What Background Charts Say About Your World

One of my favorite quirks in that lovable mess of a book adorned with a scarlet butt-ugly hollering efreeti on its cover is the sudden, inexplicable lurching into polemic.

Take this section on Social Class in the DMG:

“There is no random table for determination of a character's social status to be found here. That is because the inclusion of such a factor will either tell you little or nothing of useful nature, or it will abridge your freedom with respect to development of your campaign milieu. That is, if such a table tells you only a little so as not to force a social structure upon your campaign, the table can contain nothing of use...There are dozens of possible government forms, each of which will have varying social classes, ranks, or castes. Which sort you choose for your milieu is strictly your own prerogative. While this game is loosely based on Feudal European technology, history and myth, it also contains elements from the Ancient Period, parts of more modern myth, and the mythos of many authors as well. Within its boundaries all sorts of societies and cultures can exist, and there is nothing to dictate that their needs be Feudal European.”

On the surface that's a totally bizarre way to begin a passage in a rulebook, “let me tell you all the things that aren't in here and why in detail.” Gygax was obviously responding to the trend of second-generation fantasy game competitors to tout background charts as providing a deeper social context.

Leaving aside the obvious self-interest, I love this passage as it reveals two things: 1. a profound insight into the imaginative big-tent reach of classic D&D and it's latitude for personalizing worlds (“why do any more imagining for you”); and 2. it's a concession in a way to the fact that such tables are a powerful way to subtly hardwire setting logic into character generation.

A quick paging through a few of the contenders of that era seems to validate this. Chivalry and Sorcery's starting background chart is a laser-focused on a long list of professions and classes--from serfs up to the lesser nobility--that clearly reflect a very narrow implied campaign world based in Northwestern Europe around the end of the 12^th century. It's random distributions while slightly weighted “unrealistically” toward not playing the bottom part of the pyramid. (Harnmaster would go full hog later giving you a 65 percent chance of playing a wide range of dirt-rooting peasants).

On a radically different note, let's take Stormbringer first edition, a game whose more flatly-distributed and divergent class background table typically generates a weird, wonderful, unbalanced grab bag of a party. It's not unusual to have a strange chaotic blend of PC backgrounds. A Melnibonean sorcerer-warrior-assassin tooling around with a pygmy hunter from Oin and a leprous beggar from Nadaskor. It's a set-up for campaigns even weirder than the books really.

Point is that each of these tables alone said as much and more about the setting and how the players fit in as the many pages of text yakking on about medieval society or the twisted words of Michael Moorcock. It's an elegant way to get around info-dump.

Winding up for my second point. What I take away from that DMG rant is not so much that such tables will break your D&D campaign, but that you have a choice as a DM to either run a “background is wholly what happens in the first three levels” approach (banking on bottom-up development) or custom fit a background table or subsystem to fit the contours of your own world.

Either works well I can attest from years running and playing—players in the HC are free to choose either road--but long-time readers will know that I have loved me some campaign-specific background generators over the years.

The background subsystem in the Hill Cantons Compendium says a good deal about the implied HC campaign world. There is both the obvious flavor elements—the landsknechts, dwarven indentured servants, mountebanks—and the somewhat deeper bits in the campaign logic itself.

The Weird touching the borderlands amplifies the chaos of human society. To be in that rootless group of crazies willingly exploring it something must have broken in your head. So the system tends to generate a background that is really tumultuous and zig-zaggy, a childhood and adolescence spent running from a crime to pushing a pike to having a mystic experience and the like.

I'm throwing a wall of text at you—and forgive me if it all sounds like a big stinking pile of pretentious poo—but it's a topic that I come back to a lot in my homebrewing. And I notice more than a few of my friends out there in the ether custom fitting their own tables and it makes me just want to play in their own worlds all the more.

And you? Have you made—or want to make—your own custom fits? Did it work?

There is Religion in Them Thar Hills

A slow news day here in the hills (though a busy one in the self-styled real world), so how about another portion of campaign setting dress.

The Supernal Orthodox Temple of the Puissant Sun Lord

The Sun Lord (his true name is banned from mention) drives the Chariot of the Heavens along the Dome of the Sky daily. The god spends the winter months dining with the luminaries of Hyperborea. Some savants believe that the god is in reality a godhead of 313 “Rays” (former deities co-opted into aspects). Many old gods have been said to be usurped and absorbed this way .

A monotheistic (if syncretistic) religion, the Temple ostensibly dominates the Overkingdom spiritually. The Temple itself holds a tight monopoly on the manufacture and distribution of the Seed of the Sun (gunpowder), which does not work in the Weird.

