Hey Look, a Post
Richard just sent me an email today mentioning, among other things, that I never post on this blog. My reaction can best be summarized as "Woah shit, we have a blog."
I kept meaning to post something on here, but I've been juggling like eight different things every day these days. Thank God for vacation.
Anyway, since I have a week of vacation ahead of me, there's Nightwish blearing through my headphones and I'm far too tired to exercise better judgment, I feel now is a perfect time to talk about my summer campaign.
Yes, like seemingly everybody else, I want to run a campaign over the summer. I miss DMing, and I think I learned a lot from my past couple of attempts about what works or doesn't work. And I've been having this kickass idea bouncing around in my head for a campaign setting that I want to put out there:
It's basically a fantasized version of Ancient Rome. I'd pick and choose a few different races, but I can say right now that humans, elves and gnomes would definitely be in there, and most of the monster races with a few exceptions definitely would not. The level of technology would definitely be somewhat above what the Romans had, as would the level of magic, insofar that it would exist.
The main gameplay areas would be:
Aventium, and outlying provinces: Basically, the Roman Republic. Think all of the cultural, racial and economic diversity of Sharn, with even more blatant corruption, a far less efficient police force and a government that's about as stable as Ted Stevens' psyche (too obscure?). At the start of the campaign, there's a crapload of Carthaginian babarians (possibly halflings) at the gate, one of the two consuls has just died, and the other consul wants the senate to give him dictatorial powers so that he can beat back the invaders.
Akaea: Think Greece. Basically a bunch of city states scattered over a dozen different islands or so. Unlike in reality, the Aventines in this reality only control a few of the islands, either through outright occupation (to varying degrees) or restrictive trade agreements. They're eyeing the rest, although if they take their eyes off the islands they already have, they may lose them.
Aferius: Carthage, Persia, Egypt. Mostly halflings, although Egypt (Aegyptus) is probably more elven. Carthage is a huge military problem for Aventium. They have fucking elephants.
Britannica, Germanica: Duh. A few forests but mostly big open foggy green space with smelly (dwarven?) inhabitants that Aventium wants to conquer just for the hell of it. Of course, the locals may turn out to be a bit tougher to smash than Aventium realizes.
Clearly, the politics here would be a bit complicated, especially with all of the intrigue in Aventium, but I'll leave it up to the players whether or not they want to get into all of that. They could just as easily just higher themselves out to a single senator and smash stuff for him without giving too much thought about what his motives are.
Like with Richard's campaigns, this one would have a clearly defined arc, plotted out loosely ahead of time by me to span the three months of summer. I might be going away for a month in the middle, in which case I would abridge the arc, and most likely put a huge cliffhanger in right before I go away.
Right now here's how I'm thinking it would start out: the players all wake up to find themselves sharing a cell at the gladiatorial arena in some backwater province. Apparently, through some channel or another, they've all been betrayed and sold into slavery. From there they can either attempt to escape from the arena or stay and attempt to win their freedom through valor in the ring, but one way or another they're going to find themselves caught up in events larger than their own personal liberty.
One more thing, even though this post is already far too long: gods. I'll obviously be using the Roman pantheon, but the Romans had a habit of acknowledging other gods that weren't explicitely part of their pantheon. It wasn't unusual to find cults dedicated to gods imported from Africa or Europe in Rome. In that spirit, there will be a bunch of gods from outside the traditional pantheon. And they'll be far dumber, and far less aloof, than the gods you guys are used to. They'll take an active interest in the stuff that goes on, and use persuasion, bribery and seduction to get mortals to do stuff with no reason more farsighted than to piss off their siblings (who they'll probably be having sex with in a matter of days). I'm not sure whether or not the PCs might actually meet a god, but it would be nowhere near as unusual or exciting as it is in other campaigns.
Anyway, for those of you who actually made it all the way to the end of this post, what do you guys think?
I kept meaning to post something on here, but I've been juggling like eight different things every day these days. Thank God for vacation.
Anyway, since I have a week of vacation ahead of me, there's Nightwish blearing through my headphones and I'm far too tired to exercise better judgment, I feel now is a perfect time to talk about my summer campaign.
