Welcome to Pen and Die’s Journey Through Fairhaven Preview! Currently on Kickstarter, Journey Through Fairhaven provides a solo adventure experience while also guiding the player through the rules of the D20 system. The book is planned to be around 350+ pages with numerous endings and loads of locations to explore. The book takes the form of a choose-your-adventure book as you will flip through pages and read specific sections based on your choices. The authors take a different tact than other adventure books that sequentially number every section. Journey Through Fairhaven utilizes a few sections on every page. So rather than turning to section 658, you will turn to page 35 section 2. On the one hand, this speeds up your page flipping, which you will be doing a lot of. On the other, the whole point of the section system was to keep you from spoilers. I wonder if this system randomizes the locations as well.
A Learning Tool
The writing looks to be good quality and the art is fantastic. I also like the slow introduction to the D20 system. I’ve been playing TTRPG’s for over twenty years now, most of that time spent as game master of one rule set or another. Introducing new players always presents a bit of a challenge. Perhaps it’s a little different now that they can hop on YouTube and see how any given game is played. However, in the past, getting them comfortable with choosing an action, rolling the dice to determine success, and just generally picking things up while everyone is looking at them expectantly has produced a fair amount of anxiety in the poor novices. Journey Through Fairhaven appears to be a fine replacement for the trial under fire of the brand new player. Slowly introducing the rules gives them some time to learn on their own. New players can confidently roll their dice with a fair expectation of how things will work out.
Kickstarter
Journey Through Fairhaven is on Kickstarter right now through October 12th. You can go check it out here:
The Kickstarter features pledge levels for PDF, soft, and hardcover copies. There are two books that will be included, the adventure book and the bestiary. PDF’s will be included with the physical book pledges.
You can also find a link to a sample section of the book on the Kickstarter page so that you can see how the game will play.
Interested to know more about the creators, Jonas and Lutz? Check out our interview with them below.
Get to Know the Authors
P&D: Could you please tell me a little bit of your backstory? What drew you to making games?
J&L: I discovered dnd through Critical Role, 8 years ago when they started uploading their campaign to YouTube. I was hooked right from the beginning and knew I just had to play. I still remember the first session we ever played, I had been binge-watching Matthew Colville’s “Running the Game” and had prepped the “Delian Tomb Dungeon” he had showcased in his second episode of this series.
The rulings that night were terrible, nobody knew how to play and everyone was way over their heads, but it was a blast. I had approximately watched 50+ hours of Dungeon Master Tips, Videos and content at that point and was most familiar with the game, so I offered to be the DM.
I was a bookworm in my younger days and was spewing with creativity and knew I needed to create my own homebrew world. Ever since that day, I created 99% of all the content our group has played, with the 1% being an occasional inspiration. During Covid, our Group couldn’t continue playing, as Germany had some very strict Covid restrictions. Online Play via Roll20 never really got us hooked.
So I started looking for alternatives, Solo Play came up quite quickly, “The Executioners Daughter” was my first experience in Solo Play and I loved it, but I wanted more out of it. The restrictions got better and one was allowed to visit a person who was not part of one’s household again. I wanted to share the excitement and discovered Dnd Duett. Of course, there was even less content available for Duett play.
So Lutz (Co-Founder of Printable Adventures) and I played through a lot of it in a few days. The adventures were nice, but we thought we could create something better. This is when we really started producing content. First I just created duett adventures for us to play, but we soon were hooked on the level of immersion and realized we had a good product. I did most of the writing, Lutz did all of the design and map-making. We started out on Patreon and had the idea to create a level 0 duett adventure in which you would play our own characters’ backstory. We had some success, but life always got in the way of things, so we never published content regularly enough to gain a huge following. That’s when we decided to start a Kickstarter, with enough money, we could cut back on different other responsibilities and with enough time we knew we could create something amazing.
P&D: What are you favorite and least favorite parts of making your products?
J&L: My favorite part of making our products is sitting together with Lutz, sharing a cold beverage, and mind-mapping all of our ideas. I am the creative part and he is extremely analytical. My least favorite part is probably the formatting, having set ideas about how something should look, and that clashing with the boundaries of programs is sometimes a bit frustrating.
P&D: Is there anything else in particular that you would like to share?
J&L: My mind was blown once I discovered the different ways dungeons and dragons can be enjoyed apart from the standard group play session. I can’t recommend solo or duo play enough, the level of immersion and personal touch it has, is unmatched.
Thanks for checking out the Journey Through Fairhaven preview. Be sure to go check out the Kickstarter page here!
