Sunday, October 2, 2011

Working on a New Campaign

My friend Dwayne really likes the audiobook version of the Game of Thrones and wants to try playing a knight. Those of you with my Majestic Wilderlands know that I designed different regions with various fantasy sub-genres in mind. I just happened to have one area that works very well for a Game of Thrones like situation, Nomar.

I originally designed the area as the Majestic Wilderlands version of the Arthur myth. Given my interest in history and politics, the original design reflected more the politics of Arthur rather than the more fantastic elements. This makes it easy to adapt for a Game of Thrones like campaign and as the benefit of being it own "thing".

Since this is for my personal campaign the setting "present" is twenty years after the Majestic Wilderlands Supplement. Artos returned a decade ago, and reunified Nomar. But the promise of his return has ran aground against the reality of the situation. Artos is a brilliant leader but most days make him feel like he is herding cats. The Skandian Viking invaders are too numerous and too entrenched to be defeated in a single war. Now City-State under the regency of Duke Divolic has become a rising threat, and Nomar is besieged on all sides.

I prepare for this type of campaign by doing several things. First I draw a map, it serves an outline for all the things I need to detail next.

You can download a PDF of the map here. It includes two additional pages showing the local realms, and sub-domains.

I found out that CorelDRAW can export layered PDFs. If you use Acrobat Reader or another PDF Viewer that supports layers then you can download this file.

Next I will write up a short history, detail each sub-domain with a paragraph or two, and then write up a sentence or a paragraph on each of the personalities.

After that I will collect together what I call my Bag of stuff. A list of ideas and "bits" that I will combine to create the individual locales and minor personalities Dwayne will come across in his adventures.

Then I will make a timeline of what will happen if Dwayne's character didn't exist.

The campaign will be run using GURPS 4th edition. Still figuring out the exact number of points. I will also being adapting some mechanics from Green Ronin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Mostly chapter 6 on creating a house.

I will post what I give Dwayne. My main notes will have to wait for the campaign's conclusion.

4 comments:

Simon Forster said...

Lovely map. How long did that take?

Jake said...

Hmmmm. GURPS. I have some GURPS stuff on my blog, (though pretty far back in the archives) if I can help at all.

Miranda said...

How do you decide how much farmland should be on a map and where it should go?

PatrickW said...

Rob, would you e-mail me at patrickw.writer at gmail dot com? I have a Word file containing the edited version of your How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox posts to send to you. Thanks.
~Patrick