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eastern_frontier

The King­dom is pros­per­ous, peace­ful, pleas­an­t, and BOR­ING. When King Os­ric The Rea­son­ably Just de­creed the wild and dan­ger­ous East­ern Fron­tier open to ex­plo­ration none aban­doned their fat and easy lives to risk al­most cer­tain death. But when the good king al­so known as The Rel­a­tive­ly Gen­er­ous lat­er added there would be no tax­es, tar­iff­s, ex­cis­es, or roy­al shares levied on trea­sure re­cov­ered from the East­ern Fron­tier a few des­per­ate ad­ven­tur­ers took no­tice and head­ed East. Those that did not come to their sens­es and turn back found them­selves in the new­ly es­tab­lished Barony of Brink, last out­post of civ­i­liza­tion and gate­way to the East­ern Fron­tier.

Tomb rob­ber­s, out of work mer­ce­nar­ies, pro­fes­sion­al scoundrel­s, holy men look­ing to save or be saved, seek­ers of for­bid­den knowl­edge, naive farm boys with dreams of glo­ry, as­sort­ed ne’er-­do-well­s, and for­eign­ers from near to far all con­gre­gate at the Goat & Wiz­ard In­n. Drink­ing down the last of their coin, ey­ing the com­pe­ti­tion, chas­ing up ru­mors and bar wench­es. Even­tu­al­ly, a group gath­ers round a large ta­ble to plan their first for­ay in search of Gold and Glo­ry.

Cam­paign Me­chan­ic­s: Play­ers need noth­ing oth­er than pa­per, pen­cil, and a de­sire to have fun. Al­though, most will want to have their own dice and pos­si­bly a minia­ture fig­ure to rep­re­sent their char­ac­ter.

This cam­paign is de­signed for any num­ber of play­ers to be able to play when­ev­er they have time. So, there might be 15 play­ers in the cam­paign.

4 get to­geth­er al­most ev­ery tues, 6 play ev­ery three weeks or so, and 4 pop in and out of games when­ev­er it fits their sched­ules, and the last one is a freak :) play­ing in al­most ev­ery one of those games.

Play­ers are re­spon­si­ble for de­cid­ing when, where, and what they want to do. There is an email fo­rum http://games.­group­s.ya­hoo.­com/­group/east­ern_fron­tier/ for just this pur­pose. For ex­am­ple some­one might post “Hey I’d like to play

next thur at Bat­tle­Forge. There’s some­thing go­ing on in the Grey Marsh, any­one want to check it out­?” Oth­er play­ers would re­spond per­haps sug­gest­ing a diffrent time or goal.

Caveats include:

  • There must be at least three play­ers com­mit­t­ed to a game day for it to hap­pen

  • DM must be avail­able and must have time to pre­­pare, so sched­ule about 1 week in ad­­vance.

  • DM may ve­­to any plan that is lame such as trav­el­ing west in­­­to the BOR­ING King­­dom.

To get the ball rolling there will be char­ac­ter cre­ation ses­sions this Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary the 17th 6-9pm and next Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 24th 6-9pm at my house. Email njhar­man@­knog­gin.­com for di­rec­tion­s.

The cam­paign will al­so use a sim­ple house rule “Fame”. Char­ac­ters will earn Fame for killing known mon­ster­s, re­turn­ing from a dun­geon delve laden with trea­sure, sav­ing the damsel, etc. In ad­di­tion to mi­nor in game perks there will be a “lead­er board” of char­ac­ters with the most fame. Hope­ful­ly a lit­tle friend­ly com­pe­ti­tion to be­come the most fa­mous will liv­en things up.

Cam­paign World: This is a sand­box game http://en.wikipedi­a.org/wik­i/Sand­box_game There is a large de­tailed world to ex­plore. Un­like some cam­paigns where play­ers are re­act­ing to a plot this game is all about play­er choice. If you spend all you time put­ter­ing around the Goat & Wiz­ard noth­ing much will hap­pen. Char­ac­ters need to go ex­plor­ing, track down dan­ger and squash it like a bug.

The East­ern Fron­tier is dan­ger­ous. En­counter dif­fi­cul­ty is loose­ly based on dis­tance from civ­i­liza­tion. Play­ers have the free­dom to go any­where in­clud­ing in­to ar­eas that will wipe them out. No punch­es will be pulled, if some­how a low lev­el group man­ages to trav­el all the way to Drag­on’s Peak they will meet EL16+ drag­on­s.

On the oth­er hand know that ev­ery bit of hard won suc­cess was earned and de­served. If you are a bit cau­tious and rec­og­nize the “pat­tern­s”, the most ob­vi­ous of which is “the far­ther from Fort Brinks the more dan­ger­ous it is”, your ad­ven­tures will be fun, chal­leng­ing and re­ward­ing.

So, are you brave or fool­ish enough to roam the East­ern Fron­tier in search of fame and for­tune? More to the point are you strong enough to sur­vive its chal­lenges and re­turn body, mind, and soul in­tac­t? Ad­ven­ture beck­on­s, will you an­swer the cal­l?