Game Review: Land of Eem
Land of Eem is a 2023 TTRPG from Ben Costa and James Parks, who also authored the Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo graphic novels and Dungeoneer Adventures YA books which the game is based upon (neither of which I’ve read, so I’m coming into this totally blind). The game is published by Exalted Funeral.
I’ll be up front about this, since you may have read other reviews (and how dare you): most everybody, including the developers, refers to LoE as Muppets meets Lord of the Rings. And while that’s fairly apt, I think it’s closer, tone-wise, to say it’s as if the Fraggle Rock cast were let loose in the world of The Dark Crystal. Either way, this has Jim Henson’s stink all over it.
What is Eem?
Full Eem ahead
In broad strokes, the multi-cultural land of Eem was once bright and amazing and full of magic. Then came the Gloom King, whose undead armies toppled the bastions of civilization and ground the world under its heel. Finally an alliance of heroes and wizards rose up and destroyed the Gloom King. Over the next several hundred years, Eem began to heal.
That healing lasted exactly as long as it took for capitalism to appear. A Goblin king ascended from his underground domain in pursuit of a simple yet compelling idea: If we rip everything of value out of the land, we can make a butt-ton of money. This king employed thousands of the native folk from the southern Eem province of Bogswain to dig and chop and raze and generally despoil everything they could. However, the Goblin king didn’t have a firm grasp on his hirelings. Soon several tycoons rose up among the locals and snatched back the reins of power.
Still, there was money to be made. The tycoons built huge Corporations which raped the land with never-before-seen efficiency. In so doing, they began to dig up artifacts from the previous shining eras of Eem history. This led to what is now termed the “Dungeon Era” and the rise of the dungeoneers. Some of these adventurous souls want to keep the artifacts safe as treasures of a bygone era. Most, though, just want to sell them and become filthy rich. (Emphasis on filthy.)
Today, Bogswain is more commonly known as the Mucklands, a ravaged area largely stripped of anything beautiful. In all quarters, ramshackle mining machines using sputtertech and sparkwork chug and grind and smoke and squeal. Many of the native folk are slaves to corporations in all but name. Worse than all that, rumors have begun to surface that the Gloom King has returned.
It is a time of despair and decay and impending doom. Who, the people cry, will save them? Who could be brash and bold and, frankly, dumb enough to become the heroes the world needs?
:: looks directly at the PCs ::
Who?
Rolling the Dice
Eeming the Cube
LoE uses a simple d12 dice mechanic, because, as the developers said at the time, there aren’t enough games centered around d12s. This was before Daggerheart came along and made them all anyone could talk about.
When a player wants to do something, the GM can call for a Check. This is just a 1d12 roll plus a skill + circumstances modifier limited to between -3 and +3. The result of the roll is a complete failure for 2-, fail with a plus on 3-5, success with a twist on 6-8, regular success on 9-11, and complete success on 12+. The GM is the ultimate arbiter of what each result means, but player input is encouraged. The game stresses that you should only roll a Check if the action is consequential and advances the story.
If a player wants to do something really out there, like a common Boggart trying to rip a full-grown tree out of the ground with their bare hands, the GM can tell them before they roll that that action will have a limited outcome. That way, even if they do succeed on their roll, the GM can say they just managed to rip off some bark or a branch or something.
This is also yet another game that yoinks Advantage and Disadvantage (roll twice etc.) directly from 5e. It spices things up a bit with Proficiencies and Deficiencies, which are permanent Adv/Dis a character may have on certain actions. For instance, the frog-like Bogrils may have Proficiency in Leaping Over Chasms, a circumstantial use of the more generic Nimbleness skill.
Since rolling 1d12 gives a flat distribution, the midrange “Success with a Twist” result will always have a 25% probability of showing up no matter how good or bad you are. When you get up toward the +3/-3 area you’ll start clipping the higher and lower ends, and along the way you’d be eliminating either the “Complete Failure” or “Complete Success” possibilities entirely. Since the game is story-forward by nature, and there’s no possibility of “welp, you failed, just sit on your butt until next turn,” this isn’t particularly bothersome. But it’s worth keeping in mind.
