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gateway_to_adventure

GATEWAY TO ADVENTURE

The Polychronopolis campaign

In tone, the campaign will go in the Sword and Sorcery rather than High Fantasy direction (Conan rather than Lord of the Rings). In practice, it aims to be a true Sandbox, rather than a story-path. Players will have great agency and choice of activities, goals and adventures. However, this will put some burden on the players, because the Judge will need time to prepare. Players will be required to tell the Judge far enough ahead for him to be ready. I've outlined the procedures you'll need to follow for this to work below.

Character Status: Each of the three or more characters that a player has will be defined in one of 3 statuses.

  • Active–the character a player is using during any particular session.
  • Inactive–a character that has adventured before, but is not being used this session.
  • Unactivated–a character that has not yet been used, or has been retired.

PLAYER RESPONSIBILITIES

What do I as a player need to do before a game session?

  • Confer with the other players and decide on an expedition for the session.
  • Inform the Judge what that expedition will be, preferably at least 1 week ahead of time.
  • If the Judge does not receive your choice in enough time to prepare the expedition, it will default to a City Adventure and the Judge will choose which of your characters will be played.
  • Choose which of your characters you will play.
  • Send the Judge any orders/requests for your inactive characters

What do I as a player need to do at the beginning of a game session?

  • Complete any shopping or recruiting for any characters
  • Deal with any freehold or business activity of any of your characters.
  • Pay 30gp per level or hit die for your active and inactive PCs, their henchmen, mercenaries and horses or other animals.
  • Complete a card with the name/class/level/alignment of your active character, henchmen and mercenaries
  • Write the answer to these two questions about your character: Who are you? What do you want?

What do I as a player need to do at the end of the game session?

  • Pay combat pay or double combat pay to any mercenaries who qualify, even if they died.
  • Give henchmen their treasure shares and note their XP.
  • Draw one Rumor and perhaps a Lore card and share and/or post it or keep it secret.

SELECTING AN EXPEDITION

A Cold Expedition: The basics of selecting an expedition involve first looking at the Main Map and the Zone Descriptions. Then choosing a place that might be a good candidate to look for treasure. Choose a Zone whose Encounter Difficulty Level is close to your characters' levels. A lower EDL will be easier, but less rewarding, a higher EDL will be harder but more rewarding. A set of Ruins might have buried treasure; a Cave might have a dragon or troll; a Forest might have Owlbears or Elves (probably Owlbears). Sites likes caves, ruins, dungeons, henges are likely to have more foes and treasure grouped together than would simply wandering around a zone.

  • Example 1: a group of level 3 adventurers decide to neither take it safe nor go too risky and decide to look for a EDL 3 spot. They notice that the East Grasslands is EDL 3, and contains a Ruin (R2), they tell the Judge that they will explore R2 for their expedition, and proceed to purchase supplies and equipment for the foray.
  • Example 2: a group of level 4 adventurers are desperate for XP and money, they decide they are going to risk a EDL 6 expedition to hopefully win big. They look at the map and find Ruin 13 in the West Hills zone and inform the Judge. At the beginning of the session they hire as many underlings as practical and buy as much useful gear and healing potions as they can afford.

Goal Oriented Expedition As the campaign progresses, the players will gain knowledge of the world, through encounters and through the acquisition of rumors. Expeditions at this point might be planned based on such knowledge, rather than simple numbers.

  • Example 1: Wilfred the Wise has been plagued by Rum-Ma the Ever-Living for months now. He finds, from a tavern rumor, that Rum-Ma has his evil crypt in Ruin 13 in the West Hills. He begs his pals to help him hunt down this fiend and they agree, choosing it as their next expedition.
  • Example 2: Father Muntz needs the essence of a vampire's spine to consecrate his Staff of Doom. He learns that the Dead Hills are crawling with undead, so tricks his fellow party members into choosing to go there next week.

Random Encounter System There is a system for random encounters in the Zones and in the City Wards and small towns. It involves drawing playing cards, where the suites are tied to types of events (Spade: Obstacle, Heart: help, Diamond: Wealth, Club: fight). Complete details at this link: Encounters.

gateway_to_adventure.txt · Last modified: 2021/09/20 15:52 by dave