The faith is currently divided into 31 Houses of Orthodoxy over seemingly absurd doctrinal differences (whether sign of the sun is clockwise or counter, how many fingers used, the number of wheels on the Sun Chariot, etc.)

Clerics (the spell-casting class) are a tiny minority of the clergy and are only found in the Borderlands where their magic functions. Temple clerics are bog-standard D&D clerics down to the restriction of only using blunt weapons. They are mostly considered dangerous armed zealots by their cloistered brethren.

The Celestial Lady

A spurned female deity (also called the Sun's Bride or just the Goddess) whose now-heretical followers seek to restore her place in the Divine Family.

Her followers are divided among three bickering secret societies: the Evening Star, the Morning Star, and the Starry Void lodges. The first two societies are mostly moderate and socially egalitarian factions with a strong base artisans and denizens of the Borderlands. The Starry Void is a zealous, secretive, and lotus-addled crew who are rumored to dabble with the Mysteries of the Outer Void.

Evening and Morning Star clerics of the Lady are generally considered under the same proscriptions as those of the Sun Lord, though they are advised to be cagey about the source of their powers when among the unwashed. Mystics of the Starry Void are disallowed from wearing armor heavier than studded leather, but are granted the ability to choose a select group of (secret, naturally) unique spells.

The Old Gods

A handful of “pagan” gods still survive in the HC (though their worship is limited to country folk and tight-lipped cabals):

Radegast the Lord of Hosts, the god of fermented drinks, generosity, hospitality and magister ludis. He is still widely revered during Harvest rituals throughout the cantons as a folklore symbol.

Svat the Four-Faced, former ruler of the Pahr gods. Unpainted four faced wooden pillars are associated with his back hills worship sites.

The Silent God is rumored to be the Father of the Sun Lord, though the increasing tight-lippedness of his dwindling congregants makes the true nature of this god and his doctrine a head-scratcher for most. His symbol is nine-pointed star. Complicated esoteric equations and schematics are often associated with savants that follow him.

“Also Ran” Gods

The White God, Wodan, the World Turtle, Sorcha the Witch-Bitch, Storm-Child, and Xhom the Ur-Dwarf, all can muster a few die-hards in the HC.

Clerics of the Old and “Also Ran” Gods can use any weapon that deals out a d6 in damage or less. They are also granted special spells and powers associated with the particular nature of their deity.

Elder Gods and the Anti-World

Beyond the Veil Between the Worlds, lies the mirror image of this world borne on the back of the Anti-World Turtle. Strange alien “gods” work their powers there dictating all of the activities of the plane's denizens in heavily-plotted “adventure paths”.

Campaign Flotsam and Jetsom

I have been busy collecting all the miscellanea of our eponymous campaign recently into the compiled Rough Guide of the HC. I thought I'd share a few more items of possible interest to players and readers.

Unique Spells

Kazimir's Resplendent Couture

Level: 1

Duration: hour/level

Range: touch

The renowned popinjay and mage of Ostrovo, Kazimir the Hair-Handed, was never at a loss for being on the edge of foppish fashion no matter what the occasion or time. Local gossips whispered of eldrith magicks and unholy compacts. They were correct for once.

Touching a piece of otherwise dull apparel, the mage will create raiments of daring refinement instantly outdazzlingly any other garment in the room in it's audacity. For the length of the spell it will be the new black and the clothing will add 1d6 Charisma (max 18) to the bearer if among civilized folk. Any ruining of the garment, a stain or tear, will negate the enchantment.

Crappy Players Maps

The original Austin campaign map 2009.

Recent map drawn for the Nefarious Nine (the G+ core players) by a mad beggar.

The Guild of Condotierre, Linkboys,Roustabouts and Stevedores

Joining the Guild 

What the Guild expects:

1. The guild sets all prices and wages for related activity. No member shall work for less or more than what the local lodge sets as the prevailing wage.

2. The guild shall not abide a rival nor a scab. Members will work to “their utmost” to co-opt, silence or exterminate with extreme prejudice any unlicensed hirelings or organizations operating in the guild's sphere.

3. While the guild's business is that of danger, no member shall be placed in harm's way in a “frivolous” or “callous” manner. Contractors who are found in violation of this rule will be subject to a progressive discipline system beginning with a temporary boycott and ending with defenestration.

4. Members give their “due respect” to more-senior members.

5. All guild members shall field equipment appropriate to their “station” when under contract.

What the Guild provides:

1. Members shall be allowed to train with masters at the guild hall. If said training was to be quantified in an abstract evaluative system each sun in pursuit of this activity shall award one and half points of “experience”.

2. Apprentice and Jack member must provide a 3 sun discount to senior members on contracts. They are not allowed to refuse a contract offer by a senior member when presenting their labor at the Dome of Supernal Dealings—unless that member is facing a proscription from the Lodge Rada (governing council).

3. Guild members will be afforded a set “fair” price on equipment from Guild-approved vendors in the town market.

4. The Guild will provide training of 1 exp per 2 suns spent. Up to 100 suns per level can be spent this way in a weekly period.

Our beloved founder. 

Guild Ranks:

Apprentice: Non-combatant hireling (torchbearer, porter, bagman, etc). 20 suns/month contract

Jack: 0-level Man-at-Arms. 30 suns/month contract

Knave: Characters, levels 1-2. 50 suns/month contract and 1/3 share.

Master: Characters, levels 3 and over.

Grand Master: Political position reserved only for members of the lodge rada.

Monthly Dues Rates for the Marlinko and Ostrovo Lodges:

Apprentice	3 suns and a two-fer
Jack	5 suns, a two-fer, and 3 sags
Knave	10 suns
Master	20 suns
Grand Master	none

Corelands, Borderlands, and the Weird

Every campaign has some kind of logic, tone, or theme to it, even if unwitting to its designer. The longer you play the more this dynamic entrenches itself, creating through happy accident some kind of larger coherence behind it all. The various disparate mysteries start to have underlying and connected causes and overtime it's impossible for both players and GM not to build a sense of meaning behind it.

Both the Austin and San Antonio attempts at this campaign were very much a return to the sharply-bounded sandbox that was the height of fashion in old school circles 2-3 years ago. In that first year there really was no overarching plot, no real machinations by NPCs, nothing but pure wilderness and dungeon exploration and what the players brought to it through their own projection and co-creation.

But month after month that interplay built that famous onion-layering of mystery. I have joked (perhaps only halfway come to think of it) about the “cosmic” secrets of the HC before.

At any rate, here is one of the “outer mysteries”, the setting logic that makes for the day in day out arena that players walk around the HC in. That is in a player-driven world it produces the signposts of where exploration (adventure) are most likely to produce something fruitful. It's a campaign logic that hangs on a more literal, deeper-running meaning of the old D&D designation of geographic zones of civilization, borderlands, and wilderness areas.

The Corelands are human civilization. Though wars, political machinations, plagues, and the rest of the human drama play out here, from the perspective of Cantoners these lands are something of a movie facade. There is no whiff of the “Weird” here, magic doesn't function. Monsters and adventure has no real place here. Like a fantasy Oakland there is no there there.

Whole areas exist in the hills were the Veil Between the Worlds has ripped asunder filling the areas with the flotsam and jetsom of many worlds and times. This is the Weird. Here be monsters and golden, onion-domed barges and great cyclopean halls filling mountain-tops. Geography is exaggerated and uncoupled from the expectations of other lands.

The rising tide of such cosmic strangeness produces a startling density of these so-called sites of adventure. It's not uncommon to walk a few hours from one only to uncover another and then another a short jaunt away.

The Borderlands is the contested zone between. Magic functions here, yet civilization exists here too even if sparsely and tentatively. The entirety of human settlement in the Hill Cantons (the political/regional entity not the campaign) is found here and it is rippled like a marble cake with pockets of the Weird. As such adventure can be found here, but it involves neither the big-ticket risks nor the rewards of exploring the otherworldly regions.

Life here for humanity is tainted by the contact with the Weird, indeed literally many who return back to the core from here die quietly and strangely of maladies in the night. Though a rough frontier, fashion is extravagant and quick to change. Doctrines of the mind are extravagant and quick to heated dispute in their over-elaboration. 

While desperate, life here also carries with it the freedom from the dull routine. Heretics, runaway servants, poets, and the sociopaths and picaros calling themselves adventurers flock here as a result.

Factoids of the Hill Cantons: Unique Gear

Continuing in my series of posts from the Rough Guide to the Hill Cantons, I present today a piece of the unusual items that a visitor might find in a remote stall in the more exotic markets and trade fairs of the Hill Cantons. 

Rare Weapons

Poignard of the Overworld

Cost: 100 suns

Damage: d4+1

Weight:

A  long, lightweight thrusting knife with a tapering, acutely pointed blade and crossguard forged from a luminescent green ore from the “falling overworld”. Because of it's properties it can strike otherworldy beings. Usable by Magic Users.

