The image shows an old New England farm with a handfull of modifications. The farmhouse and barn are covered in antennas, solar panels, and homemade savonius turbines, a swarm of UAVs are flying out of a dormer on the barn roof, while a robotic tractor trundles down the driveway and a woodgas truck is parked, running, out front. There are chickens in the yard and an old ski groomer for packing down snow on the seasonal roads parked in a lean-to on the side of the barn.
The farmer who lives here was a fan-favorite with my first group of players – he does a lot of work maintaining the meshnet for the mostly-abandoned town where the campaign takes place and he became good friends with the group's hacker character.
His farm is pretty conservative for the setting. I wanted to play with how perspectives would shift in this utopian solarpunk setting, to have a farm that would seem both futuristic and kinda crunchy-progressive by our standards that would still be pretty stodgy and conservative compared to his neighbors.
He’s relying on biochar, crop rotation, and pollarded trees providing radial chipped wood to replenish his soil instead of manufactured fertilizer, using alley cropping and a handful of other agroforestry techniques to shelter his crops. He cooks his food using a scheffler reflector, drives a woodgas truck he uses to produce his biochar, and generates his power with a mix of solar, wind, water, and woodgas.
But compared to the elaborate food forests of a nearby community, Bob’s open fields and heavy reliance on tech makes his farm look downright traditional.
I find the sort of cyberpunk mix of scavenged tech and a traditional-looking farmhouse to be both a lot of fun and pretty much in line with the farmers I’ve known and worked for, who were happy to bolt new stuff onto old if it got the job done. Bob’s farm is full of scavenged robotics, radio antennas, and other tech, mostly controlled using cybernetics linked to his brain. He’s added a drone hangar …
I've been working on some location #art for a #solarpunk #TTRPG campaign. This farm was part of the #meshnet for the mostly-abandoned town
Full text post here: jacobcoffinwrites.wordpress.com/2025/02/10/b...
The campaign will be published by @FullyAutomatedRPG.mstdn.games.ap.brid.gy
#scifi
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