It startet out as a scenario idea for cubicle 7's excellent Middle-Earth rpg The One Ring. I wanted to capture the more whimsical elements of The Hobbit and especially, of Tolkien's beautiful and funny novella "Farmer Giles of Ham", and ended up with an adventure that featured man-eating fairy-tale giants, mean and surprisingly clever goblins, dead fish and a whole lot of sewing. Overall, it became a little more macabre than I had planned, but still felt like a well-behaved, kids-friendly scenario for do-gooder heroes. I went on to use it as my go-to scenario to introduce new players to The One Ring at our bookshop's open gaming nights, used it with Fate Accelerated to introduce my two nieces to rpgs and later expanded it and played it several times with Fantasy AGE. For the latter, I did a completely written and statted version (in my native German) with an eye to publication. However, for several reasons, nothing came of that.
Still, I wanted to see "The Good Needle" published. Badly. I have spent so much time with it, and it just seems to work remarkably well - GMing it, I got all kinds of things out of it, from "We'll talk our way through the whole adventure without ever baring a blade" to a fun dungeon romp (and, in one case, a would-be dungeon romp that ended with the group in goblin captivity).
Easy, most of you will say - just stat it out for some old version of D&D and put it on drivethru, at least three peoble will buy it, and you might even get a review. And that would be quite enough for me ... only, I totally don't speak D&D.
