Interview: Hilander on The Valley of Lune

I got the chance to speak with friend of the blog Hilander the other day about the Cairn adventure he's kickstarting, the Valley of Lune. Fair warning, I like this guy and his work, and we have played in each other's games, so I'm not an unbiased interviewer, but it's not like I stand to gain from the success of this product or anything.

Pictured: the artist

How did you first get into RPGs? What's your "origin story?"

My older brother and I used to write miniature board games, often these journey-style games where you had to fight monsters and claim treasures.

"DnD" was strictly off the table though. According to Dad (a great guy by most counts) that was satanic.

Well college came around and I decided to find out for myself. As a player, I found it less Satanic and more dull. I was part of a group of eight, and we were playing 3.5. Unlike the combat, I didn't last very long there.

Then my siblings asked me to run a game, so they could experience it.

I thought 5e would save us, but our first campaign ended abortively. Our second game actually made it to a conclusion, but I was burnt out on the character-build, and rules balance, and combat crafting, etc.

I wanted a riskier, punchier, simpler game.

You've since written multiple systems, and Valley of Lune is written for Cairn. What have you learned about games in the time since that 5e campaign?

Systems are only half the story, and the less interesting one, I think.

The duty of a system is to stay in the background until play becomes uncertain, then resolve that uncertainty and fade into the background again.

"Who am I?" "What can I do?" "Do I kill the monster?" "ARE there monsters?" "What kind of scenarios are we dealing with?" These are essential questions, and a system should help answer them, but also leave a door open for other possibilities.

The more interesting half of the game is the scenarios characters have to deal with, and that half of the equation is one I've struggled with, a lot.

What kind of struggle?

Where do we find the right balance of story and game?

That is, how do we make an interesting situation in the world, while still making room for characters to play in that world and have multiple cool possible outcomes?

A question for the ages. How have you answered that question for this adventure?

For The Valley of Lune, I began with three assumptions: things have happened, things are happening, things will happen. The players enter a region with a lot of moving parts, and whether they act or not, the world is moving. They can shift the path of history, but it's not waiting for them.

 

 Can you risk spoiling the adventure a bit by giving an example?

 

Sure!

The Valley has strong themes of sleep and awakening. One of the factions that can be awoken is the Gearhearts, mechanical folk who come to life once the gears of the city are activated. These are living people, but the team that awakens them will be vital in framing how this faction perceives outsiders.

Are they viewed as an unthinking work force to be ruled over, or as fellow thinking beings with an existing claim to the city, their homeland?

The players will get to make their choice if they get there first, but take too long, and someone, or something, else may wake the Gearhearts. 
 

Very neat. Is theme an important consideration to your adventure design process?

 

Theme tends to come up as a secondary element.

Lune has been percolating in my head for a long time, but I think it started with my own childhood adventures in the rainy Pacific Northwest, and finding old bits of metal covered in moss.
Did I know it would be about Awakening? Not at all, but the theme kept coming back.

 

What other inspirations can you pinpoint for Lune?

 

I think there are echoes of the Hobbit here and there, as well as some Nausicaa. 

I've been listening to covers of the Majora's Mask soundtrack as I write. 

Can I say the moon itself inspired me? A major question found a sudden answer as I was pondering how to teach first graders the lunar cycle.
 

Do you think your teaching profession has given you any insights into better DMing or adventure writing?

 

I've read a lot of rough curriculum. These are books designed to help teachers run their classes, and they can be amazingly confusing.

When I'm teaching or running a game, I want a resource that is easy to reference, helpful, and with pages that are easy to decipher.

I hope that has found its way into the way I design adventures, but I know there's always room to grow.

 

Looking at a preview on kickstarter, I see you're using a combination of bullet point-like highlights with boxed text, which is not a combo I normally see. How did you decide to key the adventure in this way?

 

The style is intended as a layered system from the characters' perspective as they move through the scene.

The box test is what's immediately apparent, and the bulleted list contains further details when the players investigate, including secret information that isnt immediately apparent.

The goal is a smooth format that's easy for Referees to read and reference with minimal prep.

 

What do you like about Cairn's guidelines for creating an overland adventure space?

 

Humans navigate by Routes and Landmarks, and that's what Cairn focuses on. It puts the interesting things along pathways of one sort or another, and overlaps the paths to create intersections and decision points.

It just works.

Do I think hexes are bad? Not at all, but this recipe works for me. 

What feeling do you hope players in a Lune game will come away with? What will they be gushing to their friends about?

 Something I'm still fine tuning is the character descriptions, because I really want characters in this game to be that focus. Who is here, what do they want from outsiders? What would push them to fight? What can they bargain with?

It's an area I really want to shine, because characters and their connections to players are what I most remember from the games I've enjoyed.

After fulfilling Valley of Lune, do you have any other publishing plans? Any ideas cooking in your head?

There are a few ideas actually, an island chain with a hidden city "megadungeon" is somewhere out there, and a forest of nightmares grown from the bones of a dead goddess, along with the home of the Dwarrow.

The dream is a chain of adventure locations long enough to feel something like the Hobbit, adventuring through a series of locations on some grand quest. 

 Ambitious! I hope you get the change to see at least a few of these through. 

Finally, do you have any RPG hot takes?

Nope.

 I've been racking my brain all day, and I can't settle on a single one. [Editor's note: boo! hiss!]

Call someone today and invite them over to play your favorite game.
That's all I've got folks. Take the risk, play the game, enjoy life. 

Always the uniter. Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed.

There's currently just seven days left to jump on the kickstarter, which has already exceeded its goal by $218 as of the time of publishing. You can pick up a pdf of the adventure for just $5, or also get the physical PDF for $12. Personally, I think those prices are very generous, and I know very few people who approach Hilander for breadth of skill-- his rules are well-considered and properly composed, his art is charming, and his layout shows great understanding of how a book or zine can aid those who want to use it. If you have a few bucks, you basically can't go wrong with a Hilander adventure. And if you don't play Cairn, I'm sure as a reader of this blog that you know how to convert things easily. You do it all the time, you're a pro, you know good work when you see it, and you know a good deal when your favorite blogger shills it out to you. Go in peace.