The Grue Next Door

A Belgian Farmhouse

My first self-published work is available on DriveThruRPG now!

Affiliate link to purchase: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/513466/A-Belgian-Farmhouse?affiliate_id=361643

Why?

After approving my submissions for monsters and artifacts for the Referee Book, James Raggi reached out to me and several other writers, asking for contributions to Green Devil Face #6. We had a tight turnaround—basically, just a weekend from the concept of the project to its completion and submission. GDF6 was released in print and distributed with orders from the LotFP webstore, with plans for it to be available as a PDF on DriveThruRPG. However, due to one of the writers becoming unreachable, that never happened.

It’s been about 9 years and I’ve now decided to start publishing my own work. This piece seemed like a great first step since it was technically done. I asked James if I could release it on my own, and he gave me the go-ahead. After far too much time spent editing and overthinking, I’m finally hitting “send” and releasing it on DriveThruRPG.

Research & Development

As mentioned in the text’s introduction, the idea for setting the book in Belgium came from my then obsession with Saison and Farmhouse Ale. I also thought A Belgian Farmhouse sounded like the title of a European horror film. As a fan of dice-drop generators, I wanted something easy to use at the table. Finally, I’ve got a lot of horror movie plots and tropes in my head. All of that distilled into this release.

After I settled on this concept and began researching, I learned that Belgium didn’t exist as a country in the 17th century—at least not as “Belgium.” So, yeah, the initial concept was a bit off, but whatever, I’m committed, and I’m plowing ahead!

I came across something in my research that in the past babies were not as highly valued as they are today due to their high mortality rate – why get attached when they are likely to die? I’m not sure that’s really true, but it’s kind of messed up so I included that in the book.

Mechanics

I decided to make high die rolls weird and low die rolls mundane as a nod to the old Avalon Hill game Magic Realm where your roll 2d6 and use the higher result.

I can’t say this enough: The Metamorphica is an essential book for anyone running OSR games—fantasy, sci-fi, horror, anything. I genuinely believe that with the core book for any system and The Metamorphica, you have all you need.

In fact, I recommend it so much that if you don't own it, you should go by that now instead of A Belgian Farmhouse!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/198038/the-metamorphica-revised?affiliate_id=361643

With that in mind, there are several sections of A Belgian Farmhouse where I assume you’ll use The Metamorphica:

The Well – 11: random negative effects
The Well – 12: random effects
Things – Treasures – 12: potion or magic item
Things – Wanderers – 12: random monster

The Metamorphica could also be used for: the mutant bear, demons, monsters, vampires, NPC adventurers, witches, and other unusual NPCs at the farmhouse.

As for the Twists, I riffed on the fly, often drawing inspiration from movies. Sometimes these were based on folklore, or I made something up. For the second release, I created a Spotify playlist matching each twist. Some songs are directly from the movies that inspired the twists; others are adjacent, by the same composer, or simply from films I like.

Twists 26-31 were inspired by European folklore in the Belgian region, and they’re the only encounters I researched. They always felt a bit out of place to me, and I considered changing them for this release, but ultimately decided to keep them. The songs tied to these twists are from Belgian composers.

There are also a couple of solipsistic inside jokes scattered throughout the book, but they’re weird enough to keep in. Long live Pappy Toilet!

There are a few obscure references and jokes hidden throughout the book. If you spot one, let me know in the comments, and I’ll happily award you a Grue No-Prize for your efforts!

Samples

I never actually used A Belgian Farmhouse in my LotFP campaign, but I did use it in my 17th Century Minimalist campaign as advanced prep. The party was systematically clearing plague from the city of Ferrara. Here are the farmhouses I created: