Odds and Ends

In this week's miscellany, I had a crack at D&D4e last night as part of the D&D Encounters program, which I decided to attend literally at the last minute. The point was to get a better handle on how the game runs at the table, but as luck would have it, this week's encounter was a skill challenge. I think this rule has a great eal of potential (compare it to, for example, the rules for extended contests in HeroQuest, or the Duel of Wits system in Burning Wheel,) but I'd rather have sat in on a fightier game.

Overall, it was a positive experience system-wise.

The Silverlands project is still underway - right now I am busy dividing up the gamable area into sub-regions, which due to an artifact of my mapping method is taking quite a while. I hope to have a new map and some more info posted some time in the next week or two - and after that, we get into the low-level work of finding interesting things to place on the map.

A Brief History of the Silverlands

I think a campaign world needs a historical framework in which to set events and stories of the DM's choosing. This needn't (indeed, possibly shouldn't,) be overly detailed, but it will provide the structure for what's to come. What follows is an outline of the history of the world of the Silverlands.

1. Before Good or Evil, before the Gods, there was the Dawn, in which the world arose from the co-mingling of Law and Chaos.
2. Powerful beings of Law, the Sun Princes of Qan, and of Chaos, the Thousand Cold Lords, arose in time, and their long struggles shaped and shattered the world. Few survived of either faction, but those that did ruled as the first Gods.
3. Unto this broken world came the Elves, from where none know, to heal it. After came the Dwarves, and though there was often rivalry and mistrust between them, a long, Bright Age passed.
4. Chaos, long-weakened, rose again and spawned the Orcs, against whom millennia-long wars were fought. A fragment of the Elves, sworn to Chaos, swung the balance in its favor, and they created a Long Dark Empire. During its reign Good and Evil arose or were recognized, causing strife within the Empire. Its fall broke the Old Races.
5. Among the ashes arose the younger races: Gnomes (possibly an offshoot of the Dwarves,) Men, and Halflings.
6. The Empire of Attalos, with the friendship of the Elves, rose to rule the world of Men. But hubris proved its undoing, and it was felled by darkest sorcery.
7. In Inutheyn arose the Dark Kingdom of Thol astride the ashes. The Thirteen Kingdoms were forged against it, and vanquished it.
8. The Present, in which many of the Thirteen still endure, while newer nations have arisen among the ruins of olden empires.

First Venture Into the Silverlands

Last year, Rob Conley over at Bat in the Attic put up a terrific post outlining a method for how to set up a fantasy sandbox. Take a look at that before reading further, because I'm going to be following his steps, probably fairly closely.

Silverlands is going to be a very traditional D&D setting; this means that all of the various D&D races and classes will be built in. I have little intention of stepping outside of the rules to devise custom stuff (but there will be exceptions to this, as we'll see later on.) At the same time, traditional or not, I have no desire to go back to the dark ages of mapping by hand along with late-night trips to the 24 hour copy place. So I'll be using modern tools, starting with Fractal Terrains Pro and Campaign Cartographer 2 Pro.

With that in mind, I present the world of Melantea:



The world map was designed using Fractal Terrains Pro from a random base and tweaked significantly, then exported to CC2Pro and thence to JPEG. All fairly easy thus far. The developed campaign area (the Silverlands themselves) are obviously going to be much smaller than the whole world.



The region pictured above is called the Attalosean Reach, so named for the great seafaring empire of Attalos which once held sway there. The continent of Inutheyn lies entirely within the region, as well as portions of the landmasses of Ghulan and Larnet. Much of eastern Inutheyn is civilized or nearly so; most of the west is wilderness or occupied by inimical tribes of humanoids... and possibly worse. It is in these savage expanses that the Silverlands lie.

Introducing the Silverlands

In the lands of the East are mighty kingdoms and Empires as old as Time. But the western kingdoms are much younger, for they lie on the border of the most unforgiving wilderness upon the world. It is called the Savage West by easterners, Kingdom and Wilderness alike. But to the peoples of Seoland and Malrene, and Hesurea and the Dells, the wild lands beyond their borders are lands of limitless opportunity, where one might decide his own destiny upon the keen edge of a blade. Here savage tribes of Orcs fight amongst themselves, seeking ever to unite as they did in the elder days, to sweep aside all the kingdoms of men in a red tide of war. Here mad wizards delve into forbidden secrets in impossible towers which destroy the sanity of the weak-minded. Here there are riches to be found and kingdoms to be forged, as much as there are ill ends to be met. The men of the west call these forbidding reaches the Silverlands.

The centerpiece of reader-usable content here at Ardwulf's Gaming Table is going to be a "traditional" campaign called Silverlands (which has no relation to my previous aborted project of that name.) Silverlands is going to be a "structured sandbox." It will be up to the players to decide where to go and what to do, but seeds to help them along, with absolutely no actual prodding from the DM, will be built into the design, using traditional tools like randomly-generated rumors, and a set of rival adventuring bands and potential nemeses.

Silverlands is not going to be setting-heavy. I intend for the entire world background to be able to fit on one two-sided sheet of paper, suitable for use as a handout, to provide a DM with maximum flexibility. The Silverlands themselves - the wilderness in which the campaign will be set - will be mapped out exhaustively at 6 miles to the hex, with placement for major adventure sites, bases of operations, and miscellaneous places of interest. My model for this is going to be the Wilderlands of High Fantasy.

UPDATE 3/11: Silverlands is going to be developed for D&D 4th Edition, not D&D3.x as previously planned. The design is at such an early stage that this makes absolutely no difference. I'll still be posting my progress, although I've been made aware of a couple of resources, which I'll point to in due time, that will be of great assistance.

However, I will be running 3.5/Pathfinder as well, using one of the Paizo Adventure Paths - I haven't decided which one yet. I'll be reporting on this as well.