Great game with an easily approached but surprisingly deep system, well presented with examples and full comics pages. And the setting offers Wonderland/Narnia/Oz/Neverland vibes thru a JPRG modern lens with a deep metaphoric understory about self-discovery and the inherent terror that is growing up.

A fantastic system that starts fairly simple with a quick and easy to understand character creation process. New abilities are gained steadily enough, always juxtaposed by the players' increase in equipment, all in the hands of the players involved. With intriguing lore already included in the lands of Yeld there is plenty to get involved with while the Friends are exploring but plenty of space for more to be added depending on the stories wished to be told. I might be fairly new to the Lands of Yeld but I will be along for the ride to see where it leads us next!

I got this as source for my high school based webcomic. Even though I didn't need the psychic material, I was not disappointed by my purchase. Good job.

If you're super into Yeld you should check out their Patreon.

It's a duet game where one player controls a PC and several NPC companions. This play mode has enough exclusive content to feel meaningfully different from the one in the core book. This kind of play experience doesn't usually come up outside of the miniatures wargame / boardgame space. It's a neat idea.

(ok there are RPGs like that but they generally don't have much tactical combat)

This is a re-release of something that came out on their Patreon a while ago. Consider supporting them over there. They could use the month-to-month support.

This book is fun but you should probably check out the adventure collections first. If you're doing a single PC Quest game then going super deep in a single job could be fun.

One word of advice is that Yeld has a Final Fantasy Tactics Advance vibe but it's secretly quite dark. It has some cute elements but it's a fairly dark Points of Light experience. (Points of light - there are only a few safe towns dotting a map largely made up of dangerous, wild places.)

• This class rewards you for killing people and absorbing their memories. The gameplay part of it lets you do rad combo attacks; but that will likely shape the tone of your game.

• Oh, and book-as-written the PCs are all minors.

• ALSO: this book doesn't have a Deadlands-like divide between player rules and GM-facing deepdark grim secrets. This only matters if you'd like to slowly reveal the UNSPEAKABLE COSMIC HORROR of it all.

This introduction was originally released on my blog diceadventurer.

I recently ordered a couple of books at my FLGS and got a copy of The Magical Land of Yeld. I supported the Kickstarter but the delivery costs to Europe were too expensive for me, so I just backed for the PDF-Level. Now I have my book in front of me and would like to introduce it to you.

The world:

Yeld is set in the world of the same name and comes from the creators of the webcomic Modest Medusa, where a little Medusa from Yeld landed in our world. The game works the other way around, a number of children enter Yeld through a door (completely in the style of The Chronicles of Narnia). This door closes relatively early and the children are trapped in Yeld. Time is ticking, because every child turns into a monster on their thirteenth birthday and can’t go back home. The world is full of magic, but also full of dangers, because a dark vampire prince rules it. The children take on the role of heroes and try to find the seven keys so that they can open the door again, which, however, are kept by seven loyal servants of the prince.

The system:

At the beginning, the friends, as the PCs are called in Yeld, end up as normal children in Yeld. The friends have four attributes (Strong, Brave, Tough and Smart) and a certain type (e.g. the liar, the princess or the big sister). In addition to the core dice (the attributes), there is also special dice, which are rolled in certain situations. The liar starts, for example, with a special Die “Lie” and can use it when he is not telling the truth. There is a whole range of Special Dice with many different effects and possibilities.

When a friend wants to do something, he rolls the Core Dice and (if appropriate) Special Dice. The game master then also takes dice (depending on the challenge or NPC) and rolls against them. Simple D6 are used and everyone adds up the result. Whoever has the higher roll wins the test. It is interesting that the players tell how something turned out, even if it failed. This dice principle is used everywhere, also in combat, for magic, etc.

The fight takes place on the action board, for which you can also use a chessboard. Whoever yells “first” attacks first (no joke) and when it was your turn, then you decide who is next to move. The more friends who are successful in a row, the more bonuses they get. If someone fails or puts his action on the bench (in order to use it later), he breaks the chain. The other side can also try to get the initiative. Everyone has a move action and a fight action. Attacks are made against a defense roll. If this is unsuccessful the opponent loses a core die. If he runs out of these, then he is dead. Friends who go to the ground continue to haunt the board as ghosts and can carry out ghost actions (such as looking for loot, haunt opponents, etc.). They can be brought back to life in the next inn or with the right magic, just like in a video game.