Ostrovan Luft-Pike

Cost: 40 suns

Damage: d6+1

Weight: 15

A 24-foot hollow steel pike crafted by the weaponsmiths of Ostrovo and employed in the tight phalanxes of the HC townbands. The pike breaks down into four sections and carried in a leather tube on the march. Always strikes first in first round of melee. The weapon can be used from third rank, but only with sufficient head room (i.e. a terrible weapon in the dungeon). Double damage when receiving a charge.

Petard

Cost: 300 suns

Damage: 3d6*

Weight: 20

Small conical leather and chain bounded bomb filled with the “Seed of the Sun Lord” (an explosive material whose secrets are tightly controlled and regulated by the temple hierarchy). Typically employed to force a gate or breach a wall in a siege. The device uses a 1-minute fuse. There is a 1 in 6 chance of a dud fuse, necessitating a change out.

If an “18” is rolled, the damage dice explodes, roll another 3d6 and continue rolling if further 18s are scored.

Nettled Club

Damage: 2-5*

Cost: 60 suns

Weight: 5

This imported club is made from a woody cactus. Small thorns adorn the head of the club and can easily be broken off. A roll of a natural “20” with this weapon will inject a poison that paralyzes an opponent that fails to save vs. poison for 1-6 rounds.

Bone Dagger

Cost: 15 suns

Damage: 1-4

Weight: .5

A lightweight dagger made from a single bone claw of a great beast of the south. The hollow edge beneath the claw-point makes it an ideal poison delivery device and as such is a favorite weapon of the Hashasian societies of the Scarlet Sultanate.

Misc

Greek Fire

Cost: 5 suns/ceramic jug

Damage: 2d8

Made of naptha and other materials known only to the Society of the Sanguinolent Alchemists. Substitutes for the standard vegetable-based lamp oil of D&D.

Tears of the Atramentous Lady

Cost: 100 suns/drop

Small, rounded opaque white crystals said to be formed from the embittered tears of the Celestial Lady herself.

When consumed roll d10 (add WIS modifier):

1-3 Hoax. No effect.

4-6 Heal 3 hit points.

7-9 Heal 5 hp.

10 Heal 7 hp. +1 to AC for day.

Radegast's Dark

Cost: 20 suns/stein

The Dark is a special dark-as-night ale drawn only at select feastdays in honor of Radegast, the Old God of Hosts, Fermented Drinks, and Magister Ludis. Reportedly has supernatural powers, such as the ability to pass into the “spirit realm”, when enough is drunk to become inebriated.  

Armor

Half-Plate

Cost: 140 suns

Weight: 27

AC: 5

Fluted breastplate, groin protection and upper arm guards. Because of advances in metal-working in the HC, cheaper and lighter than full chainmail. The gilded version costs 520 suns.

Burgonet

Cost: 10 suns

Weight: 3

The burgonet is a steel helmet characterized by a high combed skull, brow peak, hinged ear pieces and blackened sections.

Factoids of the Hill Cantons: Fashion

Readers will note the recent appearance of my “Factoids” series. The posts are random bits taken from the upcoming Rough Guide to the Hill Cantons, an assortment of details various and sundry for players in the campaign—some of it even gameable.

Though a rough and tumble borderlands, the Hill Cantons doesn't lack for a love of haute fashion (albeit provincial and strange by the jaded standards of the Overkingdom core domains.)

Beyond the Weird, the clothes still make the man. Whilst in the HC, players will be awarded 1 exp for every 2 suns--that's gp to you otherworld barbarians--spent on his or her apparel. This bonus is above and beyond that of the exp value of that gold when acquired as treasure.

Headgear
Jaunty Cap	3 suns
Foppish Hat, unbrimmed	5 suns
Foppish Hat, long-brimmed	6 suns
Foppish Hat, ostentatious	20 suns
Burgonet, gilded	50 suns

Footwear
Boots, ghost minotaur	100 suns
Boots, frog-demon	200 suns
Sandals, penitent	2 sags
Sandals, hypocrite	2 suns
Shoes, pointy	1 sun

Otherwear
Cod piece, adequate	3 suns
Cod piece, pronounced	5 suns
Cod piece, ostentatious	10 suns
Bodice, bonelace	10 suns
Bodice, bejeweled	100 suns
Thong, chainmail	10 suns

Clothing
Landsknecht get-up, serviceable	8 suns
Landsknecht get-up, elaborate	15 suns
Doublet, velvet	5 suns
Doublet, poncy	30 suns
Gown, ball	30 suns
Hairshirt	3 sags
Pantaloons	2 suns
Robe, deo-fox	150 suns
Robe, pelgrane	300 suns
Robe, giant sable	180 suns
Robe, sackcloth	5 sags
Skirt, hooped	5 suns
Chiton, Amazon	2 suns
Toga, black	5 suns

Factoids of the Hill Cantons: Numismatics

Coins Common to the Hill Cantons:

Kolo (slang “Wheel”): large white gold piece stamped with the Sun Lord's Chariot (2-wheeled) equals 10 Suns.

