From Poland With Love. Beyond Corny Gron - Adventurer's Guide

Welcome to Karpakian Mountains – a land of bold highlanders and valiant highwaymen, mighty fey-kings, and diabolical nobles. This system-neutral toolkit and sandbox generator lets you create and experience adventures set in the world inspired by legends from the Polish mountains, folk songs of bold highwaymen, and romantic tales about Hidden Things. The Guide contains:

•  a mountain map generator,
• a generator for cave tunnels and caverns,
• tables to assist with the creation of the PC-wanderers, and to establish their backgrounds, local ties, and known legends about the setting,
•  10+ tables for random places among mountain peaks,
•  10+ tables for random encounters in the wilderness,
• huge table with various findings and treasures, including magical, folklore-based artifacts,
• descriptions of 8 factions, ready to stir up the peaceful valleys,
• 180 pages of folk creatures, and their legends, including 30+ mortal inhabitants, 60+ different biesy, and 20+ other eldritch creatures and beasts.

BEYOND CORNY* GROŃ – ADVENTURER’S GUIDE was made real with tremendous help from a bunch of friends and the talented folks from the Polish TTRPG scene. Thanks to our Kickstarter backers, we've made a print run of the core game book, containing everything you need to explore the fantastic land of Karpaki. Now, both digital and printed copies of the Guide are available worldwide.

*it comes with pronunciation guide, so you'd know to spell it as tzorny (like pizza), not corny

BEYOND CORNY GROŃ is inspired by the legends of the Carpathian Mountains and other Polish folk tales about supernatural creatures, daring outlaws, and noble-born sorcerers. It puts these flavors onto experiences of adventure role-playing games, based on facing the unknown, exploring fairy-tale lands, investigating ruins lost in time, and looting ancient treasures. We wanted the GMs to experience the same joy of exploring the game world as much as the other players, and to give them the feeling of not knowing what's going to happen during the game, like what's going to be over the hill or what's waiting at the top of the mountain.

The crucial part of the Corny Groń are the illustrations, made by the awesome Ala Wiśniewska and Jacek Kuziemski. They worked hard and well to turn writer's ideas and words into beautiful images. Their styles, inspired by traditional woodcuts and folk art of Podhale, naturally spill over into the graphic design of the entire book.

Ash Alder, from Wizards Respite blog, put it in his review of the solo version of the game:

As I read through (...) I felt like I was reading stories that my old Polish grandfather would’ve told me about his homeland. The thing is, I don’t have a Polish grandfather. There’s not a drop of Polish blood in my family! That’s how easy it is to immerse yourself in this fairytale.

Seed of Worlds reviewed the very book we are talking about, stating that:

The strongest wow-factor out of the box of anything that I've gotten my hands on recently. (...) We get a neat flavourful setting with a really cunning set of exploration rules - part controlled depth crawl, part push-your-luck. The cavern exploration mechanics would combine neatly with any number of other cool underground settings - Reach of the Roach God, Veins of the Earth or standard Underdark like Out of the Abyss. With the two elements - mountains and caverns - we get a pretty directed setting which is nice, focus is a strength.