Innauguration Day II

We now have half of our initial quartet, so let’s do the other half and get this thing underway…

A young lad named Hoko Goldma grows up in Lyonesse, the cultural and economic capitol of the territories collectively known as Wilusa. The son of a wealthy barrister, he tries and tries to apply himself to the study of the law but has simply not fallen in love with his father’s profession; he’s always yearned to see what lies beyond the next hill, and accompanying his father on infrequent trips to nearby city-states has not quenched his thirst for travel.

As an adolescent, Hoko felt that something else was calling to him, if only he could find out what. His questions found answers under the tutelage of one Jannick Idolf, an acquaintance and client of Hoko’s father and a practitioner of the arcane arts. Jannick saw in Hoko the raw abilities of a worker of magics, and took him under his wing as an apprentice. Hoko’s father rather than being horrified like so many other parents, was relieved to see his son applying himself to a body of work instead of languishing or sitting idle.

After passing a final series of tests, Jannick released Hoko into the world, along with a word or two of advice about his impulsive tendencies. Hoko’s father celebrated his son’s accomplishments, bestowed upon him a tidy sum as “startup” capital, and treated him to one last meal at the Yellow Queen, a slightly up-scale establishment in Lyonesse and a renowned nexus for entrepreneurial and outgoing personality types.

“My son,” he said, “what you need is to get yourself into the northern territory, where the mining industry is going through a boom. That’s where the real opportunities will lie – where fortunes may be made or lost. If you really want to succeed at this new calling, you’re going to have to stake your claim and take some risks… Off-hand, though, I’d say it’s too risky to make the long journey up there, alone. What you need right now is…” His eyes scanned the room, lingering for a moment on a portly man of serious demeanor with a cowl up over his shaven head, then brightened as two burly strangers walked through the door from the street outside. “Ah!... You need somebody like those fellows…”

Furok grew up the son of an impoverished potter and farmer, and only child on a barely-workable patch of land in the harsh environs of the Black Hills. The soil was thin at best, and the farmers in the area were always fighting a battle against the elements; Furok’s childhood, without a mother present, was difficult to say the least. Furok’s uncle Ulmo, however, was going to change all that…

A former soldier in the army of the city-state of Imai, Ulmo had returned to the Hills as a young man, determined to make a difference in the hard lives of his folk. He signed on with a group of outriders charged with patrolling the Black Hills area, under charter with the Duke of Imai, and spent the better part of the next fifteen years roaming through the countryside and protecting the mostly-unsuspecting villagers and farmers from darker forces.

Ulmo could see that Furok had the potential and gods-given gifts to be more than just an apprentice potter or beet farmer. He could also see the longing in the boy’s eyes whenever he looked at the horizon, or watched the sun set behind the dark Hills. Ulmo confronted his father and, in a heated exchange, goaded him into releasing Furok into his care. He and the lad walked away the next morning, and Furok has only been back once since then.

For the last three years, through rain and shine, summer and chilling winter, Ulmo has taught Furok the finer points of surviving and tracking in the wilderness, as the lad learns to ride and fish, hunt and fight. Together, they track brigands, apprehend poachers, and ambush goblins. The high-point comes when the pair finally corner and capture a notorious deserter and thief in the very north of the Hills. There is some hope that he was at the center of a string of recent disappearances from the roads in the region, but this theory quickly fades under interrogation.

What becomes clear, though, is that the thief is wanted for crimes back in Lyonesse, a week’s ride to the south. Ulmo and Furok restrain him and begin heading down out of the Hills, joining the main road on the plains, stopping in the city-state of Imai before heading downriver to Lyonesse. Once they reach the largest of the city-states, Ulmo finds out from the magistrate that their prisoner is wanted for murder in Tondota, Lyonesse’s rival city. According to the Wilusan League’s compact, extradition is automatic; Ulmo packs up for another ride of several days’ duration.