Ur-Kolo: rare coin only circulated by ultra-orthodox sects, same as above but Chariot with 4 wheels, slightly larger worth 12 suns and a lady.

Apricity Crown (slang “Sun”): D&D gp but 1/10th weight, stamped one side with the Sun Lord dining with the Hyperboreans during his winter repose, the other with the most recent Overking.

Celestial Velkin (slang “Lady”): D&D sp but 1/10th weight, stamped one side with the Celestial Lady chained to a brick oven (goddess worshipers file the chains off), the other with both moons as crescents. 

Sanguinolent Orb (slang “Sag”): cp (made of a dark red bronze), blank except for a tiny symbolic drop of blood. 

1 wheel =10 suns
1 sun = 10 ladies
1 lady = 10 sags
2 ladies = a two-fer or frowned-upon fun  

Cosmic Secrets of the Hill Cantons Revealed

This will only make sense if you have read yesterday's post about campaign artifacts—and even then it may be a stretch. 

As always you must click to receive the embiggenation. 

Campaign Artifacts of the Weird

It's a given that long-running campaigns accumulate equally long paper trails. Perhaps less given, but likely frequent, is that collection entails more than just the run-of-the-mill mundane paperwork.

After a while the burgeoning horde of maps, adventure site write-ups, character sheets, tallies of ill-begotten loot, and the like starts to increasingly share dusty cabinet space with the eccentric flotsam and jetsom of creative gaming.

If you are long-suffering GM-type you likely know what I am talking about.

At the tame end are the simple visual aids. A picture yanked from the Internet representing a tapestry or a mudbrick fortress that the characters are seeing. Some props start to work themselves up the strange and obsessional meter—here an old rusty lock to be used in a lockpick challenge or there a bright-painted Oaxacan folk mask.

Put in decades to a single world and you might make up to the masters level. Just remember that magnificent treasure horde of M.A.R. Barker's collection being busily—and lovingly--filed away up in Minnesota.

With three years in the Hill Cantons I am nowhere near that level of things sadly, but sorting though the rather over-packed desk drawer containing my GM material yesterday I was amazed by the strange diversity of stuff. Most of it is in the form of spiral notebooks. Some of these are reasonably sensible brainstorm notebooks, others...others are just a little more odd. 

My favorite are the ones from my sketch book, they usually start as doodles more often than not on anyone of the interminable conference calls that make up my day job (your union dues at work).

Occasionally, one actually makes the cut and turns up at the table as a goofy player's map or a cross-section of a place of interest. Sometimes they are purely for my creative jollies, but more often they are the raw fuel or cosmic unconsciousness of a world in creation from the bottom up. (Nine times out of ten a setting detail extemporized and/or co-created with the players at the table.)

I will stop writing and just show a few to give you an idea.

This would be a symbolic map of the insular border town of Marlankh, home base of the San Antonio HC crew. Any resemblance to places both fictional and not is purely coincidental.

Now here's the Big One, the cosmology of the “Over Hill Cantons”. (Click to embiggen for detail.)

On the back was this hastily-scrawled post-session bullet point jam:

The Supernal Orthodox Temple of the Puissant Sun Lord

• Chariot of the Heavens and the Dome of the Sky [see illustration]
• Godhead of 313 “Rays” (former deities)
• Divided into 31 Houses of Orthodoxy over seemingly absurd doctrinal differences (whether sign of the sun is clockwise or counter, how many fingers used, the number of wheels on the Sun Chariot, etc.)

The Celestial Lady

At least three secret societies: Evening Star, Morning Star, and the Starry Void.

Old Gods

At least five gods: The White God, Wodan, Svat the Four-Faced, Radegast the Host, the World Turtle.

All I can say is I hope that if I die suddenly that no one paws through all the stuff. “He seemed like such a nice and polite man.”

