An Overview of Ultraviolet Grasslands 2e by Luka Rejec

Note: Where I can, I will provide art from the book, but I will only be quoting the book in short bursts where I need a specific example, or find the prose to be especially evocative. My intent is to give my thoughts on the setting, layout, and design principles behind this piece of work, and not to replicate it here . If you are interested in this work I have also provided Affiliate Links to DriveThruRPG in the case of the PDF, and nonaffiliate Links to Exalted Funeral, in the case of the physical edition.

Similarly, this is not a critique of the product, I haven't run it. However, I will touch on issues I think that you might find while running the setting for yourself. If you are interested in my explanation for the difference between a review and a critique for TTRPG's, you can find it here.

Ultraviolet Grasslands (UVG) is one odd duck. That's the best way I can think of to describe it, because frankly, it's kind of hard to describe. On the one hand, it's a Oregon trail-like point-crawl across a psychedelic landscape. Players are expected to meander their way from one location to another, heading in roughly the direction of the Black City. On the other, it's a setting, a backdrop for you to run any campaign you want. On the third hand, (You do have one of those don't you? No? How strange...) it's a mood piece. A beautiful coffee table picture book with enough there to light your imagination on fire, and no requirement that you actually use any of it. I can honestly say I've never seen anything like it.

The Grasslands are a fevered dreamscape of conflicting histories, legends, myths, and realities. The book is a confusing mess of setting, rules, and encounters. It's fascinating, but it's also overwhelming chaos. It feels like being in a crowded spice market. Everything is bright and bustling, the scents are exotic, and it all comes together into something disorienting and vibrant. For that reason alone, UVG is worth your time. It's the only setting I've found that is purely based in vibes. For better and for worse, UVG is a book of sensations.

Unfortunately, those sensations are not always good. UVG wields chaos well, but not perfectly, and the product is dragged down by a couple of baffling decisions regarding layout. (More on that in a moment.) Don’t get me wrong, it’s an excellent product on the whole. But certain choices will also carve off large numbers of potential players and DM.

Since I already touched on it, let's talk about the worst aspect of UVG: the layout. On a page-to-page basis, I actually love the layout here. The art is excellent, and it comes together to make a product that very much fits the model of the post-apocalyptic sci-fantasy road trip. However, the way the book is sectioned off leaves a lot to be desired. After the introduction, the first section of the book provides a couple of character generators for PC's and an outline of the UVG mechanics. It's fine. Standard enough for most RPGs, except that it's missing a great deal of information necessary for actually creating a character, it's just player backgrounds and motivations. That wouldn't be a problem in and of itself except the next section is a deep dive into the locations and setting of UVG, including a ton of material meant for the GM. Only after exploring the entirety of the setting and all of the pre-built adventure locations does the game loop back around to the mechanics of the game and explain some of the terms. Some of the options for character creation are buried in the bestiary section, and a true deep dive into character creation simply never presents itself. Let me be clear, the answers are there, it just takes a lot of digging to find them.

While I understand the initial reasoning behind this layout, (namely to get people interested in the stuff that actually makes UVG unique and interesting), that doesn't excuse its poor execution. There have been steps take to correct this issue, (Namely the UVG Player Guidebook and the (Upcoming) Vastlands Guidbook) but They have thier own issues which I will address at the end of the article.

Issues of character creation and layout aside, let’s move on to the next most likely sticking point: The setting. UVG is weird. Like... Really bleeping weird. It's meant to be a bizarre wasteland operating on a kind of dream logic. There isn't a set history, rather a series of implied apocalyptic events and reality leakages that have congealed to create something strange and beautiful and horrible. It's Lord Dunsany's Books of Wonder, Lovecraft's Dreamlands, Psychedelic Rock, an LSD trip, and a thorough heaping of 70s and 80s sci-fi, all dropped into one steaming pot and set to the game loop of the Oregon Trail.

On the one hand this is incredibly evocative. On the other hand, with no real cannon and history, there isn't really any context either. Titles and names are dropped, but there's no understandof what they mean. You're just supposed to 'get it, man'. It's part of the vibe, the mood. UVG isn't about history, it's about the journey. Specifically, a journey through a land that feels like it was created in a burst of drug-induced, manic creativity. This is the book's greatest strength, what distinguishes it from other "weird" games. But it's also UVG's greatest weakness.

This is a campaign I’d have to sell to my group. I can’t just show up and say “Hey guys let’s play UVG tonight!” An adventure? Sure I could get away with that. But as a Campaign? Nope. So, I’d have to show it to them. But I can’t do that. I'd love to, it's evocative, and brilliant and exciting, but it's filled with setting spoilers and secrets they shouldn't see. Neither can I give them the Player Guide, because it doesn't have the same production value and doesn't communicate the bizarre world well enough. This leaves me in the awkward position of holding up the book's cover and expecting it to sell the whole setting, or saying "Hey guys, I really want to run this weird setting, will you trust me?" That's fine for some groups, but for others, it's going to be a challenge.

