Forward

The following is the forward that I wrote for the book.

Desert and tidepools fascinate me. They both present different kinds of isolation: deserts isolating their inhabitants from the ordinary infrastructure of survival, and tidepools from their greater ecosystems. Both leave their inhabitants physically and socially stranded. And both share, at their hearts, a predictable mystery.

For a tidepool, restorative relief is but hours away, when the tides wash back in with their fresh nutrients, new “friends,” and sometimes even a means of escape. “Making do” with what they have is an exercise in exaptation for the pool-dweller: they must repurpose whatever the tides have provided to fit their needs until the waters swell again. By contrast, a desert’s austerity offers fertile ground for adaptation: if you make it to the next day, at any cost, you get to keep living and pass on that life. “[Their] need will be the real creator,” the crucible of cruel optimization through natural selection. What will a curious interloper find, on first visit? What new friends, foods, and foes have arrived in the tidepool? Which inhabitants of the desert still persist, and how have they changed?

When writing the first draft for this book, the notion of balance constantly bubbled up to the surface. Some reasons for this theme were obvious, as I contemplated the ecological and social orders that allow the inhabitants of Radanaar to survive. But at other times, the theme of balance cropped up in more subtle ways: in the co-development of the world-map along with the narrative worldbuilding, in the creation of physical obstacles and eco-social challenges that (hopefully!) appeal to players and GMs by lying somewhere between struggle and satisfaction, and in the development of mechanics that are varied enough to be unique “pockets of flavor” while still working together in a greater thematic bouillabaisse.

Radanaar is partly a desert, and its inhabitants weave a cultural tapestry from environmental austerity; but in a way it is also a tidepool with a very long and unpredictable tidal period. It’s a microcosm that isn’t refreshed regularly and can’t rely on exaptation—eventually the resources run out. But adaptation with razor-thin margins can lead to brittleness and vulnerabilities that are exposed and disrupted in an unexpected tidal wash, particularly if the pull of the riptide is strong.

What will be left behind when the tide recedes?