It's a large party, with eight PCs. All adventurers started with 40,000 XP, so most of them are 6th level with the exception of a bard, who is level 5. The roster is as follows:

*Abeni, 6th level witch with her panther animal companion.

*Cnut, 6th level cleric

*Eluan Maerse Tevdran of Rhea's Ford, 6th level assassin

*Kemar, 6th level Sorcerer

*Loman Greyhair, 6th level cleric

*Stakmar, 6th level berserker

*Vertaginous Karembeuleau, 5th level bard

*Isadore, 6th level scout

The classes are either from OSE or from the OSE Alternate Class document I've put out, which adds some customization options to the B/X-style classes. 

Because there's a lot going on with a large party and the general conceit of the game we're using a wiki to track everything. This will be used to track trade goods, PC stats and conditions, treasure, hexes they've explored, etc.

First IC post is up

 For readers unfamiliar with play by post games, there is typically an IC (in-character) and OOC (out-of-character) thread. The first post in the IC thread is the introduction to the adventure, and an invitation to the players to begin the game. This is the start to our game.

"Thirdmonth, Firstday, Secondyear of the Seventeenth Cycle

In the second year of the beginning of the 17th Cycle the adventurers find themselves in possession of a unique opportunity. A distant relative of one died, leaving them in the sole possession of their assets, all in Deepwater, as follows:

*A warehouse of 3,000 square feet, containing a small office and a storage space containing a bewildering variety of trade goods.
*A small, sea-worthy single masted cog, called "Horizon Treader", largely unremarkable but in decent repair.
*About half the crew needed to sail the vessel, inlcuding Solec Ka, the captain.
*A factor named Mrs. Foot.
*A magic mirror that will allow the adventurers to contact Mrs. Foot once per week.
*A map of the Silver Seas.
*The merchant's journal, detailing what he knows about his destination.

Madam Foot sits the adventurers down at a large table in Deepwater’s best inn – The Tattered Tabard – and spreads out an array of documents in front of them, including the two maps that were part of the inheritance. “Now, these maps show the major nearby settlements in the Silver Sea, along with the routes your predecessor likely took to reach them. I’ve also got notes detailing what good are in surplus and demand in each port. Now, please remember that this information may be out of date; these routes date back some thirty years, and according to his notes he only did business at three main ports over the past five years: Phiaric and Maar were his primary ports, and he also traded in Sachar on occasion. He stopped in Joruth frequently, but that seemed to be more just a stopping point than a serious port of trade. These notes may be out of date. I’ve tried confirming the information with other traders, but information like this is more valuable than gold, and more closely held, too.”

She looks around the table. “That being said, I’ve heard some things that may be of general interest to you. They say the narrow bay leading to Ankim has been all but closed by a dragon that has taken to nesting in the steep mountains alongside, which is a shame, because the Ankim mines are famous for the quality and quantity of the ore they produce. Grim and Tachris both have harbors that are too silted in for your boat to approach, so most trade with those two towns is done overland from Sachar. There are a couple of islands south of Joruth, small ones, that are said to be uninhabited except for the ghosts that haunt the ruins of the Ancient Ones. I don’t know who true this is but everyone knows the Ancient Ones once dwelled in the Dhembezeur Mountains east of here, so it’s possible they had outposts offland, as well.. What I do know, for a fact, is that there’s an island here,” she points to a large landmass just off the coast in the map depicting the middle section of the sea, “with only one inhabited town. Steste, they call it, a town of adventurers and freebooters and prospectors, drawn from all over the Silver Sea to explore the ruins on the island. Leftover from the days of the Crocodile Kings they are, before recorded time. Steste is under nominal control of the Baron Layge, of the Mannever Kingdom, far to the west of Deepwater.”

Her finger traces further west, and south. “So and Ma are two petty kingdoms cursed to share the same patch of island. You want to make a name for yourselves as mercenaries, they say both control bottomless diamond mines, and both are willing to pay top dollar for whatever gives them an upper hand. There’s also talk of Heswen, home to the psittacae, or parrot-folk, looking to expand their influence in the Sea. You laugh, but they’re nothing to joke about, apparently. They’ve got two colonies on the mainland – Miferd and Markdra – and are apparently sailors of no mean skill. You’ll no doubt run into some of them in ports.” Her hand drifts back to the eastern map. “If you want to go further inland they say Berric is controlled by the factors of the Azure Princedom., and is the gateway to that domain. The Coral Princedom is further south, weeks away, at least, beyond the Marald Desert. It’s also the only Principality in the Variagated Kingdom that actually borders the Silver Sea. I don’t know much about them, but it’s said the Lord of Deepwater have caught at couple of their spies lurking about.”

Madam Foot waves over another woman who’d been lurking in the shadows. “This is Captain Solec Ka. She sailed for years with your benefactor, and knows this part of the Silver Sea as well as anyone does.” Ka steps forward. She’s a short, barrel-chested woman with greying hair and a pipe jutting from the corner of her mouth. “I’m the captain, like Foot said. My first mate’s named Thorso. He’s good at his job, like me. There’s another ten sailors standing by to be hired or fired at your leisure. None too seasoned, but they’re not lubbers, neither. I’ll cost you two hundred and fifty gold a month, Thorso one-fifty, and the sailors ten each. Thorso and me are both trained as navigators, so no need to hire one special. The boat itself has an upkeep cost of approximately 100 gold a month – that’s for general repair, replacement of rotten sails and rigging, food and water for the crew, etc. She’s not built for long voyages; you’ll need to hit a port every nine or ten days. That’s not an issue on the northern end of the Silver Sea, but the further south you go the fewer islands there are.”

