abyssalbrews

Kou'un

Added 2025-02-13 16:00:06 +0000 UTC

Greetings adventurers!

I’ve always found koi to be beautiful. Something about their varied colors and textures of scales has always instilled me with a feeling of wonder, and their general status as a creature that brings luck and wealth to their owner fascinated me. I came across a particular glassblower some years ago that kept some of the creatures in a pond behind his shop and we became friends over time. I learned much about raising these special creatures, but it was my idea that he start forming glass into their shape. A few magical enchantments and well, he’s now doing quite well I’m happy to say. Maybe the fish are a symbol of luck afterall.

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Design notes from Matthew:
I’m always looking for inspiration in just about any place one could imagine and for this, funnily enough, it came from a travel vlog that I was watching documenting the koi that live in drainage canals in the city of Shimabara. I had heard of this kind of thing before, but seeing the first there was just fascinating to me. I fell down a bit of a wikipedia hole about the fish and their history. I wanted to create something to bring that to light and so this idea was born.
I’m a fan of offering choices for players and creating items that offer meaningful choices is one of the more fun parts of game design. The whole concept here was based around the idea of permanent savings versus fast money and the need for each possibly outweighing the other. Those desperate times when things are at their lowest could be turned around with a quick infusion of gold, though it’s likely that many will just hang on to the trinket for its inherent benefits.
I guess this item really conveys two of my favorite design tips that I can offer to people that want to make their own TTRPG content. First, always be open to inspiration regardless of what you’re consuming. Second, offer meaningful choices when you can. There’s a lot of other TTRPG design tips I could share, but those two are often some of the first that come to mind.

I’m happy to say that we’ve got February’s content all planned out and that we recently crossed over 200 items now available here on the Patreon. That’s a pretty impressive library and I’m quite proud of what we’ve been able to create here. Hopefully they’ve been serving your campaigns well!

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