UVG: The Book and The System

I ran an Ultra Violet Grasslands campaign in 2021. Here are some of my thoughts on that game.

Travelling

There are many rules systems out there for combat situations, or for maneuvering through dungeons. But I’ve always wanted a good set of rules for travelling long distances. I’m not the only one. Did UVG have it?

The encounter system is pretty good. It may be a little less hazardous than I’d like. Only 1/16 encounters are likely to be up-close, nasty and dangerous. Usually, they will be at least one of friendly/distant, indifferent, or harmless.

Misfortunes are a good idea in theory - travel in the wilderness is tiring and long trips will have the party needing rest. I wish there were fewer misfortunes of the embarassing pratfall variety, but overall it works.

The UVG system for Discoveries did not work as well. Sometimes you turn up no discoveries, sometimes multiple. This makes it difficult to know what to prep.
It’s neat that players can search for more adventure sites, but it’s hard for them to know where and when they should. It might be easier if discovery happened more deterministically or if it was less mechanical. Might prefer a system that was more predictable, and that was more transparent. On the other hand, in this podcast John Ingold discusses an exploration system in the game 80 Days. During development they moved from a mandatory/automatic exploration procedure in each city to an optional/manual procedure. Maybe replace “No Discoveries” on the results table with with “1 guaranteed Discovery at the next site”?

• Misfortunes are mandatory and stat-based.
• Encounters are mandatory and non-stat-based (good in that they can be pre-rolled, bad in that what does it mean for an individual character to be the one who “has” the encounter? I treated it as them being the first to spot it and having priority in choosing how to react).
• Discoveries are sometimes mandatory? and depend on different stats.
• Other activities are not mandatory.

What was lacking from UVG that I would want out of a set of travel rules? More on-the-road activities that players would want to pick (rather than being forced), that had an grounded, in-universe meaning and that gave them some agency.
Maybe path-finding to optimize travel time (and influence encounters/discoveries?), or hunting/foraging as something that could be done while travelling.

Market Research / Trade

There are a lot of little rules for making deals, finding buyers and haggling prices. In my campaign, players rolled the best possible results every time, and made a ton of money. Then, being absolutely loaded, they didn’t really need to do it any more.

If I used these rules again, it would be with a narrower range of variance.

One thing that was missing was a means for determining the total demand for a good in a region. Exactly how many sacks of cat-coffee can they dump on the market place before demand is satiated?

Consistency

UVG has a chapter for every location on the big map. The contents of those chapters roughly follow a format, but they do vary.
I wish they were more consistent. These are some features that are in some or most but maybe not all chapters, that I’d have liked to see in each and every one.

Weather & Scenery - Each location chapter starts with a bit of short fiction to give a feeling for the place. Sometimes it describes the weather, sometimes a conversation. It would be nice if there was always a bit of text describing the feel of the place as the party travels. The impression the area gives to the characters during their weeks of travel.
There is some of that in the Misfortunes section, but its usually of the negative variety.

First Impressions - Some locations have a strong direction for what the party will see when they arrive. Very useful. For example, the guard and towers around the Porcelain Citadel.

Carousing - There are cool carousing tables for the Violet City,the Porcelain Citadel, Three Sticks, and the Black City. Would have been very nice to have one for each of the civilised settlements in the grasslands.

Personalities - Some location chapters have a list of important figures one might meet. These would be great to have for every populated region.

Maps - The Porcelain Citadel has a map. It’s great! I wish every location had a map.