Desperate Nobles

The PCs are all connected in one way or another to a noble house - either family members, trusted advisors, generals, etc.

All of the noble families are in attendance at the King's Palace - Castle Wisteria - for summer court. There are six major noble families:
- House Kimbertos (the King's house)
- House Van de Kamp
- House Scavo
- House Mayer
- House Solis
- And the PC's house

The following events take place during the first 36 hours of summer court:
1. The Queen commits suicide
2. Rel Van de Kamp (the head of the house) is poisoned - he may or may not survive
3. The Scavo residence in the capital city burns down
4. Bishop Kaul, a son of the King, is seen late at night digging in the church's graveyard
5. Lady Solis is seen leaving the stables with straw in her hair followed shortly by a young stablehand.

Now turn the PCs loose!

Northern Marches on the Road

I ran a session of the Northern Marches campaign at Revolution Games this afternoon. It marked the participation of the 9th player in the campaign. There has been a "core" group of about five players that have participated in the bulk of the sessions and another, now, four players that have participated in one or two sessions each. Today's session had three players that have been in most of the sessions and a newcomer that saw my posting at the store.

My hope is to get the roster of players up to about 12 to 15 from which to draw for any particular session. I am hoping that, with this number, different groups of characters begin going in different directions.

From the beginning of the campaign I adopted Jeff's Triple Secret Random Dungeon Fate Chart of Very Probable Doom. This is to heavy-handedly encourage characters to get back to civilization by the end of the session so that the roster of all characters is available in the same location at the beginning of the next session. So far, there has not been the opportunity to subject the characters to random fates but it was close today.

Today was a fun session from my perspective. I went to the game store thinking that the party would once again descend into the haunted silver mine that they have spent the last few sessions exploring (last session they found the entrance to the second level). Instead they decided to talk to a few of the important local NPCs and see what rumours/information they could dig up and then decide what to they were going to do. This gave me the opportunity to roll on a couple of tables. I have mentioned numerous times how I enjoy DMing when I get to weave together a number of random elements.

First, I rolled on a table from Dragon issue 145 "Holding Down the Fort" that gave me the result of a disease outbreak.
Second, through the interaction with the local NPCs a couple of reaction rolls resulted in the local ranking cleric (actually not that high level) sending the party to a local midwife.
Third, a good reaction roll with the midwife resulted in her asking for aid from the party.
Fourth, I then rolled on a "Quest Generation" table that I have adapted from a couple of sources. This resulted in "Recover an Object". I just recently read an entry about an abandoned witch's hut in Points of Light, so I decided that the midwife would send them to find an old witch that might have a cure for the disease.
Fifth, where was this witch? A d6 roll to see which direction and another d6 for distance showed that the witch's hut was rumoured to be located 3 days travel north of the village.

To this point most of the dice rolls and development of the adventure hook had been done while the party was talking to NPCs, making plans, etc.

The party decided to go so as the party was traveling north and amid rolls for encounters, I made a few rolls to see if the witch was there. The result was that she was not there but instead the hut was occupied by a Living Crystal Statue. I decided that the Statue was an old servant for the witch that was left to guard the hut while she was gone. The witch had been gone for a few years now and the statue was hoping the characters would find her.

Another roll on the "quest generation" table and a couple more rolls to see why and where the witch had gone resulted in the party finding a notepad/diary where the last entry was about how the witch was going to a seek a "treasure" in a glade in a nearby forest.

A couple of rolls more and I had a ruined temple in the glade with goblins and wyverns. I decided that the wyverns would be very young and thus have only 1 hit die. A tough battle ensued and the young wyvern killed a hireling and nearly killed a Elf PC.

Will the ruined temple contain the answers to the whereabouts of the witch and/or the disease in the village? We'll have to see what I roll next time. Unfortunately, I had a mind blank and forgot to take pictures.

Another Northern Marches Session

We have had a good run of gaming for the Northern Marches campaign the last few weeks. Last night we had another game with three players and myself.

The party was light on manpower but decided to return to the mines and fight goblins and bandits. Wandering monsters were their downfall. Only Konrad the Fighter made it out alive and he was grievously injured.

He went to the local temple to seek aid for himself. This gave me the opportunity to try out some more subsystems I have developed. A good reaction roll with the high priest, with some bonuses for helping the community with the bandits, resulted in the PCs hearing the tale (a Key Rumour) of a self-proclaimed Duke that has a stronghold to the west who is actually an evil undead that lives off the suffering and torment of the living. Also, in return for some healing, the high priest had Konrad the Fighter swear to investigate a recently discovered nearby tomb.

