All art, except for the Borzoi Zordon, is by Luka Rejec.
After a hiatus and cancelling of games, cool guy gaming (that’s me) has returned for a 10-session romp through the Ultraviolet Grasslands (UVG) by Luka Rejec (and in Mythic Bastionland, with play reports also coming soon™
Selected UVG-themed music to listen to while reading:
Church of the Cosmic Skull - Mountain Heart
King Crimson - Court of the Crimson King
Blue Oyster Cult - Heavy Metal: The Black and Silver
Preambleramble to the Preamble
Many people online have expressed their praise for UVG whilst also expressing frustrations at how difficult it is to run or materialize at the table without bolting on a bunch of other systems — either wholesale using other systems or taking bits and pieces from the OSR/NSR milieu. In fact, as I write this on 7/12/25, there is a popular post on r/rpg asking, “What’s your white whale?” and UVG is at the top with comments like the above.
I don’t get it.
Of course, there are tons of intentionally left blanks within UVG that some people might not like having to fill in on their own, but the game is absolutely runnable out of the book. But the game does tell you how to play it — create some travelers, roll up a caravan, and head towards The Black City. You don’t need anything else to run this game. It runs fine just out of the book.
I think this is emblematic of a larger issue within the TTRPG space; how many people actually play games before they review them on YouTube (shout out to Quinns Quest)? How many people actually play games before talking about them on r/rpg or r/osr? How many people just repeat what they’ve heard about the system from others? How many people put in a concerned effort to actually just run or understand the game?
TTRPG players — GMs and players alike— are way more creative and way less confident in their abilities than they give themselves credit for. You don’t need 1000 rules or extended Snyder cuts of books and vlogs with annotated director’s commentary to run any game. Read the book, engage your creativity, and give it the best effort you can. We’re in a hobby of creativity, storytelling, improv, and imagination — try actually engaging in it!
Game Rules & Party (aka the Preamble)
I’m running 10 sessions of UVG straight out of the UVG2e book with nothing else supplementing, except for Skerples’ maps that dot some Trilemma adventures across the landscape, and aiming to do no more than 30 minutes of prep before our weekly sessions. I wanted to see how difficult it would be to go against the grain of the online comments and just run a game as is, right out of the book, with nothing else. This isn’t to say I’m some super-skilled GM, I’m just an average dude.
None of the group had any prior experience with UVG, with me reading the book about a week before our games started. One player played it a few years ago but doesn’t remember much.
The Party
Persimmon V12 Turbo (Percy, for short), a Steppelander skilled in “Cowboy Bushido” who brings an aircraft-grade aluminum cart of antilemon zest, pulled by Pinky and Bluster, two pink and blue neovelociraptors.
Charbon Restar, a former Union Machinehunter General and gunslinger, bringing stores of vampire wine, unusual dried fruit, and a cart pulled by two goatelopes (one of which is secretly a ramelope)
Lucidus Montague, a Decapolitan ambassador skilled in diplomacy, archaeology, and selling timeshares. Oh, and he has a synthetic abdomen that produces antiviral drugs! He brings an oddly-stained cart pulled by a goatelope and a sentient donkey named … Tim(?). Every time he misspeaks we chalk it up to the Decapolitan accent and it becomes canon.
Yuu, a caravan guard trained in the art of the blade that wants to open up a martial arts dojo for the street urchins of The Violet City. His cart? Filled with soap. Hygiene is important!
Together, they are The Chartreuse Expedition (name pending), indebted to a holographic borzoi mystic named “Slayer”, eerily similar to Zordon.
Slayer communicates with the party through a dog bone holoprojector and currently has the expedition under the paw of a 100% annual interest rate. Surprisingly, this fiscal policy is actually more coherent than that of the United States.
Week One and Two
The Violet City
Before setting off on their journey from The Violet City, the party gathered fermented piss and a dog-headed scout. The piss was not from the dog-headed scout. Percy, with knowledge of a gigantic fucking megapede on the horizons of the Steppe of the Lime Nomads, convinced the party not to go that way. He instead met a cybernetic Dwarfish man, affectionately named Old Greg, who informed Percy that the Low and High Road was beset by rabid dogs and the only way to avoid them was to carry out fermented piss.
