Building a Sandbox Campaign, Part 7: The Map

Thus far I've been posting a log of my world-building activities, closely following the template set by Rich Burlew over at Giant in the Playground. Burlew's collection of articles concentrate on creating a viable campaign world for publication, but my mission from the outset was to create a world for a sandbox campaign. It's time to say goodbye to Burlew (for now) and to have a look at some of the other sandboxing advice available on the internet.

Bat in the Attic is a great online blog by a seasoned RPG fanatic, very much of the old school. His (I'm assuming the author is the same Robert S. Conley of Bat in the Attic Games) advice is incredibly thorough. I shan't be posting each step of the process here, as I hold out the hope that I'll be able to get an actual campaign out of this one day with real players, and so I want to keep a little back.

Conley advises beginning with a continental or world map, sketching out a bit of background and then zooming in to "sandbox scale"- a regional map approximately 100 by 200 miles. I'm going to more or less skip the first part: I want to keep the general background vague. We've established that the action is to take place on the hinterland between the Fells and the Valley Kingdoms, and that across the sea to the west lies the civilised realm of the western continent. The above map shows the region of the Fells and the Valleys, and what follows is half a page background on the campaign world.

The region shows The Valley Kingdoms and the Fells, situated on the Isle of Brythar. Recorded history began roughly four hundred years ago, when traders from the mainland established the town now known as Mytholm. According to them, the local inhabitants were an uncivilised and barbaric bunch, but were incredibly talented potters and weavers, and the wool of their sheep was highly prized. The broad river plains were also extremely fertile, and the lands were coveted: waves of invaders attempted to establish permanent settlements, but the “painted men” (as then they were called, for their habit of tattooing) proved resistant to raiders. The Kintu, as they called themselves, were tenacious warriors, and were dispatched with waves of would-be conquerors. They did allow small groups of traders to remain, and these pioneers gradually brought their continental ways. valuing stability, the settlers covertly engineered the succession of a native overlord and, 150 years ago, Drustan I was crowned the first High King of the Valleys.

Oral tradition tells a slightly more interesting story. According to legend, the Kintu ("the first") all dwelt in the fells, having been made in the image of their masters, the cruel giants. It was an age of monsters and magic, and the giants ruled all the many creatures of the Fells with an iron fist. Legends tell of a great hero who untied the Ao-Sithe and the Kintu, leading them into the valleys. For a short time the fey-folk and the first men lived in peace, but the giants returned, with an army of foul creatures, led by great dragons.

Many humans fled across the sea in boats, become ancestors of the westerners. Today the terms “western”, “coward” and “foreign” are synonymous (conversely, east means “strange”, “evil” and “terrifying”), for the men who fled to the west left their brothers and sisters to die at the giants' hands. But the Ao Sithe and the first men fought bravely together, and with powerful magic defeated the monstrous hordes, driving them deep into the Fells. The fair-folk made a pact with the men: they would keep the monsters of the Fells at bay, if men promised to forsake magic.

For most of the people of the valley, these tales are nothing but that- tales. But in the town of Mutshud, they know differently: they know that the monsters are real, and the dalliances of men with magic or drawing them out of The Fells…

Building a Sandbox Part Three: Classes

Following on from previous posts on this series, I'm going to once again use Rich Burlew's excellent articles on building a campaign setting as a guideline for my own paracosmic activities. Taking a lead from Burlew's article on character class decisions, I'll be discussing how the classes from Dark Dungeons will be utilised in my campaign setting.

Rich's article riffs principally on how divine and arcane spellcasters are distinguished in his campaign setting, and I shall pick things up there before spiralling off on my own tangent. The Fells campaign takes place in a magical region of an otherwise mundane world: in the mundane realm, magic is far from an everyday commonplace occurrence yet in the fey-world of The Fells it is very real. So how does this affect choices concerning character classes?

Druids as depicted by 18th century romantics, 21st C WotC artists and and 20th C Belgian cartoonists...

My relationship with the Dungeons & Dragons cleric class has always been conflicted. I like the idea of magical powers being granted by divine powers to their devout followers and I recognise the historic precedent of men-of-the -cloth also being men-at-arms (and the precedent set by the bishop in chess). But I've always been uneasy with the idea of character levels corresponding to position in a church's (or other religious order's) hierarchy, at least with regard to NPCs. Think about it: characters mainly accumulate levels by killing other beings. Is the all-powerful yet gentle patriarch of generic lawful good church really a mass murderer? Furthermore, do all members of the priestly caste (or profession) receive training in arms?

