A Tangled Web Vol. 1

A Tangled Web is all about connecting your NPCs with one another using relationships, and breathing life into your world. This zine contains 5 precreated sets of 6 NPCs each themed with a generic multi-race fantasy setting in mind (humans, dwarves, elves, and halflings.) Each set contains its own unique narrative. There will also be 3+ “Create Your Own Tangled Web” fill in the blank style worksheets (more depending on stretch goals) that will help you generate your own collection of NPCs that are actually interesting and know each other.

Each of these NPC sets exist within a web of relationships woven to bring drama, secrets, and interesting interactions to your game. Every web has an illustrative diagram showing these relationships with unique icons. NPC descriptions are kept short and sweet and are meant to spark creativity. Random tables are provided for each web to provide different flavor, motivations, and secrets every time you use the web in a new story.

For the most part these webs are kept system and setting agnostic. Volume 1 is focused on stories within cities and towns, so you won’t find any wilderness setting NPCs here. But if you’ve got a city, town, or outpost in your game, then you’re all set to use these webs in your existing stories.

All writing and art is done by us, Benjamin McCown and Christian Stryffeler. This is our first zine and we hope you’re fond of it!

Well, first, everyone needs more RPG books and zines. We’d buy every single zine entered in ZineQuest if we could. Who doesn’t love that sweet dopamine hit when the mail person shows up with a fresh package? In fact, this is us giving you permission to do just that. Go buy every zine here. No really. Treat yo’self. (We assume no responsibility for any resulting financial difficulties.)

But aside from everyone’s love for all things dopamine and role-playing, here’s a couple of problems we’re trying to solve with this book:

• Random NPC tables don't always make sense. They are a lot of fun and can really help a dungeon master on the fly, but it can be a lot of work trying to make the random collection of back stories and unique traits fit your campaign. Why does randomly generated little Timmy have 5 older siblings, each a different race? Why does he carry a dead ferret and eleven crowbars on him at all times? We don’t know either.
• Fleshed out NPCs often come with a setting baked in. Sometimes to make a session happen you don’t need a city supplement, a massive over-arching story, or a big list of random encounters. You just need some interesting characters who know each other and have a problem that needs solving.
• Off-the-cuff NPCs never seem to know each other. We don’t know about you, but we’re too busy trying to think of improvised NPC names that are better than ”Bob” or ”Dave” to weave in relational complexities on the fly. How about some NPCs that come with a few relationships built in?

Here’s some detailed info about each of the individual item rewards that can be found featured in the different tier levels. 

Cover featured above.

A Tangled Web Vol. 1 in PDF format. This will be delivered virtually to backers via itch.io. It will fit nicely in your Google Drive collection of hundreds of other RPG resources that you still need to read. But this one is different. You need this one.

”Create your own Tangled Web” worksheets in PDF format. These will be printer friendly! They’ll appear in the zine as well, but we wanted you to have easy access to a printable version so that you can print as many as you want. These will be mad libs style where you fill in some blanks and build a full NPC web of your own.

Every web has 6 NPCs. These NPCs will have a name, a race, and some secrets, desires, or flaws. In the spirit of the OSR we encourage you to hack and change things as you wish. Names and races are just suggestions. Feel like the Blacksmith would be more interesting if they were a female Orc? Sure, why not. We’re just trying to give you story seeds to get you going. If you use our content in any way, shape, or form, we’ve succeeded in helping you, and that’s our goal.

Besides the text that describes the NPCs and their qualities, the other two components of each web are the icon map and the random tables. The icon map gives you an at-a-glance view of everyone’s relationships with each other for a simple reminder. We'll also provide three or four random tables that will help you customize some of the NPCs and give you more story ideas to help them feel unique. This way you can use the web again in the future and things might turn out a little different.

Here's an example of a complete NPC Web from the zine!

Benjamin McCown.

I’m a cloud engineer by day and an RPG playing Rocket League nerd by night. I started out playing 5e a few years ago and have gotten into the wild and wonderful world of other tabletop RPGs over the past year. Diving into the deep, deep rabbit hole of the Old School Renaissance over the past year has been a true pleasure, and I’m very excited to be releasing my first zine with one of my best friends.

Christian Stryffeler.

I am a desk jockey, an artist and anything nerdy connoisseur. I started playing 5e a handful of years ago and Ben and I have been playing tabletop games together ever since. Building games and fleshing out worlds inspires me to continue to create, and it has been so exciting delving deeper into the intricacies of everything not just behind the screen, but also behind the rules.