A Traveler's Guide to the Echelon Forest
A downloadable game
A system agnostic die drop forest crawl.
Toss a handful of six sided dice onto a table to instantly generate a forest point crawl complete with features, paths, weather, and elevation. Each time the Echelon Forest is visited things will shift, new locations will be discovered, and old ones will be rearranged.
The Echelon Forest is a magical woods full of both mundane plants and animals along with more esoteric strangeness. It is not a place to battle creatures for wealth and valor, but instead an interesting place to visit and travel through.
"It is the D&D version of a walking simulator. "
Bryce L.
Includes:
- 36 Unique Points of Interest
- 11 Different Path Types Between Locations
- A Simple Travel Procedure for Exploring the Forest
- A Simple Procedure to track Weather and Changes Within the Forest
- Visuals Inspired By Park Guide Books and Vintage Travelogues
Risograph printed copies available at:
Art is public domain, with the exception of the dungeon map in the back which was drawn by https://brstf.itch.io/.
Thanks to Yochai Gal for formatting the "booklet" files for home printing. Print duplex, double-sided (flip short-side), landscape letter.
Video walk-through by Ithaquas Bane.
A Traveler's Guide to the Echelon Forest is licensed as CC-BY-4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which means you are free to share and adapt the text however you like, as long as you credit me, link to this license, and indicate if you've made changes.
The images are all from public domain sources.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $5 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copies
If you can't, or don't want, to pay for it grab a community copy.
I'll add another one to the pile for each copy purchased (please let me know if you buy it elsewhere).
I'll add five community copies if you send me a picture of a map you created using the die drop system, or a play report of players actually experiencing the Forest.
Development log
- "Echelon Forest" Risograph Print On Sale!Jun 04, 2023
- Spanish Translation + Solo Play VideoMar 03, 2023
- Print Copies In Stores + Video WalkthroughFeb 18, 2023
- Echelon Forest in Print + Price ChangeJan 11, 2023
- Minor Fixes and UpdatesApr 17, 2022
- Added Quick Reference and Dungeon GeneratorApr 14, 2022
- Booklet Print Files AddedApr 13, 2022
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
hi there
Just wondering if any more community copies will be available?
Kind regards
Yes! Been a bit behind on updating those.
Thank you so much for your kindness and generosity in providing community copies of your game. I’m a disabled pension who can’t afford much so these free gifts really help me out in playing games and keeping my mind active. I won’t be broke forever so plan on coming back when I’m able to help out.
I really appreciate your hard work and kindness in providing community copies.
No need to come back and pay later, so long as you enjoy it that’s enough for me! If you have the opportunity pass it on to someone else in the future!
A nice supplement for exploring a magical woodland! No stats and monsters or fighting. But there's mood and atmosphere and encounters with the natural world.
I purchased a copy of it from Around the Table Game Pub in Lynnwood WA.
Rad! I’ll add the community copies.
Did you get a digital copy through Bits & Mortar as well? If not I can send you a key.
Hey, AwkwardTurtle, very inspiring thing! Thank you.
Would really like to use Echelon Forest, but not able to buy it right now. Are there more community copies available?
Wish you great success.
Just updated with some more, grab one while they’re there!
any chance of more community copies?
Thanks for the reminder! Just updated them based on recent sales + some extra.
Got one when it was just for free - LOVE IT.
Thank you! Enjoy!
Just ran a really chill one-shot with a single player using the 2400 system!
That’s awesome, great system pairing as well!
Thanks for sharing, I’ll add the community copies!
Hello! I've just run a D&D session for my kids using a map generated with this, and some random encounter tables. It's a great tool, can you recommend anything similar either by you or others?
That’s fantastic, thanks for sharing.
For things I’ve written, Wallet Dungeons is the only thing that creates full places to explore. I’ve also got Waypoints but that’s more of a feature within a larger map.
From other people, there are some online ones I’m aware of:
One Page Dungeon
Dizzy Dragon
Some pen and paper dice rolling:
Hedonic Ink’s Die Drop Dungeons
Esoteric Enterprises has a bunch of die drop generators in it, but it’s all modern/urban fantasy stuff and may not be the genre or tone you’re looking for.
I’m sure there are more that I’m not thinking of at the moment.
I made a map using this!
This is extremely cool! Thanks so much for sharing!
Love it!
I think there is an error in the title on page 18, it should be 5, 11 and 17, not 16.
You are correct, thank you! I've fixed it in the source and the pdfs will be fixed in the next update.
Did you make the art for this? It looks amazing.
I did not! I have no artistic skills at all. Almost all of the artwork is in the public domain from old travelogues or nature books. They're sourced through the British Library's Flickr page.
The one exception is the example random dungeon in the back of the book was drawn by https://brstf.itch.io/.
is this supposed to be a game?
no, it's a tool for people running a traditional rpg table
A good read, I liked your diagrams and dungeon tool at the end :)
Had a lot of fun with this!
Don't you think the same mechanics could generate a town?
Absolutely! At its core this is just a glorified d66 table with some extra bits attached.
If you made a d66 table of locations (or a subset of d66) and a 2d6 table of roads or connections you could apply it to almost anything. Adjust the extra mechanics based on what you're specifically trying to generate.
the three references on page 6 are two pages behind what they mean to be. i also failed to understand 'going off trail' and the passage of time system. fun way to get a map going though, even with insufficient dice.
Ahh, thanks for the note on the references. I'll fix those, and the pdf should be good on the next update.
For going off trail, my intent is that it's if people decide to "off road" it and just cut directly through the forest. I agree I didn't make that clear enough though, I'll add some extra explanation in the next version.
I love the drawing! Super cool to see how the forest looks for other people, and I honestly appreciate seeing the result with fewer dice than I used.
The Seasons have some impossible values.
Ahh, you're right. An earlier draft allowed up to 4 connections to the Heart, but I ended up changing that for the sake of simplicity to just let the Heart act like the other locations. Just forgot to update the list of values. I left the value of 1 in there just to let the lists of numbers all be the same length, although that's a moot point if I fix the list to account for the other issue.
If I thought I could get away with just writing Sum Mod 4 + 1 I'd do that, but listing the values seemed like the better option.
I totally love this! Very useful and the layout is dope!