Pendragon Family History & Character Generation

Today's been busy. Aside from helping to create four new characters for the OSRIC Expeditionary Campaign (an Illusionist, 2 Fighters and a Cleric) and reviewing or discussing three characters created without my help (a Bard, another Fighter and a second (possibly multi-class) Illusionist, I've done some work on my forthcoming Pendragon Game as well.

Specifically, four squires have gone through the advanced, family-history style character generation to stand ready at the cusp of knighthood in the year 485 AD. We really enjoyed playing through the options together, alternately delighting in the fortunes of our characters fathers' and grandfathers' while mocking and deriding their failures. Going through the process also helped my players (all Pendragon virgins) immerse themselves in the settings detailed back-story and (for those familiar with Arthurian legends) helping them identify which of their normal expectations would apply to the Pendragon setting and which would not.

So without further ado, here are our four would-be hero knights:

Squire Galen the Loyal:

A 21 year old British Christian Squire, Galen's father and grandfather both died gloriously in battle. Galen's relatively glorious family history means he has some bragging rights among the other squires, but not so much that he stands out from the pack in the eyes of Salisbury knights. Noted for his considerable sense of loyalty as well as a truly awe-inspiring hatred of all things Saxon (starting Hate Saxon Passion of 21). Skill in horsemanship runs in the family, Glory: 322

Squire Godrick the Brave:

Another 21 year old British Christian, Godricks grandfather died in battle in the year of his fathers birth. His fathers luck was not much better, having spent many a year idling during uneventful garrison duty while other men fought and died in famous battles. Hates the Saxons almost as much as his friend Galen (Hate Saxon Passion of 19) and shares the family talent for Falconry. Starting Glory 269.

Squire Tywin:

A 21 year old Pagan squire, Tywin's grandfather was one of the longest lived knights of his day, participating in many battles yet rarely in the thick of the fray (as evidenced by low glory roles). A canny old fellow, he outlived all his sons, including Tywins father who died while the squire was still little more than a babe. The old knight imparted his skills in treating wounds to his grandson, along with an intense dislike of the Irish and a mild hatred of the Saxons. (Hatred Irish 8 and Hatred Saxons 15). Starting Glory: 132

Squire Valiance

23 years old, the energetic yet unambitious Squire Valiance was content to manage his older brothers lands as Steward until his unfortunate death from wounds this last winter. The oldest of the squires, Valiance is also the least forceful in voicing his opinions and often allows himself to follow the lead of the other lads. Both his father and grandfather had long, undistinguished careers. Valiance does not seem particularly driven to go against the family tradition in this regard. Valiance seems to have a rather indifferent attitude to most things in life, even the Saxons! (Hatred Saxons 12) Starting Glory: 153

Tomorrow we plan on playing through the introductory scenario in the 5th ed rulebook. It's not a great scenario, even for a free introductory adventure, but it should serve well to teach the newbies the rules and help clean out the cobwebs lingering in my brain. If all goes well, and we have time, we'll play through the remainder of 485 as well.

Persephone NPC's

For the benefit of myself and my players, here is a brief list of the notable NPC's from the Earthshaker Isles shipwreck. I say notable, because all the other NPC's present represent the replacement character pool and will stay unnamed and nebulous until needed to replace a dead PC.

Minerva: Priestess of Hestia and eldest daughter of the King of Mysos, Minerva is a passenger aboard the Persephone, the leader of a trade embessy en route to Zama and (some whisper) potentially an arranged marriage with Prince Hamilcar Zarka, Archon-Prince and Champion of Zama. Minerva is short in stature and dark haired, with a winsome smile that does little to hide the great intelligence and fine humour glittering in her eyes.

 Minerva has spent the vast majority of the journey surrounded by bodyguards, either at the Prow of the ship, where she has studied the motion of the waves with great interest, or taking leisure in her tent erected beneath the mast.

(Note: In this setting being a priestess does not automatically make one a cleric. A priestess is just as likely to be a 0 level character or even belong to another class altogether).

Antipater: Grizzled capatain and ships master of the Persephone, only the great respect in which he is held by his crew has prevented his lynching following the mysterious, clearly god-driven storm that has driven the Persephone onto the rocks of this mysterious island. Indeed, were it not for his firm and steady hand at the rudder, likely no-one would have survived the wreck. Instead, only a few sailors were lost, swept overboard by waves or crushed by snapping oars. Nevertheless, Antipater took a hefty blow to the head when the ship crashed upon the rocky beech and has yet to regain his wits.

Pendragon Campaign

I've been rattling on about the Isle of the Eartshaker campaign for more than a month now, but as I'm sure you've all realised by now I've never been one for limiting myself to a single project at a time. Project number 2 will the Pendragon Great Campaign, played by myself, my dearly beloved and the couple across the street. The same small group, in other words, that played in my last OSRIC campaign. The one that basically met whenever the four of us happened to have a free evening at the same time and no other plans.
So, tomorrow will be a big day character generation wise. I'll be meeting with some folks on Skype to create characters for the OSRIC game and I'll be meeting with the folks from across the way to create characters for both games at once.

I have to be honest about how excited I am by the prospect of getting to run two games at once. Especially given that one is my home brew game world and the other a campaign I've been wanting to get stuck into for years. Luckily, most of the work for Earthshaker is already finished (enough for several months gaming at least, I should think) and the Pendragon Great Campaign can pretty much run itself with the help of a pre-published adventure or two.