Building Characters
There is no “I” in Eem
First, consider the kind of character you want to build, then select a Class. There are six (though in most cases, realistically just five) Classes:
- Bard – Charisma personified, party face, buff generator
- Dungeoneer – Treasure hunter, minion master, Temu Indiana Jones
- Knight-Errant – Gallant swordsperson, cavalryman, party tank
- Loyal Chum – Samwise Gamgee. Pretty much it right there.
- Rascal – Skulker in the dark, disguise maven, confidence trickster
- Gnome – Party mage. This Class can only be taken by Gnomes.
Your Class sets your base Courage Stat (see below) and your Dread Die (see further below).
When you select a Class, you have a couple of choices to make regarding what kind of character you want to be. For instance, the Loyal Chum selects another party member to be their Best Chum, and has to decide whether they’re a Share the Load type, Lighten the Mood type, or Take the Hit type, each choice giving their own special bonuses for their Best Chum only. They must also choose a Handicraft from Cooking, Building, or Alchemy, which allows them to create unique boosts for the whole party.
Class selection includes two Abilities (essentially unique character powers) at level 1. For instance, the Knight-Errant gains Wayfarer (invent details about the surroundings) and Inspiring Orders (which boosts party rolls or healing).
The more interesting thing about Classes is how they level up. When you spend the XP to go up a level, you gain two new Abilities but you have to drop one Ability from the previous level. So your Knight-Errant at level 2 gains Tactical Combat and Feat of Strength, but has to drop either Wayfarer or Inspiring Orders. At level 3, they gain both Discerning Eye and Sworn Protector but have to drop one of the level 2 ones. And so on.
It’s a bit weird conceptually, but I can see that they’re trying to give plenty of options while not loading characters up with Abilities to the point of becoming insanely powerful. While it may be occasionally disappointing, especially if the previous level had two Abilities that seemed equally good, you do still get two new toys to play with. And when it’s time to level up again, usually you’ll already know which one you like better.
Next we determine our four Attributes:
- Vim – Charisma, intuition, spirit
- Vigor – Strength, fortitude, fitness
- Knack – Agility, dexterity, stealth
- Knowhow – Intelligence, wisdom, knowledge
Now, these are some cute names. They’re easy to remember and just whimsical as all get-out. But the English major in me feels like he must stand up and loudly declaim that that’s not what “vim” means. “Vim” is a synonym for “vigor.” It’s nowhere near what you’re using the word for here, designers. Even if you squint! Words MEAN things!
Okay, I’m done.
… Playing fast-and-loose with “knack” there, too, duders.
Okay, I’m really done.
So anyway, you take these Attributes and distribute an array of +2, +1, 0, -1 among them.
Your four Attributes are used to help calculate your five Stats:
- Courage – Used to resist Dread. Determined by your class and modified by Vim.
- Attack – Used to bonk things. Equals your Vigor.
- Defense – Used to resist being bonked. Equals the inverse of your Knack (e.g. +1 Knack equals -1 Defense).
- Quest Points – Spent to activate your special Abilities, or give a +1 bonus to Checks post-roll. Equals 3 + your Knowhow.
- Inventory Slots – How much equipment you can carry. Equals 20 + your Might and Vitality Skills (see below).
Each Attribute is the basis of four Skills each. Vigor, for instance, is the underpinning for the Athletics, Might, Intimidate, and Vitality Skills, which all equal the base Attribute to start. As the player receives XP, they can add points to each individual Skill, to a maximum of +3. The player then takes one point each from one +2 and +1 Skill, and adds them to one +0 and -1 Skill.
Now we select a Folk (a.k.a. race / species / heritage / other non-offensive term). Here’s where Land of Eem’s rubber really hits the road. People disappointed by the paucity of Classes will have their brains expanded by the list of sixteen different Folk types. So let’s get to it. Deep breaths. Here we go.
Group shot!
Boggarts: The most populous Folk in the Mucklands, and the area’s original inhabitants. Technically related to Goblins, but less generally pointy. Boggarts come in many sizes, shapes and colors, averaging around Human sized.
