The Swedish publisher Free League Publishing is known for many different systems they published throughout the last few years. Their newest project is an adaption of a known system for D&D 5e. Mattias Lilja told us about the Kickstarter campaign for Symbaroum 5e just a week before its end.
Tabletop roleplaying games gained a boost in popularity through the fifth version of Dungeons & Dragons. Our beloved hobby is more represented in media and old stigmata are being questioned. Free League Publishing has decided to adapt the very special setting of Symbaroum to D&D 5e. The Kickstarter campaign ends on May 6th.
About Mattias: Mattias Lilja works with Free League Publishing since 2018. Not only did he graduate with a Bachelor of Science and worked at Paradox Interactive as producer and COO, he also designed the first version of Coriolis. Since then, he mainly worked on Symbaroum and as partner, writer and game designer of the publisher. Mattias lives with his family near Stockholm.
About the Symbaroum Kickstarter
Teilzeithelden: Hello Mattias, thank you for your time. Please tell us what Symbaroum is all about. What makes it special?
Mattias: Symbaroum is a fantasy world locked in conflict between the creative forces of nature, the controlling forces of humanity and the corruption that results when humans go from use to exploitation of nature.
Teilzeithelden: Why did you decide to adapt Symbaroum to 5e?
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Mattias: It goes back years. It might look weird from the outside but for me it’s a natural venue to explore; I have played all D&D editions since the early 80s and some parts of the original Symbaroum system is influenced by that. We know people in the 5e-community are curious about the evocative Symbaroum setting but not willing to move away from their favourite system to explore it. So we decided to do a trial balloon (Ruins of Symbaroum – The Promised Land, available for free on DrivethruRPG) and the reaction convinced us we should take a stab at this.
Teilzeithelden: Why did you choose a crowdfunding on Kickstarter (KS) while the fifth book of the Throne of Thorns-campaign was not funded through one?
Mattias: Several reasons. KS is great for gauging interest among the community – and with Ruins of Symbaroum 5e we wanted to reach people that we do not already talk to through other channels. As we cannot handle too many KS in a short time – it’s hard work quite frankly – we need to use pre-order for products where we know the fans and they know us. A rule of thumb is that core game books and more experimental products have priority on KS, so for something like Throne of Thorns – The Haunted Waste we find that pre-orders are more suitable.
Teilzeithelden: For fans of the original Symbaroum: Would you recommend them to join the crowdfunding? If you do, what are the benefits?
Mattias: Actually no, as Ruins of Symbaroum is an adaptation of the original game to a new ruleset. The content is the same, and the art too, even though the presentation differs (what’s in each core book, et cetera) to fit the expectations of a 5e Game Master. There is some KS exclusive content, like a cloth map. I don´t think it warrants a pledge unless you are interested in what we have done with the 5e mechanics.
On a different note I might say that success for Ruins of Symbaroum 5e will benefit all Symbaroum players over time; the more fans the setting has will result in us being able to create more content, regardless of the system.
Adapting Symbaroum to D&D 5e
Teilzeithelden: Symbaroum uses a very unique rule-set: the gm does not roll dice at all, there are no levels but experience points that can for example be used for rituals or to re-roll dice. What are the major changes in the 5e-adaption?
Mattias: I like to think of it in terms of spirit and detail; Ruins of Symbaroum 5e (RoS) and the original game share the same setting, the same conflicts and the same themes – they are the same in spirit. But the mechanics differ, so they diverge in the details of how the setting comes alive through the mechanics.
You mentioned the levels of 5e that have no real precedence in the original 5e. They only handle challenges in levels of resistance and give guidelines of how experienced a party of adventurers needs to be to tackle that challenge. Overall, the approach to danger set in the original Symbaroum will transfer over to 5e: there will be less hand-holding of PCs than in a standard 5e game. A 5e RoS PC will not be sure that an encounter is suitably hard, and the players will learn (the hard way if nothing else) that it’s best to sneak, negotiate – or perhaps retreat, than to charge in as the world is not always fair to PCs.
Our take – present in original Symbaroum – is that smart enemies will calculate the odds too, and not attack unless they have a chance of winning – and many of the thoroughly corrupted aberrations that attack in blind hatred or out of insatiable hunger are dangerous enough to not care either way.
Teilzeithelden: Now that you mention it: how is Corruption handled in the 5e-adaption?
Mattias: On the topic of Corruption: this is handled very much the same way in both systems, which for 5e means you don’t have Spell Slots and instead get temporary Corruption when casting spells or attuning to magic items. You will have to be careful not to go above the Corruption Threshold or face dire consequences.
Teilzeithelden: Can you name any other changes of the mechanics in 5e?
Mattias: One area where 5e differs is the range of options PCs have. It’s built into the core mechanic and we needed to manage that through all the 20 class levels. One way we did that was to add another type of rest: extended rest, which can only be taken in a safe place – and those familiar with Davokar (Editor’s Note: the forest of Davokar is the heart of the game world of Symbaroum) know how rare such places are (especially if you have managed to piss off either the elves or the witches, or, worst case, both).
You can only spend Hit Dice to regain hit points or remove temporary Corruption during extended rests, meaning even high-level PCs in RoS will have to manage their resources (and their relationships) in the depth of Davokar.
What’s Next
Teilzeithelden: You are working together with Foundry VTT. Would you like to share some insight about what we can expect there?
Mattias: This is something the Free League has started doing for other games, so Ruins of Symbaroum 5e felt like a good match as well, so we offered this as stretch goals in the Kickstarter, to apparent excitement from the growing Symbaroum 5e crowd. We have not yet started this development, so I literally can’t give you details, but the goal is for Foundry modules to launch with everything else in February 2022.
Teilzeithelden: Is there more to come in the Symbaroum 5e-adaption after the crowdfunding is completed? For example the Throne of Thorns-campaign?
Mattias: Given the success of the KS, I imagine we will come back with more content for the 5e version, but I’m not sure when. The Throne of Thorns-campaign would be a likely candidate, and we have already gotten requests to include it in the current KS. However, we won’t be able to do that and stick to the release schedule. But it’s very much on our to-do list.
Teilzeithelden: Thank you, Mattias. It is always a pleasure interviewing one of you guys from Free League. I wish you all the best!
Pictures: © Free League Publishing
Layout and Design: Roger Lewin
Proofreading: Alexa Kasparek
