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Oct 6, 2023

PROCESS : Curiosities of Mont-Bolet

Self-publishing a tabletop roleplay game

I imagined a magical little TTRPG, a medieval setting, with lots of opportunities for heroic and/or funny actions. It was a lot of fun to make and get out of my head and onto paper. So I'm sharing this creative adventure into the world of tabletop gaming with you.

  • Self-publishing
  • Creativity
  • Original
  • Game
  • Process

There's a secret in the depths of the village. A secret that makes mediocre music to the rhythm of the cash registers.

Il y a quelque chose que j’aime particulièrement et dont je n’ai pas encore parlé sur mes communications publiques, que se soit ici ou sur mon compte Instagram, c’est le jeu de rôle.

Mais qu’est-ce, Léna ?

And there are PLENTY of them, from traditional medieval-fantasy, to solo writing that follows a story in space, not forgetting love, humour, drama and investigations. Around a table, remotely, with a facilitator or not… What I like is this variety.

Personally, I like to play, but I especially like to collect: systems, blog posts and game ideas.

One day, I took the plunge. And I wrote a game, or a snippet of it: The Curiosities of Mont-Bolet. It’s a place, characters and secrets that a facilitator can use to play with their players in a fun and unusual world. It can be used as a one-shot game (a session with a fairly short adventure) or as part of a big campaign. And it can be done with the little rules I’ve invented, or not!

And now, welcome backstage!

The stages of this cryptic venture

  1. GAME 📌 Imagining the game play, the place and the people in it
  2. RESOURCES 📝 Creating documents to reflect the game
  3. DISTRIBUTION 💗 Putting it all online!

The front cover of the Mont-Bolet Curiosities leaflet

GAME 📌 Imagining the game play, the place and the people in it

Before embarking on something I’ve never shown before, I wanted to be sure of the ’type’ of atmosphere I wanted in my documents.

I’m no stranger to the humorous medieval-fantasy world, particularly the games of Dungeons of Naheulbeuk that my beloved used to run. So I decided to go for a colourful, quirky adventure that would give the players a chance to do some wacky things. I took the opportunity to write a small set of optional rules, with no pressure, no great complexity, and no real equipment (apart from a traditional 6-sided die and perhaps something to take notes with).

I wanted a fairly ordinary setting for this kind of adventure. A village with a bakery, a tower and wooden ramparts. A place so typical that anything a little out of the ordinary is a lot out of the ordinary. So I was able to slip in a few secrets that were well buried in such a small place. But I’d advise you not to go and look at the link below if you don’t want to reveal the illustrated map of the village and all its mysteries.

For the non-player characters, I’ve created factions: the villagers, the gnome syndicate, the wandering tourists and the [CENSORED]. Some of these characters can be drawn on the spot from random tables, and others, more remarkable (to me) are described in more details! 🥰 For example, a little gentleman, Gustave Agaric, the baker who can welcome the Adventuresses into his clover-shaped shop.

RESOURCES 📝 Creating documents to reflect the game

**I love designing this kind of document **. I have to admit, I’m a layout nerd and I find it a real pleasure to learn every time. So I took the opportunity to to get used to Affinity Publisher. Originally, I was just thinking of making a 3-panel leaflet (so 6 A5 pages) about the Mont-Bolet setting and 2 pages for the rules. When my friend Ewylana, beta-tested the game, we talked a lot and I decided to do some supplements to help make it easier to visualise the game.

This game contains:

  • Colour and black and white tokens
  • Location maps
  • The set of rules
  • and, of course, the brochure!

PUBLISHING 💗 Putting it all online!

And finally, despite my inner critic’s nagging, I’ve done it: I put my game online! I had to dig around a bit on the internet to understand the workings of itch.io, the platform for sharing and selling independent games. But with the series of articles by Angela Quidam on the blog C’est pas du Jeu de rôle (Part 1 & 2) it wasn’t so hard to understand!

Les Curiosités de Mont-Bolet (FR)

WARNING, consulting this link means unveiling the secret dungeon of Mont-Bolet. At your own risk! ❌

The Curiosities of… are gentle, fun role-playing modules full of magic. In this guide, discover a hamlet renowned for its mushrooms, which seems to be disrupted by a sudden influx of rather… suspicious tourists.

Last year (it seems so long ago already!), I took the initiative of illustrating my own version of the Werewolf of Thiercelieux. You can read more about the game here: MARS 2022: The Werewolf before I might put the files on itch.io 🥰

My profile on itch.io (FR&EN) with my first ludic publications including Regards Suivis (FR) which I did for the Once upon a time a little JDR competition.

Axolotl the collective of authors/artists/creators of independent and alternative RPGs that I joined at the beginning of the year.