Between the epochs of long ago, when the clouds screamed with Angelim and floated with Leviathan, the Caecilian Colossus strode the land with cities ‘neath its feet, and the Jade Empire of the Serpent-Men was cast into ruin, and before the Immortal City passed unto death, the Fourth Moon fell from the sky, and the Nameless God was Named, there was an age of Yirith yet undreamed of, an age of Low Adventure.
Campaign 2026
NBateman from the rainbow OSR Discord server proposed a community blogging project for the upcoming year of running and writing about an RPG campaign. I am already writing session reports and brief GMing reflections, so this won't be a whole of extra work, and might revive my already moribund blog.
Parameters
Yirith: Age of Low Adventure is a Black Sword Hack open table sandbox campaign played via Roll20 on a weekly basis since August. The world, Yirith, is populated with published modules that fit well enough into the spirit of sword and sorcery, with sinister cults and jewel heists, frog gods and serpent men, thieves’ guilds and dark sorcery, Law and Chaos, mighty thews and unfathomable beasts, and sweaty jungles and desolate wastes. (There's nothing innovative about the milieu.)
The particular “Appendix N” for this campaign includes: “Tower of the Elephant” and “Lean Times in Lankhmar”; Clark Ashton Smith with the solidity dialed up and Jack Vance with the goofiness dialed down; Orientalist oil paintings and Frank Frazzeta’s art; the first Conan film and some scenes from Bakshi’s fantasy animations; the Thieves’ World series and Vlad Taltos' organization; "Soldier of an Empire Unacquainted with Defeat" and "Gimmile's Songs"; Gentlemen of the Road and Between Two Fires; the Hound & Arya’s fight for chickens and the violent bits of The Northman; Egil & Nix and Logen Ninefingers & Ferro Maljinn; and the black-tongued thief and Locke Lamora. Many world features are thinly-veiled rip-offs of these sources (as the opening spiel indicates), and I've borrowed heavily from World of Xoth (itself largely derived from Clark Ashton Smith's material) and Joseph R. Lewis' Harth for place-names and fantastic phenomena, as well as Goblin Punch, Silver Nightengale, and Goodman Games. Because of player choices--they wandered into a largely blank portion of the map--the flavor suddenly got a lot more "classical," i.e. Aegean, something I hadn't planned on at all. Yirith--the planet--has been constructed to fit what seem like interesting modules into the various notHistoricalEarth regions that are typical of sword and sorcery.
I invited eighteen players at the beginning. Six have joined, four of them for double-digit sessions, so far. Nine characters have been rolled, and three have been killed, so far. The adventurers have trod through the modules "Vault of Yigthrahotep" and "Bad Myrmidon" (both heavily rewritten), "Well of Frogs," "The Sunbathers," "Parallel Dungeons," and the Agon scenario "Kryos," with interstitial material provided by me. Modules that have been prepped (but not ventured to, yet) include "Grave Matters," "The Lounge Temple of Asavraki," "Curse of the Maggot God," "Temple of Lies," "Grave Titan Harvest," "Queen of the Black Coast," "Forgotten Fane of the Coiled Goddess," "Lorn Song of the Bachelor," and Reach of the Roach God. Many others have been shallowly prepared, as the party has received rumors about those places. The scattering of (mostly) OSR modules across the landscape inspired by Throne of Salt.
The Campaign So Far
Phase One: The City of Thieves (sessions 0-6)
Phase Two: Against the Island Cults (sessions 7-14)
Phase Three: The Cave of Angel and Saint (sessions 15-17+)
The World
 |
| Yirith, so far, with character origins and adventure sites |
Session 1 Dungeon
 |
| What, you let someone summon an ancient serpent beast?! |
Session 2-6 Dungeon
 |
It ain't all pretty |
No comments:
Post a Comment