Sampura sun maus knights,
The last few months have been pretty hectic with six weeks of summer holidays for my kids followed almost immediately by a four week to Indonesia to let the immigration authorities know that I’m still alive and wanting to keep my PR among other bureacratic nightmares.
Fortunately, I was able to use the time in Indonesia to network with local OSR/NSR fans at the LFG Ramadan event. The local indie scene is getting very exciting with at least two Discord based groups regularly playing OSR/NSR games, with some referees almost always playing in English. If you are interested in joing these groups to play with Indonesians let me know in the comments and I’ll share the Discord invite links.
There were quite a few people at the LFG Ramadan event who are actively writing stuff that is in my view of a publishable standard. At least one piece was highly praised by the creator of the game (Durf maybe?). The most amazing piece I saw was written and illustrated by someone who only started teaching himself to draw five months ago and drafting his first intended for publication module two months ago. He’s already at the test copy stage and it only needs a little editing and layout before being print ready!
On that note, I was talking things over with Munkao and he feels that most of the remaining illustrations should be done by a Sundanese person since this project is showcasing Sundanese culture. I had been thinking about it already and his advice pushed me over the line to committing to this. Rest assured you will still be gettuing some Munkao art in this project as the overall series isn’t limited to Sundanese culture. His art work will probably feature in the settting guide which I decided to add to this project a freebie to backers. And in case you were unaware, his most recent work is now available in print form from his website Hey Centaur.
As far as the project is going, the overall planning is solid complete. The maps just needs a little tweaking in the form of icons etc, the details for the locations and their denizens are mostly in dot point form. I still have to work out encounter details that appeal to me, this is proving to be quite difficult because I am trying to minimise combat oriented encounters and foreground opportunities for role playing to get information and have civilised encounters, etc. I’ve also decided to drop the Babi Ngepet from this versiopn of the module and leave it in for the Cairn/human scale version unless I can think of a way of bringing it in at a mouse scale by adapting the myth a little without ruining it.
However the main problem I am facing is in the writing. Which is a shock for me as concise yet detailed writing has been one of my strengths over the years. What is getting me is the attempt to embed the cultural experience in the writing. This was something that really came to the fore for me while playing Liminal Horror at the LFG Ramadan event. Our experience was so rich because we were all immersed in Indonesian culture. Isaac was able to embed details in his descriptions that conveyed a lot of flavour, but we were only able to taste it because we understood. This is probably going to delay the project quite a bit.
In terms of the path forward, I am going to go over the material I have written by Zedeck Siew. He is the touted fairly widely in the scene as the best author in the NSR. He manages to convey an authentic experience even to those who have little or no familiarity with Southeast Asian cultures. I will also look over the work of other creators in the region, and even those like Yochai Gal with his Beyond the Pale which is supposed to capture a very Jewish experience and perspective.
One final note, I have opened up the project for late backing if anyone is interested in helping fund the art but was unable to contribute during Mausritter month.
Until next time,
ARR