A hard winter has come and gone for the frontier town of Vosserlin. The common folk scraped by on stale pottage and frozen hearthbread, while the town’s nobility enjoyed salted pork and hearty stews at every needless banquet. Now spring has sprung, and with it come the taxes of the first harvest. The townsfolk are hopeful for a light tax and good business, but the nobility has other, much crueler plans in mind.
Leafstone and Silk is a FREE one shot scenario that focuses on a band of errants in the Blackwood setting. As players learn the ins and outs of a Blackwood town, they find the commoners are one grievance away from forming an angry mob. Welcome to the world of the Blackwood, where danger lurks all around and help might not always be welcome.
Revolutionary Roots
The Blackwood is inspired by folklore and wuxia. It’s also a setting that started out as a way for me to explore my roots. I was looking at Germanic folklore, but also the stories of colonial North America. There are folktales a-plenty from that time, but I was fascinated by the way some historical moments were given a mythic/folklore treatment. When we learn about the Boston Tea Party in grade school, we don’t learn the complex socioeconomic circumstances that lead up to it. We don’t even learn much about the perspectives of the two sides. We know the colonies were upset about taxes and we know they dumped a bunch of British tea in the harbor. The setting, the action, and the lesson are three core elements of a folktale, and that’s about all we get when we’re first introduced to a lot of the history of the American Revolution.
The idea for this adventure came to me while I was attending the Inauguration Day protest in Chicago. We were listening to a Latinx student group talk about their experience. There were grandmas and church groups to my left. Groups of scientists and pro bono legal counsel were behind me, while antifas and counterprotesters were trying to cover up each other’s signs to my left. At one point I smelled something burning, then I noticed two witches scrubbing the area with some burning sage. I thought to myself, “how would this protest look and feel different if it had been organized by any other of these groups?”
It made me want to explore the idea in a game, so I started looking for opportunities in folklore and history. The American Revolution was a sure bet, and the most well-known protest I could think of was the Boston Tea Party. I did some research about the underlying sentiments behind the event, and decided pitting a moderate view against a radical one would work best.
Leafstone and Silk is a bit of a bonus adventure because of its connection to the main setting book. By the time the Plot Point Campaign takes place, Vosserlin has been sacked by an alliance of pagan covens. Survivors fled to the frontier fort across the lake, known these days as Bracken. It’s a lawless and rowdy town, but perhaps someone could rally the errants together long enough to stage a counterattack and take back Vosserlin…
If you’ve already got the Savage Worlds Deluxe Explorer’s Edition, head over to DriveThruRPG to get this next adventure in the Blackwood:
Be sure to check out our previous releases too:
The Seven Quillcrows One Sheet
The King of Knuckle Peak One Sheet
The documents feature some awesome character art from Eric Quigley, Daniel Comerci, and old woodcuts in the public domain. Even though we’re official Savage Worlds licensees, all four of these products are totally FREE! So what are you waiting for? Scoop ’em up and head out into the woods!
When you sit down to run this adventure with your gaming group, take a take a table selfie with the hashtag #BlackwoodGames. And if you enjoy the adventure, please leave us a review on DriveThruRPG!