But that’s not all, because very early on, the friends get a heroic job (basically a class). These jobs give them more core dice, special dice and their job skills. The jobs are very interesting and are reminiscent of video games, such as the black magician and the white magician or the Soul Thief. Later the friends can also take on legendary jobs, for which they have to complete a quest beforehand. Whoever reaches the thirteenth year gets access to the monster jobs, such as the werewolf or the Deep Mage with a gigantic squid on his head. When it comes to character development, Yeld reminds me a little of Shadow of the Demon Lord, where you gradually get more and have to do more for it.

Generally, the friends do grow over the adventure. The players decide for themselves how challenging or dangerous an adventure should be. In addition, there is the maximum amount of die for challenge dice. At the end of the adventure there are the reward dice, rolls on the loot tables, etc., which are shared among the friends, so there is not always everything for everyone. This also motivates the friends to approach tasks that are more dangerous.

Depending on the level of danger, the game master gets many things at hand. For example, how strong the monsters can be and on which tables the players can roll the dice as a reward. The GM part is pretty darn good in my eyes. There are construction kits for everything (e.g. to build equipment or monsters). To this date, the way of building monsters in Yeld is the best I’ve seen in a long time.

The goal of the game (yes, it has a goal) is to get the seven keys. To do this, you explore Yeld and receive an empty map made of squares. Only the magic door is drawn. Gradually the map fills up with places that you have discovered and played on, similar to a hexcrawl. However, the game doesn’t leave you alone, because it gives you a lot of help, especially with the guardians of the keys.

It is also important to say that the game master also builds a friend, because the game master should change after every adventure. I do not know if I would do it this way because everyone needs the book (or PDF).

Playing Online:

You can find a character sheet for Yeld on Roll20 and even without it it’s really easy to play online. The mechanics are pretty simple and you just need the action board, the world map and tokens. All my previous sessions of Yeld were online and went really smooth.

The book:

The book is in English and has an incredible number of illustrations (which is why the book came out much later). The images are all very cute and friendly, although the game is a bit dark in parts. In any case, you get a very good impression of the world. Everything is very legible and understandable, and the arrangement and order make sense. The printed book is softcover and I have the impression that the color of the pictures do not do one hundred percent justice to the pictures in the PDF.

Who might be interested in Yeld:

• GMs and players who want to play something in the style of Zelda and the like
• People who want to have a simple ruleset with increasing complexity
• Players who want to play as children

Who might not be interested in Yeld:

• GMs and players who like extensive rules and mechanics
• People who cannot do anything with a childish fantasy game
• Players who don’t want to switch between the role of player and GM

I absoulety love these. If you are play Yeld these minatures are a MUST have.

This pack of monsters is amazing! I am really excited to use them in our next adventure. The quality is top notch. These guys never disapoint.

I originally bought this game to introduce my kids to RPGs. It has a lot of great kid-friendly art (I later found out one of the authors writes a comic: modest medusa). As I started flipping pages, I was blown away by the sheer amount of content, and clever ideas (some rules I'll be now using for my grown-up rpgs!).

At its core, the main mechanic is a simple d6 pool, where your stats/attributes (called "core dice") and things like weapons and special abilities all add aditional dice to your pool. The total of all your dice is compared to the Game Master's target number, or in the case of a competition, the other player/monster's total.

Player Characters (called "friends") will gain dice (either in their stats or special abilities) by advancing in a class (called "Heroic Jobs") or through some roleplaying challenges. Players create a "friend" based on archetypes like: Big Sister, Bully, and even a Dog. Heroic Jobs give access to special abilities (including magic) and uniquie abilities that are only available to that Herioc Job.

Combat is always repersented on an 8 x 8 grid (obviously for simplicity, although I don't see any reason that couldn't change). Your attack pool (which includes weapons) is compared to the target's defense pool (which includes armor) and if you have the higher total, you remove 1 of thier core "Tough" dice.

So far, all of this is pretty standard rpg material (purposly so, to help kids learn the rules). But there are some very clever twists on traditional rpg rules:

Combat initiative allows the Players to always go first. But introduces an "Excuse Me" rule, where monsters can try to interrupt and take their turn instead. Based on rolls, this means each round of combat has an unpredictable initiative order - keeping everyone on their toes.

Teamwork is the key to winning fights, as every success the previous player gets, allows the next player to get a culmaltive +1 bonus die to thier pool. This means you are excited to see your fellow players succeed - and slowly ramps up the action.

