Welcome to my new project, Tales of Calvenor, an amalgam of solo-roleplaying in the background and fantasy fiction in the foreground.

This project is a continuation of my writing and gaming journey, which started with Dungeon Crawl Classics, writing fiction accounts of my solo games there, and most recently my Age of Wonders story. Come to think of it, those stories began because of my Age of Ashes novellas, which were essentially retelling of my playthrough of a beloved Pathfinder 2^nd Edition adventure. In many ways, I’m on a quest to tell serial fiction like my Age of Ashes treatments, without the aid of a published setting and adventure.

As I outlined in my Age of Wonders reflections last week, my intention here is to:

1. Continue to improve my worldbuilding chops in an entirely homebrewed setting.
2. Focus on compelling characters, improving upon my earlier efforts.
3. Lean more heavily into emergent storytelling via the Mythic GM Emulator and other solo gaming tools.
4. Find a game that will support my enjoyment of the story.

Next week I’ll focus on our cast of characters, touching briefly on the setting (unlike last time, I’m aiming to reveal most of the worldbuilding within the fiction). Today, I want to spotlight the game system I’ll be using in the background of this story: Tales of Argosa.

Why Tales of Argosa?

I’ve been buying a lot of tabletop roleplaying games the past several years, which I think is borne out of equal parts: a) an explosion of new games thanks to platforms like Kickstarter and Backer Kit (both of which I’m slightly addicted to), b) me dedicating more time to playing tabletop games – right now I have no less than four group games running concurrently, and c) a nostalgic realization that reading TTRPG game books makes me happy, and we all need some escapist happiness these days.

Most of these games, past and present, sit on several bookshelves in my house, which my wonderful wife—even though the shelves are in her home office—accepts without complaint. The newest acquisitions, however, sit in my home office, on what I’ve come to refer to as The Stack. The Stack is a literal stack of books that I have at best skimmed, but which I’m excited to read. Once I’ve given a book from The Stack a thorough cover-to-cover delve, I almost ritualistically carry it from my office to my wife’s, placing it upon the shelf with its brethren.  

Right now, The Stack is out of control, and I’m willing myself to buy less and read more. Every day, I enter my office and see Evolved, Shadow of the Weird Wizard,Worlds Without Number,Mythras (plus Mythras Classic Fantasy and Destined), DCC’s Caverns of Thracia, and Shadowdark, soon to be joined by Legend in the Mist, Dolmenwood, and Reaver, all staring at me. Indeed, The Stack has become such a point of embarrassment for me that I spent an entire weekend recently reading game books.

One of those books was Tales of Argosa by Pickpocket Press. I can’t even remember why I bought Tales originally, but I believe it stemmed from a podcast review of someone raving about it. I’ve been on a real Sword & Sorcery kick over the past year, reading, among other things, the original Conan stories and comics, and Tales sounded a lot like the Dungeon Crawl Classics’ (probably my current favorite game system) answer to playing Sword & Sorcery games… a modern system with an old school feel.

Here is a Discord conversation I had that Saturday afternoon with a friend of mine:

Unlike Age of Wonders, when I spent two full months exploring what game might fit my vision, I immediately knew in early June that Tales of Argosa would underpin my next story. No, it’s not a superhero system. No, it’s not extremely popular like some of those games on The Stack (which I’m sure I’ll also love and want to play). But, as I said to my friend Rob, dammit all if it doesn’t sound like tons of fun. Maybe I’m just a sucker for old-school black and white art.

If you’ve been reading my blog over the past couple of years, you may be shocked that I’m not playing Evolved, which is literally my favorite system applied to superheroes, my deepest genre love. And yes, on the surface it seems like a silly thing to overlook. Here is my rationale: First, Evolved comes pre-wired with a specific setting, full of time travel and technology. I dig the setting and flipping through the 480-page (!) rulebook makes me drool, but it feels like the sort of game you play as-is without massively customizing it, at least at first glance. Because I want to keep going on my homebrewed setting, that’s a no-go for me. Second, as I mentioned, part of the fun of DCC is the high death count, which necessitates many PCs, and right now I only want to juggle 3-4. Finally, as I mentioned, I’m currently hip deep in a Sword & Sorcery phase, a subgenre of fantasy that’s well explained here. It’s clear from Age of Wonders that my creativity was tilting towards fantasy and away from superheroes, so I might as well fully embrace that for now. I’m never too far from a spandex phase, though. Soon enough, it will be time for Evolved, probably in a live group game. For now, it stays on The Stack.

Why I Love Tales of Argosa

Okay, I joked about it before, but I truly do love the art. From the awesome cover by Luke Eidenschink to brilliant pieces throughout by artists such as Earl Geier, Jeffrey Koch, Dean Spencer, Marcin, Anaislalovi, Eric Lofgren, Thomas Denmark, Blake Davis, Rick Hershey, and many, many other talented folk (seriously, I only gave up listing them because it was feeling silly to keep going). It’s possible to have a subpar game with amazing art, but the art here is inspiring to my storytelling brain. And, thankfully, it all comes attached to a kick ass tabletop roleplaying game.

Tales of Argosa is the second edition of Low Fantasy Gaming by the same company. I admit that I hadn’t heard of LFG, but then my Sword & Sorcery obsession these days is relatively recent.Mechanics-wise, it’s a standard d20 system and thus recognizable for anyone who’s played any edition of Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder. It’s the tweaks that make it exciting, though. I could describe them to you, or I could use the handy summary from page 5 in the rulebook:

Because the game funded via Kickstarter in April of 2024, shipped to backers in January of this year, and released to the public shortly afterwards, there aren’t a ton of in-depth reviews that I could find. Check out the reviews on DriveThruRPG, however, and you get nuggets like, “THE Sword & Sorcery game you NEED! Buy this NOW!,” “This is wonderful. No singular gimmick that soon loses its appeal for a selling point but instead, many well thought out additions and modifications that create probably the best D&D style RPG out there!,” and, my personal favorite, “If you enjoy, DCC, Shadow of the Demon Lord, OSR, low magic settings, and a non-bloat set of rules, Tales of Argosa is the game for you.”

In addition, the rulebook even has a section for solo play, and the game comes with its own Mythic-like oracular card deck (called, awesomely, the Deck of Signs), plus special Fate dice that can offer other fun ways to randomly shape an emergent story. Add all that good stuff together, and it’s no wonder that, as I read through the crisp 250-page rulebook (which is a guide for both players and GMs, and includes a bestiary), I could immediately see it as the system underpinning my next fiction project. Even going through the summary here has made me excited all over again!

In fact…

Let’s Begin!

Again, last time I had a lot of build-up to the narrative. After six installments choosing a system, I spent one post each on the setting and variant rules, diving into the history of Oakton, then one installment for each of the three protagonists. This go-round, I’m spending less time on set-up—at least from a blog point of view—and jumping in. Next week, I’ll make my three PCs, discuss any rule-tweaks I want to make from the start (spoiler alert: none, really), and leave the work I’ve done on worldbuilding to come out in the writing process. Then we’re off and running, jumping right into a story where I have no more idea what will happen than you do. I can’t wait!

As always, if you’re enjoying these posts or have suggestions, drop me a comment below or feel free to email me at jaycms@yahoo.com.

Next: Meet the adventurers