Twisting Alleyways & Outlaw Thieves - Haven The Free City & The Stormbringer Rpg

 "HAVEN — The Free City can be used with any fantasy role-playing system that accepts the existence of magic and a multi-racial universe, and is designed as an interrelated series with Thieves' Guild™, forming the basis for a complete campaign universe. Ample space is provided for the GM to incorporate features, politics, and personalities from his own campaign into the fabric of the city. This package includes:

• An Overview of the city of Haven and the region of the Ten Cities, and explanations of the terminology used in the books;
• 7 booklets describing the 7 boroughs and neighborhoods of the city, with major families, personalities, shops, taverns, and residences, and possible adventures;
• A booklet of random encounters and statistics for all NPCs described in the text;
• 11 detailed neighborhood maps showing the locations of shops and other places of interest described in the text; (Actually, it's 10 cardstock maps... this is a misprint)
• A poster-sized color map of the entire city, showing over 100 noted landmarks.

"So if your players are looking for a place to spend the ill-gotten gains from their last expedition, seeking to establish a more permanent base of operations for their favorite adventurers, or are just plain tired of skulking around uncharted dungeon corridors for the twentieth week in a row, bring them to HAVEN — The Free City, the biggest and best fantasy city ever published!"

1984 ... Gamelords 3930"

Wayback in the early two thousands our group of retrobates got deeply involved with using our scale ship for pirating and raids against the Pan Tangian empire. And we needed an off the cuff deeply involved city to unload our ill gotten  goods too. We had a mixed crew of renagade Pan Tangians, Tragic Millenium, Vikings, and Young Kingdom rejects. And my uncle started us with Gamelords Haven The Free City but adapted it straight into a Stormbringer rpg location. Here our Vikings speaking an archaic form of French & Pidget trade language unloaded our ill gotten goods. And man we took a bath on some of the trade goods. We got our scale ship upgraded, traded out our exterior crew, upgraded the dry dock for her, and somehow Haven became our home away from home during the Nineties under my uncle's ever watchful DM's eye. Haven can still be gotten from Game Science right over here. Now our Stormbringer rpg campaigns began to incorporate more outlaws, renagades, and scallywags. And this was due to our almost constant need to keep up with repairs on our scale ship. We kept running into Pan Tangian & Tragic Millenium agents who were trying to find our crew because we were known outlaws. Why didn't we go back to Sancutary?! We weren't exactly welcome back there because our party owed money to every bookie and loanshark in the city. 

So our base of operations became in Haven and it was fitting. To this day Haven has a soft spot in our hearts and our party really fit in among the riff raff of Haven. We also had quite a few urban based adventures among the back alleys and businesses of Haven. 

Then there was the fact that Haven really fit the back alley nature of the thieving, pirate, and renagade life style that our party developed during our Stormbringer play. And then there was the fact that Haven supported piracy with Lair of the Free Booters supplement and adventure. 
Haven had a sorta of aura of adventure about it. Because it fit the Stormbringer, and Avalon Hill Ruinquest Third edition vibe far better then we as players expected. 

When one of our crew was killed we'd spin out the next crew member into our party of scum & villainy. 
Trade Town from Lair of the Freebooters was a perfect little port for piracy. That is until the damn Pan Tangians showed up again. And we really began to concentrate on building our crews with more outlaws and mercenaries after the last encounter. We had the local pirates on our side after the Pan Tangians consigned more then a few of the pirates souls into waiting tentacles of Pyray the Whisperer of Impossible secrets. 

Our party eventually wound up within the Grand Arena having to go undercover, to buy back, escape from, and finally fight our way out of the same arena. Our party ended up in the Grand arena and this is where Avalon Hill's Runequest third edition's Monster Collseum appeared on the table top. And here's where our group actually got deeply into 15 MM miniatures! These miniatures work so well with the Avalon Hill Runequest Monster Coliseum set. If your looking for a very good overview/review of Haven The Free City check out this entry on the Blackgate blog here.