Building a Sandbox Campaign, Part 9: Magic and the Fells

One of the cornerstones of The Fells as a campaign world was that there was to be an actual, physical in-game divide between the mundane world of civilisation and the magical wilderness of adventure. Since I've now reached the stage where I have a map, I should like to take a moment to explore where that barrier lies and the effect that it is.

The Fells campaign is loosely inspired by the sidhe of Irish mythology, and  the broader, Germanic-Celtic folklore of northern Europe. A common feature of these myths is the idea of a faery kingdom or fey realm, to which mortals might be transported, either willingly or unwillingly. Further myths and legends abound concerning ancient sites and faery rings that act as a gateway between the two realms. In the realm of The Fells there are points where the Otherworld of the Ao Sith and the mundane world are one and the same. At these points, there is no divide between the mundane and the magical.

It makes sense to me that such points would correspond with the sites I've selected for various adventures (lairs & ruins), so I shaded these off on my hex-map accordingly. Of course, some of those lairs might be home to more mundane creatures, but I can change my map later. I've also decided that some of these lairs are locations of veritable fey dominions, and so the surrounding hexes for certain locations are shaded, too.

Now, in the post concerning campaign tone I wrote that as well as a mundane and a magical realm, there should also be a hinterland between the two. In campaign terms, this represents a point where the Otherworld's influence is strong, magic works and fey creatures can travel, but it is the two realms are still essentially separate from one another.

Using my hex map above, I then began to shade in all hexes abutting a fey hex, identifying them as on the fey "hinterland". I then shaded in a few extra hexes to link areas together, producing this quite pretty map below.

PCs wandering through this map never leave the mundane world: instead, the pass through parts of the mundane world which are also part of the Otherworld, or are particularly close to it. The two worlds are parallel, but largely independent: entering a magenta hex does not mean the character is free to explore the realm of the fey, that would require special enchantment. Likewise, a fey creature can never leave the Otherworld: they might sometimes wander into areas were the mundane and the Otherworld are the same, or close to one another, but if they wander into a mundane hex, they vanish from view. This reinforces my conceptualisation of fey creatures described in this post.

The hinterland squares have special characteristics, for here the Otherworld can be seen but not touched. Henceforth it shall be known as the halfworld, for although it is mundane it is neither here nor there. Here. inhabitants of the Otherworld appear like wraiths or shadows and, if they desire, may fully manifest in this magical part of the mundane world. They may just as easily leave, whereupon they once again take on a semi-corporeal form, appearing as harmless ghosts.

This gives all fey a horrifying power of mundane creatures: they may enter and leave certain parts of their world at will, steal from or harm its inhabitants, then return to somewhere humans will never be able to reach them.

Magical creatures are often protected by an immunity to conventional weapons, and in the Otherworld the majority of creatures experience a boost to their immunity, so that a creature normally vulnerable to silver weapons will only be vulnerable to a +1 magical weapon and so on. Fey creatures without invulnerability can only be hit by silver or magical weapons in the fey realm. In other words, a fey creature is at full strength in the Otherworld, but whilst in the Halfworld it is weaker and more vulnerable.

eg. Naimbh the Bold encounters a band of malevolent redcaps whilst exploring a strange forest in the Halfworld . They attempt to lure her into the Otherworld realm by taunting and attacking her. Because they are not very powerful, she is able to wound them with her mundane sword, Brechwingamen, so the Redcap hop between worlds in the hope that she will not kill them.

They successfully lure her to a point where the Otherworld and Mundane are one [a magenta hex]; here, there powers are augmented and Naimbh's sword appears to pass through them without causing any damage. Remembering the legends concerning such creatures, Naimbh pulls a silver dagger from it's sheath and is able to inflict harm on them.

Overpowered, Naimbh flees, with some of the Redcap in pursuit. They follow her for many miles, but as soon as she leaves the Halfworld, they are unable to maintain chase: fey creatures may not enter the mundane.

Spell casting and magical powers are also affected by the location of the creature. Magic in this campaign is drawn entirely from the Otherworld, and so is at its most potent in that realm. In the mundane world it is subject to severe restrictions. In the Halfworld, where the influence of the Otherworld is strong, magic follows conventional game mechanics.