Before collecting his prisoner and remounting, he takes Furok aside, suggesting that he head back to the Black Hills; they’ve been gone a while, and Ulmo doesn’t want the outriders to be short-handed for too long. They enter the inn where they’ve been staying (the Yellow Queen, of course), and say their goodbyes. As Ulmo leaves, a large heavyset man with a cowl over his shaven head introduces himself…

“I am Archibald, of the Order of Pluto. I am in need of stout hearts and strong arms, to aid me in an errand of sacred importance. Might I tempt you into discussing potential terms of employment?”

At almost the same moment, a young elf and burly half-orc enter the inn, the shouts of the criers echoing in their ears; a barrister pushes his son towards the growing knot of individuals. They introduce themselves and inquire with Archibald about employment. Archibald explains that one of the duties of Pluto’s priesthood, as wardens of the dead and the underworld, is to explore and catalog any large subterranean complexes that are discovered. Some of these are too dangerous, some are inaccessible, but an initial attempt must be made.

Archibald explains that the complex he is bound to explore is located in the heart of the Black Hills, only a couple of days’ march from Furok’s old home. The others sign on, a price is determined, and gold coins change hands. The group of adventurers agrees to depart on the morrow…

And a legend is born!!!

(***Note***: credit for a great deal of this material must be given to other sites and bloggers, to say nothing of all the stuff that I've ripped off from common literature. I am chiefly indebted to the work of Matt Stater, over at Land of Nod; please check him out, and buy his stuff on Lulu.com...)

Sandbox vs. Linear... Ready... FIGHT!!!

When I started this current effort, I was presented with a dilemma – which approach will give a group of extremely imaginative (but completely inexperienced) gamers the most satisfaction: a linear, adventure-module-type campaign, or an open-ended sandbox?

It’s probably not too shocking to find that, so far, I’m doing a bit of both. I started out, however, by going hard in the “sandbox” direction.

Using Land of Nod as a guide, I stuffed a ton of adventure seeds and hooks into my 400mile x 400mile region of the world; all told, it was easily forty or so, not including more complex locations like cities. It was, frankly, a bit overwhelming for me as the DM… I could only imagine what it was going to be like as a brand-new player, being inundated with an avalanche of material to pick through…

At present, as I said, I’m doing a bit of both: I’m stitching together a couple of long-term storylines using modified versions of boxed adventures, but I’m peppering the environment with a selection of adventure hooks that can send the PC’s off on flights of tangent.

I have also found that there’s a third option. As a fan of Jungian synchronicity, I’ve been delighted to discover that random encounters can be made to fit a wide range of storylines if you’re willing to throw caution to the wind and embrace the madness. Dire wolves are no longer just a range of numbers on a chart; to the players, they automatically become obvious agents of Evil Genius X (whether or not that’s true, of course, is borne out over time). Taken to an extreme (and using suggestions such as Daddy Grognard’s that involve the tracking and mapping of major random encounters), you effectively have a sandbox environment that generates itself…

This is all undoubtedly “old hat” to a lot of folks who might read this blog, along with much of the material that’s going to be posted here. All I can say is that this is all either new or fresh to me, so I hope it’s interesting to read about somebody progressing through the various stages of discovery…

Inauguration Day

So, here's where I start getting specific. I'm going to (briefly) recap the action of the gaming sessions, as best as my feeble powers of recall will allow.

{At the time of this writing, some of my guys haven't really committed to character names. As a result, I'll have to go back and add them as I go along. For now, they are Napoleon, Hoko Goldma, Furok, and Nyatar.}

I feel very lucky, since everybody basically chose a cornerstone archetype and went with it: ranger, thief, mage, cleric. I was so afraid that I'd be dealing solely with barbarians and assassins and druids, but my fears were unfounded.

The action starts with young Nyatar, the half-orc cleric of Horus, the lawful god of vengeance and storms and war. (No, it's not the Deities & Demigods version of Horus, it's Land of Nod entity of the same moniker...) He's from a very warm climate near the equator, in the city of Ibis in the region of Uban. He is a newly-minted novice, eager to prove his worth to a skeptical heirarchy. His father, a gypsy, had dropped him off at a monastery outside the city, and he has been raised as an acolyte of Horus with every expectation that he'd fail. Not only did he refuse to fail, but he flourished under the scrutiny and is now being sent out to assist the priest of Horus that attends a diplomatic mission in the far northwest of the continent (think Juneau, Alaska, meets low medieval York).

