Tolkenor, the Border Isle

 It is a time of concord. It is a time of discord. Peace has finally come between the thousand warring lords of Alba, but it was not won through friendship. A warlord holds the pope for a hostage, and all the great isles hold their breath. Meanwhile, hundreds of unemployed retainers and thousands of disloyal soldiers turn to brigandry on the waves or the hardscrabble life of the wanderer, as news of wealth and horror from farther and farther lands marks a new age of conquest, expansion, and misery.

Shadow Hunters (1972)

(This regioncrawl was written to accommodate the Masters of the Strait gloghack)

Click here for the regioncrawl, or read on for some reflections on it.

rare photo of Errol Flynn playing a pirate

Reflections:

• As always, I'm glad I included the little details that make the relationship between the ruleset and the world strong-- making sure to include dogs if there's a dog language PCs can learn, exc. But I could have gone a lot harder in that, and it would have gone well I think.
• As a setting, Tolkenor has plenty of danger, wonder, and political-dramatic potential, but it lacks an overarching crisis that makes everything doubly precarious and animates all the best settings. A massive invasion, or outright domestic crisis of some sort.
• Perhaps more overt risk to the life of piracy, or the end of nobility or something. Inspiration from the source material. Why isn't a snooty bureaucrat on the brink of gathering a massive fleet to shoot every outlaw in the head with a cannon?
• Glad I have those little harbor marks on the border connections between land and ocean. That's a step over previous efforts.
• There should be way more connection between regions. PCs following each lead should feel blown around.
• There should be way more interactivity. More buttons that make regions explode, or move, or something. I've done better at that before.
• If I was about to run a Tolkenor campaign, I'd put more work into making a generator for making regions on the fly. Like Josie's stocking procedure, but with a table of elements and themes particular to the setting.
• Coming up with spirits on the fly on a per-region basis is fine, but if spirits are going to be local powers, I'd like some of them to feel as present as some of the political powers. That would give priests and religious events a feeling of actuality.

GLoGhack: Masters of the Strait 🏴‍☠️

 Because some find it hard to get excited about a ruleset, I've made a regioncrawl to go with this one.

I wanted to write out a ruleset that encompassed lesson I've learned and the ways my tastes have changed since writing and running Vain the Sword.

• From playing B/X, I got more into the quadratic, simple leveled advancement (that OG GLOG also had) where you may get to level 4 relatively quickly and advance very slowly from there, but with a complete arsenal of class tools. I became fluent in the pace of gold-for-XP and other classic systems I was only discovering a few years ago.
• From playing Traveller, I fell in love with the career character creation system and skill acquisition. I wondered if I could use a similar framework to also make a procedure of the introduction of PC families and connections to the world that I had previously attempted in slapdash ways.
• From playing Lost Fable, I solidified how I wanted to do overland travel for regioncrawls.
• Looking back on Vain the Sword, I do enjoy the 8 hp maximum and the risk that the Table of Consequences gives, which can be tweaked with a custom table for every campaign.

Just as knights are the flower of chivalry, so are settings the flower of nobility. Accordingly, I have a polished version with a setting integrated and a more generic skeleton in case I want to adapt it for another campaign. I hope you enjoy!