Now it's your turn, show and tell time. What weird wonders lurk in your cabinet?

Tekumel and the Use of the Weird in Campaign Settings

An often-heard complaint about the Empire of the Petal Throne setting is that the thing is just too damn exotic: too many strange names; too many details on obscure religions and culture; too many odd beasts; too many damned diacritical marks, etc. These objections are just as often met (at least in the written and online material I have seen) by the hardcore fans of the setting with a dismissal of small-minded role players not able to cope with a more imaginatively robust non-faux medieval European (or Tolkien-esque) setting.

Both sides get it a little wrong--and a little right--in this.

The problem with the wider accessibility of Tekumel, beyond ill-fitting game systems or canonical behavior, is not that it is too weird, but perhaps that it's weirdness doesn't get sufficient enough contrast with the everyday (our everyday that is, not that of the Tsolyani clan house obsessed about it in later game editions).

The thrill of D&D at it's very best was the sense of sheer mystery and thrill of exploration at it's visceral core. You felt the fear and excitement in your gut as your character ventured out from that achingly familiar and comfortable Platonic-ideal inn (you know the wood-timbered Tudor one complete with roaring fire, tankards of mead, rolly-polly innkeeper, etc) and then into the dark corridors of the unknown. Sadly the sheer success of the game and the trail-along popular cultural acceptance of vanilla fantasy have buried, or at best obscured, this tension--enough where exploration of the weirder edges of pulp fantasy become liberating again.

But it's the edge that helps make the contrast meaningful, a concept with a long pedigree in pulp fantasy. Think here of John Carter, a Virginian ferchrissakes, thrust into the bizarre societies of Barsoom or the veneer in Howard that just barely covers the historical nations of Hyboria.

In the very first issue of Dragon magazine (#40 in case you actually give a crap) I picked up was an article by Douglas Bachman that stamped itself on my young impressionable kid DM mind. Leaving aside the article's misguided and overly-complicated Chivalry and Sorcery-fueled desire to inject High Fantasy (capitalized of course) into rpgs, there was an intriguing notion that wormed its way into my consciousness about the desirability of having a stark—physical even—separation between the mundane and fantastical parts of your setting. Human civilized life right here, the life of adventure over here.

As Bachman puts it:

“...There is an essential element which will determine the success or failure of a game as High Fantasy: the division of the world into Home Areas and Wyrd Areas (“wyrd” is an Old English word meaning destiny in the sense of an inward potentiality in process of becoming, with an approaching inevitable end; it eventually was changed through use into “weird”). A Home Area is one in which everyday life as we know it exists; it is the Primary World.

A Wyrd Area is the realm of the Dark, the actual world of Faerie. It is in Wyrd Areas that one encounters monsters and has adventures. All AD&D dungeons are Wyrd Areas...

The boundary between Home Areas and Wyrd Areas should be set out clearly. The use of mile stones, walls, magic barriers, hedges, toll gates, rivers, and ditches all serve to clearly separate the Primary World from Faerie.

Home Areas are populated by humans. It may be appropriate for a few elves, dwarves or halflings to be visiting a Home Area, but they should not live there...

It is imperative for players and DMs to understand the need for this division, and to handle the separation creatively. For instance, all adventures are appropriately undertaken and all experience points gained in Wyrd Areas. Bawdy houses, government, trade, agriculture, law & order, and military orders/units—the entire ambiance of En Garde! or of a feudal society (or any other historical culture/society)— are appropriate to Home Areas.”

It's also a contrast that unsurprisingly some of our more creative gaming brethern have been articulating more as of late. James Raggi, for instance, finds it important enough to tackle it in his own ever-opinionated game treatment of weird fantasy. In the more interesting parts of the LotFP referee book you'll find paragraphs like this gem of a flame-war starter:

“The ability to create...mystery is why a verisimiltudinous campaign world is recommended. If everything is fantastic (as it is in Sword and Planet stories and genres), then nothing really is. It's exotic, to be sure, and this isn't to disparage the enjoyment of such things but it becomes very difficult to differentiate “normal” from “abnormal” in a game world that is fundamentally alien from the start.”

And again this tension is repeated by the creator of one of the more alien, exotic, and beautifully-imagined settings, Geoffrey of Carcosa fame (or infamy depending on your point of view). He devotes a recent blog post—which seriously deserved more play in the blogosphere—to a move away from all-strange, all the time feel of Carcosa toward a new Clark Ashton Smith-flavored setting, now fittingly-titled Isle of the Unknown, that explicitly embraces this contrast.