Percy returned with a non-trademark-infringing Ziploc bag of fermented piss, as any seasoned traveller does.
Meanwhile, Yuu, Lucidus, and Charbon tracked down a dog-headed scout named Sid Cadmium, who had just returned from a far west journey. After double-fisting cigars and blowing the smoke in their faces, the party hired Sid for a rate of $75/week (of which Percy thought was a scam, but he was not present to argue against it. Me, though? I would never scam the players!)
With preparations completed, the party set out to The Low Road and The High.
The Low Road and The High
Thankfully, with the help of Sid Cadmium and Percy’s non-trademark-infringing Ziploc bag of fermented piss, they avoided the rabid dogs they were warned about. Instead, they were rolled up on by a 40-foot-tall industrial forklift /walker hybrid carrying Beauregarthe.
After exchanging pleasantries, in which Beauregarthe expressed his immense desire to kill cats (and accused Sid of being a cat in a dog-headed disguise) along with firing his gun after every sentence, the groups parted ways amicably.
After arriving at the crumbling highway overpass (the High Road!) and the crumbling streets underneath (the Low Road!), information was exchanged with another group of traders heading back to The Violet City. Percy, realizing some mistakes in travel planning and the imminent lack of food for the upcoming week of travel, foraged with Sid Cadmium and Yuu. Lucidus and Charbon trekked off towards a nearby humongous crystal to the northeast. Importantly, there was a conversation over who should take the non-trademark-infringing Ziploc bag of fermented piss. Lucidus and Charbon did not take it.
Observing elephant-sized millipedes shooting lasers from their head and engaging in some weird headbutting-potential-mating ritual, Lucidus and Charbon took the long way around to the opposite side of the crystal. Their attempts to scavenge from the crystal itself were hindered by a funnel-caked mass of crystalline brambles that collapsed into aeromatic, hallucinogenic/narcoleptic powder. Charbon crumpled into a sleep after failing to resist the allure of the drug, while Lucidus tempted fate after resisting and tried to collect more of it. Passing out just as he sealed a small amount into a pouch with wax…
The two awoke five hours later to the sound of snarling, rabid dogs (should have brought the non-trademark-infringing Ziploc bag of fermented piss!) and the laser-millipedes, of which they were caught in between.
Facing down certain death as the millipedes were hungry and charging, Charbon and Lucidus let off shots at the dogs to no avail in an attempt to scare them and run away. Fortunately, the dogs were scared off by the millipedes. Unfortunately, Charbon and Lucidus were now being shot at by laser millipedes. Both took multiple shots while trying to flee, but luckily survived and eventually reunited with the rest of the caravan.
Percy, Sim, and Yuu foraged a small surplus of food, so the caravan rested for a week so Charbon and Lucidus could recover their strength. With a two-day lull period, Percy and Yuu investigated a nearby outcropping of natural mechanominerals that was patrolled by a lone, naked humanoid that crawled like a spider and bent its body over like that girl from The Exorcist when it wanted to change directions. Avoiding conflict with this creature, Percy and Yuu noted this outcropping as somewhere to return to once they had the tools to excavate some of the minerals and mechanized skeletons embedded in the ground. The end of this week was heralded by the return of Beauregarthe, who wished the party well.
The party recovered, and no longer wanting to pay Sid Cadmium, set off westward for the Porcelain Citadel as the session ended here.
It’s impossible to truly judge a game until you’ve played it. I would say it’s hard to judge it until you’ve played extensively at both high and low levels of play.
I judged daggerheart on initial read-through and my position 180ed when I actually sat down to play it. Now I carry far less judgment about a game until I’ve GMed for it.
To your point, it’s surprising how easy it is to resolve issues at the table in the moment. Make a ruling. Move on. It keeps play fast and fun.