"The Old Realms have fallen to the twisted horrors and mystical
aberrations of an arcane event. You and a few hundred survivors have
fled north to the Basin, the northern edge of the Old Realms across the
Winterwyne River, to make a new life in the hopes that the calamity will
not spread further.
In the wake of the migration, duty calls.
Your new settlement needs to be defended from threats unknown, and the
land around you is as foreign as the lands across the sea. In the haste
of your flight, maps and books on the Old Realms were tossed to make
room for essential supplies. What’s more, this mass arcane aberration
seems to have disrupted the collective memory of the survivors. As a
result, even the lands you once called home are unfamiliar.
The
caravan arrived in the early fall. Without a crop to harvest, you
gathered what you could to prepare for the winter. When it came, you
huddled around your fire inside your hastily-built mud house. You
scraped by on spare oats and the small winter animals that you could
catch. All around you, your neighbors succumbed to sickness and
starvation. But you held out.
Now that spring has thawed the ice
and snow, it’s time for the refugees to repair their homes and sow what
few seeds they can. But a different fate awaits you. You feel the call
of adventure. What lies within the highlands you’ve found yourselves in?
What treasures might be glimmering in dark places? And what is the
nature of the arcane aberration that drove you out of your home and into
the north?"
- Introductory text from the Old Realms Player's Guide
Introduction
The Old Realms Campaign is an open-table, old-school roleplaying game using Necrotic Gnome's Old School Essentials ruleset. The characters are among the survivors of an arcane calamity that disrupted their memories and transformed the common creatures of the world into magical aberrations. After fleeing to the northern highlands, the survivors established the settlement of Ram's Horn. The PCs are using the shanty village as their base while they explore the surroundings.
The Old Realms
The namesake of the campaign refers to the lands from which the survivors fled. They were a collection of closely-related kingdoms and principalities united by a desire for peace and prosperity. They were as follows:
Pravdia: a land of rolling hills covered by dense evergreen forests. Pravdians primarily speak Common and Pravdi, their ancestral tongue. Pravdian names are similar to those found in the Czech Republic.
Avanolia: the heartland of the Old Realm. Gentle hills, scattered deciduous forests, and grasslands used for farming. European names with a twist.
Kezkaza: the western plains region. People here lived a semi-nomadic life. Armenian names.
Hiacenia, the Emerald Vales: Dense forested region to the south. Sylvari names. Traditionally, Hiacenians don’t have last names unless they earn them by accomplishing some great feat.
Other peoples live beyond the borders of the Old Realm, but nobody in the settlement remembers who, what, or where they are.
Religion in the Old Realms
The people of the Old Realms believe in the Three Masters: the Master of Chaos, the Master of Law, and the Master of Balance. Official canon states that the Masters are three distinct godly beings in constant conflict with one another. The people believe that the Masters appear to humans in avatar-form as a means of communicating in a way that they can understand.
Some believe in a fourth deity known as the Boundless Master. Its adherents believe that the Boundless Master, who represents Time and Eternity, is the only God of the Universe and that the Three Masters are merely different aspects of It.
The Players
Playable races: Human only (for now)
Available classes: Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, Thief, Assassin (OSE Advanced), and Acolyte (Carcass Crawler #1)
Core assumptions:
- The world beyond the walls is dark and unknown: only the settlement is safe. The world beyond is largely unexplored and will not scale to your level. Tread carefully!
- Exploration and mapping are imperative as the players are not provided with a map. Instead, they are responsible for creating maps based on the information I communicate to them. This includes mapping for dungeons.
- Player skill takes precedence over what's written on a character sheet. The character is presumed to be as smart and observant as her player. If you're solving a problem, I want to know how you're going about doing it.
