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?