So, hopefully I'll be running a game of Labyrinth Lord soon, which is exciting. Old-school D&D is nostalgic to me, having played it in my youth before I understood all of this AD&D vs OD&D thing, and way before 3rd edition was a twinkle in anybody's eye. I'm talking BECMI edition, baby.
Anyways, the way I've decided to share my joy is through building an adventure when, once I see how it goes over in actual play, I hope to publish online, along with the campaign guide. Obviously, I hope for the campaign guide to grow as the players and I make things up, but once it gets nailed down into a pseudo-concrete style, it should be published on Dragonsfoot.
Anyways, the most old-school adventure location is, I think, the tomb or crypt. So, the first location my players will be going will be the crypt. I'm in the unusual position of being able to choose exactly what they're going to do, because this will be their first foray back into old-school territory, and they'll be tentative and unsure of what's going to happen. Anyways, the crypt.
It's going to be a pseudo-egyptian one, with zombie guards, deadly insects, traps, and lots and lots of swag. It'll mostly be in the form of tapestries, statues, and other untakeable things, but I hope the players manage to surprise me and lay claim to all sorts of cool stuff and not just the coins and gems and magical shit.
Anyways, I'll post my finished module both here and on Enworld and Dragonsfoot, because I'm of the opinion that you can't give yourself enough free publicity, especially for something as near and dear to my heart as Labyrinth Lord.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Labyrinth Lord
I've been thinking about the game of LL that I want to foist upon my unwitting accomplices. I keep trying to explain to them why, exactly, I want to go back to this old-school game, giving them stories of player interaction vs character interaction, player skill vs character skill, sandbox gaming, and I think it's working.
Which is bad news, actually, because I haven't the foggiest idea of what we're going to play. Now, I know it's bad form to plot out an entire campaign before it happens, and reduce the players to pawns in a story they've had no hand in creating, but it's still good to have some sort of idea what's going on in the world.
I've tentatively set the campaign world at the base of some mountainous terrain, some couple thousand years before our last micro-campaign in Aether Peak. The empire to which their hometown, Northglade, belongs is in a time of absolute peace. It's peaceful, just, fair, and relatively noble. The guards are sharp-eyed and vigilant without being intrusive, and the nobles are uncorrupt. The kingdom is at peace with its neighbors and itself. Tax rates are low, and the economy is growing slowly.
Outside of the kingdom, however, it's a different story. The guards don't care what happens outside of their sturdy walls and off their roads and, by and large, the wilderness is wild . Brigands and skeletons and kobolds scurry about, feuding amongst themselves. Undiscovered ruins lay in unexplored wilderness. Ancient monuments to forgotten gods rise menacingly out of misty valleys, and dark and dangerous dungeons are cut out of mountain faces.
All in all, the cities a terrible place for adventurers- which is the point. They need to go out of town, explore the wilderness, find dungeons and orcs and giants and dragons and ettercaps and all of those cool things. I want them to want to get out of town.
Now, these things might not work. Maybe they'll decide that, since the kingdom is so peaceful, that it's ripe for a revolution. Maybe they'll attempt to overthrow the seemingly complacent town they live in, and install themselves as military dictators. Or maybe they'll take it upon themselves to civilize the outside world, and become rulers of their own little fortress.
But hopefully they won't want to do any of that. Hopefully, they'll just decide to get rich or die tryin'.
Which is bad news, actually, because I haven't the foggiest idea of what we're going to play. Now, I know it's bad form to plot out an entire campaign before it happens, and reduce the players to pawns in a story they've had no hand in creating, but it's still good to have some sort of idea what's going on in the world.
I've tentatively set the campaign world at the base of some mountainous terrain, some couple thousand years before our last micro-campaign in Aether Peak. The empire to which their hometown, Northglade, belongs is in a time of absolute peace. It's peaceful, just, fair, and relatively noble. The guards are sharp-eyed and vigilant without being intrusive, and the nobles are uncorrupt. The kingdom is at peace with its neighbors and itself. Tax rates are low, and the economy is growing slowly.
Outside of the kingdom, however, it's a different story. The guards don't care what happens outside of their sturdy walls and off their roads and, by and large, the wilderness is wild . Brigands and skeletons and kobolds scurry about, feuding amongst themselves. Undiscovered ruins lay in unexplored wilderness. Ancient monuments to forgotten gods rise menacingly out of misty valleys, and dark and dangerous dungeons are cut out of mountain faces.
All in all, the cities a terrible place for adventurers- which is the point. They need to go out of town, explore the wilderness, find dungeons and orcs and giants and dragons and ettercaps and all of those cool things. I want them to want to get out of town.
Now, these things might not work. Maybe they'll decide that, since the kingdom is so peaceful, that it's ripe for a revolution. Maybe they'll attempt to overthrow the seemingly complacent town they live in, and install themselves as military dictators. Or maybe they'll take it upon themselves to civilize the outside world, and become rulers of their own little fortress.
But hopefully they won't want to do any of that. Hopefully, they'll just decide to get rich or die tryin'.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
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