Boggles: Little guys with pointy noses and ears; like Goblins, but smaller and more mischievous. Tend not to be very brave, but are really good at running and hiding.
Bogrils: Chubby, skinny-limbed frog people with clammy skin. Like to wander and are good at swimming and jumping. Tend about the same size or larger than Humans.
Bugbears: Lotta similar sounding “B” Folk, aren’t there. These are big ol’ shaggy guys with a vaguely bear-like demeanor. Not super pensive. Enjoy the simple life of farmin’, drankin’, and rasslin’.
Gelatinous Goos: Become the slime you were meant to be. These are blobby translucent jelly-like fellows with no features, often bluish in color. Despite their lack of sensory organs, they can perceive the world just fine. They understand Folk Tongue but can’t speak it, instead having their own language, Gelatinous Gooese.
Gnomes: Short magic beardy people, protecting what little of the natural world remains in corporate America Mucklands. Endearingly (and sometimes annoyingly) upbeat and honest. Often accompanied by an animal companion, like a squirrel or something. Can only take the Gnome Class.
Goblins: Cousins of the Boggarts, with green skin and highly pointed ears and noses. Generally industrious and hard-working, almost to a fault, as you’d expect from the architects of the Dungeon Era. Just kinda regular folks otherwise.
Humans: Surprisingly not the default Folk this time. They’re not common in the Mucklands, and the ones that hang around tend to live quiet lives. However, stories abound that Humans were once among the greatest heroes of yore, and some of them think they might be again …
Imps: Little red winged dudes spontaneously generated by magic. Often conjured to be minions for evil wizards, but escaped Imps are neither particularly good or evil on their own, just clever and, well, impish. All Imps can at least hover with their wings, and some can actually fly.
Mushrums: Small-to-medium ambulatory mushrooms. Being fungus-based, they can have some weird abilities, including telepathy with other fungi and the ability to spawn into two identical copies of themselves when they die. Not much of a sense of humor, though.
Quortles: We’ve already had frog people, so why not turtles? Slow paced but well armored, they love living in lush green wetlands, and their closeness to the land makes them excellent alchemists and herbalists.
Shryms: Furry, shrew-like Folk from a distant desert land, Shryms are born engineers and gadgeteers. They’re the ones responsible for all the sputtertech machines tearing up the joint, and are constantly tinkering with them.
Skeletons: Extremely rare in the Mucklands, sometimes these former minions of evil necromancers will break free, regain some of their basic humanity, and become ordinary, skinless, gutless, regular Joes. Sadly, making friends remains a constant uphill battle.
Welkins: Bird Folk. Come in a myriad of shapes and colors. All Welkins can fly if they’re not holding something in their hands/wings, though some are proficient in grasping things with their feet.
Whalens: Humanoid whale Folk. Their thick blubbery skin gives them good durability, and their singing voices are very soothing. They do need to keep their skin hydrated, though, so many of them work as sailors or dockworkers.
Wugs: Bigger beefier Boggarts. Indispensable anywhere that needs heavy lifting. They mostly choose to keep their ears open and their mouths shut, which some people think indicates simpleness, but they’re often sharper than you think.
Each Folk has a list of Perks, which are usually Proficiencies, and Quirks, which are either Deficiencies, Skill minuses, or inconvenient role-playing bits. The players can choose one Perk, or take two Perks and one Quirk.
Chosen your Folk? Good! Now select a Homeland. The Mucklands is (are?) divided up into various smaller regions, each with a list of local Proficiencies to pick two of, plus a unique set of starting Equipment. These Homelands include a magic forest, a vast swamp, a large urban area, a grassy wilderness, an area of lakes and rivers, a pirate-infested seacoast, the desolate wasteland known as the Used T’Be Forest, and subterranea.
Finally it’s time for a session zero, where the players and GM will flesh out each character’s Backstories, Ideals, Flaws, and Personal Quests. By the end of this phase, the players will have created NPC Allies and Rivals for their characters, role-playing prompts which net their characters extra XP if they engage with them during a session, and some juicy character arcs which the GM can mine to their heart’s delight.
