Among all the GMs on the internet, I should be remembered as the guy who’s always been super excited about planning for big sandbox campaigns and Sword & Sorcery, and whose actual games never turned out as delivering either. After two years in the wilderness, the ancient call sounded again on the wind, and I am back to thinking, “Man, wouldn’t it be cool…?”
I now believe that probably the biggest thing that always got in my way was that I really wanted to make a beautiful world first, that is magnificent in itself, and then somehow adapt a game system to match the world, and create campaigns set in that world. And the world that I was dreaming up just wasn’t really well suited for Sword & Sorcery adventures and sandbox campaigns. No amount of retooling was actually helping with that.
But now, I am once again here thinking how could it would be to really take a proper shot at that kind of campaign I’ve seen people talk about over many years. And I feel that probably the best shot at making this actually work for once, is to start with a game system and campaign structure that have worked for many other people first, and then build a world around those. And the system I am thinking about is of course the 1981 Dungeons & Dragons Basic and Expert Rules by Tom Moldvay and Zeb Cook. (Actually Old School Essentials Advanced Rules but that’s 98% the same thing.)
And instead of making the world some new take on the old concept with recycled places and cultures from Kaendor and the Ancient Lands, the plan here and now is to really start with something new from scratch, going all the way back to the original references and sources.
Sword & Sorcery & Sandbox
The starting point for this campaign idea is to take the Basic and especially the Expert Rules as they are, and not make any attempts at improvements and streamlining, like retooling the saving throw categories, modifying the experience point reward system, or changing the spell lists to fit a different image of what magic is in the world. It should be just B/X with a few additional custom classes. (And the modern way to calculate attack hits after the d20 is rolled, because it’s just so much objectively better!)
But what is very important to make clear is that I have no intention of planning the campaign and populating the world to be a hexcrawl. The players picking one of the five unexplored hexes around their current location and with luck finding a hole in the ground in an area of forest covering five Central Parks, and maybe killing a dozen goblins for 3 copper coins sounds as dull to me as it is to apparently a very large number of players. My idea of sandbox campaigns is to have the players get involved in conspiracies against some minor king, find the hidden temple of a high priest kidnapping princesses, destroy the pirates sinking merchant ships and following them to their volcano lair on skull island. With the players making the choice which of the rumors they encounter on their travels they want to follow, and what sides they want to pick, and what kind of ultimate outcome they want to see. (This is one of the reasons why B/X is such an attractive pick, as it’s a system that allows preparing NPC leaders and their minions, or maps for lairs and ancient ruins very quickly to be ready to play within five days.)
The main works I am drawing ideas from for the game world are the classic 80s Sword & Sorcery movies Conan the Barbarian and Fire and Ice. But also the interpretation of the Young Kingdoms in the Elric RPG Stormbringer, the Wilderlands of High Fantasy and Planet Algol, and the post-post-Apocalyptic sandbox game Kenshi. Given the classic depictions of Sword & Sorcery scenes by the most famous artists of the genre and the highly fragmented state of civilization I want to go for, I would roughly place the cultural state of the setting in the mid-Iron Age. That’s the time where Greek city states were starting to make their comeback and the Phoenicians and Etruscans were doing quite well for themselves, but still a considerable time before the Romans and Achaemenids became major players in the cultural and political landscape.
The Iron Lands
As a start, I grabbed this map from the internet to have a first reference for the geography of the setting.
But in particular this area.
This area here covers roughly the size of Asia Minor, Greece, and Mesopotamia. That’s more than enough room for a decently sized Iron Age population, with a vast interior remaining for numerous nomadic tribes and all kinds of great and strange beasts.
The world of the Iron Lands is very much not planet Earth. The mountains, forests, and islands are recognizable enough, but the wild beasts and even domesticated creatures are more like prehistoric creatures from hundreds of millions of years ago, and the the monsters have only very little overlap with the generic D&D creatures.
In the very ancient past, some 10,000 years ago, the continent was home to strange inhuman civilizations. These Ancients have been long gone, and little has been left of their empires other than a few overgrown ziggurats made from strange green stone or purple glass, hidden deep in the jungles and mountains.
Long after the Ancients were gone came the age of the serpentmen, who build numerous large kingdoms across the coastal lands, ruling over great populations of human slaves. Their civilization eventually fell as well a thousand years ago, but a few half-abandoned cities still are clinging on in the jungles to the east.
After the serpentmen were gone from the Iron Lands, most of their human slaves dispersed into the highlands and forests, but eventually some clans began to rebuild abandoned cities or build new ones of their own. 300 years ago, a powerful sorcerer king conquered most of the city states of the Iron Lands. But even with his magic, he eventually died, and his 100 year long empire fell soon after, as his governors were overthrown by the people one by one. The rivalry between the many petty kings has diminished trade and education noticeably since the time of the Empire, and their individual power rarely extends for more than a three days march around their cities. The hills and many of the smaller islands are home to countless minor lords who are often little more than mercenary captains who moved into border forts abandoned by the Empire or the Serpentmen.