The full details of the effects on spell casting are listed below:

The Mundane

• Magical scrolls require an additional round to activate. All spell scrolls will have a 50% chance of summoning a creature.
• Rods, staves and wands require an additional round to activate. All spell like effects will have a 50% chance of summoning a creature.
• Potions either operate at 50% efficiency or have their duration reduced by 50%.
• Katadru (cleric analogues) and other faith-based casters are unable to cast spells;
• Magic users and Keiwosithe may cast spells but with the following restrictions:
1. At first level they may only cast read magic.
2. At 2nd level the may cast read magic and one other first level spell with a 50% chance of failure
3. At 3rd level they may cast read magic and one other first level spell without restrictions. All other 1st level spells have a 50% chance of failure. They may not cast any second level spells.
4. At 4th level they have the same restrictions as 3rd level, but may cast one 2nd level spell at 50% chance of failure.
5. At all subsequent levels the pattern continues: they can cast one spell without random failure at each spell level they know, apart from the highest level. They are unable to cast any spells of their highest level unless they are "usually" able to cast until they learn one more spell at this level, which will have a 50% chance of failure.
6. All spells, once cast successfully, have a 50% chance of summoning a creature.

The Halfworld

• Magical items and spell casting function as usual,

The Otherworld

• Katudru and other faith based casters awaking in the Otherworld may prepare two additional spells for each spell level they know, apart from spells of the highest level they can cast. They may prepare one additional spell of their highest spell level. These spells are lost if they leave the Otherworld.
• Magic users and Keiwosithe entering the Otherworld automatically gain the ability re-cast one already-prepared spell at every level they have memorised. Additionally, they may spontaneously cast one spell they know (but not necessarily prepared) at each level they can cast except for their highest level spells. This ability is lost if they leave the Otherworld, and not regained until 24 hours after they have left.
• Magical items function normally.

Example:

Gwyn is a sixth level Soit-alo. She begins the day in a woodland in the mundane world, and prepares three first level spells (read magic, magic missile and Sleep), two second level spells (Invisibility and Detect Evil) and two 3rd level spells (Fly, Dispel Magic).

Whilst in the mundane, Gwyn may cast read magic without restrictions. She may cast one other first level spell without restrictions, and one with a fifty percent chance of failure. She may cast one second level spell without restrictions, and one with a fifty percent chance of failure. She may only cast one of her third level spells, and it will have a 50% chance of failure.

Gwyn casts no spells until her party enter the Haunted Forest, which is located in the Halfworld. Here, she may cast her spells with no additional restrictions. During an encounter with a group of bandits, she uses magic missile and sleep.

As her party venture further into the wood, they become aware of an unusual magical presence. They have entered the Otherworld. Shortly, they are ambushed by a group of goblins. Gwyn is able to re-cast one of her spent first level spells, and may cast one each of her second and third level spells again. She may also cast one first level and one second level spell she knows spontaneously for as long as she remains in the Otherworld.

Next time, I will be looking at providing further detail for the base town, Mutshud.

  

 

Building a Sandbox Campaign, Part 8: Adventure Sites

Following Bat in the Attic's example, once a regional map is drafted the following steps are to be implemented: 

1. Decide to place Population Locales note their race this includes social monsters
2. Decide to place Lairs (locales that revolves around a home of monsters)
3. Decide to place Ruins (locales that revolves around a site)
4. Decide to place miscellaneous locales. (anything that doesn't fit a above.

The Fells is a campaign set in the magical wilderness beyond civilisation, amidst the various ruins of the vanished Land of the Giants. These ruins represent adventure locations where ancient artefacts, hidden treasures or hideous monsters might be located.

This is a Sandbox campaign: where the PCs venture to is up to them. But some guidance should be provided- not to rail-road the PCs, but to give them some choices about where they might wish to head. Nearby ruins might be well known to the inhabitants of Mutshud (our AdventureTown TM.), whereas the location of more distant ruins might be more vague, with clues, hints and maps obtained during preceding encounters.

