Campaign Pitch: Every Corner

 The story I have been told is that early adventure game campaigns featured adventuring parties of varying levels tromping across a small region pursuing their own interests, sending assassins after each other, and remaking local politics in their own pointy-hatted image. That sounds fun, but the realities of gaming for many modern people, myself included, often prevent a campaign that starts with a handful of rat-catchers and veterans to get there. A campaign format I would be interested in that could scratch that itch is what I have taken to calling the Every Corner campaign.

box art by John Blanche

First, the DM or the table designates about four to six major characters, the most interesting and powerful characters in a region-- names, classes, and one utmost desire. Your Aragorns, Gandalfs, and Saurons. In B/X terms, they're level 10-13. Then, they designate about double that number of intermediate characters: Theodins, Elronds, and Eowyns of level 5-9-- names and one utmost desire. By now, you should have a specific character as head of every important place and group in the land. Finally, come up with double that number of minor characters of level 2-4-- name and unique position in the world. Be sure to connect some of them as family, some as friends and lovers, etc.

These form the starting stable of PCs. Every interesting character in this region is playable from the onset, and the DM prepares a region that has challenges appropriate for all levels of play as well as procedures for domain management. It will probably come to pass that if a high-level character has some adventure they need to undertake, they will gather other characters around them. This can play like a normal adventuring party. Other times, a single player may schedule some time to pursue a PC's singular interest, and this can function like a limited Western Marches campaign.

Introducing level 1 characters should always be allowed, and if the DM has introduced NPCs of notable level, they should consider allowing them into the stable of potential PCs if their goals are clear enough for them to be interesting to play.

Example Set-Up

To try out how onerous or interesting this pitch would be, here's my outline for an Every Corner campaign set in Oylaosaga, which I generated in a recent blogpost.

High-level

1. Oylao, dragon 13. Seeks to disassemble the March to his southeast.
2. Emveu the Hateful Princess, gothic villain 10. Seeks to capture a dragon to again secure her rule.
3. The Sister, dragon 11. Seeks to fully wake.
4. Rizeuh, magic-user 12. Seeks to conquer monsters to secure the Sister's rule.
5. Tecu the Miserable, cleric 10. Seeks a successor to guide the Enoidel People.

Intermediate-level

1. Aurece, vampire 9. Seeks the love of Emveu. Mayor of a great March city.
2. Udato, wemic 8. Seeks to exceed his mother in war. A nomad of the southern plains.
3. Ilini, cleric 6. Seeks to redeem her pirate brother Ooska.
4. I-u, magic-user 5. Seeks promises of protection for the Lake of Masks.
5. Qage, lycanthrope 6. Seeks to control land west of the Shadow Mountains.
6. Ousgo, fighter 8. High priest of the Raised Gardens. Seeks comfort above all.
7. Uugen, fighter 6. Seeks the power to save his Enoidel people. Potentially a prophecied hero.
8. Oezya, fighter 7. Seeks to cleanse the Old Capitol of monsters. State-made son of Oylao.
9. Aande, thief 7. Seeks to bring her mother, Apava, back home safely to the Blue Mountains.
10. Eisleer, thief 9. Seeks to control a prominent Marches mayor on behalf of the wizard Rizeuh, his father.
11. Otere, magic-user 5. Seeks to make Odages Jungle independent.

