A staple of any TTRPG blog are accounts of play sessions for ongoing campaigns. I'd like to talk about my first major Dungeon World campaign, and another excellent book that laid the foundations for it.
Skycrawl by Aaron A. Reed offers a unique, systems-agnostic framework for running a TTRPG campaign all about sailing airships in a realm of infinite sky, dotted with floating islands inhabited by all kinds of strange creatures.
The Setting
The Azure Etern is a plane defined by an infinite air-filled void and no objective gravity. A number of magical metals, the so-called "Heavy Elements" generate gravitational pull. They also serve as the setting's currency and the basis for a unique system for mixing potions, called "orcery."
The void is dotted with several free-floating islands, or "Lands," with its own attendant "Sol," a miniature, sentient sun. And these lands are populated by "Folk," the book's term for fantasy races. These can come in a wide variety of strange and unusual forms, quite unlike the elves and dwarves of more conventional fantasy settings.
The Tools
But here's the real beauty of this book. It provides you the foundation, but the details of all these weird floating islands and fantasy races are left up to you. It provides examples, of course, but it also includes robust random tables for generating ideas for Lands and Folk. It's simple (and addictive!) to roll up some basic facts about a Land or a Folk and connect them into a weird, unique set piece for your campaign.
As I alluded to above, it also includes some basic, system-agnostic procedures for handling things like ship-to-ship combat and exploring/charting an infinite, ever-shifting void with no fixed landmarks. And the author lists Powered by the Apocalypse games as a primary source for inspiring these mechanics. They are mostly contained in discrete "moves," with suggestions for degrees of success.
In addition to Skycrawl, I also used some content from Inverse World, by Jacob Randolph and Brandon Schmelz. Their book describes a similar campaign setting, but with floating islands orbiting a sun in a hollow Earth type scenario. I may have lifted a few ideas here and there, but I mainly got that for the Dungeon World compatible mount and vehicle rules.
I also used Owlberar's Big Book of Races [sic] to give my players class-independent racial move options. That was the very first thing I decided to house rule for my campaign, and I recommend it to anyone playing Dungeon World.
The Campaign
Here is the premise of my Dungeon World campaign which I gave to all of my players:
"Your world teeters on the precipice of doom. Apophis, the Shadow Wyrm, has awoken from his slumber. All efforts to slay or contain him have failed, and soon he will devour the sun, plunging the world into eternal darkness and dooming all life. Your liege and ruler, Princess Claire, has devised a novel solution: find a new sun.
An ancient legend describes a world where new suns are born. A world of endless sky, where villages cling to small rocky spheres lit by sentient suns, brave souls sail far beyond the reach of gravity toward far-flung delves and enchanted clouds, and strange skybeasts swim wild through vast and distant twilights.
A world known as the Azure Aetern. And Princess Claire’s magical adviser, Vandroth, the Good Warlock, has devised a miraculous flying ship, and a ritual by which he may open a portal to this other world. Your mission: find a suitable replacement for the sun, and save your world."
I changed the spelling to Azure Aetern, with an A. I'm kind of a Latin nerd.
Anyway, at time of writing, we're 10 sessions deep. I had some difficulty with players dropping in and out for the first few sessions, as is to be expected, but I seem to have found a pretty solid gaming group now. I've been writing session recaps for my players for each session, and I intend to clean those up and post them. I would also like to post some of my prep for this campaign, which anyone can mine for inspiration or just lift outright for their own games.
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