Yes, like seemingly everybody else, I want to run a campaign over the summer. I miss DMing, and I think I learned a lot from my past couple of attempts about what works or doesn't work. And I've been having this kickass idea bouncing around in my head for a campaign setting that I want to put out there:
It's basically a fantasized version of Ancient Rome. I'd pick and choose a few different races, but I can say right now that humans, elves and gnomes would definitely be in there, and most of the monster races with a few exceptions definitely would not. The level of technology would definitely be somewhat above what the Romans had, as would the level of magic, insofar that it would exist.
The main gameplay areas would be:
Aventium, and outlying provinces: Basically, the Roman Republic. Think all of the cultural, racial and economic diversity of Sharn, with even more blatant corruption, a far less efficient police force and a government that's about as stable as Ted Stevens' psyche (too obscure?). At the start of the campaign, there's a crapload of Carthaginian babarians (possibly halflings) at the gate, one of the two consuls has just died, and the other consul wants the senate to give him dictatorial powers so that he can beat back the invaders.
Akaea: Think Greece. Basically a bunch of city states scattered over a dozen different islands or so. Unlike in reality, the Aventines in this reality only control a few of the islands, either through outright occupation (to varying degrees) or restrictive trade agreements. They're eyeing the rest, although if they take their eyes off the islands they already have, they may lose them.
Aferius: Carthage, Persia, Egypt. Mostly halflings, although Egypt (Aegyptus) is probably more elven. Carthage is a huge military problem for Aventium. They have fucking elephants.
Britannica, Germanica: Duh. A few forests but mostly big open foggy green space with smelly (dwarven?) inhabitants that Aventium wants to conquer just for the hell of it. Of course, the locals may turn out to be a bit tougher to smash than Aventium realizes.
Clearly, the politics here would be a bit complicated, especially with all of the intrigue in Aventium, but I'll leave it up to the players whether or not they want to get into all of that. They could just as easily just higher themselves out to a single senator and smash stuff for him without giving too much thought about what his motives are.
Like with Richard's campaigns, this one would have a clearly defined arc, plotted out loosely ahead of time by me to span the three months of summer. I might be going away for a month in the middle, in which case I would abridge the arc, and most likely put a huge cliffhanger in right before I go away.
Right now here's how I'm thinking it would start out: the players all wake up to find themselves sharing a cell at the gladiatorial arena in some backwater province. Apparently, through some channel or another, they've all been betrayed and sold into slavery. From there they can either attempt to escape from the arena or stay and attempt to win their freedom through valor in the ring, but one way or another they're going to find themselves caught up in events larger than their own personal liberty.
One more thing, even though this post is already far too long: gods. I'll obviously be using the Roman pantheon, but the Romans had a habit of acknowledging other gods that weren't explicitely part of their pantheon. It wasn't unusual to find cults dedicated to gods imported from Africa or Europe in Rome. In that spirit, there will be a bunch of gods from outside the traditional pantheon. And they'll be far dumber, and far less aloof, than the gods you guys are used to. They'll take an active interest in the stuff that goes on, and use persuasion, bribery and seduction to get mortals to do stuff with no reason more farsighted than to piss off their siblings (who they'll probably be having sex with in a matter of days). I'm not sure whether or not the PCs might actually meet a god, but it would be nowhere near as unusual or exciting as it is in other campaigns.
Anyway, for those of you who actually made it all the way to the end of this post, what do you guys think?
posted by Ned Resnikoff at 10:35 PM
2 Comments:
I'd say that it all sounds good, but one thing that I think is important to take into consideration is that several people in our dnd group (most notably the ones in college) haven't taken a History course in a while, so some of the references you make may be lost on them. On another note, the Germanic tribes were usually referred to as Germania, not Germanica. Following that note: I call German Dwarf!
I don't think anyone will have to worry about not knowing enough about Ancient Rome. This is first and foremost a fantasy world (which is why I switched most of the names around). Remember, I'm using Rome as the basis for this setting, not as the setting itself; treat it like you would any other fantasy setting, like Eberron or Sylovia.
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