Currently bubbling away in the mind cauldron:'nOSR campaign frame based on Crystal Chronicles (2003).
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Currently bubbling away in the mind cauldron:
OSR campaign frame based on Crystal Chronicles (2003). Heading out from the home village into the miasma to get drops of myrrh to protect the village... the cycle of the yearly celebration and the relationships back home... hexcrawling between mini dungeons and deciding which opportunities to go for and which to try again next year...
The vibe is a kind of bucolic post-apocalypse, which seems like a paradox.
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Currently bubbling away in the mind cauldron:
OSR campaign frame based on Crystal Chronicles (2003). Heading out from the home village into the miasma to get drops of myrrh to protect the village... the cycle of the yearly celebration and the relationships back home... hexcrawling between mini dungeons and deciding which opportunities to go for and which to try again next year...
The vibe is a kind of bucolic post-apocalypse, which seems like a paradox.
Want to have plenty of interaction with caravans from other settlements, both friendly and rival. I also want a "blank map" that the players fill in as they explore.
Perhaps: a disaster struck the previous caravan and also destroyed the nearest village. So the party have only stories the previous generation told.
They can travel to the lands beyond the disaster to get advice and help, but they won't encounter anyone who has adventured in their own patch.
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Want to have plenty of interaction with caravans from other settlements, both friendly and rival. I also want a "blank map" that the players fill in as they explore.
Perhaps: a disaster struck the previous caravan and also destroyed the nearest village. So the party have only stories the previous generation told.
They can travel to the lands beyond the disaster to get advice and help, but they won't encounter anyone who has adventured in their own patch.
More Crystals Chronicles TTRPG thoughts:
Would it be crazy to have hexes (or pointcrawl paths) that take a week to cross, and a month to thoroughly search for dungeons / points of interest?
I really want to get the CC vibe of being on the road all year and coming back home rarely, and to get the annual cycle of events without playing more than 2 or 3 sessions.
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More Crystals Chronicles TTRPG thoughts:
Would it be crazy to have hexes (or pointcrawl paths) that take a week to cross, and a month to thoroughly search for dungeons / points of interest?
I really want to get the CC vibe of being on the road all year and coming back home rarely, and to get the annual cycle of events without playing more than 2 or 3 sessions.
@martin I say make it work. Ultra Violet Grasslands uses a pointcrawl with travel times in weeks, so there's a precedent.
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@martin I say make it work. Ultra Violet Grasslands uses a pointcrawl with travel times in weeks, so there's a precedent.
@SymbolicCity I own that and should read it then, thanks! I first got my copy when I was feeling ill and never got around to reading it.
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@SymbolicCity I own that and should read it then, thanks! I first got my copy when I was feeling ill and never got around to reading it.
@martin @SymbolicCity I was going to say, this sounds very similar to the UVG campaign I’m currently running. Our last session covered 6 weeks in game time. I would say, I think anything more than 2 months per session is going to be a little tricky, unless you’re explicitly saying “nothing really interesting happens during this time, we skip it”. Which is fine, but should be an intentional choice I think
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@martin @SymbolicCity I was going to say, this sounds very similar to the UVG campaign I’m currently running. Our last session covered 6 weeks in game time. I would say, I think anything more than 2 months per session is going to be a little tricky, unless you’re explicitly saying “nothing really interesting happens during this time, we skip it”. Which is fine, but should be an intentional choice I think
@SymbolicCity @bwebster Yeah, on reflection I think the pace I described in my other post is fine: If the party are lucky they will find 3 myrrh in about 6 months. Then they can travel to other villages for trade and rumours for the new year before hunkering down for the winter.
And if they are unlucky it will take more sessions (and more of the year) to get what they need.
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@martin @SymbolicCity I was going to say, this sounds very similar to the UVG campaign I’m currently running. Our last session covered 6 weeks in game time. I would say, I think anything more than 2 months per session is going to be a little tricky, unless you’re explicitly saying “nothing really interesting happens during this time, we skip it”. Which is fine, but should be an intentional choice I think
@bwebster @martin I think you can do a more active version of that time frame, but you have to change the scope of the action a bit. For example, some games have "downtime" actions that allow you advance your characters. I could see running long-term travel as a mixture of that sort of "montage sequence" character development along with periodic random encounters. That could be engaging.
