Mar 22, 2023 1:34 am
Hey y'all! Below is the one-pager for this proposed West Marches campaign. Thanks in advance for your consideration. If you have any additional questions about the setting, game format, or whatever else, don't hesitate to ask.
Welcome to Chaldea, A land of feuding gods, fallen civilizations, and ancient treasures! This is my homebrew setting, a fantastical analogue of Iron-Age Mesopotamia.
This campaign’s cornerstone and home base is Ramah, a bustling trading town nestled in the hill country of Ninmah’s Hem. Once the seat of a powerful kingdom, it has been fought over and conquered many times in prior ages. The ruins of its various incarnations are littered about the surrounding countryside, a reminder of its former splendor.
Whether your characters are Ramah natives, citizens of other city-states, or travelers from lands beyond Chaldea, they’ve found their way here, perhaps drawn by the promise of riches and adventure in the desolate lands between the great city-states.
Old-school Rules
The campaign runs on Old School Essentials, a retro-clone of Basic/Expert D&D. Rules options are as follows:
- Classic Fantasy and Advanced Fantasy character classes.
- Descending armor class & THAC0
- Slot-based encumbrance system from OSE’s Carcass Crawler zine.
- "Roll to return" borrowed from Five Torches Deep so parties can abstract the process of escaping an adventure location and returning to town.
Open Table
This is a "West Marches" style of campaign with heavy focus on exploration. Here are the basics:
Casual play. Players can drop in/out easily. You’re never on the hook beyond a single expedition.
Player-directed. Assemble your own parties, choose your objective, and notify the DM (me!) to initiate the adventure.
Home base. Parties return to town to recuperate after completing an expedition.
Strict time records. 1 day in real time is 1 day in game time. During active expeditions, time still contracts & dilates as necessary; the characters & locations involved are "temporally locked" until the adventure’s conclusion.
Note: This is an experiment in adapting this concept to PBP. Tweaks may be necessary, as it wasn’t necessarily designed for the longer timeframes involved.
Here's a great video from Ben at Questing Beast explaining how this play style originated with the earliest D&D campaigns.
Game Duration & Post Frequency
As above, you're free to come and go as you please. No one is on the hook for more than a single expedition/adventure. However, please plan to complete expeditions you do sign up for. If circumstances prohibit you, or you just decide the game's not for you, just give me a holler--communication is key. I'm toying with the idea of a fixed cap on real-world game time for an expedition to keep things churning, but that is very much in flux. We'll play it by ear, and I'm very open to player feedback on that issue. Posting expectations will be once daily as a general rule, but it's not a big deal to miss a day here and there. If you think you may not be able to post for longer, again, just let me know. Posts don't have to read like a novel, but some basic punctuation, etc. would be greatly appreciated.
Tone & Setting
The game will feature the grand weirdness of Mesopotamian myth and the campy adventure of classic sword-and-sandal movies (Clash of the Titans, Jason & the Argonauts). Players should imagine monsters as Ray Harryhausen special effects! This is tempered, however, with a focus on verisimilitude, i.e. the simulated reality of the secondary world.
As such, I like to keep character names in line with the setting’s flavor. Analogues of most any civilization of antiquity exist somewhere within the campaign world, so anything suitably "ancient" will do just fine. For reference, my names are generally Sumerian, Babylonian, Akkadian, Hittite, and Hebrew. Check out Fantasy Name Generator for names from these and other cultures.
Content Advisory
I like to keep things pretty wholesome, so there shouldn't be much to worry about on this front. No sexual content. Descriptions of violence will not be indulgent or gratuitous. One thing to note: in keeping with the nature of the setting, the institution of slavery does exist in the game. However, it's in the form of "bondservants," a type of social contract much closer to being a paid servant than slavery in the antebellum American south, with no aspect of racial superiority implied.
If you're interested in the game but have any additional concerns about thematic material, please let me know!
Welcome to Chaldea, A land of feuding gods, fallen civilizations, and ancient treasures! This is my homebrew setting, a fantastical analogue of Iron-Age Mesopotamia.
This campaign’s cornerstone and home base is Ramah, a bustling trading town nestled in the hill country of Ninmah’s Hem. Once the seat of a powerful kingdom, it has been fought over and conquered many times in prior ages. The ruins of its various incarnations are littered about the surrounding countryside, a reminder of its former splendor.
Whether your characters are Ramah natives, citizens of other city-states, or travelers from lands beyond Chaldea, they’ve found their way here, perhaps drawn by the promise of riches and adventure in the desolate lands between the great city-states.
Old-school Rules
The campaign runs on Old School Essentials, a retro-clone of Basic/Expert D&D. Rules options are as follows:
- Classic Fantasy and Advanced Fantasy character classes.
- Descending armor class & THAC0
- Slot-based encumbrance system from OSE’s Carcass Crawler zine.
- "Roll to return" borrowed from Five Torches Deep so parties can abstract the process of escaping an adventure location and returning to town.
Open Table
This is a "West Marches" style of campaign with heavy focus on exploration. Here are the basics:
Casual play. Players can drop in/out easily. You’re never on the hook beyond a single expedition.
Player-directed. Assemble your own parties, choose your objective, and notify the DM (me!) to initiate the adventure.
Home base. Parties return to town to recuperate after completing an expedition.
Strict time records. 1 day in real time is 1 day in game time. During active expeditions, time still contracts & dilates as necessary; the characters & locations involved are "temporally locked" until the adventure’s conclusion.
Note: This is an experiment in adapting this concept to PBP. Tweaks may be necessary, as it wasn’t necessarily designed for the longer timeframes involved.
Here's a great video from Ben at Questing Beast explaining how this play style originated with the earliest D&D campaigns.
Game Duration & Post Frequency
As above, you're free to come and go as you please. No one is on the hook for more than a single expedition/adventure. However, please plan to complete expeditions you do sign up for. If circumstances prohibit you, or you just decide the game's not for you, just give me a holler--communication is key. I'm toying with the idea of a fixed cap on real-world game time for an expedition to keep things churning, but that is very much in flux. We'll play it by ear, and I'm very open to player feedback on that issue. Posting expectations will be once daily as a general rule, but it's not a big deal to miss a day here and there. If you think you may not be able to post for longer, again, just let me know. Posts don't have to read like a novel, but some basic punctuation, etc. would be greatly appreciated.
Tone & Setting
The game will feature the grand weirdness of Mesopotamian myth and the campy adventure of classic sword-and-sandal movies (Clash of the Titans, Jason & the Argonauts). Players should imagine monsters as Ray Harryhausen special effects! This is tempered, however, with a focus on verisimilitude, i.e. the simulated reality of the secondary world.
As such, I like to keep character names in line with the setting’s flavor. Analogues of most any civilization of antiquity exist somewhere within the campaign world, so anything suitably "ancient" will do just fine. For reference, my names are generally Sumerian, Babylonian, Akkadian, Hittite, and Hebrew. Check out Fantasy Name Generator for names from these and other cultures.
Content Advisory
I like to keep things pretty wholesome, so there shouldn't be much to worry about on this front. No sexual content. Descriptions of violence will not be indulgent or gratuitous. One thing to note: in keeping with the nature of the setting, the institution of slavery does exist in the game. However, it's in the form of "bondservants," a type of social contract much closer to being a paid servant than slavery in the antebellum American south, with no aspect of racial superiority implied.
If you're interested in the game but have any additional concerns about thematic material, please let me know!
Last edited May 21, 2023 3:04 am
