“It’s definitely a bit more focused on the gamer crowd – we have a lot of experience of the ‘my first rpg’ games with My Little Pony and Labyrinth. But there’s certainly more to sink your teeth into with The Dark Crystal,” says Jack Caesar, the designer of the game and previous Jim Hederson universe RPG, Labyrinth.
“Dark Crystal is a bit more in-depth, a bit more crunchy. We’re more focusing on the group of friends who like Dark Crystal, whereas Labyrinth was more for parents who wanted to introduce their family to it.”
Labyrinth: The Adventure Game was a huge success in many ways, not least critically. It won a couple of ENNIES – gold for best family product, and silver for best cartography. The adventure writer for the book was Ben Milton, a proponent of the OSR movement, found a happy medium between the classic ‘rulings not rules’ mantra, and working with a puzzle heavy combat-free system. The book also contained a cut out slice of the book to contain the pair of D6.
The designer is teaming up with Janet Forbes heading up the writing of the game this time as we are welcomed back to the world of Thra. That may be from your last visit for the 1982 film, or the Netflix series of 2019, or indeed the series of books. It’s a world filled with strange creatures, with the central story, thrust as it so often is, on gentle peoples ill equipped for the world. We’ll be taking on the roles of the extremely puppety Geflings in our hopes to save the world. Just try to avoid trial by stone.
CRYSTALISED
The Dark Crystal Adventure Game, to give its full title is a roleplaying game, that comes entirely complete with in its pages.
“It’s both your ruleset, your adventure, everything you need to through the adventure – which is one of the nice things about it,” says the designer, “it takes inspiration from the movie, the series, the novels, the comics – we’ve been able to pick and mix from the entire world. There’s all these locations that people have put a lot of attention and care into describing over the years – and we can now bring that out in a gaming context.”