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'.