Hiding and Sneaking is brilliantly done, allowing the stealthy "rogue" types to hide, removing themselves from the battle board. If they come in at the end of the first round, they can enter any 'edge' of the board. If they sneak further, coming into play after the 2nd+ round, they can place thier charater in ANY square on the battle board. Of course there is risk to this, and a monster can use it's action to try and spot/stop them.

Magic allows your character to use any spell they know, but the more powerful the spell, the higher the Target Number they have to roll to successfully cast the spell. But your spell roll is also used by monsters to 'resist' that spell. So rolling great has its rewards. However, magic can also be "fumbled/backfire", if you roll two or more "1's" in your pool. These can have very chaotic (and fun!) results.

No one finds it fun to die or go unconscious (loosing all your Tough pool) during battle - especially kids. But the game introduces "ghosts". While you are temporarily out of the fight, you may have "ghost" actions, which may aid friends, 'haunt' enemies, or even do battle with other ghosts. This is a great way for to ensure players can still have fun, even if thier character is temporarily disabled.

I could continue to ramble-on, mentioning scores of cool magic items, the great villians/campaign that is built in, how important calandar dates and the "friend's" age becomes important, and how it uses lavish illustrations throughout to walk you through the rules.

If I had to give one negative to my review, it would be about the organization of a few of the rules. Often I found myself flipping back and forth to find rules. For example, spells are introduced early in the book, but magic backfires are explained later in the book. Or how weapons are described in one section, but how some weapons require 2 hands to wield is descibe in a different section.

This is a stunning game, and while it is geared for kids, it would make a valuable addition to any RPG collection. Highly recommended.

The good: Excellent artwork and interesting character concepts. The gameplay is fairly simple, as well, and I can think of few RPGs where a party of dogs is viable.

The bad: At present, very few win conditions beyond beating the Prince and leaving Yeld, the dog characters have few obvious lose conditions the way the human characters do, and the PDF lacks bookmarks at time of writing.

Additional thoughts: Playing as monsters and trying to save the world would be worth exploring, as well as some more written bits to help one get a feel for the tone and action a group can expect a la Shadowrun.

Fun way to introduce RPG's to kids, fantastic artwork, fun to play. lots of content.

Great theme, mechanics and gameplay. if the GM reads thought the PDF very easy to run a game with players with next to no experience. A full session can take from 4-5hours so best cut into 2 sessions or one long session. Really underrated gem, but be prepared for total brutality. (My one gripe is there are a few pages missing from the pdf. A sentance seems to end halfway trough and it looks like about 3pages are missing. Unsure what this is but I would like to see them.) 8/10

It's clear if a little purposefully vague, but what appeals to me most with this game is the unique setting and the character system based around amnesiacs literally recovering their histories and uncovering mysteries. It's a streamlined, thematic system and charming (in a dark kind of way) illustrations.

Great game! Any chance we could have access to the cover so I can print the book? Thank you in advance.

Ocean is an example of how simple an RPG can be and still be effective.

In Ocean, the players are all people who have woken up in an underwater Station with no memory of how they got there, who they are, or what the monsters are that are stalking and picking them off. They will try to solve three mysteries involving their situation, and survive to escape to safety.

The mechanics of the game are freeform with respect to everything except survival and mystery. Players develop the mystery through rolling dice to find clues to each of the mysteries (who are we? what are the monsters?) and to find supplies that will help them survive and escape. The supplies (weapons, keys, files, etc.) are described in detail.

As a LOST fan, I really like the "castaway" element of the game. The characters are isolated and must work together to succeed in a situation they don't understand. The deck is very much stacked against them mechanically - it's extremely unlikely that everyone will escape together. But with good planning and skillful play they may have a chance.

This competitive/challenge element is not something you normally see in narrative style games of this kind, and it works very well. It also sets up situations where one character might sacrifice themselves for the group, or might throw someone to the wolves (so to speak) for their own benefit, which are highly dramatic and interesting character actions not normally given mechanical weight.

This is a solid game that you will want to run more than once, to compare what was created across several groups. It's also an ideal convention scenario, with almost exactly enough content to learn and understand in a single session with a tight ending.

The presentation of the material with a comic book style to help people understand the tone and mechanics is also innovative and good (though the really constricted text gets a bit old at times.) Highly recommended.