Of course, in addition to these ruins are the locations of various lairs. These could be the hideouts of local bandits, the den of unearthly monsters or even whole villages of Keiwosithe. Unlike ruins, there's no obvious geographical features to mark these out, and PCs will either stumble upon them or seek them out based on rumour. Rumours could cover anything from information obtained from random encounters (Bandit: "Look, all I know is that things were fine until those other crooks showed up, about 12 miles south of here"), local heresay ("There been strange creatures spotted in the marshes... weird, unearthly creatures...") or even just the name of geographical features ("The forest, south of here? Oh, you mean the haunted woods...").

Each of these lairs and ruins I've populated (to larger or greater extents), but shan't go into detail here for fear of future players unravelling their secrets. But each lair or ruin also is accompanied by site-specific random encounter tables in their immediate environs, which may give PCs clues as to how to find the lair/ruin, and what they might expect to encounter there when they do....

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 Campaign, Part Six: Non-Playable Races

The Fells is a sandbox campaign in which PCs have forsaken the relative mundanity of the medieval-Celtic Valley Kingdoms to explore the mysterious highlands, home to lost treasures and strange magic. What is the nature of the inhabitants of the Fells? What creatures inhabit this wyrd realm?

Let's start with what has been established so far:

• Humans inhabit the Valley Kingdoms. Magic and wyrd creatures are part of their mythological traditions, but largely regarded as superstition.
• At society's hinterlands, belief in magic and minsters is more widespread, They've seen stuff.
• According to ancient myth, humans were once the slaves of a tyrannical precursor race who were overthrown by an alliance of fey creatures and humans.
•  These fey creatures are said to live in The Fells, a realm where magic is very real.
• The Keowosithe are an elf-like, iron age people who keep a close eye on their human cousins. their heritage is a mixture of magical fey and mundane humans.
• The Keijuk have a similar heritage, but were created by the precursors as a slave race (presumably they rebelled at some point). 

Let's establish the following founder races:

• Fey- ancient, magical beings inhabiting a world parallel to that of humans.
• Humans- mundane beings that rule the Valley Kingdoms, former slaves of the precursors who created them.
• Keowosithe and Keijuks born of mixed fey and human blood.
• The Precursors, a tyrannical race who once ruled over all the other sentient species.

Ultimately, all "humanoid" types have their origins in either the fey or the precursors, or both. In the earlier piece regarding setting the tone, I looked at Rich Burlew's assumptions about standard fantasy settings:

There are hundreds of intelligent species, but 99% are monsters

...and responded to it thus:

•  There will be many humanoid species, but...

1. Most of them will be treated as "fey"
2. They will have more magical abilities (even kobolds)

In Rich Burlew's article on world-building he is reluctant to include a panoply of humanoid races, on the basis that civilisation should be the purview of the campaign's dominant species. The subtext here is that humanoid creatures are essentially battling for the same ecological niche, and it undermines the verisimilitude of the setting for there to be hundreds of such sentient races. Furthermore, he wishes to preserve "the medieval feel, for monsters to be Monsters-creatures [sic] that are unknowable and frightening...".

I like this philosophy but tackle it from a different angle. Rather than living in independent, human-esque societies, why not return dome of these creatures to their mythological roots? Goblins and kobolds were thought of as malevolent sprites, a kind of anti-fey rather than organised cultures. I'm picturing two "courts" under the jurisdiction of the fey: one of high elves, sprites and the like, dwelling in the Otherworld; and a shadowy, malevolent court of dark elves, goblins, kobolds and the like, dwelling in the Netherworld. Following the loose naming conventions established in previous posts, I shall name the "light" fey the Ao Sithe and the "dark" fey the Dao Sith. The light and dark analogy is probably not to clever, given that all faeries love moonlight. Good and evil doesn't cut it either, given that both groups operate outside of human moral paradigms. I'll stick with light and dark for now, if only on the basis that the Dao Sith prefer underground tunnels.

