Tove and Erik are based in Oxford, UK, but watch the pitch video for The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway, and you’ll hear the Scandinavian heritage.
Eastern Farraway has been a Kickstarter success for years, a homebrew for decades, and the fact that The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway (5e) reached 500% funding on launch day should speak volumes about the campaign setting.
Geek Native has an interview with the two, also known as the publisher Midnight Tower, coming up, but since we’ve been waiting literal years for The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway, let’s look at that first!
If you’ve been backing Midnight Tower’s 5e adventures already, then you’ll know their style. If not, or even if you need to complete your collection, there’s a free adventure to download today that demonstrates the pair’s writing skills. You can get Call of the Wild from the website now.
Here’s what the funded Kickstarter can offer:
- A campaign setting and sourcebook for roleplaying games, containing history, lore, character options, magic items, and monsters.
- Approximately 160 pages, depending on unlocked stretch goals.
Player Content:
- New character species: Norn and Mist Elves.
- New character backgrounds.
- Heirloom magic items that scale with character level, including the Horn of Summoning the Fallen, Belt of Thor’s Might, and Khali-di-zar’s Hammer.
Game Master Content:
- New monsters inspired by Scandinavian folklore, such as Jotnar giants, Bäckahästen, and gonks.
- 100 plot hooks.
- Detailed NPCs with backgrounds, traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws.
- Pre-designed locations and lairs suitable for one-shot adventures or boss fights.
- A starter one-shot adventure titled “Before the Times of Heroes“.
Setting & Lore:
- Lore sections on locations such as the Silent Woods, Ilde Volcano, and the Ancient Temple of the Valkyria.
Art & Production:
- Includes over 90 full-colour illustrations.
- Features hand-drawn maps by Dark Realm Maps.
- Cover art by Alaina Milare.
- A two-page art spread by Sedat Savas.
- All unlocked stretch goals will be compiled into a compendium called “The Stolen Pages from the Compass Codex”.
- Backers will have their names printed in the book.
The Wanderer tier is set at only £12 and offers the digital content. Backers who can step up to £30 will also receive the softcover, and £40 is the tier at which the hardback will be released.
Backers who can go higher can unlock other Midnight Tower books and adventures as additional rewards.
The Kickstarter runs until August 9th.
An interview with Midnight Tower
I met Midnight Tower and UK Games Expo, knew The Adventurer’s Guide to Eastern Farraway was coming and especially wanted to tackle the pair’s approach to low/high fantasy. I shy away from comic book fantasy, too, even in D&D.
The description of Eastern Farraway mentions that magic is “rare and uncommon” and the world is “wild and beautiful,” drawing inspiration from authors like Robin Hobb and Robert Jordan, as well as Norse mythology. How do you balance this grounded, grittier sense of realism with the high-fantasy elements inherent in a D&D 5e setting?
Eastern Farraway as such is quite low on the magical and the whimsical – much of the classic D&D whimsy is often added by the DM once the adventures are underway. There are plenty of magic things around – especially locations that are peculiar and enigmatic – but few things that the characters can pick up and add to their inventory, at least while they’re at low levels. But powerful spellcasters are rare, and the world in general is full of people going about their everyday lives – meals need to be cooked, farmers need to farm, horses need to be looked after, and so on. Also, magic and technological items are often unstable and unpredictable. This means that if you can cast spells, you’re pretty special!
We also try to add lots of details that hopefully make the world feel grounded, sich as menus at taverns, rare but nonmagical gear, and such. There are also many conflicts, so there are diplomats and negotiators – including among the drow.
However, because magic is typically unreliable, there are some rather strange instances that have come into being because of arcane mishaps, such as a tower full of cats, a huge aquatic monster, and more. So in short, Eastern Farraway is a regular fantasy world infused with doses of whimsy, but that idea is to keep those rare to keep the atmosphere from becoming too bonkers.
You’ve been building the world of Farraway for over 25 years, starting with a hand-drawn map to track your party’s journey. What’s it like to finally codify all those years of adventures, notes, and memories into an official sourcebook? Are there any inside jokes or memorable moments from your home games that have made it into the final text?
Lots of our home game can be found in the books! There are many player characters, NPCs, and random henchmen who have ended up in our adventures. More prominently, lots of places come directly from our games over the past (soon 30) years. I (Tove) encourage players to think up backstories that include locations, so these often end up on the maps.
Getting to finally write a guide is, to be honest, terrifying! Everything used to live only in my head and on our pile of assorted maps, but the world has grown so large that I struggle to keep track of it all – but I really want to make sure that I get everything right now that we’re creating a guide. That said, it’s also tons of fun, and a fantastic privilege! I’m really looking forward to sharing the world, especially as many have asked for more details.
The Kickstarter page mentions that your Scandinavian upbringing has heavily influenced the setting. Could you give us an example of a creature, cultural reference, or tradition in Eastern Farraway that comes directly from that heritage, and how you’ve adapted it for the game?
Some features and names are almost directly from Swedish, for example the celebration of midsommar (midsummer). There’s also the White King, a huge mythical elk who roams woods and whose appearance is portentous. And there’s the Stenbumling, a troll who resembles a moss-covered rock.
The success of your initial adventure, Call of the Wild, has blossomed into a series of eleven books and now a full campaign setting. What has that journey from a single adventure to becoming established publishers with a dedicated world been like for you as a team at Midnight Tower?
Weirdly, not much has changed! I still write and DM the adventures, and we’re still two people,. We’ve chosen not to scale things up as we want to be close to the adventure-writing and the world. But it’s enormously fun to collaborate with visual artists, which we do a lot! And it’s an amazing feeling to hold an actual book.
One of the best parts is talking to or even meeting people who have played our adventures, which we’ve done countless times now – it’s incredibly fun, we love hearing how the adventures have played out, and we often get fantastic feedback too. It’s still stunning that people all over the planet have played our adventures!
In short, it’s a lot about friendship and the TTRPG community – which is downright phenomenal. We’ve gotten to know some other creators really well and we must’ve talked to hundreds, and there’s a strong spirit of support and creativity.
What’s next for Midnight Tower?
Good question! The crystal ball is a bit dim – but if one shakes it really hard, it whispers faintly about something that sounds a bit like “a solo adventure”. But we’re not sure that’s true! There are definitely more books and Kickstarters on the horizon. And more cons! We had our first ever stand at the UKGE, and later this year we’ll be at Dragonmeet.
Thanks, Tove, thanks, Erik.
