Exploration remains one of the joys of many role playing games. Whether discovering new characters, mapping out deadly dungeons or even just trying to scrape every ounce of gold from an evil lair, players love to take their characters into the unknown. Ultraviolet Grasslands from designer Luka Rejec offer a very strange new world for players to explore. This technofantasy wasteland offers dozens of strange sites, unusual characters and random encounters to spice up the long days, weeks and months characters might spend on the road. Exalted Funeral sent along a review copy of this book for review. Are the grasslands full of dangers and delights? Let’s play to find out.
The book details the titular grasslands as a liminal space between two cities. In discussing the first city the designer presents the kind of weirdness to expect right away. Violet City is a place where psychic, coffee drinking cats are revered and potentially in charge. The book resents over 30 unusual locations like this. Each one is detailed with people to meet, encounters to have and potential hooks that connect storylines through different locations. Drop one of these locations in a standard D&D game and you’ll have a left turn experience in the style of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Running through the Grasslands offers a campaign that feels inspired from the pages of “adult” comic books from the 70's and 80's like Heavy Metal. Rejec’s art supports this feel with art that feels lifted from a sketchbook created while traveling through the area. Massive monsters and structures are given great detail but might have a tiny stick figure on the edge for scale. There’s a psychedelic vibe to it all that feels very refreshing. So many games these days are declaring themselves metal while Ultraviolet Grasslands seems to be going for more of a psychedelic prog rock vibe.
As a campaign, the book sets up the players as leading a caravan through the grasslands to the Black City. There are known roads that pass through the detailed locations and players are given choices when they hit one of the big locales. Random encounters can happen while on the road thanks to a detailed set of charts that generate fellow travellers, interesting distractions on the side of the road and potential misfortunes to befall the caravan. These encounters hammer at the feeling of the game being a railroad but even without them, choosing destinations is more reminiscent of picking the next mission in an open world video game. Game masters can stack the deck a little by seeding rumors and reports on the road but there’s enough material here that should the players look at the map and decide to see The Forest of Meat, the GM will be fine running that location on the fly.
Second Edition offers more detailed rules for running the caravan. It gives the setting a slightly different flavor by shifting focus away from combat and exotic monsters. There are still dangerous creatures and wild spots in the wilderness but Ultraviolet Grasslands wants players to experience its strangeness and not be defeated by it. The book includes a short easy system that’s very loosely based on d20 fantasy systems, though the implication is that you’ll have to port in spells or other special powers for players that might want such things.
The best system to use with Ultraviolet Grasslands is whatever one your group enjoys the most. The flavor of the setting doesn’t need mechanics to reinforce its ideas. This could most obviously be a campaign setup for a setting like Numenera or Gamma World. But I can also see someone who loves Savage Worlds taking it out for a spin with just a few hacks here and there. It could also be run using whatever throwback games you might prefer. Something like Mork Borg could really reinforce the brutality of the frontier.
Bottom line: Ultraviolet Grasslands offers a unique setting for role playing groups that are more interested in exploring a strange new world than conquering one.