One thing that's been buzzing round my head is that whilst these monsters might be "amped up" somewhat, especially in terms of things like natural spell-casting abilities, they will also suffer restrictions. I'm absolutely forbidding these creatures to enter the mundane realms, unless summoned by a magician or somesuch. So, whilst a party might suddenly find the spell-casting, teleporting-at-will goblins a tougher prospect than a standard goblin encounter, they can always retreat to non-magical territory if the encounter gets out of hand.

The exception to this rule would be those hybrid races already mentioned: the Keowosithe and the Keijuk. This is in part born out of their status as playable races, but justified in terms of their mundane heritage It follows that there might be other creatures created by the precursors who are similarly able to traverse the world of the magical and the mundane. This gives us the option of adding more conventional humanoid races.

Finally, I've been using the word precursor a great deal, and my employment of this term has been somewhat disingenuous. The implication of this ambivalent term is that I have not yet decided on the nature of these semi-mythical beings, when in fact a fairly clear idea developed as soon as I started to consider the setting. These creatures were giants. This is by no means an original idea, but it tallies nicely with precedents in various RW folklore and myth, from the classical titans to the biblical nephilim to the Irish fomoire.

  

In laying down the ground rules in broad strokes I have left many questions unanswered, but that shall be the subject of further updates. For now, I must press on with the design of the sandbox itself.

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. 

Building a Sandbox Campaign Part Two: Selecting a Game System

In the previous sandbox building article I closely adhered to Rich Burlew's article on establishing Purpose and Style for a campaign world. As I begin to bring the concept of my campaign world, The Fells, to fruition I shall continue to follow his steps, though not in a linear fashion. In the fourth article in his series The New World, The Right Tool for the Right Job, Rich Burlew rationalises the adoption of D20 Modern as his preferred gaming system for his dark ages campaign, as it fits in with his low-magic tone of his world. What follows is a (very brief) outline of why I've opted for Dark Dungeons as the preferred system for the theoretical campaign...

The D&D Rules Cyclopedia

In my post Memoir of a Failed Campaign I I alluded to my first foray into campaigning using the D&D Expert Set and, later, the Rules Cyclopedia. Call it nostalgia, but for me this represented the definitive D&D experience: the rules were easy to grasp without being simplistic, and like all systems could be augmented with house rules and. Most importantly, the entire game was contained in one volume, a far cry from the splat-book bonanza of 2nd edition and beyond. 

Dark Dungeons- Downloadable at gratis games

Sadly, my copy of the Rules Cyclopedia disappeared (along with pretty much everything I'd accumulated in my short life) at some point in my early twenties. Reading around the OSR online community, however, has exposed me to a whole host of free-to-download retor-clones, including Dark Dungeons, pictured above. This volume faithfully replicates the mechanics of Cyclopedia-era D&D whilst containing all the spells, monsters and rules needed to run a sandbox campaign up to 36th (!) level.

One of the attractions of this ruleset is the limited range of available classes and the limitation of demi-human races to a single, racial class. This later feature is somewhat mystifying to anyone unfamiliar with "basic" editions of D&D, but for me this dovetails nicely with my desire to restore a bit of the magic and mystery to a campaign. Demi-humans and humanoids aren't simply analogues of humans, happily (or unhappily) rubbing shoulders with their human cousins. Instead, they're enchanted creatures with unique abilities, advantages and limitations.

I am a fan of 3rd edition D&D (despite the complexities of organising combat, especially at higher levels), and from what I've read I think I'd enjoy WotC's 5th edition, too. However, from a sandbox point of you, the simplified mechanics make it much easier to knock out encounters and NPCs on the fly, something that should be integral to a sandbox campaign.

With an established rules system I'm now given a framework within which the mechanics of the game can breathe life into this burgeoning world. In the next two articles I'll be picking up Burlew's baton once more and having a look at character classes and races in The Fells respectively.

Building a Sandbox Campaign Part One: Setting the Tone

Because I'm not participating in a campaign at present, and because I'm spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about running a campaign, my energies are naturally diverted to setting up the kind of campaign I'd like to play. World-building has been a hobby of mine since I was very young, but not wishing to fall into the traps which have derailed my efforts in the past I've been reading up on the advice of one or two more experienced DMs.