Minor-level

1. Autoq, cleric 4. Prophet of the faith of All-The-Sky-A-Rolling-Plain, going north to spread his message.
2. Ioc, fighter 2. A warden and protector along the Abandoned Road of Tlen. State-made son of Oylao.
3. Aliuh, magic-user 4. Lives in the Bog of the Sister as her honored half-sister.
4. Ooska, thief 3. Slaver and smuggler connecting the Coast of Free Traders and the Trade Reserve.
5. Aotzuza, magic-user 3. Passing herself off as a dragon apostle in teh Bog of Oylao.
6. Eil, fighter 2. Waging a one-man war of revenge against partisans in the Child River.
7. Ade, thief 4. Hunted for a secret she knows about the Fort Towns. State-made daughter of Oylao.
8. Eucel, fighter 4. Seeking his fortune after living as a bandit in Sister's Hills. Old flame of the enchanter I-u.
9. Apavu. cleric 2. Walks the Marches at night as a vigilante.
10. Otedu, fighter 4. Trade Reserve. Guide and translator between plainsfolk and foreign traders.
11. Usiji, cleric 3. Only survivor of a dark creeper attack in the Vassalwoods, wandering traumatized and alone.
12. Uorus, magic-user 2. Vouchsafed Route. Escaped slave who knows the location of buried treasure.
13. Einejex, magic-user 2. One of several minor apprentices to the great wizard Rizeuh.
14. Atowisu, elf 3. Exiled plotter from beneath the earth, recently emerged from Ways of the Foreign Sky.
15. Edi, dervish 2. Lifelong raider recently come into possession of a sword which speaks in his dreams.
16. Adoin, cleric 3. Courtier advising the Hateful Princess. Daughter of the Sister, posing as a state-made daughter of Oylao.
17. Uiskaas, bugbear 3. Witch-hunter and March celebrity. Secretly funds the partisan Qage.
18. Okofa, thief 2. Relic-hunter and diver from the Bog of Oylao. Devout supporter of Otere.
19. Igeud, magic-user 3. Exiled by her Enoidel people for making her trade as a poisoner.
20. Oirelop, magic-user 4. Enoidel mystic and crab-rider. Believes himself the prophecied warrior Tecu claims to be.
21. Yoso, fighter 4. Jolly murderer, lover of ale and dice. Old flame to Ilini, Otere, Einejex, Adoin, and Ooska.

This was fun, and coming up with characters like this with a full table of people could be even more fun. The next campaign I run, I will seriously consider doing something along these lines.

Campaign Pitch: Acmori

"Ere he had fallen to the depths, and died a victim for mortalkind

A strange being, who has no body nor mind.

Dodkul, the master of the dead, gives life to the dead, and death to the aspirant.

A new god of the land. His name is Tyrant. 

He commands a group of powerful creatures, called The Judges of All Vice. 

They hold dominion over all the ice."

- from the Chelonian Fragment of I AM VERGAR

Faith, by Arnaud Pheu

Character Generation

You can make any number of PCs, that's fine.

PCs are baseline characters in your GLoGhack of choice, except they start with snow shoes, straps and leads, and a spiked ice-stock. You speak mundane languages like Acmor, Low Dialect, Nasjicu, Sanx, Semaphore, or some provincial tongue. You also know Trade Sign, a full-body sign language used to communicate with almost anyone one the sea. You may speak esoteric languages like the Dog language, Aurora, in Beard Knots, Binary, or Trepaniat, the language of the trepanned.

You will also work together with your DM to establish some facts about your home island: whether it sustains a city or is totally rural, what religious sect is primary, what your first mundane language should be, and the character and creatures of the island.

Expeditions

Your characters are leaders in the island's community, the sort of people who are trusted to go on the winter expeditions to find new routes to other islands, to brave strange events on the ice and strange wildlife, and to act as representatives of your island's interests. You will be spending these winters on expeditions, and the rest of the year will be spent in "down-time," where you buy and sell routes, supplies, and treasures as you pursue your own goals, start a family, and deal with events,

Route maps (and treasure maps) will show you some landmarks, and give you an idea of how many encounters you may expect on your way to your destination. When on expeditions, expect to randomly encounter nautical or arctic oddities. You will also frequently face trouble if you are not properly equipped for the ice, but you already start with what you need; snow shoes, straps and leads, and a spiked ice-stock. Upon reaching your destination, you will find a unique and dangerous ecosystem and will face trouble for as long as you are not properly equipped for it. You won't necessarily know what you need, but anyone who lives there might.

Berg Strider, by Filip Burburan

Mystic Floes

This premise bounds a location-based adventure structure with domain play from the get-go, and can easily accommodate many dungeons. This exists against a conflict-creating background. Before the ice came to Acmori, it was the domain of Socu worshipers, who practice a faith of hospitality and pastoral isolation, visiting their neighbors with boats or zoa, giant floating organisms. With the ice came the Dodkulists, the servants of a dead god and His righteous dead servants. These newcomers of the past centuries are here on pilgrimage, and seek to perform rites of rebirth at the graves of all, creating instant tension throughout the sea. Giants stead the sea floor, strange lights fill the sky, and seers presage utter destruction of all by fire. 

The campaign's structure allows very easily for modules in the form of route maps. As a DM, you can preroll a route and take additional time tying the elements together. You can also repurpose the route map generator as a Redwall-style prophecy, prerolling the encounters on the ice as well and tweaking those to match a broader theme. In the next few weeks, I am going to demonstrate these techniques and thereby create modular expeditions.