Foot looks around the table at the assembled adventurers. “The world is your oyster, so to speak. You can contact me once per week with the mirror, so be sure to stay in touch and let me know if there is anything you need me to purchase or arrange for you. There’s a boat leaving for the Scarlet Principalities once every other day, roughly, and Rhea’s Ford is going to be the biggest city around that I know of, unless you venture off these maps, but it will take time to get goods or supplies from up north. Do you have any questions for me?”"

Starting up a New Game

 Since the advent of COVID I've let updating this blog slip to the wayside, and I'd like to change that. I'm in the process of starting up a new play-by-post game on rpg.net, and have been thinking that this blog would be a good way to provide a summary -- an actual play, if you will -- of that game.

This game will have a lot in common with the games I typically run. It is set in Absalom, the world of the Populated Hexes, a world beset by constant fluctuations in the universal forces of Law and Chaos. These swings are called Cycles, and a Cycle -- from Apex to Nadir and back to Apex -- typically lasts between 200 and 300 years. This game is set at the beginning of the 17th Cycle, as the forces of Law once more become ascendant, and Man returns to the wilderness to claim what was lost during the last Nadir. The 17th Cycle is roughly 250 years after the time period the Populated Hexes are written for.

I'm using Old School Essentials with some customization; making it a little bit more like 5e. It is a hexcrawl, as the adventurers venture back out into a world drastically changed by the depredations of Chaos. They have a map, but who knows how accurate it is. The adventurers are mid-level (roughly 6th), ready to think about entering the domain phase of their career.

This is the first game I've run with a nautical theme, though. A distant relative of one of the adventurers has died, leaving them a sailing ship (a cog, to be precise), a warehouse full of trade goods, their journal detailing common trade routes, a map, and a factor named Madam Foot (and a magical mirror they can use to contact Foot once per week). The game will start in Deepwater, a town founded by the adventurers during the last campaign, and will see them sailing south down the Sarn, out into the Silver Sea.

Like all my games here we'll be relying on a wiki to keep track of everything, and I will be posting links to the wiki (or IC thread) when that becomes relevant. 

Next post will be introducing the adventurers.

Cover Art for Collaborative Dungeon #1

I just got the cover illustration for the Collaborative Dungeon in, drawn by Chad Dickhaut. The theme of the first issue is "Ruined Keep". Guidelines for submission can be found in this post.

Another hex is up on Drivethru

New (old) hex is up on Drivethru. The Forests of Plenty features a sprite lair containing a gateway that leads to the Pallid Fields hexcrawl, a bonus hex with the lair of a medusa cultist and her daughters, rules for adding spellcasting levels to monsters for Old School Essentials, and revised guidelines for cost of living and determining how much (and how long) it takes to commission items. Link is here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/305866/Forest-of-Plenty--Hex-1624

New Hex on Drivethru

I'm slowly making my way through the backlog of old hexes, getting them edited and professionally laid out. The new hex is for sale on Drivethru. It features a brigand keep, an alternate brigand class for use with Old School Essentials or similar OSR-style game, and rules for adding brigandry guilds to the options in the Guide to Thieves' Guild supplement. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/305109/Keep-of-the-Rawhide-Gang--Hex-1542

Second Map is In

Second map is in for the Collaborative Dungeon Project. Let me know if you're interested in populating this one.

First Map is in

The first map for my experiment is in and ready to be populated. I'm pretty excited about it and wanted to share it with folks. Some people have already expressed interest in working on this project, so I am going to be distributing maps on a first come, first serve basis. Each populated map will be paid 25.00, USD. This dungeon is by Aaron Schmidt.

Collaborative Dungeon Publication

I would like to try something and am putting a call out for submissions. I am thinking about publishing a series of small collections of dungeons, using Necrotic Gnomes Old School Essentials (the SRD is found here), with a twist: I am soliciting submissions for keyed dungeon maps without text. Maps will then be distributed to those interested in populating them at random, so folks will be creating dungeons based on maps that someone else has designed. I'm looking at between 4-8 dungeons, with guidelines as follows:

1. Dungeon maps should consist of around 15 keyed locations and should be something other than bog-standard graph paper maps. I'll be paying 25.00 per map, at least for the first collection.
2. Each person will be responsible for filling in and populating the completed maps using the Old School Essentials rules. Other sources can be used, but need to be converted to OSE and sources noted. I'll be paying 25.00 for each populated dungeon, as well. 
3. Everyone submitting will get a pdf of the edited manuscript and at-cost code for a POD copy and will be credited for their work.
4. Each collection will be based on a theme that will be used to build off of. We'll start off simple with the first collection: the theme will be "Abandoned Keep."

I know these rates are below industry standard, and if successful I will be looking to increase them (as well as, I guess, increasing scrutiny of submissions). Interest can be emailed to thirdkingdom at yahoo.com