The three articles (or series of articles) that have caught my eye are to be found at Giant in the Playground (home of the impossibly good Order of the Stick webcomic), Bat in the attic and The Hydra's Grotto. I've selected these three because the run the spectrum of approaches to setting up a campaign, with Rich Burlew's articles focusing more on a building rich background, Hydra's Grotto is more about setting up an out-and-out sandbox, and BitA lurks somewhere in between.

Both Hydra's Grotto and Bat in the Attic advocate starting with a map. Burlew, on the other hand, begins his first post by talking about purpose and style. Now, perhaps I've fallen at the first special-snowflake hurdle by adhering to the latter path, but I've already started to set the tone for the campaign in my previous post. It would be disingenuous of me to start sketching out a map without acknowledging that I've already approached the task with some presuppositions. Besides, things like climate and geography determine the tone of the setting to a great extent. So I'll begin with the idea that this is a campaign setting designed for an (as yet undiscovered) gaming group, rather than a publication, and take things from there.

Looking down on the civilised lands.

Seeing as this is to be a sandbox setting, I don't want to impose a grand narrative or over-arching story. The idea is to avoid rail-roading PCs along to some ultimate goal. Instead I would like them to establish their own goals, to explore and interact as they see fit. I would like to incorporate some of Chris Kutalik's ideas about player driven mystery.

Because the proposed sandbox takes place outside the mundane realms, it is intended that the politics of that realm do not generally interfere with event within the campaign world. This is not to say that NPCs don't have plots and schemes, but that these manifest in line with the interests and goals of the PCs.

Having previously established that most of the campaign action takes place in an area of desolate, highland moors and the occasional soaring peak, I was inspired by some of the landscapes of my home country, the United Kingdom. Taken this inspiration a little further, I think a celtic flavour to the campaign setting would be fun to explore, especially given the idea of the magical fells (like the realm of the sidhe or the fey). That said, I don't want to get too bogged down in fleshing out the mundane world, and seeing as most RPG mechanics suit a medieval setting, I'm picturing a world much like early medieval Ireland: an insular culture with some connections to (a perhaps more sophisticated) continental culture. Seeing as the magical realm is in the highlands of The Fells, I'm going to locate the mundane realm in the lowlands. It shall be known as the Valley Kingdoms.

As well as dividing the world into the mundane and magical, I'd like to establish a hinterland between the two. These three distinct zones have an effect on the performance of magic, including magical items and creatures. 

Taking Burlew's advice, I'm now going to look at eleven assumptions about a fantasy setting, and see which of these I would like to keep, discard or subvert. This list is lifted directly from Burlew's article The New World: purpose and Style.

1. Humans dominate the world
2. Gods are real and active
3. Magic is real and can be used by anyone who learns it
4. Opposites alignments fight each other
5. Arcane and divine magic are inherently separate
6. The wilderness is separate enough from the cities to justify three wilderness classes
7. There are hundreds of intelligent species, but 99% are monsters
8. Arcane magic is impersonal, requiring no "deal" with a supernatural being/force
9. Beings from other planes take an active interest in the mortal world
10. Magic items are assumed to be available
11. Magic is consequence-free

For brevity's sake, I'm going to deal with each item sequentially and in an identical format:

1. Humans dominate, but campaigning largely take place in a non-human setting, 
1. This non-human setting is The Fells
2. It abuts the known world yet is avoided by most humans
3. The human lands are known as the Valley Kingdoms 
2. Gods may or may not be real, but are impersonal and archetypal
3. Magic is real but...
1. It only functions "normally" in The Fells
2. It requires sufficient learning or devotion to harness
4. Alignment is more to do with personal philosophy than allegiance
5. All magic emanates from the supernatural energies of The Fells, distinctions are aesthetic
6. Potentially... though I may begin with the most basic set of classes
7. There will be many humanoid species, but...
1. Most of them will be treated as "fey"
2. They will have more magical abilities (even kobolds)
8. There will be many routes to obtaining arcane power, some may involve "pacts"
9. Other-worldly beings inhabit the planes, and have their own motives and desires. They are not godlike, though they are supernatural.
10. Magic items are rare, and function differently in each of the three zones (mundane, borderland and magical).
11. Magic manifests in different ways in each of the three "zones", and may have different additional consequences in each. One idea I'm toying with is that if someone is able to harness magic in the mundane realm, it summons a random magical creature...

