Bolthaven Folio #3 Is Available Now

The Zine, Printed.

On 2/28/26, at the very end of Zine Month, I uploaded Bolthaven Folio #3 to itch and DriveThruRPG. It's playable, and I've got many expansion plans for the system.

I'd love your feedback on the system as it stands. If you play with it, please let me know what you think about the system. If you think it needs more explanation on any piece, that's hugely important to me. Similarly, please let me know if you want the information presented in a different order to make it easier to digest and use.

You can leave me a comment on this post, or reach out to me on Bluesky or at the dice.camp Mastodon instance. I'll respond, though it might take me a few days. I'll give you a mention on future iterations of the Settlement System.

And speaking of which...

Testing Settlements - Coldwater Bend Part 5

Finally A Hamlet!

I'm testing my settlement system by telling the story of Coldwater Bend, a brand new hamlet built by a party of ex-adventurers by the riverbend teeming with trout. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here.

Turn 13

Income generates 4 Coin (the Tavern triggered!), 2 Morale, 2 Wood, and a River Trout. Growing to a Hamlet proceeds apace (4 of 6 PP done. Next turn for sure.). Foraging turned up nothing. We get an Attack for an Event this turn, so we'll resolve that after Trading.

Our Specialists take their 2 Coin. Zofia trades a Wood for 1 Iron and 1 Coin (yay, special ability!), and pays 1 Coin to get some Wheat, as a hedge against growth. Tadek takes the Iron and forges weapons, giving a +1 to Militia until next turn.

Testing Settlements - Coldwater Bend Part 4

Need better outhouses.

I'm testing my settlement system by telling the story of Coldwater Bend, a brand new hamlet built by a party of ex-adventurers by the riverbend teeming with trout. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

Turn 10

Income consists of 3 Coin, 2 Morale (Culture has a +1 temporary bonus, so we're currently at 7 and getting a few bonuses on rolls), 1 River Trout, and 2 Wood. The people finish work on the Tavern, and it gets added to the Infrastructure list, giving +1 Culture and a 50% chance of generating 1 Coin at Income. The Recruiting effort bears fruit, attracting 2 People (I rolled a 1 and added 1 from High Morale). I rolled Settlers as an Event, so another 5 People (rolled 4, plus 1 for High Morale) move to town. That puts us at 18 Population, squarely in the overlap between Holding and Hamlet. Looks like we should start working on growing Coldwater Bend pretty soon.

Testing Settlements - Coldwater Bend Part 3

Citizen With A Dog.

I'm testing my settlement system by telling the story of Coldwater Bend, a brand new hamlet built by a party of ex-adventurers by the riverbend teeming with trout. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

I've changed the turn order a little, so I'm making those modifications in this test run. I'm planning on running another few turns later today, and I'll post those results this week.

Turn 7

Income consists of 2 Coin, 1 Morale, and 1 River Trout. The Lumber Mill finished this turn, so that gets added to the Infrastructure (costs 1 Coin in Upkeep, gives 2 Wood at Income). People harvested a second River Trout for their Forage project. The dice gods were kind, giving us no Event this turn.

No trading took place this turn, as there's enough Coin and Resources to go around this turn. Specialists now get paid here, just before resolving their effects. So Zofia gets her 1 Coin here, and Coldwater Bend enjoys +1 Trade for another turn.

Testing Settlements - Coldwater Bend Part 2

Getting Swans In A Row.

I'm testing my settlement system by telling the story of Coldwater Bend, a brand new hamlet built by a party of ex-adventurers by the riverbend teeming with trout. You can read Part 1 here.

Turn 4

Income consists of 1 River Trout, 2 Coin (Trade went up to 2 last turn thanks to Zofia), and 1 Morale. Residents gathered 2 Wood to prep for building a lumber mill, and they managed to trap 1 Rabbit for food. I rolled an Exodus event, so 3 people left (the refugees went back to the city to the rest of their family, bringing the population down to 10), causing Morale to drop by 2 (it hurts to say goodbye).

I was planning on building a lumber mill this turn, but with Morale running in the negative, it's time for a Festival (1 PP) to cheer people up, plus foraging for more food to keep everyone fed. Zofia sold off the River Trout for 1 Coin, and everyone had rabbit stew to keep their bellies full. Upkeep also included 2 Coin (1 for Size and 1 for Zofia, bringing us down to 1) 1 Morale (bringing us to -2).

Testing Settlements - Coldwater Bend Part 1

They probably have cows.

I've got enough structure built for the Settlement System to give it a whirl, so let's try an alpha test by starting with a brand new settlement.

