Campaigns, Actual Play & Site History

At the end of the day, covered in the dust of a few tombs, any adventurer worth their salt makes their way to the tavern.

A place to kick back, brag about the day's victories, mourn the losses, and enjoy a good pint.

A few thoughts on a recent one-off adventure. It was a tomb in the Lowlands in a place called the Valley of the Drowned Kings.

The adventure was meant to be easy. It was a classic "go explore the dungeon" setup for some friends, two of them new to the whole Dungeons & Dragons thing. It was set in the Lowlands, the main gateway region of the world that's easy to grasp and step into. All standard fantasy fare.

I decided to jump start the story at a campsite a half day from the tomb. They had a map. They had an NPC guide.

Wolves, bears, garden-looting rabbits: real problems for medieval villagers. They also had bandits, plagues, and feudal wars. Add in some griffons, goblins, ghosts, dire wolves, and a few heartless fairies and you wonder how normal people get through a single day in a fantasy world.

How do things work in a world with magic? In games we tend to talk about monsters in the wild, in tombs, in dungeons. What about the villages? These tiny outposts of civilization have to have some way of surviving.

These are some thoughts on how it all can work, making better sense for a world while adding layers of story, and even a few adventure hooks.

It all ended in the mining town of Pitfife near the Copper Lake in the Cairn Hills. Grimly, as expected. The final showdown with Kleg Blacklung, the man who killed their grandfather, came down to the wire. Abas and Kleg took each other down, and though not dead the brothers were bleeding out and the last of the Rahmans standing was a henchwoman named Hissie. Not that Kleg had many men left, and some of them were still on fire: but either the brothers would die there on the floor or at best find themselves chained and battered on their way to execution.

Adventure Setup: The Rope Bridge Frying Pan

I wrote this as an adventure setup, in the style of a (long) event promo blurb:

The gorge looked a lot nicer when you weren’t running for your life. The sagging rope bridge bounces more than you’d like and you’re not making good time, what with all the loot you’re carrying.

Image from Blackadder the Second

An excerpt from the culture sidebar for the citystate of Larakan:
 

Somehow after five years the Rahman Brothers are still alive and the campaign is still going. It's been a grognard romp for the most part, full of murder and mayhem and -- as the brothers often explain -- "terrible misunderstandings."

Currently in the Borderlands of Wallendahr, faced with a freezing snow-drenched wilderness. Great old school stuff ahead: dragon, wizard(s), druids and a lich. I just hope they don't read the blog.

Again with the name changes! We're trying "Midsummer: the World of Telrhin". And this is the new intro on the home page that helps shape it:

Indago: Midsummer of a World

Chaos in the melding of the Twelve Lost Dreams gave way to the Great Dream, a gathered world of mythic and impossible things. It cracked and boiled out into new parts: the Second World of lost secrets, the Spirit World of ideas too large, and what remained was Terra.

[update: name switch to Indago Nigh: the World of Telrhin after letting it digest and some feedback, and still playing with rule names like Alpha Nigh...]

A long delay in work on Telrhin thanks to a Vespa accident. But the end is nigh: work on Mark IV is drawing to a close, enough to look for some good 'branding' for both the world and rules. Enter 'Ars Indago: the Art of the Crawl' (the "product" title) with the Indago Rules (as much as I loved calling them Fat Dragon...).

[ 4/5 update: a partial list of the games (and these are just the ones Scott S.

Fat Dragon started with my first stab at a new system for sorcery and spellcasting and then expanded back to the main rules from there.

To be clear, these things kind of happen. And it will never be for sale, these are in-house rules.

Last post mentions the de-elfing process, which led to a revisit of the world origins and the why/whats of it all:vthe diegesis.

The new vision rethinks the chain of events from the Dream to the Agon, which ushered in the Mythic World (Antedivisian) before the Fracture. From there it's the balancing act of the Ehtre: the struggle between the Course of Dreams and the Ascendancy.

As we rebuilt Telrhin a few years back, the impulse was a full embrace of nostalgia. The whole panache of beloved geek fantasy from our gaming years. We're living in the Old School Renaissance after all.

But there comes a time to de-elf the world. We may have re-invented everything top to bottom in Telrhin Mark IV, but the old names were still there, ripe with stereotypes and the stolen ideas of others before us. The backstory to the "older" races was re-imagined, history re-thought, origin myths re-invented.

Back in the day we put out a newzine for the campaigns called the Adventure Log. There were over 40 issues by the end. To honor our current campaign's second year we put out a Rahman Brothers Special Edition. The campaign centers around brothers from the Rahman clan. When someone dies, we roll up a new brother! It's almost like Clone Club.

Victory at last! The tedious job of manually entering all of the old entries from the WordPerfect file to the new database is complete. Yes, I said WordPerfect. Started that file in the 80s. The encyclopedia has about 750 entries right now. Each of the old entries needed to be integrated into the new world 'vision' (read: totally rewritten/re-imagined) and all of the fields carefully selected for political, social and geographical assocations, various checkboxes checked...   glad that's over. Now I can search it, sort it and mine it to my heart's content. Excelsior!

The current campaign has made the leap to the Borderlands of Wallendahr following their expedition to the Mad Labyrinth of Zen the Mad. This takes the Rahman Brothers out of the Lowlands for the first time, which will help expand the world design and development.

The Encyclopaedia now has over 700 entries. And I've finally finished migrating the 'S' section from the old version.

And for those of you following the blog: I made the final table at Origins! Go Catan! I then managed to squander my lead through a series of catastrophically poor moves.

Since last post many things have developed. The new HQ for Telrhin has moved cities for one.
 

RULES NEWS:

Playtesting the new spellcasting rules. It's coming along nicely. Magic as a 'gift' (both for mages but also 'true faith' for divine powers). This gift is class-independent, so the class of mage or priest is a form of specialist.

Die pool for casting, rules for 'subversion' and control tests, 'stealing vis' and other fun stuff. 
 

WORLD NEWS:

At long last I've finished the new Field Guide to the Lowlands, a player's guide to the main campaign region of the world. The old Field Guides, written over the years, had covered the whole world. And covered it poorly. So as I got about developing the re-imagined 'mark iv' I thought I'd keep it focused on one area. This also lets me keep a steady perspective and point-of-view based on the culture of the Lowlands.

Origins starts today (well, last night really) and we all get to game and geek out. Playing an indie narrative game tonight by Bully Pulpit Games called Fiasco. 

But that is all an aside. The development on Telrhin moves forward. Encyclopaedia is two-thirds complete. The Lowlands Field Guide is 80%.  Sifting through the long years worth of notes, ideas and differing directions has been daunting. It would have been easier to start fresh, but I wanted to reshape the world and keep its wealth of detail and story.  

This is a write-up of the story at the center of the world, the flavor and theme inside the structure. The Tale of the Ember Queens:

The Two Queens, first among the Old Ones (the Ethrings) and last vessels of the creation song. They are the soft silk of an ancient truth, a long thread of purpose in the tapestry of the world, shaped by the unfolding of years, the choices of man and the dreams of the Embrings as they slide into forgetfulness.

In their unfinished tale lie the secrets of the world.

The older incarnations of Telrhin were a rehash of the Tolkien story: once mighty civilizations, tarnished and diluted over time from change and the emergence of "man", battling an ancient evil in the form of the Black King, Talon.  There were gods and a cosmic struggle layered into this, and later in 'mark iii' the idea of a crossroads of fate emerged, determining the future paradigm.

This is where I'll be posting comments and notes on the process of designing an FRPG world, the travails and challenges, and a few details of the world itself for those who care.