{"id":305,"date":"2024-09-22T15:16:23","date_gmt":"2024-09-22T15:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.wyrdingmedia.org\/?p=305"},"modified":"2025-01-22T16:07:41","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T16:07:41","slug":"artume-a-sword-sorcery-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wyrdingmedia.org\/index.php\/2024\/09\/22\/artume-a-sword-sorcery-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Artume: A Sword & Sorcery RPG Campaign – Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Early this year, after re-reading some of my old favorite S&S fiction, I discovered that I really wanted to create a kind of sandboxed campaign incorporating many of my favorite science-fantasy themes straight from the pages of the classic fantasy writers of the ’60s and ’70s that I grew up with. I wanted to really focus on my favorite weird stuff from Gary Gygax’s Appendix N like Michael Moorcock’s multiverse<\/a>, Jack Vance’s Dying Earth<\/a>, Fred Saberhagen’s Empire of the East<\/a>, H.P. Lovecraft’s Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath<\/a>, and various works by Roger Zelazny<\/a>. Outside of the Appendix N literature, I was also heavily influenced by Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique Cycle<\/a> (as was Jack Vance, I might add).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew that I wanted it to combine together the elements of Science-Fiction and Fantasy that were so common in the days before every other book on the bookstore shelves was an unremarkable 800 page high-fantasy Tolkien-clone. I wanted weird chaos-warped wastelands, psionics mixed with magic, and mysterious ancient technology buried below the surface just waiting for the player characters to find and use to fight the forces of darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I set myself to crafting Artume, my odd little post-apocalyptic hollow-world prison planet to be the sandbox where I could both host entertaining games and explore the S&S that I was interested in. I quickly decided on using the Old-School Essentials<\/a> (OSE) ruleset to run the games as it allowed for the OSR flavor I was looking for with a nicely updated format that made it more appealing for me than just trying to use a vintage RPG such as AD&D 1e. OSE was also the right choice for Artume as it has expansions in the form of zines that add to the weirdness with psionics and energy weapons…just what I needed to make my science-fantasy creation come to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I needed a stage, some framing structure on which to build my sandbox campaign, I created the small and self-contained world of Artume and some starting locations and factions. Here is the campaign guide that I created for my players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n