There was an existing group of gamers, including a mix of newer and experienced players. More importantly, there were numerous people willing to GM, allowing for bunches of campaigns. It was a cornucopia of gaming opportunities; I was able to run my own campaign while playing in one or two others.
After graduating, starting a career and moving to a new area, I was lucky enough to continue having such opportunities. While my schedule (and balancing new priorities) doesn’t allow for more than one session a week, I’ve had a steady chance to run and play in campaigns. That is what has led to a practice of mine, once a group has been playing together for long enough. At the one-year mark, I start sessions by reviewing my notes from twelve months earlier—always opening with the announcement “One year ago in campaign history.” Sometimes I cheat a little and start making these declarations at the six-month mark, because I enjoy making them.
That’s the origin of this blog’s title. In this case, however, I intend to update a little more regularly. My current campaign is set in the Kingdoms of Legend, with four regular players and one who pops in from time to time to aid with or add to the conflicts. I’m not going to name names, though. (Cough, Brent, cough.) This blog is going to be a place for reflecting on this campaign specifically, and the Kingdoms of Legend and Pathfinder RPG in general.
The Advantages of a Shared World Setting
I’ll be honest. During the brainstorming phase of developing the Kingdoms of Legend campaign setting, I wasn’t too excited about the notion of using the real world with an altered history. At the time, I would have preferred to see an entirely new setting. I was quickly proven wrong, however.
The main reason for this change of heart has become apparent to me while running my current campaign. It’s something that I’d learned before in other games, but hadn’t thought to apply to this one. For one thing, players who sit down at the table for a KoL game already know what to expect. The places and background are already somewhat familiar to them, although they can still be surprised by the changes. This makes the game approachable, but not predictable.
More importantly, from the perspective of the GM, is the fact that all of the world’s history and mythology is possible source material. Wikipedia therefore becomes an invaluable reference, as a starting point for generating ideas. It’s amazing how details seem to flow together; one core idea quickly expands into a complex scenario.
Take, for example, a recent series of adventures that started with the PC’s rescuing an oracle. They’d slain a basilisk and found its lair; the items there included a statue of a beautiful woman. I added that element with the intentions of developing it later. The PC’s had used the basilisk’s blood to restore one of their fellow adventurers, along with a horse, so they had to wait until they could return to town to learn her story. All of that bought me some time, between sessions, to further develop that plot.
I’d gone into the whole thing because of an interest in the mysterious women know as sibyls. Reading up on them revealed a few interesting details.
- The sibyls were connected to the Greek-Egyptian Queen Lamia, said by some to be the mother of the monsters of that name.
- This queen was blinded as a result of angering Hera because of an affair with her husband Zeus. This may also have involved Hera or Lamia murdering her children.
- One of the sibyls was said to have lived at the Siwa Oasis in western Egypt.
- According to the Pathfinder Bestiary, lamias were said to live under a horrible curse.
These details, all gleaned from reading a few articles online, laid out a plot involving a quest to break a curse, a hidden shrine in a desert oasis, and wicked monsters who could recruit other beasts to do their bidding. I don’t want to spoil everything for those who might have a chance to play through these adventures, but one thing became quite apparent.
This creativity was fueled by the fact that the world’s rich folklore could be considered canon. There PC’s dealt with that business, and are now sailing for the island of Crete to investigate business involving minotaurs, the inventor Daedalus, the bronze warrior-creature Talus and slave trading via North Africa. Here again, the adventures nearly write themselves, and that’s what has sold me on the virtues of “Earth as it wasn’t.”
