My RPG campaign

I read a book last summer that I like quite a bit: Among Thieves, A Tale of the Kin by Douglas Hulik.

It’s about a rogue in a renaissance-ish setting and how he stumbles into a plot to destroy the empire. I quite enjoyed the characters and really like the setting. I liked the fight scenes the most because I was able to actually see all the moves and fighting described in my head, I’ve done most of the moves used at one point or another in real life. How, you ask? In addition to being a gamer I’m also a member of the SCA, Society for Creative Anachronism, that does medieval recreation. I study and practice a bit of 16^th century Italian fencing (Capo Ferro if you were wondering). I actually know and have met the author, he is known SCA wide as Don Simon Moricar, and he is a very experienced fencer so the fighting scenes in the book are very realistic.

So how does this tie into gaming? After all, that’s what this blog is about. Well, I liked the setting and characters well enough that I decided to create my own role playing campaign based on the book. Initially the city described sounds very much like a medieval Tangier or Marrakesh but with the fencing elements it’s would fall into more of a Renaissance setting. I’ve actually been to Tangier so it’s pretty easy to visualize the crowded, twisting streets and markets. And my knowledge of fencing makes it pretty easy to figure that in. I like the Pathfinder rules so I’m using that as a base. It is a very low fantasy world with very little magic so the only caster classes I’m allowing are bard and wizard. Even those will have their spell lists limited and I’m only allowing one caster in the party. Magic is very powerful as it is very rare so you won’t be able to start out with the all the normal spells, you have to find them in spell books.

Other than the magic it is pretty much a “normal” setting so I’m only allowing humans and animals, no fantasy races like kobolds and elves (sad I know, I’ll miss the elves). The world is going to be all about stealth and speed, very much a “daggers in a dark alley” type place. The player alignment will be restricted to Lawful Neutral, Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, and Neutral Evil (lawful just means you have some sort of a code or creed that you live by). The party will be bad (or at least amoral) people working for other bad people trying to move up in the ranks of a mob-family type organization.

I’ve spent a couple months putting it all together. Deciding what classes and archetypes to allow, how to modify the spells and magic item use to fit the world, how to make this my world and have it work but still allowing for the players to play their characters the way they want without forcing them to do things exactly as I want. That’s always the hard part of creating your own campaign setting; it is far easier to just use the premade or published adventures. Then you don’t mind if things don’t go the way you thought. But is it more satisfying to me to use something that you came up with yourself because you get into it more.

I realize now that I forgot to mention something in my history of role playing post. I actually created my own system once while I was in the military. I was a gun guard for an exercise so I pretty much did nothing but stand in front of a missile storage facility for hours at a time with nothing to do. When I say my own system I mean everything: which dice were used to represent what, the mechanics of how it all worked together, character interaction and creation rules, etc. It took me about seven days to do it all, about 10 hours a day, figuring it all out while standing guard then typing it up on my few lunch or bathroom breaks. The only thing I didn’t finish were the rules for magic (always the most complicated thing in any system). I think I still have it saved on my computer somewhere. I should finish it sometime and see if it actually works with a group.

Back to the main point:

Role playing has come a long way from where it used to be. Before you had to do everything on paper so keeping track of all the damage and curses, etc, was a bit of a pain. Now there is a computer program for that. Set everything up in there and it keeps track of your characters & enemies health and status with just a few button clicks. It even runs the combats for you and keeps track of whose turn it is, very handy. Having all the rule books there and character sheets for everyone is nice, but no longer necessary. It’s all on the computer.

I’m looking forward to running my new campaign. I wanted to start before Christmas but Skyrim came out and that took up most of my free time for a couple weeks (understandably). Now the holidays are over and everyone can go back to a normal schedule. I have the first adventure planned out and have some friends that are interested in playing. One has read the book and I leant it to another to read and they like the setting. I am ready for character creation. I have a basic idea of my overall plot but I need to know who the characters are before I can create more adventures, so I can tailor it to them. Since this is very heavily modified from the actual Pathfinder rules for characters I’ll be working very closely with each player as their character develops. Figuring out what works in the setting that makes a character they like.

The only thing really stopping us now is finding a location to play. Play time will be Sunday afternoons when the game store isn’t open. This is going to be an adult group and it’s an evil campaign so probably best if kids aren’t around. One of the players is a bit boisterous so it should be somewhere private. I’m still living in a friend’s spare bedroom so I can’t host. I will be living in a house once the heating is finished but we haven’t been able to get a hold of the ductwork guy and he was supposed to start last week.

Life, why are you ruining my gaming plans?