So a very long-winded way to justify some of my own campaign choices (which are, of course, at the end of day a matter of personal taste). The Hill Cantons are a borderlands area in which characters pass from the a human-dominated civilized world so dull and stolid and rooted in our historical, late 15^th century stand-in institutions that magic, demi-humans, and all that is weird are almost forgotten. While town adventures might happen they only do so in the border towns that the swirling chaos is starting to encroach on—the core lands themselves have little to show for them adventure-wise.

That is until something comes along perhaps to upend the apple cart...

The Discreet Charm of City Ruins

Up until my move back to Texas last summer, I lived and worked in the post-industrial train wreck of a city called Detroit. Early on in my seven-winter tenure there, a colleague at the magazine I worked for gave me some half-baked advice about coping with the Motor City: try a positive re-frame and embrace the city in all its ruined charm.

I never managed to get my head around the human misery factor enough to ever quite make that full embrace, but I did fall in on occasion with a peculiar, brave crowd of urban explorers who have.

The covert tours of magnificent hulking buildings (such as the old main train station downtown pictured here), always managed to evoke inside of me the lost-glory awe of Howard-esque ruined cities. The implied sense of danger that came with trespassing in a rough place added to that dramatic tension in a way exploring old West Texas forts or castle ruins in Europe never managed to do. Calling on those memories at times have helped me draw a mental picture of the forbidden dungeons and sunken cities I populate my campaign world with.

Still I have yet to fully capture the totality of that feeling. My maps and scenery descriptions just have never quite hit the mark. They miss something of the scope, adrenalin edge, and pathos of those walking tours.

Travelling back to Michigan in recent months it hit me what I was missing: I wanted a large, sprawling setting that was not quite a full, monster-inhabited ruin, nor simply a run-down fantasy metropolis.

Pulling back to memories of the works of the great medieval historian, Steven Runciman, I suddenly remembered his sad, yet beautifully eloquent description of Constantinople, before its fall to the Turks in 1453. He wrote of the city, which had shrunk from a population of a million in the 12th century down to about a hundred thousand at the time:

"Of the suburbs along the Thracian shores, once studded with splendid villas and rich monasteries, only a few hamlets were left, clustering around some ancient church. The city itself, within its 14 miles of walls, had even in its greatest days, been full of parks and gardens, dividing the various quarters. But now many quarters had disappeared, and fields and orchards separated those that remained. The traveller Ibn Battuta counted 13 hamlets within its walls...In many districts you would have thought you were in the open countryside, with wild roses blooming in the hedgerows in spring and nightengales singing in the copses."

Re-reading that passage cemented it for me. I wanted a city that had a vestiage of human civilization surrounded by an internal wilderness--a "point of light" in the confine of a large-scale urban setting. Why not a once-great metropolis with a valiant human garrison manning sprawling long sets of triple walls beset both internally and externally? Why not a mega-dungeon of sorts sprawling horizontally above ground and here and there punctuated with hard-pressed human "wards"? And best of all, why not plop this mini-sandbox right down on a time-forgotten border of the Hill Cantons sandbox...

Playing Around with a Sandbox Campaign

Having fielded a few questions off line about the how and why behind the Hill Cantons campaign, I felt that it would help to have a short note right up on the campaign blog about the style of play involved.

A good deal of inspiration was drawn from the recent online enthusiasm for West Marches-style campaigns (a more intentional and well thought out way of running the kinds of campaigns we ran back 20 years ago in teen years). We essentially had no prefigured plotline in place at the start. The campaign setting was limited to three paragraphs and I tried to pare back all the over-deterministic world-building impulses to a minimum.

Taking a different tack, I sketched out a good old-fashioned sandbox complete with a hand-drawn players' map highlighting a number of obvious dungeons (two big ones and several smaller ones), numerous vaguely-defined points of interest, and a handful of civilized habitations. After handing over the map, I explained that they were free to explore, but that the encounters would not be scaled to be totally appropriate to their level. If they ignored the obvious warning signs of an area above their heads then it fell on them to figure out how to get themselves out.

Interestingly enough, as nature abhors a vacuum, a vague storyline is seeming to develop from the bottom up as the play sessions unfold. Players have started to ascribe meaning and patterns to the characters, monsters, histories, sites, and events (the moving parts behind the scene) they discover--and a player-centered "plot" begins to be born.

You can check out some other interesting examples of the thinking behind sandbox-style games on the links below:

How to Set Up a Sandbox Campaign

Sandbox Play

Old Schoolin' How to Get Started

Cautionary Tales from the Sandbox

Old School Campaign Tent Poles

Campaign Map

Map courtesy of AKS Mapper, a nifty (and free!) map-making software package.

