Bringing Weird Fantasy to 5.5e: Q&A With Agammemnon Press

Greetings! This week is a busy one as we’re previewing a number of fascinating projects. Today, we’re looking at Agamemnon Press’ Christopher Willett, who is bringing his “surreal weird-fantasy hexcrawl,” the Painted Wastelands, to Fifth Edition players this week on Backerkit. The game won an Ennie for its interior art and is an exemplary example of the kind of weirdness that TTRPGs can present when they want to.

Now, the original setting, written for Exalted Funeral’s Old School Essentials, has been rebuilt from the ground up for 5.5e to reach new readers.

TTRPG Insider spoke with Willett about the game's adaptation, its future, and what it means for longtime fans of the acid-punk property. We also have a preview of some of the game’s upcoming mechanics.

Where did Painted Wastelands (the original campaign) come from?

Christopher Willett: I found this painting by Tim Molloy. And I was blown away. I’d never seen art like this. I stalked him on Instagram and found out how to contact him. Then I put together a sample encounter around the sorcerer.

The original pitch was taking Tim’s old art and making it into something, but then he told me “actually there’s a world that already exists that connects all my comics, paintings, and writing.” So, I said, “Then let’s do that instead!”

Everything in the world comes from his setting; everything I write is run by him first. We
spend a lot of time brainstorming. I watched all these weird movies and read everything
he ever wrote so that I could get on the same weird wavelength. I used to be a more
normal person.

We talk every day. The hardest challenge in my TTRPG career has been finding
someone who can work at the level I want to work at. The other day he said to me:
“We’ve met each other’s match.” I am constantly writing and he’s constantly drawing.
He’s easily become my best friend and we’ve never met because he lives in Australia
and I live in Arizona. That’s all about to change in a month when we meet with our wives
in Tokyo, Japan! We will finally be able to create together in the same space.

What inspired the call to adapt Painted Wastelands from OSE to 5.5e?

Willett: This is something we’ve always talked about doing. We began with OSE because it’s very straightforward; I think of it as the platonic ideal of just playing some DnD. We’ve always talked about converting Painted Wastelands to another game system, and 5.5e has some really interesting mechanics to connect players with the world.

I’m always thinking about how we can get players more engaged with our setting and story because it is so unique. We’re not making a TTRPG based on someone else’s IP, and we’re not making a setting that is the same old basic fantasy you’ve seen 100 times. Backgrounds, species, subclasses, and factions are ways to get players more interested in engaging with the setting.

Finally, we started with DnD 5.5e for our conversion journey because it’s quite popular still. How many times did I give my pitch at my local Comic Convention only for the guest to say “Is this for 5th edition?” Then I have so “No actually, it’s for Old-School Essentials, which is basic and expert D&D from the 80s!” and I just watch the light in their eyes die. I already know I’ve lost them at ThAC0. My hope is that by converting to 5.5 edition and meeting those players where they’re at, it will start to bring them into the wider world of weird fantasy OSR.

How did you balance adapting to the more traditional 5.5e mechanics while maintaining the absolute weirdness and acid-punk-ness of Painted Wastelands?

At the end of the day, I am not really designing optimal builds. My focus for these subclasses is not to make a subclass that is so powerful you’d be a fool not to take it. I’m making subclasses you’ve never seen before. We have a Fighter subclass called the Liminalist, in which you wear a breathing apparatus that lets you huff ectoplasm directly into the dome. You move as if you can see the future because you’re vibrating faster than everyone else.

The test for me is whether the weird idea gives the players something interesting to actually do. If it’s only strange to read about, it probably doesn’t belong in the rules. So, while the mechanics of 5.5e may be traditional, the coating wrapped around them shouldn’t be. These are opportunities to play with the setting and do something fun. We’re famous for our Cat class in OSE. You can move silently, jump, and you get a pet human. This human is a hireling who will carry heavy objects, open cans of tuna, and adore you. Which is the ultimate fantasy.

In 5.5e, there wasn’t enough there mechanically to justify making the Cat an entire class or subclass. Thus, the Cat becomes a species, opening up the game for a Cat Sorcerer or Cat Fighter. Also, instead of the Cat getting a hireling as their pet human (because
this upsets the action economy), they get a willing player to be their pet human.

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Balancing Art With Mechanics

One of the unique elements that makes The Painted Wastelands attractive is how it began with art and eventually evolved into mechanics. How did you balance those two to ensure it was still fun and not just wild overall?

Part of what makes The Painted Wastelands unique is that it really comes from Tim’s
singular vision. I do a lot of writing, but I really feel as if I am walking around the dream
world and just writing down what I see. One of the things that I love about Tim is that,
while he likes RPGs and played them as a kid, he basically was disengaged with it for
30 years. He is unencumbered by what came before. That’s what makes us different
from a lot of the stuff Wizards of the Coast is putting out, which seems to be more from
the same well.

Now, The Painted Wastelands follows a certain logic. It’s a dream logic, but it’s not a
completely wacky adventure. It just seems wacky compared to the competition. I often
talk about the fact that the Painted Wastelands could be a side adventure, the players
are down in the dungeon and poof a trap goes off. They all fall asleep and wake up in
this new world. I am also designing the player material mechanically to be something
where your cat character or desert weirdo biker character can fit in with the party back
in the Forgotten Realms.

How might the 5.5e version compare to the original Painted Wastelands? Is
there any new art, mechanics, or story set in the game?

Willett: First, we are publishing two books as part of this project. The Adventurer’s Handbook is our player-focused book. The original Painted Wastelands Player’s Guide is a small 45-page paperback book. This is a 100+ page hardback book with all new subclasses for each class, 8 factions + faction backgrounds, 5 new backgrounds not tied to a faction, 30+ new spells, equipment, and more. It’s a full-fledged book with tons of new stuff.

The Campaign Guide is the closest to the original campaign. It is a hexcrawl that follows along the same encounters, now updated for 5.5e. But now I’m going back through this book 2 years later, and things have changed. I’ve grown as a designer, and this is an opportunity to polish things up a bit or do things a little differently. An example of this is that the original Painted Wastelands you’re supposed to just wander around. The feedback I got is that people didn’t care for that and wanted more guidance. Empire of Bones, the sequel to The Painted Wastelands, came with more guidance.

For 5.5e, there are NPC patrons. So now you can follow the guidance of the dead queen Yaldabythos, who is pushing your characters along the Pilgrimage of Yaldabythos to wash away their sins and curses. The players can even work for that dastardly Diseased One, originally a villain in our OSE adventure. But he’s a very pragmatic sorcerer who has his own ulterior motives. Is he manipulating the characters to do his dirty work for him? This mechanic that’s originally for 5.5e is something I’m going to tie back into OSE when we get back to it.

The Hundred-Year Coast (an upcoming supplement for the game) will still come out for OSE first. We’re not abandoning OSE. The idea is that our adventures can begin there, and then if it makes sense, we can revisit them for 5.5e D&D later.

Agammemnon Press was kind enough to share previews of two of its player options with TTRPG Insider, including the previously mentioned Cat player option. So if you ever felt like playing as a feline, maybe consider this campaign.

You can back The Painted Wastelands 5.5e on Backerkit here.

What are your thoughts? Send any scoops, tips or press releases to [email protected].