Click here for the UVG Character Creation Companion

I’m not the first person to notice that Luka Rejec’s Ultraviolet Grasslands is completely brilliant but entirely lacking in player facing material. When discussing play at the table, the source book has a conversational tone, recommending for example when to show players the overarching point-crawl map, but ultimately telling us “Hey, it’s your game; show ’em what you want.” Since the book is essentially one giant spoiler, it won’t do to just pass the PDF around.

Skerples created a wonderful “digital comic book” to convey UVG’s mood and aesthetic but given that my players were most familiar with the overwritten Forgotten Realms, I knew that they would need to have their feet planted more firmly in the setting before we created characters. So, I created a player facing character creation companion that is relatively faithful to the vision of the UVG.

What is the UVG?

For referees/GMs intending to use this companion: My version of the Ultraviolet Grasslands is more rooted in Gene Wolfe’s Urth series rather than Mad Max. The document downplays the prevalence of vechs and autogolems to start, hoping to establish a more familiar medieval-ish setting before unleashing the gonzo on the players. Information in the companion is either from the book directly (in some cases literally, with lightly edited pages from the source PDF) or setting details inspired by the source.

The companion directly references New Aleph and the City Verdigris, two cities that do not exist in the source book but were included to give the world a wider scope. The players are not intended to ever visit these places. Also included are, in the writings of Guy duy Ferraj, a list of large scale adventure hooks that don’t reference content from the source material.

Hopefully this will be of use in the coming weeks as the physical UVG books get shipped and more campaigns begin in earnest. Use, share, and enjoy.