A Fairly Odd Tale is an adventure (2nd level for DCC, 4th level for 5e) for 4-6 characters. When your party is sent to parley with a mysterious witch, you assume it will be a simple fetch quest. But now you've been sucked into a crazy book filled with monsters and characters from half-remembered stories. Will you survive the strange candy house, make it to the top of the beanstalk, solve the riddle of the door, and find your way back home?

Hi Jonathan, it seems like you've created something that is perhaps very whimsical. It has a lot of classic fairy tale inspirations. Am I right about the "whimsy" or does the adventure tend to have a different tone?

Whimsical with a few touches of dark humor is a pretty good descriptor for the adventure, although in playtesting the tone is strongly influenced by the players. I’ve run the module with groups of adults and mixed groups of adults and youth. The former tend to lean into the dark humor of the tale, while the latter play it a little more straight (at least within the context of fairyland!).

You've also got some cool stretch goals! One is for Mother Goose as a patron. I imagine she's rather important in the adventure. The other is for bonus encounters. Will those be more geared towards random encounters or something else?

In the module the Mother of Stories (one of her many sobriquets!) is more of a background player. Her direct influence isn’t felt until the final encounter, but the door is left open such that she could call on the PCs more directly in the future. That’s why I wanted to include her as a patron, although her area of influence is geared more towards social interactions than combat.

The bonus encounters aren’t so much random encounters as additional scenes that the Judge can use to extend the module. As written it’s designed to be played within a standard 4-hour convention session; these encounters extend the fun for groups that have more time to devote to the adventure.

On the Kickstarter page, you mentioned playtesting for over a year! Did the adventure significantly change, or grow in scope over that time? Or was most of the playtesting focus towards polish?

The basic outline of the adventure has remained largely intact, especially the first 2/3rds. The final act originally included an encounter with Robin Hood that was supposed to turn into a chase, but I couldn’t settle on mechanics that felt satisfying for the chase so I wound up dropping it.

The giant’s house also saw a lot of polishing. It’s essentially a point crawl, so seeing how different players approach it caused some tweaks and changes along the way. Even at the most recent Gen Con players were trying new things I’d never thought of!

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You've written the adventure for two systems: 5e and DCC. Any special struggles in doing that? What's the most significant change between the two systems?

Statting monsters for two different systems has been the biggest challenge, because monsters in DCC and 5e are very different creatures (no pun intended!). Writing monsters for DCC is relatively easy since the stat block is so simple and there’s less expectation of balance. 5e monsters, on the other hand, have a lot more going on and there’s isn’t a one-on-one correlation with DCC stats.

Shifting to art, tell us about working with Aaron Kreader and Chris Tupa. How specific did you get with art direction? Were you giving them sketches of how you want an image, were you giving them inspiration pieces or a mood board, telling them "a need a quarter page with X happening in it", or something different?

Christopher and Aaron have been terrific to work with, in part because they’re both excited to see this type of adventure being published. They also bring a great deal of their own creativity and inspiration to the pieces they’re creating.

I’m no artist, so my approach is to describe what absolutely has to be in the image (e.g., a basic description of the creatures, this particular item, etc.), the size I need, and then let them run wild. Part of the joy of working with artists is seeing what inventive and creative images they come up with.

Aaron Kreader’s cover is a good example. As soon as I started considering art I knew I wanted Aaron to paint the cover – I’ve been a fan of his for years, and I trusted him to understand the vibe I was looking for. He absolutely nailed what I had in mind, and even included a few details that I’ve now incorporated into the module, such as the money sack hanging from the giant’s waist!

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer all these questions! Any last things you'd like to mention?

Thanks for letting me share some of the background of A Fairly Odd Tale! I’d be remiss not to give a shoutout to the DCC community and the support Goodman Games gives to their third party publishers. This is the greatest community in gaming and I’m thankful for everyone who has given me encouragement along the way!

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