, if you look at all the art for the Black Mage spells you can see that Naomi really likes tormenting Monsters).

Naomi continues to experiment with magic on her journey through Yeld. She spends time as a Drudge Angel, an Advanced Job that casts both Black and White magic, and deals with death and the Ghost World. Eventually, her interest in magic leads her to Deep Magic, and she makes a deal with a Herald of the Deep to become a Deep Mage. Naomi was hoping to gain more power, but she discovered that the Deep was even crueler than she was. The Herald, a giant evil squid, now lives on Naomi's head. It grants her powerful magic and domain over water, but it also whispers into her brain and lives in her dreams, and more and more often Naomi wonders if her thoughts are really her own, or if she's already lost herself to the Deep.

The rules are simple: you roll a d20 to see if you get a body part and another to see how chaos ensues! From there, you read what happens from the lists of prompts, and you might get to choose the fate of your fellow necromancers. Mostly, it’s up to destiny to decide who gets ahead, but in those precious moments in which you get to choose who gets a setback, you feel like you’re holding the last +4 in a game of UNO.

The only hiccup with this system is that sometimes the gameplay might become a bit long and repetitive, but my friends and I have a great house rule to aid with that! It consists in rolling the “chaos ensues!” table only after getting a useful result in the “body part” one. To make things more dynamic, a high player count is advised, but it can definitely be played one-on-one.

The game’s design is pretty nice, with really cute illustrations and a well-organized distribution, and it is full of references from different pieces of horror media. Just a treat for the player! It shows that Darkheart Games put a fair amount of effort into this project, and however you choose to play it, I can guarantee you’ll have fun with this game, so I hope you give it a try!