Hail and well met, weary traveller! There’s a new episode of The Farrier’s Bellows, and this time we’re looking at the wildly influential Trollbabe! We discuss language and how rulebooks are written, talk elegance and simplicity in mechanics, and look at just how damn cool this game of big swords, bigger monsters, and biggest hair makes you feel. Put on your favorite prog rock and join us at the fjord.
The Farrier's Bellows -- Trollbabe
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Another great episode!
I’ve seen the title of Trollbabe before and sort of discounted it because I thought that the name was a bit goofy.
Regarding the length and density of the text, it reminds me of hearing Epidiah Ravachol talking about putting out Dread and feeling that an RPG book was expected to fit a certain format.
Anyway, the game sounds cool and I’d love to see a stripped down version of the text!
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I’d never heard of the game until the podcast - thanks. The discussion about the creation of our current vocabulary was fascinating.
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I loved the discussion of how a lot of the text was trying to grapple with ideas that were new and undefined for the time, and I think a lot of games can stand being revised to update both their language & their mechanics to what we’ve learned since it’s creation and publication. It’s part of why I love the hackability of storygames!
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Farrier’s Bellows has become one of my favorite podcasts.
This episode was great. I’ve been a huge fan of Lasers and Feelings but didn’t have much knowledge of where its tech came from!
If you ever need to change up the show, that’d be a fascinating structure. Take a newer popular game and trace its ancestry.
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“If Bilbo Baggins said Trollbabe…”
You mean the anachronisticly inserted representative of middle class Englishness in a medieval ish high fantasy setting? Bilbo Baggins IS a Trollbabe.
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(Hope that didn’t come off belligerent. Mostly I just wanted to say “Bilbo Baggins is a Trollbabe.”)
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A fair point!
FB does a great job of highlighting why people should play these games and now I’m interested in trying Trollbabe someday.
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