Investigating the tomb resulted in the PCs finding the first large treasure trove for the campaign. They have been unlucky in that regard to this point.

My goal in the development of the Northern Marches is to use a handful of simple subsystems based on existing mechanics in the B/X rules so that the campaign is nearly usable for solo play - something akin to an open ended version of Barbarian Prince. Then I, as the DM, can just sit back and enjoy meshing the results of these subsystems into a workable campaign for the players. I have mentioned in previous posts that the thing I enjoy the most about DMing is when I get to take a few randomly generated elements and use my imagination to mesh it together into something usable. Using the subsystems allows me to determine a larger history and story to the setting without a metaplot thus keeping the sandbox nature of the campaign. By parsing out random rumours and elements of the setting the players can ignore them if they wish but still get a sense of a larger world with a past and other forces present.

I have been enjoying not only the gaming sessions but also the construction process.

Rumours in the Northern Marches

The players in my Northern Marches game are very exploration focused which makes things easy for me since the it is an exploration based sandbox game. A key thing that is making the players get out there and explore are the rumours that they hear. I am using two types of rumours - the General Rumours one picks up in taverns, markets, etc. and what I am calling the Key Rumours for the Northern Marches. I am working with a very basic structure for the General Rumours:

Goals + Location + Obstacles = Adventure

To begin with the Goals have been very simple - the hint of the unknown and/or treasure!
The locations and obstacles to date have been my megadungeon (which has taken much of my time away from the Pit of Tortured Souls, sorry) and four pre-placed, published adventures.

As the campaign continues, I will begin to use the players to generate the Goals portion of the rumours equation. For example, the magic-user reaches 2nd level and is looking for someone to teach him Read Magic. He approaches the Striped Mage of Hareth but learns that for the Mage to teach it to him, the magic-user must bring back the feet of a Bugbear. The goal then becomes Find Bugbears.

The Location portion of the rumour equation will be handled in one of three likely ways: 1) I will have already placed some Bugbears somewhere in the Northern Marches, 2) I will randomly generate the location for some Bugbears, or 3) I will just pick some place cool to stick some Bugbears.

The Obstacles will also be handled with a similar method. For this example, the obvious one is the Bugbears themselves. But what if they are looking for a Potion of Fire Resistance? I can use the Wandering Monster tables or just pick something I want to use - maybe a Cave Bear.

Things won't be so random for the General Rumours about the megadungeon. As it is the so-called "tent pole" of my campaign it will be much more structured and thought out. And since I want to stress not only the megadungeon but also the exploration of the wilderness of the Northern Marches most of the locations of these General Rumours will be rather small - for example, a 20 room dungeon, a small shrine or a beast's lair.

The final component of these General Rumours will be whether they are true or not. I will use a dice roll to determine if the Goal, Location and/or Obstacles are true or false. So if the party was looking for the legendary sword of Cirso and they heard that it might be found in the Forest of Terror and it is rumoured to be guarded by the Fire-Breathing Giant of Belal, some or all of that may be true. Maybe the sword is in the forest but it is guarded by a normal Fire Giant, maybe the Fire-Breathing Giant of Belal makes his lair in the Forest of Terror but the sword is not there or maybe the Fire-Breathing Giant does guard the sword but his lair is actually in the Mountains of Nyght.

The second type of rumour, the Key Rumours, are specific rumours I have developed about the key figures in the Northern Marches. These rumours can only be obtained from other key figures such as the Lords, Mayors, High Priests, etc. Each key figure has been given two things; a Key Rumour about another key figure and a desire/quest (think video games). By gaining an audience with these key figures and rolling a very positive Reaction Roll, the party can learn either one of these. These Key Rumours are always true and they are designed to tell the story of the Northern Marches. The desires/quests are designed for more significant adventures and may give the party other benefits, for example Duke Belamor desires a famed diamond called the Heart of Zeus. If the party brings it to him he will reward them by making the Fighter with the highest charisma a General of his army. I am also toying with the idea that to learn a Key Rumour from a figure the party must first fulfill the figure's desire (once again think video games).

The Key Rumours may be such things as "the Lady Estir is actually a succubus and is harvesting souls to activate the Gate of Xull and allow her master to enter the world." If you string a bunch of these Key Rumours together you get a picture of the history and goings on in the Northern Marches.

In the last session of the campaign, some of the adventurers travelled to Silverton and heard the rumour that there was an abandoned mine near by that might be the hideout for some bandits (a General Rumour) and had an audience with the Mayor and rolled a very good reaction roll to hear his desire - to find the bandits that have been raiding near by silver mines. If they had rolled a bit better or maybe if they succeed in ridding the area of the bandits, the Mayor may tell them a Key Rumour.