Birch; The Idea
Adapt, Grow, Renew
"Again I hear,
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. -Once again
Do I behold these steep and loft cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky"
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey; William Wordsworth
While it's mostly been a passion project of mine for a number of years now; I am really wanting to get a version of this finished and potentially even play-tested if that's something even within the realm of possibility.
The world and rules are influenced by so many creators and pieces that it'd be a lot to list them all out here, but suffice it to say that I am always combing through communities, settings, worlds and really just anything to try and improve and refine Birch in some way.
Going through this process for a number of years and collecting so many resources (just so many), I've tried to refine the setting and the rule sets to a number of core pillars to follow.
The hope is to have something D&D inspired in terms of a game-play loop; D&D at it's core to me is a pinnacle of a combat game in which most of the emphasis of the game over its tenure has been dungeon crawling. Unfortunately for me, it feels like that has been lost over recent years and has been picked back up by the OSR community (which is where its influence comes in).
I want there to be some crunch, but not TOO much crunch (which in of itself sounds ridiculous) but I ultimately am just making the game I wish I could play and have something codified even if I in turn just run it solo.
Aesthetically, it's Algonquin Park mixed with fantastical post Bronze-Age collapse Europe. It's Destiny meets Bethesda games. It's Goblin Slayer meets Lord of the Rings. It's musketeers fighting guerrilla freedom fighters meets Warlocks making pacts with ancient Warmind A.I's to political Imperial prisoners desperately trying to hunt leviathans in the ocean for oil to power a desperate world. It is a world without a sun, and a crumbling Empire looking for anything to keep their grasp on a world nobody fully understands.