The players then take a little extra time to establish Relationships with each other, and at last we can get to the adventuring!
… Just as soon as we look at
Equipment
Eem of the crop
Your character has a number of Inventory Slots, usually somewhere in the low 20’s, determined during character creation. Now it’s time for them to earn their keep. Carryable items have an Item Slot value between 0 and 3 which indicates how bulky they are. Subtract those values to see how you fare. If you run out of Inventory Slots, you become Overburdened, suffering a penalty to Defense and a Disadvantage on Movement Checks. Some very large items have the Bulky tag and can’t be carried by one person.
This slot system seems like an attempt to bridge the gap between sweating over every ounce you carry, and just hauling all your stuff around in Hammerspace. I’m not sure it’s entirely successful, because it still kinda feels like OD&D pound-tallying with extra steps. In practice, though, it’s rarely consequential after the adventure begins, and it does keep characters from carrying everything that’s not nailed down.
Consumables (rations, coins, ammo, etc.) aren’t tracked individually. Instead, every time you use a significant amount, roll the item’s Usage Die, which is anything from 1d6 to 1d20. If you roll 2 or less, you use it up completely. Rolling higher than 2 instead reduces your die for the next roll, progressing from 1d20 -> 1d12 -> 1d10 -> 1d8 -> the minimum of 1d6. As long as you keep rolling above 2, you won’t run out. But 2 or less on any of these rolls puts you out of stock. (Ammo, luckily, is only rolled at the end of a battle rather than for every shot.)
Personally I’m not a huge fan of this, even if it is tee-hee whimsical. Rather than keeping track of your item tally, you’re keeping track of your die level. And there’s always the disappointment of having 1d20 worth of arrows and blowing your load on the first engagement. Um. I mean. That’s never happened to me, of course, but can you imagine?
Weapons inflict Dread on the enemy. The size of your Dread Die depends on your Class, not the weapon. For instance, a Bard’s Dread Die is d4 and a Dungeoneer’s is d8, so the Dungeoneer is simply more dangerous with any and all weapons than the Bard is. This also means that every weapon wielded by a character is equally deadly. This can be modified for things like two-handed weapons (+1 Dread), improvised weapons (Disadvantage on the Dread roll), Ranged weapons (Disadvantage to hit at close range), etc.
Armor and shields, meanwhile, can reduce Dread taken, as well as other effects like Advantage on Resist Wounds and Defy Death Checks (about which, see the combat section). Heavier armors also confer Disadvantage on Movement Checks.
Occasionally you’ll run across a Magnificent item. This is an item with a particular Trait, like [trusty] (can’t be fumbled or dropped), [precious] (sells for extra money), [mastercrafted] (Advantage on the relevant Check when using this item), etc. You can even find Magnificent containers, which increase your Inventory Slots.
There are several random tables for Treasure Hoards, ranging from Loot Piles which contain some copper coins and a few other mundane bits and bobs, to Mythic Hoards overflowing with Magnificent magic items. GMs are encouraged to drop at least one Treasure Hoard in every dungeon and/or after a significant fight against a particularly deadly foe.
Finally in this chapter, we find Crafting rules. Crafters must have/rent/buy the proper tools, including a forge for metal items, an alchemy set for potions, or cookware for food. Large or expensive items may also require the help of a hired crafting crew. The characters must gather sufficient inorganic Materials or organic Components to craft with, then spend the time to assemble their target item. At the end of the process, they make a Tinker Check on a variety of tables depending on the item they’re crafting. These result in anything from complete failure to accidentally crafting something Magnificent.
The core book has over 20 pages crammed with tables and lists of Materials and Components, where in the Mucklands they can be found, and recipes for the items to make from them. These are not small pages with a lot of white space, either. It’s very, very impressive and very, very daunting to look through.
Living the Adventure
Eem me up
Halfway through the core rulebook, we’ve finally reached the Adventuring chapter. Huzzah.
Traveling in Land of Eem is a textbook sandbox hex crawl, with a big lovely map of the Mucklands for your players to mess around in. Each 24-hour period is divided into four turns, and the party can travel 1-2 six-mile-wide hexes per turn during the day or one hex per turn at night. Every turn spent traveling merits a Travel Check, with consequences including perilous encounters, bumps in the road (losing something, bad weather, etc.), uneventful travel, or discovering something new. If the players want, they can spend a turn exploring a hex rather than traveling, either to find something they need or just to increase their chances of a discovery.
During the two night turns, players on the road are encouraged to make camp and rest. Each turn they can talk (increasing their mutual bonds), forage, keep watch, or just sleep. If they have the Tired condition, the only cure for that is a Long Sleep, taking up two consecutive turns. This is also their opportunity to heal, which requires both food and rest. The GM rolls for wandering monster encounters during this time as well.
So you can already see there’s a lot of randomness here. Many choices include rolling on a table, which sometimes requires a roll on a second table for specifics. Get used to this pattern, we’ll see a lot of it going forward.
The next section is Conflict. Conflict is not just Combat, which has its own section, but also everything leading up to the actual fighting. Despite its apocalyptic setting, Eem is silly and quaint, and often fighting can be avoided by talking.
The first phase of Conflict is Parley. Anyone who wants to charm or trick their opponents can roll here. Adversaries have a Parley Rating between 0 and 2, which is the number of times they’ll listen to your pitch. If that doesn’t work, next is the Improvise phase, in which the players can take any action short of running away to deescalate the situation. If that doesn’t work, it’s time for phase three: Run. Whenever the group wants to scarper, the party member with the lowest Nimbleness Skill rolls to get away. If that fails, you’re in the soup.
Combat itself is an extension of the rules we’ve seen so far. It takes place theater-of-the-mind style, using range bands to separate combatants. One quirk is changing the 1d12 success chart for melee combat to “critical miss – miss with a plus – hit with a counterattack – hit – critical hit.” That counterattack makes Eem combat particularly dangerous. Characters don’t have the wherewithal to really stand toe-to-toe with an adversary for long anyway, so giving them an opportunity to hit you in the middle of your own attack just makes it worse.
Note that a counterattack also requires the adversary to roll on the same chart. This sets up the potential for a series of trading counters, almost like a duel, that at the end has both participants greatly depleted.
Damage, as mentioned before, comes in the form of Dread. Dread can be inflicted in a variety of ways, not just combat, though only Dread received in combat can be reduced by armor and shields. Dread reduces your Courage Stat, which works much like HP. When Courage reaches 0, the character falls unconscious for 1d4 rounds and must make a Resist Wounds Check; on a failure they gain the Wounded condition, which inflicts -1 to all rolls until they receive medical attention or magical healing. Waking up, either at the end of the allotted time or by being awoken by another PC, heals their Courage by 1d6 + their level.
If a character falls unconscious twice or more in the same session, they have to make a Defy Death Check, with consequences running the gamut from “take a heroic last action before dying” to surviving with a lasting injury.
The book continues with a list of Conditions. Besides the ones we’ve seen like Tired, Overburdened, and Unconscious, there are many others with set game effects like Frightened, Poisoned, Burning, Prone, Engulfed, Entangled, and other fun things to do on a Saturday night.
Last in this section, the book discusses Downtime. Between adventures, characters can indulge in crafting, gambling, infiltration, information gathering, merrymaking, performance, recuperation, research, training, or work, with a handy chart for each.
Being Adversarial
Eeming into the void
The Adversaries chapter outlines them wot want ta bash ya. Adversaries come in three broad categories: Creatures (sapient beings), Critters (animals and beasts, which can still be vaguely sapient and may even speak in broken sentences, but can’t be reasoned with in the usual sense), and Creepers (unintelligent pests that are more like environmental hazards than monsters). Those devs sure do like using cutesy terms which don’t really fit, don’t they. Grr.
Aaaanyway. Adversaries also come in three general classes: Goons, Bruisers, and Champions. Goons are the dumb weak minions, Champions are big boss types, and Bruisers live somewhere in between.
