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.