Node Cities & Starting Points For The Sword & Caravan By The RPG Pundit From Mad Scribe Games As OSR Campaign

Is Sword & Caravan all that exotic within today's OSR?! Yes & no, there haven't been too many rpg product that have come across my desk that explore the Silk Road in detail. Sword & Caravan fits this niche nicely. This blog entry picks right up from here. 

Sword & Caravan is epic history along the Silk Road & the supplement does it in a compact yet  divisive way. Why do I say divisive?! Because of the very nature of Sword & Caravan where the PC are travelers,merchants, explorers  upon the Silk Road. And within this the OSR campaign is woven. But where is the Silk Road & why has it been critical to Eastern & Western civilization? Well according to the Silk Road wiki entry; "First coined in the late 19th century, the name "Silk Road" has fallen into disuse among some modern historians in favor of Silk Routes, which more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting East and Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, the Middle East, East Africa and Europe." And this was the case going back to the Mongol Empire &  up until the rise of the Ottoman Empire in 1473.  This leads to massive expansion for an OSR campaign stretching across the ages on the Silk Road. Sword & Caravan set's this up quite nicely. And this leads to one of the single most important cities of the Silk Road & that's Baghad. The Round city of Baghdad between 767 and 912 was the most important urban node along the Silk Road.

The Round city of Baghdad between 767 and 912 is the perfect central urban point to start a Sword & Caravan campaign. The adventurers can be of the higher social strata making their way in the world along with their staff.
Used with either or both Lion & Dragon or Dark Albion, Sword & Caravan offers at completely different setting then the usual dungeon crawling but there's also plenty of opportunities for that as well. All along the route of the Silk Road are hub or node cities that benefit from the trade & caravans that make up the life blood of the route.. The Round City of Baghdad is a perfect example of this style of urban location. This trade is the heart & soul of the Silk Road according to wiki; "

The expansion of the Parthian Empire, which stretched from eastern Anatolia to Afghanistan, provided a bridge to East Africa and the Mediterranean, particularly the nascent Roman Empire. By the early first century CE, Chinese silk was widely sought-after in Rome, Egypt, and Greece.^[2] Other lucrative commodities from the East included tea, dyes, perfumes, and porcelain; among Western exports were horses, camels, honey, wine, and gold. Aside from generating substantial wealth for emerging mercantile classes, the proliferation of goods such as paper and gunpowder greatly altered the trajectory of various realms, if not world history."

Sword & Caravan By The RPG Pundit From Mad Scribe Games Is Availabe Here