There are a lot of things I’m not good at, but for this post I’ll limit myself to talking about my lack of artistic ability. Or is it lack of skill as a cartographer? Either way, whatever is needed to create decent wilderness maps for role-playing, I don’t have it.

That being said, here’s the rough region map for the Forbidden City Sandbox campaign I’m putting together for Swords & Wizardry White Box:

This is a 6.25 miles per hex region map for my reference while creating background and putting together the area surrounding the Dwellers of the Forbidden City. Besides water, the terrain consists of trees (mostly heavy jungle), grasslands, and barren. Hills and mountains are common, and the dark lines are the major rivers of the region.

The area is uncivilized, though in the lands west of the mountains native tribes, hunters, and traders are relatively common. People rarely venture beyond the mountains, and those that do rarely return. The few survivors are often mad, sick, or both. Their fevered tales are filled with savage tribes of cannibals, overgrown ruins from an ancient age, and terrifying gigantic lizards.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that I used the Campaign Runner Tactical Map from HeyMikey.org for this.

Tags: Forbidden Jungle

Trollsmyth points out a Malevolent & Benign post asking folks to describe their campaign in 25 words or less.

This sort of thing is actually a great tool to help you get to the root of what you’re after. A quick, limited summary makes you distill your thoughts down to the bare essence. If you can’t get it down to 25 words, maybe you’ve got too many things going on and your campaign is a bit scattered, or maybe you just haven’t decided/figured out exactly where it is and where its headed.

For instance, here’s my Forbidden City Sandbox campaign:

Swords & sorcery in a cursed city of demonic snakemen and mongrel humanoids surrounded by trackless jungle filled with savage tribesmen, giant apes, and dinosaurs.

In only 25 words, I think I pretty much summed up what I’m shooting for. Now, the campaign is still in development and lot of things are still up in the air. But that description is likely to fit whatever form it has at kickoff and will probably be accurate even after many sessions of players doing exactly what I thought they wouldn’t. Because the summary is short on details and long on setting and mood, little details like whether the PCs are heroes or mere tomb robbers won’t affect the high-level view.

Trollsmyth is having a little trouble coming up with his summary:

It’s a tough challenge, more so for me because I think the players and I are still feeling our way around the Labyrinth Lord campaign I’m DMing.

He points out that revisiting in a few months will allow him to have a better idea of exactly what the theme of his campaign is. And, to tell the truth, I’m in the same boat with a small campaign that I’m running, also in Labyrinth Lord. It really doesn’t have much in the way of theme or design or even a developed setting. We just rolled up characters and dove in. And that’s cool. We don’t really have a description, because there’s no real background or setting to describe. Maybe we’ll get to one eventually, maybe not.

But if you’ve got a specific idea in mind and want to put an effort into getting the most out of it, maybe the 25 word exercise can help you define exactly what it is you’re going for and be a sort of mission statement about what it is that your campaign is.

Tags: Forbidden Jungle

Here’s something pretty funny that I figured out recently when beginning work on my Forbidden City Sandbox campaign. Down in the southwest corner of the city, near the entrance to the valley leading to the amphitheater of the yuan ti, is the building pictured at right.

You see that partially-collapsed roof? And the cracks radiating from the missing section?

For more than twenty years I’ve thought that was a statue of a guy holding up a sword.

Seriously.

Looking at it now, especially zoomed in a bit, it’s clearly not.

I’m a little disappointed. In fact, I’m so disappointed that maybe, just maybe, in my Forbidden City that is a giant rooftop statue of a guy holding his sword aloft and not wreckage like on so many of the other buildings.

Tags: Forbidden Jungle

I’ve decided to scratch something that’s been itching me for more than two decades.

I’ve really been wanting to get something going with the new Swords & Wizardry White Box rules set. The short and simple system, a retro-clone of the three original LBBs without material from the supplements, shouts “sword and sorcery” to me, and I’ve been trying to decide exactly how to approach it.

My decision is that I’m going to launch a sandbox-style campaign with the old AD&D module I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City. This was the first module we ever played, and my brother sent me through it in about 1983 or 1984. (I’m not 100% certain, but I believe this may have been the first time I played an NPC from my campaign named Kilgore as my own player character.)

The module itself provides a rather intriguing setting and a number of encounters. Beyond that, there’s not a lot to it, and that’s what I’ve always liked about it. The basic hook in the module is that the adventurers are on a mission to see who has been interfering with trade caravans (it turns out to be the yuan ti in the city, the first appearance of these popular creatures), but given the size of the place and the excellent map, the surface of the setting’s potential is barely even scratched. I’ve long wanted to change that, and now I’m going to.

My basic plan is to map out some of the surrounding territory and provide some interesting encounters in the wilderness. I’ve already begun keying every building in the city. I the map into the computer and numbered every building, and I’m using 3×5 index cards for notes. I figure I can write up each building in as much (or as little) detail as needed, pull the card when required, and make changes or write up an entirely new card when actions by the player characters alter things. I’ll probably use cards for wilderness hexes, as well.

Those that own or have played the module know that the overwhelming majority of the buildings in the city are uninhabited and basically empty. Rest assured that this will not be the case in my Forbidden City. In addition, I am working on several ideas regarding the sewer network mentioned in the module, a megadungeon-type labyrinth with at least one entrance somewhere in the city, and a number of other ideas to greatly expand the possibilities. The setting (dense jungle, ancient ruined city) and the inhabitants (demonic snakemen, degenerate human-animal mongrels, native tribesmen) are just screaming for the old-school swords and sorcery treatment.

My hope is to have an ongoing setting where the majority of the adventuring takes place in or under the Forbidden City itself, but there’s plenty of room to explore the surrounding wilderness (and run into some surprises I’ve got in mind while doing so). Also, things like that Egyptian-style pyramid and the temple-looking building with two winged demons flanking the entrance aren’t going to be there just for looks any longer. I’m developing a bit of backstory and the inhabitants of the city are not completely isolated. Rather, the city is part of the larger world, and caravan raiding is not the only contact between those in the city and those outside.

Eventually, I think there will plenty be room enough for at least one main campaign and additional smaller groups running simultaneously. (Oh, for only enough time and enough players to make something like that happen!) I’ll probably also have some one-shot scenarios set in the region for pick-up play if needed.

Now that I’ve decided on this, I’m pretty excited about it. I’ll be writing about some of this as I develop it. If I can get even half of my grand ideas into action, it’s going to be good times in the old jungle!

Tags: Forbidden Jungle