Adventures on the 7th sea – Campaign specifics Part I

In any rpg campaign there will be "home rules" reflecting The flavor and tone of the campaign, the specific rule changes and, (of course) a Dungeon Masters preferences and prejudices- Adventures on the 7th sea is no different.  here are a few of the notes I have jotted down (all subject to change of course).

 Character Races

The races I chose for the campaign reflect what I consider to be the more “down to earth” races available in 5^th edition (The exception being the Genasi). In my campaign the Elves stay in the Fey realms, though they do cross the veil from time to time and seduce the occasional maiden (Which accounts for the inclusion of the Half-Elf).

The Races available to PC’s are

Dwarf

Halfling

Human

Genasi

Goliath

Gnome

Gnome, Deep

Half-Elf

Half-Orc

Character classes remain as they are. however, the gods that clerics and paladins serve are of the Deities represented in the area.

Deities

The lists below are a sampling of the deities used in the 7^th sea campaign. these are deities that were not covered in the current 5th edition of the players handbook.  As the player characters come into contact with other peoples I expect this list of Deities to grow.

Sumerian Gods

God	Alignment	Domain	Symbol
Enlil, Ruler of the gods	NG	Tempest, War	Pickaxe
Enki, God of Rivers and Oceans	LN	Nature	Ibex
Inanna, Goddess of Love and War	LE	Life, War	Shepard's staff
Ki, Goddess of Nature	N	Nature	Iris
Nanna-Sin, God of the Moon	CG	Light	Jet black axe over the moon
Nin-Hursag, Goddess of the Earth	N	Nature	Blue-white diamond
Utu, God of the Sun	CG	Light	Radiant sun disc

Babylonian Gods

God	Alignment	Domain	Symbol
Anu,  God of the sky, Ruler of the gods	LN	Tempest, Nature	Gold sun partially blocked by a gray cloud
Anshar, God of darkness and the night	CE	Trickery	Black Sphere
Duaga, Ruler of the devil world	LE	Death	Ruby Mace
Girru, God of fire	LE	Nature	Fire enwrapped axe
Ishtar, Goddess of love and war	N	Life, War	Female hand grasping a blue crystal rod
Marduk, God of cities and storms	LN	Knowledge, Tempest	Blue-white diamond
Nergal, God of the Underworld	NE	Death	Dark-skinned man holding a jet black shield
Ramman, God of Storms and Thunder	N	Tempest	Lightning bolt through a storm cloud

Aegyptian Gods

God	Alignment	Domain	Symbol
Anhur, God of war	CG	War	A cord
Apshai, God of Animals	N	Nature	Praying Mantis
Geb, God of Earth	N	Nature	Earth Hieroglyph
Seker, God of Death	NG	Death, Light	Hawk headed mummy with an Ankh in his right hand
Serket, God of venomous creatures	N	Life, Trickery	Scorpion tail
Shu, God of the Sky	LG	Nature, Light	Female hand grasping a blue crystal rod
Tefnut, Goddess of storms and flowing water	LG	Tempest, Life	Lioness Head
Konshu, God of the Moon	NG	Life	Crescent Moon

And coming soon...

Adventures on the 7th Sea - Origins of a campaign

I've been itching for a while to try a different type of fantasy adventure campaign than the standard western flavored campaigns I've run in the past. I've always loved the Sinbad stories so I figured I would try using the Middle East as a starting area for my campaign. Taking a further step I decided to incorporate the  Changa's Safari stories by Milton Davis.

Looking though my gaming library I pulled out my copy of Gary Gygax's Epic Aerth supplement for his Dangerous Journeys RPG. Epic of Aerth gave me a great starting point as it's basically a fantasy Earth set in an alternate reality. Many of the names and locales are the same but with just enough of a difference for the players to know that they are not on a historical earth, this also allows me the freedom to ignore earth history when convenient for me and silence noisy players when they whine about some nit-picky fact from actual ancient history.

My system of choice has always been Dungeons & Dragons, and with the recent release of the 5th edition I decided to take a stab at this new campaign using the new rules. For a campaign name I decided of "Adventures on the 7th Sea" since I expect most of our game time spent adventuring in the Indian Ocean region.