A few definitions to navigate what's happening might help. Basic stats are Size (governs the scale of everything), Trade, Culture, and Militia. Each of those except Militia corresponds with a more volatile stat that potentially changes every turn, namely Population, Coin, and Morale. Settlement Turns are how often Income, Events, Projects, and Upkeep happen; I'm using a week per turn, but for a more casual experience a month per turn should work (and probably make more sense).

Settlements have Resource Income, which generate Food, Raw Materials, and Luxury Goods for consumption or trade, with extra Resources persisting between Turns in the Warehouse. Infrastructure tracks settlement buildings and Specialists are notable people in the settlement, and both can impact settlement stats. Projects allow the citizens to build and do things, and Events happen randomly every Turn to help or hinder the settlement's progress.

With all that as prologue, let's follow along as six ex-adventurers found a tiny settlement named Coldwater Bend.

Bolthaven Folio #2 Is Available

On DriveThru and Itch.

Yes, I actually finished and released another zine! I wanted to get one published per quarter, and I squeaked this one out at the tail end of September. But I did it, art and everything.

Bolthaven Folio #2: Bard Bands (available at DriveThru and Itch) provides guidelines to let your bard characters collaborate and allow anyone with Performance training to help make their magic more powerful. If you really want to go crazy, you can run an all-bard campaign where your PCs can compose and rehearse Singles and play for a minute or more to make some epic musical magic.

All this magic happens in the same 4-page digest format of other Bolthaven Folio titles, so don't expect a fully-developed treatise on the nature of bardic magic or anything. It lays out a system and leaves plenty of interpretation room, especially with multiple bards blending and joining spells through writing Singles. If you want to power up your bard characters, give this one a read.

Jammin' and Publishin'

Hey there, Yawning Chasm That Is The Intarwebz. How y'all been? It's been a hot minute since I just talked to you, so I thought I'd do something like that now.

I basically gave this blog over to my current campaign setting Fellport over the past 2.5 years, posting nothing but NPCs, locations, items, groups, and related snippets to use in your game if you want. I shifted focus from my thoughts to stuff I made, thinking nobody would care about this aging white guy's opinions. Maybe that's true. Maybe the void will eat my thoughts and never give anything back. But does that negate the effort or the accomplishment of having strung together words in hopes of clarifying my thoughts and working through what I might think? I don't think so. I'm writing here mainly for me, but if these words reach anyone with similar beliefs and biases, great! So let's get to it.

Just to let you know, things have shifted for me since April, and things have shifted more in the past 6-7 weeks. Lemme 'splain.

(WARNING: Brain Dump Below The Cut! Double-check your safety gear now!)

Bolthaven Folio #1: Coming Soon

Draft of Bolthaven Folio #1

I've been fighting with myself for a long time. I'm just an editor (even though it's never "just" editing). I'm not a game designer (even though I've been doing it since I started playing, and I even have a card). I'm not good enough (even though friends keep asking for me to run more games for them).

It took time and effort, but I can finally talk over my Brain Weasels.

I have ideas. Given the 240ish posts here about Fellport over the past 2 years, apparently I have plenty of ideas. That's never been the issue. Developing the idea and sticking with it until there's something solid that can stand on its own has been my stumbling block. Now, I think I have something worthwhile. I thought I'd start a series of zines to start getting these ideas out into the world, called Bolthaven Folios.

Tempus Fugit

It's been a year to the day since my last post here. That's enough silence, and enough waiting for the rest of life to settle down. High time I started writing again, so buckle up.

I could make empty promises that I'll post something at least monthly, and then summer will happen and I'll drop off the face of the earth for a few months. So I won't. I'll just say I'll post when I feel moved to post and go from there.

For those of you still out there and reading along: Thanks for sticking with it. Or for the laziness in not cleaning up your dead blog links. Whichever, the end result is the same.

I've got a few irons in the fire currently...

Intro to Binding

I've been making my own (small) notebooks lately, as I mentioned previously in My First Attempt at Binding. I've been posting several pictures on G+, and then people started requesting a video. I had some time, so I recorded and edited 2 videos yesterday.

The first one covers the tools I use in binding, all of which have Amazon links in the video description if you're interested in picking them up. About $100 will get you started with all the tools you need to get a zine assembled and out the door.

This video is 2 minutes long. What can I say? I enjoy working in a limited space.

My First Attempt at Binding

I picked up all the tools for zine production, so this morning I did a quickie binding project. I found an old pad of graph paper, and my daughter had some green card stock that I swiped. A few rotary cuts, four green-colored staples, and four corner rounding chomps later I ended up with these: