Crazy Eights — Alphinius Goo on Blood For the Khan 5E Adventure

When Gooey Cube revealed themselves to the world at Gen Con in 2019, nobody was quite prepared for how lush and dense the Fifth Edition campaign setting The Wy’rded World of Zyathé would become. Now they are back with a new Kickstarter, offering their trademark premium game experiences in a new adventure and campaign setting: Blood for the Khan & The Mournwood Sourcebook. So what exactly is Gooey Cube and why do they like to keep things so sticky? Luckily, we were able to get some answers from the Mad Wizard Alphinus Goo himself:

In the Kickstarter you state that “you can use these materials in the World of Zyathe’” What is the world of Zyathe’?

The World of Zyathé is a grimdark fantasy world that brings a mix of high fantasy, medieval fantasy, and a couples it with a touch of both gothic and eldritch horror along with just a smidgeon of “steampunkyness” to make for a unique fantasy roleplaying experience. It is a rich and deeply mysterious world with much lore and expansive materials to help GMs craft enthralling and exciting adventures for their players. AND perhaps even more important… to cut the prep time for those same GMs dramatically because of the breadth and depth of handouts and materials that we bring to all our adventures.

What sets Blood for the Khan apart from other third party D&D 5E supplements and adventures out there?

Beyond it being a truly great tale (and it really is), Blood for the Khan contains all manner of full color illustrated location and encounter handouts, special item cards, full color illustrated NPC portraits, awesome color maps, and so much more to make the games more immersive for players and WAY easier for GMs to run.

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What gave you the idea for Blood for the Khan?

So it was inspired by our friends, Donny and Andre’a who are the folks who own and run Genghis Con. We’ve been going to Genghis since we started Gooey Cube and they have been so good to us… we just wanted to do something fun to honor them and their marvelous convention. It kind of grew from there to this really amazing tale and campaign locality.

While session times can vary from DM to DM and player to player, what would you say the average length of the adventure is, in terms of player hours/sessions.

I think that the full Blood for the Khan adventure will run at least four or five game sessions (of four hours each) but that could be expanded dramatically with the stretch goals that we’re offering which include a full side-quest adventure and a number of “mini-adventures” that are all designed to work with Blood for the Khan. Plus the Mournwood campaign area offers a lot of expansion opportunities as well depending on what the GM wants to do.

The Kickstarter primarily refers to the Blood for the Khan adventure, but also mentions the Mournwood Campaign Guidebook- Will there be more adventures in this setting or is this primarily a setting sourcebook for DMs to craft their own campaigns?

So the Mournwood is where Blood for the Khan takes place… it’s a fearful and corrupted forested area just across the river from the great city of Darkenhaven (but truly… it could be used in almost any world). The Mournwood is fairly large and we designed this entire “package” to be a relatively confined sandbox campaign territory that would include the Blood for the Khan adventure. And yes… given the success we’ve had thus far with it… we are likely to do a sequel to Blood for the Khan.

Is this strictly for D&D 5E? Could you use it with, for instance, Pathfinder 2E or Savage Worlds?

For many folks out there who are like me, conversion to other systems that I know well is typically not that difficult. We do not, at this time, have conversions to other systems. But it is a thing we are looking at in our future. The big question is which systems should we focus on as there are more than a few out there as you know.

Looking at the character portraits both on the Kickstarter and on your website, I was struck by the level of diversity depicted. Considering how much first party offerings continue to make missteps to this day, how is Gooey Cube approaching representation in the World of Zyathe’?

It is part of our mission to have a diverse world filled with all manner of wonderful peoples. We have no plans to slow that down or impede it. In fact… as we expand to other lands in the world of Zyathé… we plan to add to those lands with mythology and culture that is inspired by other lands and peoples in our world. That will make Zyathé truly rich. I’m excited to see it come to fruition.

Eventually you’ll have Blood for the Khan and Mournwood available at retail- Why back now?

The stretch goals are SO good… and getting better by the day. As I write this we are well over 400% funded with some fabulous stretch goals already achieved and some great ones still to come. And if we pass the 500% level I have even more planned! It’s exciting to have so many folks supporting what we are doing. Our community is truly amazing.

Blood for the Khan is currently on Kickstarter– go back it, you won’t be disappointed!

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