Hill Cantons Setting and C&C House Rules

The campaign is set in a frontier region of the Over-Kingdom of the Nemetz Lands, a sprawling, loose federation of vaguely Germanic and Slavic domains ruled by an Overking elected by the Lords Temporal and Spiritual. Our down-and-out heroes have just ridden into Ostrovo, a small, provincial town of around 3,000, located in the Hill Cantons, a wild and woolly borderlands region of independent-minded freeholders and petty aristocratic micro-states.

As the curtain lifts, the Over-Kingdom teeters on the brink of chaos. It is a land so very different from our own. Two long grueling overseas wars against distant sultanates, the collapse of the large merchant banking houses, bumbling incompetent national leaders, and other sundry calamities have fractured the already fragile and decentralized realm. The Overking's authority is now mostly nominal in outlying regions. Magical happenings have become more common and some say long-banished elves, dwarves, and things that go bump in the night have returned to forgotten homes.

A monotheistic church, the Supernal Orthodox Temple of the Puissant Sun Lord, also ostensibly dominates the realm with its monopoly on the manufacture and distribution of gunpowder. But powerful new heretical movements such as the Morning Star and Evening Star societies seek to restore a spurned female deity, the Celestial Lady, to her “proper” place in the pantheon. The weakening of the Overking's power has also allowed old pagan religions kept alive by country folks to be worshiped publicly again in the Hill Cantons. Further ominous rumors abound about the reawakening of slumbering Elder Gods and unspeakable evil...

House Rules
(a special thanks to Jeff's Game Blog and Sham's Grog and Blog for inspiration)

Starting Characters
--Must be human. Roll 4d6 six times, throw out one die and apply each set of dice rolls to attributes as desired. Pick class. Multi-classing must be ok'ed by the GM.

--Characters start with 3,000 experience points. Characters receive maximum hit points for each starting level.

Starting Assets
--All characters start with up to 300 gold pieces worth of equipment. PCs with a plausible back story reason may be granted one or two items from the equipment list.

--Expert-crafted, non-magical weapons (+1 damage) and armor (+1 AC) can be bought at 8 times the list price, masterwork weapons (+1 to hit, +1 damage) are bought at 20 times list price.

--All characters can start with at least one Loyal Follower (1st level NPC/back-up PC, see below). Characters with Charisma over 15 can start with an additional lackey, hireling, or hired blade.

--All unspent gold over 20 gp is removed before the first adventure starts (you are down and out after all). So spend while you are still in your salad days and help stimulate our fantasy economy!

Experience Points
--Instead of simply earning experience for treasure, PCs gain 1 exp for each gp worth of treasure spent on training or research. The PC must find and recruit a mentor of the same class that is at least three levels higher than their current. Game time spent on training sessions will be determined by the GM.

--PCs can also receive 1 exp for each 2 gp of treasure spent in sword-and-sorcery-hero style debauched spending sprees (food, drink, romantic partners, fancy personal accoutrements, etc). Obviously, no mentor or training down time is necessary, but there is a 1 in 6 chance that a “complication” may follow (mammoth hangovers, duels, hostile constabulary, angry spouses, etc).

Style Points
- PCs can spend style points to re-roll a die roll of their choice (to hit, saving throw, skill roll, whatever)

--PCs gain style points for doing “cool shit” during an adventure session. Cool being things such as solving difficult problems coming up in adventure; exceptionally entertaining role-playing; daring feats of danger and the like.

Monthly Wage Scales for the Guild of Condotierre, Linkboys, Roustabouts, and Stevedores
Hire “union” for your quality NPC labor needs.
Lackey (0 level, under 3 hp), 10 gp
Hireling (0 level, over 3 hp), 20 gp
Hired Blade (0 level fighter, over 4 hp), 30 gp
Henchpeople and Loyal Followers (1st level and above NPC), 50 gp/level

Overtime, combat pay, treasure shares, dental benefits, and other sundry bonuses increase NPC morale during and after adventures. Lack of said perks may decrease morale over time.

Loyal Followers
Pick one or roll up your own
1.Thundarr, 1st level barbarian
2.Black Ratter, 1st level thief
3.Rhialta “the Magnificent”, 1st level wizard
4.Carlos “the Dwarf”, 1st level dwarf fighter
5.Sister Anya, 1st level cleric
6.Mongo X, 1st level fighter