I think that's enough to be getting on with. Before I settle down to drafting a map, I'm going to look at a few more of Rich Burlew's stages of world creation, and continue posting at this site.

The Weird, Wyrd, Wilderness...

In the short time that this blog has been in existence I've heavily referenced the Hill Cantons blog and for this I make no apologies: both the quality of the writing and the ideas found at this site are exceptional, and have there's a great deal there which has inspired my current musings on the direction I'd like to take a future campaign.

In his post Tekumel and the Use of the Weird in Campaign Settings Kutalik addresses the negative effect of ubiquitous magic (or, more broadly, the weird and the wonderful) has on a sense of mystery in a fantasy campaign setting.

The divide between the mundane and the magical...

I shan't spend too long summarising the content of the post (I strongly recommend that you have a look for yourself), instead focusing upon how this could be realised in a sandbox setting. Broadly speaking, Kutalik argues that the distaste experienced by some players and DMs for idiosyncratic fantasy worlds such as Tekumel is due to a lack of contrast with the mundane. Kutalik, inspired by an article by Douglas Bachmann in an early edition of Dragon, of dividing the "wyrd", "magical" or "fey" realms from the mundane. The concept creates sufficient contrast to maintain that sense of wonder, as well as encouraging thrill-seekers to explore the sandbox instead of the "human-dominated civilized world ... so dull and stolid".

Indeed, rationalising the contrast between the mundane and the magical justifies some of the tropes most discredited in traditional RPGs. Thus the classic "adventure town" is the last outpost of civilisation at OrdinaryRealm's frontier with the weirder-ness. One can imagine a world in which tales of magic and monsters have slipped into legend or even myth, yet at the periphery of mundane society those legends are still pervasive. Perhaps it is here that the near-mythical demi-humans make occasional contact with their human cousins, or those humans curious about magic come to find rumoured artefacts or specimens for magical research.

 Image: Wikipedia / Tobias Klenze / 

Returning to the idea of the weird wilderness and the outpost idea, an scenario that I've had brewing for some time is that of The Fells. "Fell" is an English term for a high, barren landscape such as moor-covered hills, originating from the Old Norse fjell. Perhaps this bleak, mysterious landscape was once home to the ancestors of the contemporary humans and their mysterious masters, but long ago they migrated to the fertile lowlands of the river valley, leaving the realm of magic behind. This realm is the site of various myths and legends, but is considered of no interest to (most) civilised people, and taboo for more superstitious folks.

Perhaps geography could have a specific magic effect, i.e. it actually explicitly functions as a divide between the magical and non-magical. Tying this in to the preceding legend, perhaps the ancestors of modern humans overcome their masters with the help of magical assistance (from elves or fey or somesuch), and these magical saviours keep the forces of darkness (for want of a less clichéd term) at bay for as long as humans do not dabble in the dark arts.

Without wanting to go into too much "special snowflake" back story, we've set up a scenario whereby pure magic and mystery is confined to the Fells. Moreover, the concept of precursor race and a vague, historical/mythological backdrop means we can stock this area full of ancient ruins, forgotten monuments, magic forests and abandoned caves. All we need now is a base of operations.

Mutshud is the last point in the fertile river valley of the Great River before the land rises dramatically into the mysterious fells, the last outpost of the (relatively) peaceful Valley Kingdom. Here the superstitious locals are fearful of the weird world lurking at the periphery of the settlement, but the adventurers have been drawn by the prospect of pillaging the ruins of a precursor culture that once inhabited the peculiar region of the fells. Rumours abound of great riches and mysterious artefacts to be found in the ruins of an elder race, but that these ruins are also home to a host of foul and horrific creatures.

The adventurers have sailed westward, to this backwards realm, with only rumours of what my lie beyond...