What’s amazing is the amount of information provided for each Adversary, with not just stats and descriptions but full-color illos, social patterns, how they normally fight, and how they act in victory or defeat.
Because of the enormous amount of space devoted to each monster, the core book only outlines 26 different Adversaries (though if you include classes there are more like 50). The separate Bestiary (Vol 1), which came with the Kickstarter, adds something like 200 more, all with the same amount of detail. Just nutso.
Mastering Gamery
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of Eem
The Gamemaster chapter is probably the most normal part of the book, even though the first tip on the first page is “Make the Land of Eem feel alive and real and weird.” But the advice they give to do all that is solid, if unremarkable. All the greatest hits are here, like “be fans of your players but don’t be afraid to challenge them” and “offer the PCs difficult but interesting choices.” You know, the usual.
There are sections singling out how to run Conflicts and Combats in interesting ways, including tips on running mass combat and vehicle combat. There’s also a page about random dungeons with a few tables to roll on to get started.
But brother, if it’s random tables you want, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The GM section is followed/supplemented by:
Appendix A
(receding echo)
Okay, you wonder, why am I singling out an appendix in this review? Well, mostly because Appendix A is 57 pages of nothing but random tables.
Wandering intruder tables. Encounter tables. Loot tables. Curse tables. Books. Spells. Relics. Dungeon traps. Location aspects. Boons. Discoveries. Puzzles. Riddles.
And often not just one table for each subject! No, encounter tables have a different table for every area in the Mucklands. The Location Aspects tables are split by location type. Some tables are so full of stuff that they require you to roll 1d200 (using a d20 for the tens place).
Much like the Bestiary, being confronted by this wildly insane amount of effort takes you to a place where you can only intense-clap like Orson Welles. Appendix A is simply a tour de force. Bravo, Appendix A. Bravo.
If you don’t want to give yourself carpal tunnel by rolling, most of these tables are on the Land of Eem website as one-click generators. Talk about value-added.
Sample Adventure: Wally’s Waffles and Rats!
Eem park
The core book ends with a smallish adventure which leads the characters into the basement of the local waffle house to locate the owner’s property deed. There they discover that the rats in the basement ate magic cheese which gave them intelligence, grabbed the deed, and dug through the wall into a vast underground labyrinth. As you might expect, hijinks ensue.
Short as it is, the adventure has a lot of opportunity for role-playing, especially in the opening scene when they’re chatting with the weirdos in the waffle house. It sets a good tone for what an Eem adventure should feel like. Giant talking rats and all.
Conclusion
(clears throat, leans in very close to the mic, slight squeal of feedback) … Eem
Whew. Well.
Land of Eem is certainly unique. Despite the simplicity of its rules, I’d call it deceptively … not complex, really, but thick. Just oozing with character and detail and obvious love for this strange broken little universe the developers have created. This was so obviously written by writers. I mean, yeah, I know. But this was written by someone who’d written, like, books, about what the game is about, even. It’s chock full of the authors’ mental comfort that comes from really living in this world.
I may not be making sense anymore. That’s what this game has done to me.
It’s very silly, and very cute, but in that hard, semi-grotesque, down-to-earth way that only the prime-time-era Muppets have ever been able to pull off. The artwork only doubles down on that. It’s a game about the world essentially coming to an end and yet staying brave and cheerful through it all, not in that ironic Rick & Morty clenched-teeth way, but straightforward and genuine and natural, almost cozy.
It’s also easy to play, unusual for a game that’s 258 pages of small text. There are a lot of people online who talk about playing this with their kids. I can super-dig that. The developers just completed a Kickstarter for an even simpler version aimed squarely at young people, as well as a supplement for an entire subterranean campaign. If either of them even vaguely match the quality of the main books, they’ll be more than worth the money.
Land of Eem is weird and silly and good. There’s a free preview even. Give it a shot.
Two-and-a-third thumbs up.
Unused Puns Table (1d6)
- Coming apart at the Eems
- Nothing is as it Eems
- I Eem, you Eem, we all Eem for ice Eem
- Inappropriate and un-Eemly
- It belongs in a mus-Eem!
- Eem Rules Everything Around Me