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It's been a while since my last post... August of last year? Amazing how time flies when you're busy.
Tl;dr - I'll be sharing my home-brew campaign setting, presented in a system-agnostic way. I'll also share some one-shot modules I wrote for my setting. These will be shared across subsequent posts.
Take a seat on your cozy, threadbare sofa. It's story time.
Being a young geek-- of high fantasy, science fiction, and video gaming ilk-- I knew of Dungeons and Dragons. And collectible card games (Magic: The Gathering, for example). But, I didn't have a group of friends bold enough to embark on a first tabletop role-playing adventure. Looking back, given how much fun I had playing video games and reading genre novels, others would have had to pull me into a first tabletop adventure.
Fast forward to college. One of my dorm mates was a long-time D&D player and dungeon master who frequented gaming conventions during the Living Greyhawk era. He helped me (and my future wife) create my first D&D 3.5e character. Cracking open the Player's Handbook for the first time was a humbling experience. He brought a bunch of us together to play through some of his favorite Greyhawk modules. I remember the first session had all of our characters airborne, with aerial combat. It was a dramatic first adventure!
After college and getting my first "real" job, my wife and I decided to give D&D another shot. We were in a new place with no close friends yet, so we found a game shop. D&D 4th Edition was out at the time. We signed up for a few casual sessions and had a blast. Then, Wizards of the Coast and the RPGA kicked off the "Living Forgotten Realms" campaign. We decided to go all in and played sanctioned adventures for a time, filling up our Adventure Logs and attaining certificates of completion-- should we ever make the pilgrimage to a gaming convention.
To this day, I am blown away by the scale of the Living Forgotten Realms and how it played out. The RPGA assigned a Realm to each region of the country (internationally, as well). Being on the US west coast, our Realm was the East Rift-- a new area formed during the Spellplague (circa 1479 DR). West coast, East Rift, go figure. We'd alternate between CORE and EAST modules, with adventures from other regions thrown in for flavor. We never did play at a convention, but we got a taste of "the big time" in tabletop terms. What an experience!
It was during sanctioned play that I tried my hand at dungeon mastering. And I never looked back. After a while, my wife and I wanted to venture beyond official adventure modules. While the adventures were well-written for the most part, sanctioned play made them rigid. Sanctioned play was also a haven for "rules lawyers". "Roll players" instead of "role players", as an acquaintance of mine put it.
After we'd settled a bit, I'd managed to find some friends to play games with. After several game nights, I worked up the nerve to pitch a new campaign and offer to run it. I'd pulled it from ENWorld: "The War of the Burning Sky" (for D&D 4th Edition) and its 12 modules. And so began my first at-home dungeon mastering adventure.
The campaign was going well. Until we concluded the fourth module. Early on, the players didn't find "the rails" of the adventure particularly appealing, and they started venturing off the established path. I caught on to their preferences, and my prep work started to increase-- linearly, at first. I would cut "filler" encounters, demanded by published 4th edition material, plus changes to the primary narrative. Which would cascade into subsequent modules. My DM role became more and more demanding, as I was stuck in a sanctioned play mindset: stay true to the published module and overarching narrative. Preparation time was now increasing geometrically session to session. After completing the fifth session, I talked to the table, and suggested we step away from the published modules. They consented, and my first home-brew campaign was born: "The Suzerain", which would continue our adventure. On my terms.
We would continue to game regularly for some years, I am happy to say. After concluding the War of the Burning Sky, and my sequel, "The Suzerain", I started writing my first home-brew setting from scratch. I call it "Ignar", but I rarely reference that name in my adventures anymore. If folks want to play a high fantasy setting, I set it in Ignar. I've read accounts of Ed Greenwood, creator of the Forgotten Realms, talking about his (shoe)boxes of thoughts, ideas, and bits of lore about the Realms. Obviously I'm not Ed Greenwood, nor do I claim to be a writer. That said, "Ignar" is the culmination of my (shoe)boxes of thoughts, ideas, and lore.
I'll be sharing those over the coming months. If it inspires anyone, then it will have served its purpose. Steal with pride and make it your own-- wisdom and advice from the War of the Burning Sky campaign guide.
Ed Greenwood has his Forgotten Realms. George Lucas had his Star Wars. Frank Herbert had the Duniverse. Lois McMaster Bujold has the World of the Five Gods. H.P. Lovecraft had Lovecraft Country. J.R.R. Tolkien had Middle-earth. We could keep going, and start bringing in all those stories spun around fires from the time Humans started talking. For every author who has enjoyed commercial success (posthumously in some cases) with their setting, I'd wager there are many thousands more-- unwritten. A multiverse of places, the creations of folk like you and me. Places where our dreams and imagination take flight.
- thac0, 2024-01-30
War of the Burning Sky Adventure Path (EN Publishing)
Copyright (C) 2024 Joseph B. Konno <thac0@tx0.org>
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