The mundane world that complements the magic one of The Fells is modelled loosely on an early medieval, Celtic society. I envisage a medieval Scotland, Wales or Ireland (or maybe even Brittany or Cornwall) where there was no Roman invasion, and no subsequent "christianisation". It would therefore make sense to extrapolate the pagan practices of Celtic cultures into a feudal setting. Much of what we know about the religion of the pre-Christian Celts is drawn from three sources: the piecemeal archaeological record, the unreliable accounts of classical scholars and romantic medieval literature (principally Irish in origin). The latter of these sources was also the inspiration for much of the 19th century Celtic (and pagan) revival, upon which contemporary lay understanding of Celtic culture is founed. As unreliable as these sources may be, the are to be an inspiration for an interesting backdrop rather than an historically authentic reconstruction.

What is at least partly clear is that a significant figure in the religious life of the Celts was the druid. By all accounts druids represented an educated class occupying positions as divergent as priest, doctor, advisor, astronomer and sorcerer. The conceptualisation of druid in D&D as some kind of magical guardian of nature was most likely inspired by the aforementioned 19th Century romanticisation of Celtic culture. Having said that, it could be postulated that historical druids may well have evolved from a prehistoric shaman-type figure closer more akin to the familiar figure in D&D.

Pseudo-intellectual conjecture aside, let us contextualise this in terms of the campaign world of The Fells. In my brief outline of the mystical origins of the campaign world, the druids may have acted as ambassadors from the human world and that of the magical fey, and played an integral role in bringing about the ultimate liberation of both parties from the tyranny of their as yet unidentified masters. The Fey may have granted them magical power (or guided them in how to access the power of "nature i.e. the fey world" ), as well as knowledge of herbs, medicine and perhaps things like writing (ogham runes) and primitive crafts. This would have made the early druids important figures, as well as guardians of occult knowledge.

Unlike their RW counterparts, the druids of the valleys/fells never experienced persecution by a imperial power (i.e. Rome), nor were they sidelined by a militant new religion (i.e. Christianity). As such, it can be envisaged that the druids would have assumed a more secular role within society, alongside those sacred duties (the sanctification of marriages, births and deaths; confirming divine approval to rulers) that would otherwise be accorded to a priestly caste similar to the medieval Christian church. Note that this evolution would have been parallel to the decline of magic in the Valley kingdoms, as the fey withdrew to The Fells.

The druids in the Valley Kingdoms function as a unified order with a hierarchical leadership structure. Though they originally venerated nature and the mystical power of the Otherworld, this has evolved into a polytheistic religion, whereby heroic figures from the near-mythical past have been conflated with the lords of the fey and worshipped as gods. There is still a loose association with nature in rituals and philosophy, but perhaps it is symbolic, similar to the pastoral motifs (the lord as shepherd to his flock) found throughout the new testament.

Because all technical knowledge is considered to be of divine origin, provision of this knowledge is controlled by the preistly caste, i.e. the druids. Everything from mathematics to metallurgy, literature to lore, medicine to masonry is managed by various orders of the druidic council.

Phew. If you're reading this as an OSR or sandbox-play enthusiast and are thinking "what the fuck is all this special snowflakery bullshit?", let me explain myself. This post is very much a journal of the thought processes that are helping me to make decisions about the role and "flavour" off clerics in the campaign world of The Fells. I have no intention of shoving this down the throat of prospective players. Instead, a brief series of bullet points on the classes restrictions and background would suffice. I promise.

Druids Inciting the Britons to Oppose the Landing of the Romans, Cassell's History of England.

Now: resisting the urge to make a comprehensive list of druidic orders (complete with Gaelic-inspired name, colout-coded hood/cloak combos and area of responsibility), I'll return to the issue of how this affects the cleric character class in The Fells. It stands to reason that the druids are keen to preserve the exclusivity of the knowledge that they hoard. If their secrets entered the public domain they would lose their position of power and privilege. There would need to be a martial order to serve as custodians of the ancient teachings, an order whose loyalty was beyond doubt. What better way to ensure loyalty than to sanctify their duties? These warrior-druids would therefore be amongst the most devout, a facet that I will use to justify their uncommon spellcasting abilities. Furthermore, the oaths of the druid-warrior might also preclude the use of certain weapons (or necessitate the use of traditional or ceremonial weaponry), a parallel to the conventional rule of clerics being unable to use blunt weapons.

In the mundane lands of the Valley, being a druid does not automatically confer magical powers. Pragmatic druids may privately dismiss belief in magic as superstition, and concentrate on their area of mundane responsibility. The warrior-druids (and I will need a better name for them- let's say katadru, from proto Celtic) believe in all the myths. They honour the gods, but recognise the gods as emanating from the Otherworld. They know most of the great myths of the The Fells, and truly believe in the power of the fey. For this reason, when a katadru first prays to the Otherworld when entering The Fells, they find that they have been granted spellcasting powers. These powers are not manifest in the mundane realms.