Barkeep on the Borderlands is a pubcrawl pointcrawl adventure amidst Mardi Gras-like festivities for fantasy roleplaying games. It includes pubs written by many luminaries of the OSR and adjacent movements, such as Luka Rejec, Zedeck Siew, Ben Laurence, Ava Islam, and more. However, the Keep is home to far more taverns, taprooms, saloons and speakeasies than could ever be detailed in such a slim adventure. The dipsomanic adventurers returning from their dungeon delves demand ever more watering holes.

For this jam, you may write a pub set in the Keep, a standalone tavern compatible with the drinking and pubcrawl mechanics of Barkeep on the Borderlands, or a completely stand-alone pubcrawl of your own. Heck, you can just put together some extra Sidetracks or Situations for your favorite pub from the adventure or a lyric game that isn’t exactly meant to be played at all. Even unfinished attempts, prototypes, ashcans, rough drafts, loose notes on a bar napkin, the disconnected ramblings of an addled mind, all submissions are welcome here, so long as you steer clear of any bigotry, hatred, or harassment in any forms.

You’ve presumably heard of an “SRD”, a system reference document, for TTRPG systems. Well who said that was only for systems! The general pub format and the entirety of the pubcrawl and drinking rules from Barkeep on the Borderlands are available for use via the Barkeep on the Borderlands Third Party License. The license is fully available no matter how you plan to price (or not price) your submission. There is also a compatibility mark for use in your submission (or future works using the license). 

If you’d like to workshop your ideas, feel free to hop into the Prismatic Wasteland Discord server, where there will be a channel for this game jam. We also talk about other stuff, like Legos. 

Some potential submissions include:

• An actual recipe for one of the drinks from Barkeep on the Borderlands
• A random table of wizard student NPCs that hang around Ship of Thesis or Watchtower Without Wizard.
• A partially submerged pub that caters to lizardfolk refugees and veterans of the Keep.
• Your players’ favorite tavern in your home campaign.
• A full-scale pubcrawl adventure with multiple pubs.

Creation is its own reward, but there are some treats for you beyond just that. Everyone who submits something will get a discount code for my webstore (for physical copies of Barkeep on the Borderlands, Barkeep accessories, and other miscellanea). Once the jam ends on August 14, I will write a compilation post that links to all the entries, highlighting some of my favorites (the criteria is based on my own highly idiosyncratic tastes). Depending on the level of participation, I may also reach out to the best 6 to 12 entries to see if the authors would be interested in getting paid to have their submission published in a print compilation (along with editing, art, the whole shebang). But that is just me dreaming big. 

Cheers!

W.F. Smith