Ruminitions on the Isle of the Earthshaker Campagn

The central premise of the Isle of the Earthshaker expeditionary campaign is that the PC's are crew and passengers aboard the Persephone, a galley out of Mysos, that has somehow angered the Earthshaker and been cast onto the shores of a mysterious island (hopefully, the characters will eventually find out why their ship in particular has been so cursed -and whose fault it is. I expect sparks to fly when they do).

I selected an island about 40 miles wide (at it's widest point) by about 35 miles high (at it longest) purely because of the campaign style. With more than 30 invited players expected to attend sessions irregularly (and 15 people who have so far said YES) I was concerned that a player might persuade the group to visit one location, miss a session or two, and come back to find the group suddenly 300miles from where he was expecting. By restricting the size of the island (while having a built-in game-world reason for why so many monstrous types live there) I can make sure that PC's whose players attend more rarely don't wind up an infeasable distance away from the main party between sessions.

At some stage, when the characters find themselves some means of leaving the island ( I plan on having three not-very-accessible means of leaving the main island) I'll add additional islands to the sandbox as well as a means of reaching Zama, the Greyhawk or Waterdeep of my campaign setting. You might think I run the risk of the party using Zama as a jumping off point to travel wherever they like.  A valid concern, except that I know something you don't know (and I'm not telling).

In any case, I'm increasingly looking forward to Monday. I have just a few last minute touches to complete -printing our character sheets, sorting out starting equipment bundles scavenged from the wreck and painting up some appropriately armed and equipped miniatures to represent player characters.

I've also had a few requests for non-cannon or unusual characters and classes from a few players. Given that these very much fit with the themes of the setting I'm quite happily allowing one player to play a Bard and another to take a racial mult-class combination that, while not strictly permitted by the OSRIC rules, certainly fits how the race in question works in the world of Zama. After all, my elves are more like the Malevolent Fey or "Fairfolk" of ancient British Myth than tolkeinesque paragons. It makes sense for such creatures to have a little "glamour" (in the traditional sense of the word) does it not?

Hail to the Geek

Just heard this for the first time. It should be an official gaming anthem.

July Painting Round-up

July was a fairly good painting month, at least to start with. My painting efforts tailed off towards the end however. In the last half of the month, I painted exactly zero figures. So while I'm ahead of the miniature-a-day target over all, I could have done a lot better. Especially considering that most of these mini's are 15mm and a lot less time consuming to paint.

 First up we have a number of hoplites and amazons painted for the upcoming Isle of the Eathshaker Expeditionary campaign I'll be running. The fabric on these guys (and I do mean guys, the girls are hardly wearing a thing) has been painted in my traditional "mook" blue. That is, the dark blue colour I paint most of my RPG minion types in. Clearly, that means none of these hoplites will represent PC's (I have the Foundry Jason and the Argonauts figures for PCs) but one or two amazons might wind up with better, non-mook paint-jobs depending on how character generation goes.

 Next up we have some 15mm Critical Mass aliens painted up and re-modelled with milli-put for my Mass Effect theme science fiction gaming. These guys already appeared (in a different photo) on my Terminus Omega blog last month. So that'll explain any sense of de ja vu you might be experiencing.

 I love these rats. Otherworld miniatures produce some great sculpts but these little guys are my favorites, hands-down. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that they are some of my favorite sculpts from any range. And very simple (and quick) to paint too.

 Finally, here's the first of two shots showing my 15mm science fiction gaming colonists from Ground Zero games. I bought eight packs of various sci-fi civilians, techs and security guards from GZG last month. They come eight miniatures to a pack, with 2 each of 4 poses. So half are being painted up as Corporate clones (19 done so far, 13 left to go) while the other half will be painted up as normal, non-corporate types.

And here's the corporate wage-slaves again from a second angle.

In case you're wondering why I need so many civilians in overalls, well, the answer is simple. I'm building a 15mm "moon-scape" scenery set right now. One of the major terrain features (it'll take up roughly a 4ft x 4ft area all by itself when completed) is a generic production plant/power station facility. The guys in orange get to be the staff on duty. The other civvies get to the off-duty inhabitants of the "company town" I'll be building to take up the rest of the table. There will be a post on my Terminus Omega blog with more details on this terrain building project soon.

It Begins: Isle of the Earthshaker

Finally. The new campaign is rolling ever-forward to it's first session. About five minutes ago I sent out an invitation email to about 2 dozen potential players -some old hands at the gaming table, some who haven't lifted a die in their lives unless it was for a game of monopoly.

Alas, it seems that over they years I've managed to drift farther apart from some of my friends than I'd ever realised -about half a dozen of the invitations I sent out were rejected by the post-master. It seems they no longer exist, taking with them (in some cases) the last potential link to gaming buddies of old.

Likewise, there were a good dozen folk I was unable to track down email addresses for at all. These potential recruits will have to be contacted via intermediaries. Unfortunately, this runs the risk of the players in question getting the impression that they are somehow "second-string" or "B-list" choices, which couldn't be farther from the truth.

Regardless of all this, my long (nearly two-week) hiatus from the blog is over. Look for a few updates on how recruitment is going, along with July's painting challenge summary and more campaign background posts over the next week or so. And in about a weeks time, I'll have the first actual play report from the the Isle of the Earthshaker campaign.

I can't wait.