At the same time, UVG isn't exactly going to be simple to run as a GM either. Vibes can be a powerful creative tool, but it's not a substitute for well-prepared locations and discoveries. Unfortunately, UVG runs off of this kind of low-detail, improv heavy storytelling. The term it uses is actually "Anti-canon" I'll use an early location as an example:
"Great Biomechanical Baobab (1 day, 120 xp)
Famed in the tales of the Green Tangerine Clan, the biomechanical tree is an unbelievable sight that dominates the plain. It secretes natural oils (€200/sack, harvest 1 per 1d6 days) that lubricate machines and cure aching joints. They say an artificial dryad (L4, lovely plastic) resides in the great tree’s slow-brain, dreaming of the awakened ecosphere."

That description may work in a "roadside stop/stretch your legs" kind of way, but it isn't exactly playable. If my players have questions about the Green Tangerine Clan, I have to make something up because there isn't any kind of context for who they are, what they want, or what they believe. If my players decide to climb into the tree and talk to the dryad, I have no real clue what it will want either. Will it try to send them on some kind of quest? Will it just continue to sleep? Is it sentient at all or just a machine? I have no idea. I can make guesses, make up my own stuff, but that is more work put on my end.

There are a few places that are better stocked and laid out, that read more like one or two page adventures. But most are this: A paragraph or two that are evocative, but not usable.

Almost everything in UVG has the same issue. Cities exist as one or two locations and a random encounter table. This makes a degree of sense, as the setting is built to be a fantasy road trip, but it's the same thing with the factions too. Factions may have a dozen or so NPCs mentioned, but none of those NPC's will have wants, needs, and desires that are actionable. It doesn't matter if "Celadon 10-body is the father of the Mollusk Appreciation Denomination bolstering sentient dryland coral technology", if I don't have any context for what that means in relation to the rest of the world.

This is why I say that UVG is all flavor. Factions, locations, history, NPC's and even monsters aren't fleshed out more than the bare minimum. Instead, everything is left to the DM's imagination. For some GM's, those with the time and creative energy this will be freeing. For others, it will be absolutely infuriating.

So, where do I fall on this? Well... I don't know that I've ever wanted to play or run a setting so badly, while recognizing that I probably never will. The reasons are twofold: Firstly, a UVG campaign will probably require a lot of creative energy, and more than that it requires a certain brand of creative energy. One that I am just not interested in. Psychedelic Dream Rock game-play just isn't my thing. I enjoy consuming it, but my creative juices are splattered and oozing in different genres.

Secondly, it's going to be awfully hard to convince my friends to play it, because it probably isn't their thing any more than it is mine. I could do solo-play, but honestly, for the trouble, I'd much rather write. For me, UVG probably will be an art book on my dining room table, and that's too bad. On the other hand, it's a hell of an art-book. I really can't express how good the production values are for this, and if I ever want to run a rules light(ish) game, UVG's system is exactly what I'd be looking for. So, I have a new white whale. I think I can live with that. Probably. Hopefully...

Hmm. Maybe Our Golden Age will fix these problems for me…

Note: I wanted to touch on it in this review but I couldn't really find a place for it. The (Upcoming) Vastland's Guidebook I mentioned does a lot to fix some of my issues with PC generation and has hard rules for the SEACAT system that UVG comes with. Luka even mentioned on a reddit thread that the same issues I mentioned here led to the creation of the Vastland's Guide. However the current version is only a beta, and itself is a slightly modified version of the Player's Guidebook released for the second edition. So why didn't I cover the Player's Guidebook? Because near as I can tell, for both editions of the game the guidebook was released at a later date, and neither of them have the same production values as the original books. In comparison both feel haphazard, almost as if they are 3rd party collections of rules rather than core to the UVG experience. Since the core book has all the rules anyways, I decided to treat it as a singular product, because honestly, that's how it feels.

If you are interested in picking up UVG 2e or supporting me further, I've left an affliate link to DriveThruRPG and a non-affiliate link to Exalted Funeral (in case you want to pick up a physical copy).
I’ve also left a link to Luka’s most recent Kickstarter for the Our Golden Age Pre/Sequel and the current Beta Version of The Vastland’s Guidebook

Digital Copy: DriveThruRPG
Physical Edition: Exalted Funeral
Our Golden Age
The Vastlands Guidebook (Free Beta)