Ten Reasons to Take a Look at The World of Fletnern

The World of Fletnern was first shown to the wider public in 1991 within various Board Enterprises products.  More and more depth has been added since that point, but that doesn’t mean all of you know about it.  So here are the ten reasons you should take a look at The World of Fletnern:
 

1.  It’s FREE!!  There is no money to check out Fletnern!

2.  It has everything a fantasy world needs to have.  It has dragons, knights, elves, dwarves, trolls, orcs, and on and on and on.  They’re all here.

3.  But all those normal things have different spins.  So it is not boring old elves stuck in a forest, but instead a dynamic society of the magical nobles and downtrodden (maybe rebellious) commoners.  Or there are the Circle Forest elves, many of which have turned to raiding viking style.  The orcs are fashioning the world’s largest empire.  The dwarves are (mostly) communists.

4.  Magic not only exists, but it is available.  Mages offer long distance teleportation.  Mentalists use telepathy to relay messages across the continents.  Hospitals have healers able to cure diseases and heal wounds.  This is high fantasy!

5.  The different cultures are different.  Not every human looks the same or acts the same.  Not every troll follows the same religion.  Every race is free to be who they want to be, even if that splits them into multiple factions.

6.  And on the subject of religions:  there are different religions.  Even the individual gods have more than one religion.  This is not a matter of “all elves worship this god and all worship him in the exact same way”.

7.  The price list makes sense.  Different products come from different places, and they are cheaper where they’re made.  But the economy doesn’t cause an apple orchard to face bankruptcy because the game designer didn’t understand math.

8.  The various factions are taking actions.  Unlike most of your computer game worlds, the rival factions and secret societies continue to plan, to prepare, and to take action.  There is constantly news in the world, because things are actually happening.

9.  The detail is there, but it’s not overwhelming.  Fletnern has many cultures that you will find interesting, possibly fascinating, and they all make sense.  But it was also developed to be run by anyone with whatever level of interest that they have.  Study it, or simply breeze through for some ideas - it doesn’t matter.  You will come to love it!

10.  But most of all, Fletnern is a world of adventure.  There are bad guys to defeat, monsters to tame, and ancient relics to recover.  The history isn’t some boring exposition, but instead written specifically to drive adventure hooks. 

Fletnern can be found for free at its wiki site:  https://fletnern.wikia.com/wiki/World_of_Fletnern_Wiki

A summary can be found at its page on our site:  http://www.boardenterprises.com/fletnern.html

And the truly in-depth write ups are contained within the Small Bites editions.  The free World Walker editions are available at:  https://www.rpgnow.com/browse/pub/376/Board-Enterprises

For anyone hoping to run Fletnern as a game world or use it for ideas on their own world, you may want to join us on Patreon and get the full sized Game Masters’ editions here:  https://www.patreon.com/boardent

The Future of the Sounding Board

So we’re thinking about how we might do certain things better, smarter in 2019.  One of the things we’re thinking of doing is delaying how we post the Sounding Board items.  The way we do this currently is as we’re finishing off the Small Bites edition, we post these to the blog.  So the Small Bites edition that comes out (theoretically) the last day of the month will have been preceded by these blog posts.  But what that means is that if a blog post caught your attention and you are a patron, you still need to wait one to four weeks for the edition to come out.  If you’re not a patron, it’s more like three to six weeks.

Attention spans being what they are in the modern day, that isn’t working for us.  In fact, the blog as a whole hasn’t been functioning all that well.  A couple years ago, we were in with a couple of blog advertising sites and they helped to direct a lot of traffic our way.  But they have both closed up, and traffic is now at a slow trickle.

We are not planning to close the blog down, mainly due to tradition.  It helped direct a lot of traffic to us and to our products for many years and simply ending it feels unfair.  But it is not serving as a great means to direct traffic to us today.  We believe that this change in timing - moving the edition’s blog posts from weeks before the World Walker edition is available to just after it has become available, might serve to direct some additional traffic to the edition.  It’s a “Did you like this?  Well there’s more at ...”

But if you’re reading this post, then you’re probably a frequent reader of the blog, and we wanted to at least explain our intentions to you.  As always, we are open to comments.  Does this change affect you?  Do you know any FRPG blog advertising sites that might help increase our exposure?  Is there a FRPG theme you’ve been dying to ask us for, but haven’t gotten around to asking just yet?  We’re here!  We listen!  Though admittedly, if you comment on a blog post from years ago, we don’t always see those, so you might want to email us at info@boardenterprises.com and let us know that you commented.

Is Being a Trope a Bad Thing?

I’ve just finished a conversation where I went on at length about how the orcs of Fletnern aren’t just tropes, but are instead a decently thought out society, that is both interesting and makes sense.  Briefly - The various orcish tribes inhabit the Wembic Empire based in the Gold Mountains.  The problem is that while called the Gold Mountains, there is no gold left in them having been mined out by the dwarves centuries ago.  The various tribes are different cultures; as different as American Indians are/were.

So, OK, these orcs aren’t mindless raiding morons who simply attack until some adventurers or other mercenaries come along and kill them.  That’s great, for those who want characters with depth and back story and some manner of goal beyond acquiring a high number of gold coins on their character sheet.  But what if you aren’t one of those?

I bad mouth “gold farmers” all the time, you know, those “role-players” who simply don’t put themselves into the minds of their characters but instead just adventure for the experience points.  But sometimes, it’s OK to be the orc killer - to just be a big, hulking warrior, who never bothers to use his brain but instead just wades through the bad guys hacking and slashing.  Why is this good?  Because it’s only a game (sacrilege, I know) and sometimes it just needs to be a release.

Most of us have been found, mouth slightly open, dead look in our eyes, focused on a screen of some sort killing dozens if not hundreds of bad guys in some rather mindless “adventure” game.  Usually we’ve lost all track of time and someone is trying to bring us back into reality.  We “zone out” because we can.  We zone out because we need it.  Lots of people have ways to check out of reality and stop thinking for a while.  Some drink, some read, some binge watch The Walking Dead.  We’re gamers; we do other things.

I am not going against everything I have ever written to say that you should go out and just slaughter-fest your way through a campaign filled with enemies and plots, but every once in a while, it’s kind of nice to just play an easy character - one without any baggage and without any drama.  You don’t have any friends outside the player characters and you just go adventuring.  The only thing you really want to find is the next dungeon, before you have to solve some riddle.  Maybe you’re the only “mindless” one in the party - that’s fine.  The rest can figure things out.  This week, you’re going to kick back and eat pretzels until one of them tells you to roll for initiative and then you get to kill things.  It’s kind of like therapy - only a lot cheaper.

During your next play session - Play a more mature character in a more mature way, but every once in a while, GMs should let the players just kind of go through the motions.  I can’t be the only one who needs to remind myself every now and again to relax and unwind.

All About City Guards and Police

Our latest edition:  Civilian Authority of Brinston aka All About City Guards and Police (and a little about crime, too!!) has been sent to all Patreon patrons.  If you are one, and you didn't get it, please let us know and we will correct the error ASAP!!!
If you are not yet a patron, please join us by going to:  https://www.patreon.com/boardent
You will get our full edition of the monthly world building and game mastering supplement (minimum 40 pages - this month's is 48) and get it weeks earlier than the people who wait to download the much shorter World Walker edition.  If you want an example of the World Walker edition, how about looking at our last month's version by clicking here.

As always, you should tell us what you think, because we actually listen to our customers and patrons!