I'm hoping to run a campaign where the heroes are a combination of merchants, adventurers, and explorers.  Though there will be dungeon crawls and tomb raiding I want there to also be a bit of commerce going on as well.  I plan on giving the characters a Dhow and a crew and allow them to manage their crew and ship as well as how many torches and iron rations they are stuffing into their back packs.

I realize that this type of campaign isn't to everyone's taste but for a group that's interested in this type of gaming I'm hoping it will prove fun. 

Sword Coast Legends

Nerdgasm time.

My thanks to Bert for giving me the heads up on this. This will definitely be on my "Must buy" list for 2015.

Looks like it's 5th Edition and has the official D&D stamp of approval!

Star Frontiers /5th Edition D&D conversion

I just ran across a 5th edition conversion for the TSR Star Frontiers game. Star Frontiers has always been a favorite of mine. Unfortunately I've only been able to play it a handful of times in the last 30+ years that its been around, but thats about to change. Thanks to Micheal Long a blogger on Tribality who wrote a great series of articles on converting Star Frontiers to 5E D&D. The articles have been gathered up, expanded on, and published in issue 11 of Frontier Explorer.

Star Frontiers /5E is a perfect mini campaign for my players to explore when we are ready to take a break from slaying dragons but still want to stay with the same ruleset. Many of the old modules are online and there has been  a great deal of fan support for Star Frontiers over the years in the form of at least two publications that I'm aware of - Star Frontiersman and Frontier Explorer.

 I really hope Micheal continues the series and adds more support for his 5E conversion. For now, a hearty thank you Micheal Long for your efforts!

Moving forward with Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition

After over three decades with AD&D 2nd edition I have finally decided to complete the switch to a new edition-sort of.

I announced yesterday to my friday night online gaming group that our current 2nd edition game has come to an end and on December 5th we will be converting to 5th Edition. With that announcement I finally end my relationship with 2nd edition. But were still friends, because frankly 2nd edition has yet to meet its match for sheer volume of settings.

the publishers of 5th edition have stated that they intend to avoid inundating their customer base with new books every month as they had in previous editions. Instead, it appears they are taking the "Mr. Coffee" approach to releasing new material- one slow drip at a time. Frankly , when it comes to my hobby, I love being inundated. 

Publish as much as you want. Of course, I'm not going to buy all of it, but I'm a big fan of choice.  And its because of that "slow-drip" approach that I will keep visiting my 2nd edition collections for late night hook ups. Al Qadim, Kara Tur, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, Planescape, Birthright, etc. they are still too sexy to just drop - especially when 5th edition is refusing to put out.

So next month I finally join the 21st century gaming scene, But, you never forget your first love.

Using Volo's guides from 2nd edition AD&D for 5th edition

I've read quite a few blogposts about folks using their 2nd edition AD&D Forgotten Realms material as a setting for the new 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons. It makes sense to me given how much old Realms material I have around here.    Many of the folks point to the 1st edition of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting and others advise using the second edition specific setting. Amongst my favorite resources are the Volo Guides.

The Volo guides are like a Fodor’s travel guide for the Forgotten Realms there are five Volo guides to various sections of Toril and one guide dealing “With all things Magical”. The guidebooks are packed full of real places that adventurers frequent in games- taverns, inns, brothels, shops, and places of interest (like haunted keeps and such).  Just about every entry has some kind of hook ripe for development into an adventure.  Before you know it your characters will have a list of favorite places to stay and shops to frequent in between dungeon crawls and tomb robbing.

Volo's guides are also a wonderful way to plan out down time for characters. for instance, if a character in your game needs a suit of plate armor, you can quote a price from the players book and be done with it or you could tell the player that the best plate armor in the sword coast can be found at a shop called The Halls of Hilmer on the street of bells in Waterdeep, thus a desire for plate armor leads the character on a journey to the most fabulous city in the Realms.

I find the information in them much more useful than stat-blocks for Uber-NPC's that I'll never use in my campaign These guidebooks have become the most referenced material I have on the Forgotten Realms. And speaking of stat-blocks, the guides have very little in the way of rules or stats, it's all about the flavor and feel of the establishment or locale, which makes it a smooth transition to 5th edition.

You can find almost all of them at RPGnow (it seems that the guides to the North and Baldur's Gate II have yet to be released).

Volo’s guide to Waterdeep

Volo’s guide to the Sword Coast

Volo’s guide to the Dalelands

Volo’s guide to Cormyr

Volo’s guide to all things Magical