Dungeons & Dragons supplementary series Animal Adventures returns with playable alpacas and albatrosses
Prepare to voyage on The Faraway Sea.
Play as seafaring alpacas and albatrosses in Animal Adventures: The Faraway Sea, an upcoming roleplaying game supplement for Dungeons & Dragons 5E.
The newest entry in a series of D&D supplements, The Faraway Sea is a RPG sourcebook and miniatures collection designed to be used alongside the Dungeons & Dragons 5E system. Promising an island-hopping campaign wherein players will embody a party of “awakened animals” as they sail across the oceans, The Faraway Sea looks to build on the previous Animal Adventures entries by offering new playable species and locations.
Dicebreaker spoke with the roleplaying game’s co-creators Russ Charles and Richard August about what new and returning players can expect from The Faraway Sea. According to the co-designers, “the book does provide some continuity with Gullet Cove,” - which was the setting of the previous sourcebook in the series - and will “offer some easter eggs” for players of Gullet Cove, including “a few characters and organisations.” Charles and August did confirm that new players will not “be forced to buy the previous book” to experience The Faraway Sea.
Included within The Faraway Sea will be a collection of new playable animals for players to choose from, with each type of creature coming with its own sculpted miniature for players to use within their playthroughs. Charles and August revealed that featured amongst the roster will be an “alpaca adventurer, an albatross explorer and loads of other awesome new characters.” One particular type of character that will be featured in the roleplaying game is an animal Artificer, which was apparently inspired by a previously released Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook.
“We loved the Artificer class from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, and we asked ourselves...what’s an animal Artificer look like?” Charles and August said, “We’ve got some amazing new rules and an interesting new direction for the class as a whole.”
Besides the Artificer, The Faraway Sea will also contain a new class based on The Watcher character and guild first introduced in Gullet Cove, which will be built around killing large creatures - in a similar fashion to that of the Witchers from Andrzej Sapkowski series of fantasy novels. “So, if you want to take on big monsters and protect small animals, this [The Watcher class] might be your calling,” commented Charles and August.
Alongside the miniatures and setting, The Faraway Sea will contain everything that both the games master and players will need to create their characters and control them, as well as tools for the GM to tell the story with. The campaign itself will feature a collection of islands that each contain “a unique essence in the form of a magic item: a genius loci that the player characters can find and even take with them.” Charles and August stated that The Faraway Sea “isn’t a narrative driven campaign,” but a more open-world experience taking place in an oceanic setting. A town called Flotsam will be one of the potential places that players can visit and will be reportedly “filled with the kind of intriguing details player love”.
Besides co-creating The Faraway Sea, Charles and August have also collaborated on the previous entries in the Animal Adventures series - including the aforementioned Gullet Cove, as well as Animal Adventures: Dungeons & Doggies and Cats & Catacombs.
Animal Adventures: The Faraway Sea is being published by Steamforged Games, the studio behind several video game board games such as Resident Evil 2: The Board Game, Horizon Zero Dawn: The Board Game and the upcoming Monster Hunter World: The Board Game.
The Kickstarter campaign for Animal Adventures: The Faraway Sea is set to launch on July 20th, with pledge amounts and estimated release dates yet to be confirmed.