Campaign Pitch: When Do We Ride to Jerusalem?

Like an enemy HE has bent HIS bow;

HIS right hand poised like an adversary,

HE has slain all who pleased HIS eye;

HE has poured out HIS wrath like fire

on the tent of the Daughter of Zion. 

Character Generation

PCs are baseline characters in your GLoGhack of choice, except for two differences:

1. Instead of normal in-order stat assignment, each player (including the DM) rolls stats in order, then the players (excluding the DM) draft, taking turns claiming, say, the STR 14 someone rolled or the WIS 7 or what have you. Since the DM rolled up some stats, this should leave one set of attributes which we will save for later.

2. use failed careers instead of any other skill system. Here's one if you don't have a list handy:

d12 Failed Careers:

1. Fisher
2. Tax Collector
3. Political Activist
4. Thief
5. Prostitute
6. Beggar
7. Con
8. Scribe
9. Exorcist
10. Priest
11. Carpenter
12. Shepherd

When rolling 2d6 for random encounters, use whatever table is appropriate to the setting, but a roll of 7 is always orthodox oppressors and a snake-eyes is always the Devil.

art by Tomatobird

The Prophet

In addition to the normal PCs, the party will also be making a Prophet, the leader of the party. Mechanically, this is done by first taking the array of attributes left over from character creation, then communally generating a level 1 Heresiarch. They may have other powers, but the players know them not.

The Prophet gets all of the experience points which the party would receive. (If you don't want the campaign to be about dungeon crawling, give XP for each HD of person converted or 2xHD of priest out-debated) When the Prophet dies, all of these experience points are split by the party if they regroup and honor their leader's memory with a ceremony.

The Prophet is played by everyone, usually whichever player is most available in the moment. To keep some things consistent, always cleave to these principles for the Prophet:

1. The Prophet knows they are going to die soon.
2. The Prophet's word won't be understood until they are gone.
3. The Prophet's message is eternal and for everyone.
4. The Prophet is totally sincere, and knows they're the world's best hope.

The (inevitable?) death of the prophet is not the end of the campaign. If you've been lucky, it's only half-time. 

The City

As a group, you should determine some facts about the nation you start in, and the religion your Prophet has come to uplift. You begin as a voice in the wilderness, where people are spread out, authorities must appease your followers, and the demons are young and weak. The congregation is safe from being stamped out as long as it remains isolated, but may peter out if it does not gain a popular following. Eventually, you will have to come to the City.

The City is the center of spiritual power in the nation and (kings may scoff) the world. It is where the orthodoxy makes its laws and defiles its law. People will despise you, authorities will harry you, and demons inhabit ancient brazen forms, but it is here you must go. If you enter the city with a popular movement behind you, you will start to win. You will soar higher than you ever have, then the wings which raised you will be blasted apart from the spires of empires.

The Kingdom

In order for the Prophet's message to survive, it will need to form congregations in many nations. You can create a congregation by:

• Having the Prophet give the Difficult Order to one of their rich followers to make a congregation in their community.
• Giving 200 gold to one of your zealous followers to make a congregation in their community.

After the Prophet dies, you should be able to write accounts of their life and install them into congregations for a bonus. Maybe it's how you win the game.

New faiths require constant nurturing. Each month that a congregation goes without the Prophet or a PC visiting them, roll on the table below:

2d6 Congregation Events

• 2. False prophet. Possibly claiming to be the party's prophet. Congregation doubles in size as doctrines shift towards new heresy.
• 3. Minor miracle. Congregation heartened. 
• 4. Raises 50 gold for renovations, or to fund a congregation elsewhere.
• 5. Travelling magus competes with congregation leaders
• 6. Rumor of potential boon. Slot in plot hook.
• 7. Orthodox oppression. Same old same old.
• 8. Rumor of threatened bane. Slot in plot hook.
• 9. Orthodox priests debate congregation leaders
• 10. Calamity. Congregation seeks 50 gold for renovations, or to escape tyranny.
• 11. Backsliding. Congregation remains allied to the party, but resumes the behavior it once renounced.
• 12. Orthodox crack-down. Congregation is destroyed unless it somehow planned for this, with a 50% chance each named member is killed or imprisoned.