After a sea voyage of two months, he arrives outside the whitewashed walls of the city-state of Lyonesse. Upon entering the city, he discovers the the head of his order has succumbed to a quickly-acting wasting disease. The head of the Ubani delegation must send away for a new head cleric, for which a conclave must be called; all told, it might be two months or more before Ken's new superior arrives. In the meantime, he's left to acquaint himself to the local culture as best as he can. He decides to take a spin around the city, while deciding what to do...

A young elf named Napoleon (I swear that I'm going to beat that name out of him) grows up in an elvish enclave, hidden among the Hibernian isles of the northern ocean. His father's a highly-respected physician and healer who dearly wants the young man to follow in his own footsteps; unfortunately, no matter how strong his desires, the young man simply shows no real interest in medicine. Predictably, the bored young elf falls in with a rather roguish peer who introduces him to the rather seedy side of social interaction.

After a few petty actions and relatively harmless larcenies committed among the stoic elven neighbors, Napoleon and his companion decide it's time to explore the wider world beyond their isolated enclave, but his fellow traveler leaves him behind in order to skip town early. He's finally able to book passage to Lyonesse (seeing a pattern here?); on board, he befriends an old hand named Jake who's seeking better fortunes among the burgeoning metal- gem-strikes of the far north, collectively known as The Faces.

The ship arrives outside the beautiful white-washed walls of the Jewel of the North on a clear late-spring day. He gets into line with dozens of other hopefuls, seeking to pay the fare and enter the city. Once inside, he begins making various fruitless inquiries until the siren song of a town crier reaches his ears:

"Seeking!... Adventurers of all stripes and sizes... Stout of heart and steady of hand... Seekers of fame and glory!... Come ye to the Yellow Queen and acquaint yourself with Archibald, of the Order of Pluto..."

{To be continued...}

(***Note***: credit for a great deal of this material must be given to other sites and bloggers, to say nothing of all the stuff that I've ripped off from common literature. I am chiefly indebted to the work of Matt Stater, over at Land of Nod; please check him out, and buy his stuff on Lulu.com...)

Tinker, tailor, soldier, mage...

I've got a bit of ex-po-ZEE-shun to take care of, here, so I'll bite the bullet and get on with it.

With a group of players who haven't had gaming take over their lives for long stretches of time, I needed a way to introduce the elements slowly, but not so slowly as to be utterly boring. (To be fair, one of the players had played before, but using one of the later editions....)

I decided to use the edition that I was most familiar with - 1E - as the basis for the game, liberally seasoned with some stuff from Labyrinth Lord, various blogs like Land of Nod, Daddy Grognard, and Hill Cantons, and even some 2E stuff. Frankly, I've never been enamored of the later versions and the first edition demands engagement of the imagination, something that my particular players crave.

I picked a free fractal terrain generator (I forget which, at the moment) and worked up a planetary biosphere. I found a series of tables for generating a large-scale history somewhere on the interwebs, and proceeded to mold my world. The randomness of both types really plays to my taste for Jungian synchronicity: I just generate the random elements and trust my imagination and improv skills to provide the links. Love it...

Anyway, I worked up a basic cosmology founded on principals of fundamental elements gradually becoming more fractured and complex, and voila!... It not exactly the Silmarillion, but it'll do. I'm pretty proud of it, actually.

For specific cities and sandbox elements I'm heavily indebted to Matt Stater over at Land of Nod, one of the smartest and cleanest blogs out there. (My players are advised to ignore this paragraph, upon pain of... um... pain.)

Throughout this whole process, I've only had one major concern: over-thinking everything. I'm sorely tempted to stuff all kinds of details into the plans of a session, and then beat myself up for leaving something out or not anticipating something. I've seen it written elsewhere, and I now consider it to be the cardinal rule of GM-ing: Just Have Fun. Do your prep work, but remember to enjoy the game. You're playing, too...