There's been an awful lot of noise regarding Domain play in the OSR blogsphere lately, much of it inspires, I'm sure, by Hill Cantons' work on his Borderlands supplement and Autarch's Adventurer, Conqueror, King system. Consequently, I've been fiddling some more with incorporating opportunities for domain play (should the players decide to pursue it) into the Earthshaker Isle's.
Other than that, I've been griding away at writing up Dungeons, Wilderness Locations, Encounter Tables, Event's tables and Political Dynamic Webs to get the game to a point where I'm comfortable opening up the sandbox for play. Bat in the Attic has a number of excellent sand-box posts recommending that you can start with one dungeon and one home-base location and make the rest up as you go, but I prefer to have more groundwork done. It's a matter of personal choice. And also a matter to do with scale. At one mile to a hex, a party could cross the island (realistically) from eastern tip to western tip in little more than two or three sessions (assuming they don't make any side-trips to dungeons on the way) so my sand-box needs to be a bit more fleshed out than most. It is, after all, only about forty miles long by about twenty miles wide.
In effect, the Island itself has the same function (for me) as a single town and dungeon has for Bat. Once the island begins to out-live it's usefulness (or once the party acquires a boat) I'll need to flesh out the rest of the archipelago.
Alas, what all this means is that, while I've been churning out gaming material like a man possessed, I can't post any of it. Not yet. At least not until the players start exploring some of it. But now that the sandbox is at a stage where I'm happy to run it, normal posting should resume soon.
Being a chronicle of my experiences in the murky world of "old school" roleplaying, wargaming and Miniature Painting. Likely to feature games of Dungeons and Dragons, Tomorrow's War, OSRIC, Harnmaster, Warhammer Ancients, Retinue and All Things Zombie.
7 comments:
No problem, awaiting with interest.
Yes, indeed - I've been preparing myself for a while now!
Don't forget you still need to email me your character WTF :)
I was already intrigued--now I am hooked. Let me know if the campaign evolves into that kind of play.
Ah, crap!
I thought we were bringing them on the night!
Right, plan for tonight (or tomorrow) - get you my sheet!
Sounds like fun. What do your Political Dynamic Webs look like?
Just a series of circles with the name of each political group inside. Each circle has an arrow pointing to all the other circles with a one or two word summary of the groups attitudes toward the linked group (hostile, wary, allied, trading partners etc)
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