When it comes to campaign & world building sometimes its time to fall back into the fundamental books & guidelines. The powerhouse books often inspire deeper looks into the process of a fictional table top universe. But first let's go over some of the situation with some boots on the ground.
Dungeon master Steve's lot of players can't seem to make a commitment to a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night OSR game at the moment. So I'm fading back to back up plan 'A' which is to concentrate on my own weekend game of OSR /Amazing Adventures! rpg hybrid campaign. To this end I unpacked my copy of the Troll Lord games Castle Keeper's Guide & my copy of the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide. Now at first these two books would seem to be at odds for a dungeon master. But in actuality they both have the bare bones of their respective old school & OSR systems. The Castle & Crusades Castle Keeper's Guide has the bare bones of the Siege Engine & some very solid systems for campaign implication.
But let's face facts this book doesn't have the advise & wisdom of Gary Gygax even though its a perfectly decent book. There's simply something about the DMG that has just a bit more under the hood of it. The Castle Keeper's book is however designed with several subsystems in mind that are perfectly suited to old school Pulp adventure & Sword & Sorcery. Oddly enough Castles & Crusades was designed to work with AD&D which is fine. The Castle Keeper's Guide contains : player races, variants on the standard character races, different approaches to spells, spellbooks, material components and holy symbols, mana points, vehicles, lodgings, and hirelings. There’s a chapter on world design, including discussion of such elements as climate, geography, weather, calendars, government, a slew of alternative settings to the usual high medieval cultural setting such as Greco-Roman, Iron Age, Renaissance, or even Meso-American or Stone Age (and a later section even discusses futuristic and horror settings).
And its these that I'm going to be concentrating on. Now I've talked about using the Amazing Adventures! rpg by Jason Vey for some time. But the thing to remember is that the AA! rpg is completely & utterly cross compatible with the Castles & Crusades system. Now that being said I'm going to get back to the weekend campaign that I've been working on based on several Appendix N sources. The far future world of HG Wells When The Sleeper Wakes & the year 2100 when the campaign takes place.
The first issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly, dated Winter 1928.
The cover art is by Frank R. Paul[1] for H.G. Wells' story When the Sleeper Wakes.Artwork is public domain.
The far future world of 2100 is a very dangerous place with a lots of influences coming from Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique . All of this dovetails into Wells The Time Machine & William Hope Hodgson's The Nightland. All of this has to do with the the artificial space-time structure ruins that have already cropped up in several of my games. And what about the demi gods & adventurers etc? Well this is a job for mortal men & women of adventure!
Already several of the Morlock & Abhuman factional blocks have had contact with the PC's. There the minions of several wizard's minions prowling the New York City mega state & a bunch of artifacts from the Museum of Time & History have gone missing! Now all of this I just randomly rolled up from the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide & Troll Lord games Castle Keeper's Guide
The wilderness of the world of 2100 is indeed looking very dangerous! Already there are several crystal eggs that have shown up in my weekend game! Special thanks to Heretic Werks blog for ruining my player's PC s day!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.