Mega Update - a work in progress

New Ideas on RPGs

I have slowly, over the course of some time, gone over the history of my RPG gaming (a very limited part of it anyway), and new thoughts have come forth on the matter.  These will be covered here in due time, but meantime, I would like to present and organize some of the notes made recently in my notebooks reserved for the topics.

Back in 2013, I resurrected my Arkon related campaigns (which had never fully died, see below).  Along with this, and at about the same time, came another 2 ideas for campaign settings (and I mention this for reasons that will become clear later).  This brought slowly back into my consciousness ideas that really ought to have been developed long ago.

The trouble that I had for some time was the tendency toward riffing off campaign worlds already in existence, which to some extent is probably unavoidable.  But by bringing back Arkon I was defiantly bringing to life something that was very much my own creation.

Then I came to realize, with the arrival of 2015, that there were other campaigns as well, and that these are also worth a retrospective.  These concerned other campaigns not just run in the JL era, but also the campaigns of the JJD and MW era, which were actually older (and more over the top in many ways).  There is no reason, if the Arkon campaigns got attention, that these other ones ought not also.

The purpose of this file, then, will be actually twofold:  first, to document and preserve writings germane to the topic, and second, to probably generate new ideas for the future as needed.  There is certainly ample material to work with.  For example, in the yellow notebook I recently perused, there were pretty well-mapped ideas for a whole solar system or even several of them for Arkon and its related campaigns.  Not a bad find at all, and hopefully there are more to come.

So without further ado:

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The Green Notebook
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-There are first and foremost some considerations that need to be taken with regard to what kind of campaigns the Arkon campaign was.  Namely, was it 'high fantasy' after the fashion of Tolkien, or was it closer to the horror and gritty realism of a Howard?  The answer, though no doubt a 'cop out', is that it was somewhere between those two things.  Though not quite so far out as some previous experiments.  However, I am fully of the opinion that 'far-out' campaigns can be among the most enjoyable...

-The nature of government by the time of Verial.  Note that at that time, things seem to have attained to an Early-to-High Modern level, albeit with some fantastic additions like airships.  This is a period of high power politics between developed nation states.  The different realms of Saen reflect these.  Though in my previous writings it had been said that there were three major kingdoms, why not also allow for some minor ones and so on?  And vis-a-vis government, it seems that the major powers are either monarchic or high-aristocratic, that is the pattern of the older times of decentralized aristocratic rule is now a thing of the past.

-Bold revisions:  How about viewing the three major campaigns of the later period of Arkon as a progression and one that ultimately involves lifetimes instead of a shorter timespan.  That is, Verial is sort of a 17th century wars of religion type of affair, Vampyro is 18th century great power politics, and by Jedon's era, the whole world is in play?  This way we can see e.g. the rise of the triadic cult as a process involving a longer period.  That way we get to see these things arise and develop according to their own rules.  Verial campaign didn't have the world saving heroics of high fantasy anyway, since JL didn't like that, and preferred a more adventurous and personal way (which made the struggles with Arxam, Derus and Count Savil more enjoyable).  Note well, I am not looking for exact parallels with the real world, just sort of using those as a rough guide.  I want it to be fantastical after all.

-Belgast plotline would be some kind of fork campaign, but it has an admitted appeal.  It is also proof that JJD and I came up with the idea of an interstellar Necromancer/Undead Empire before Warcraft/Blizzard did.  This will be a fork campaign on Arkon and others, just as WotI was for KW.  The 'main stream' Arkon will have the Darklords plotline come to a head with the Age of Jedon.  Does this prevent a Late Modern catastrophe like what happened in RW?

-The system of Magic needs to be carefully thought out.  Usually it takes a tripartite form (as in both DND and RM, with the formulation of Essence-Channeling-Mentalism).  This might be acceptable to keep.

-Classes notes:  NPC classes I like to have include the Artificer and Alchemist.  The latter deals mainly with the magical manipulation of solids, liquids and gases (for example they may make potions, poisons, or materials), while the former deals mainly with magical production of finished goods (i.e. weapons, armour, items).

-With regard to source material:  I have found, recently, some sites of note and there are probably many more thanks to the modern internet (if only I had time to look at all of that!).  I feel indebted to Grognardia for turning me onto artists I had heretofore not known of, but really should have sought out long ago.  Men like Howard, Vance, Leiber, Merritt, Burroughs and so on can be inspirations even so many years later.  Another profitable ground to look on, besides say blogspot, would be the Reocities archives, which also are very helpful in having preserved some of what used to be hosted on the now-defunct Geocities freeweb platform.

-New Materials:  Moonsteel is a material used for armour and weapons among other things, and this may bear some resemblance to the Mythril.  Elfinglass, a Mythic Age concoction of the high Elvish alchemists, is another one of note.  And there are others.

-Arkon was interesting because of the active resistance of JL to Apocalyptic and High Fantastic plotlines.  On the other hand, another early participant JLy made for a very weird diverging set of campaigns based apparently on New Testament Apocalyptic visions and ridiculously over-the-top science fiction and carnival-style aesthetic.

-James Maliszewski is a probably unfortunately maligned character around the internet and I'm a fan of his despite his many flaws (he shouldn't have made promises he couldn't keep, even if it's a very human flaw it made his name mud and that's a shame).  But I don't always agree with his characterization of hi-level campaigns.  Those can be very fun if done correctly, though unrealistic, but this is after all a fantastic form of entertainment for God's sake.

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-Everything RPG began in 1994 (for the sake of simplicity let's just say this is so).  This was the Hale campaign, commenced in the high summer months with JJD upon our meeting in a chemistry class.  It was over-the-top in a way that is hard to imagine for someone not wholly possessed by the spirit of youth and the unbounded passion which it brings.  What was it?  A space opera would be a not unfair characterization of it.  But it also had high sword-and-sorcery, epic world-saving and -destroying plot lines, absurd time travels, galactic-imperial politics, etc.

-In fall 1994, I inaugurated the Exiles campaign with MW who was (still is?) a SciFi fan, particularly of Star Wars at that time.  Therefore, Exiles was basically a Star Wars knockoff, except not, because it was mutated to a great degree.  The Empire ended up being something way more than in Lucas' creation, among other things, and there were too many original ideas for it to really be at all viewed as a copy.  PArts of this were chronicled as of about 1996, but I am not sure if I still have them.  I tried to preserve all of my valuable notebooks, but there are some I haven't seen in a long time.  The yellow notebooks (2), and the big dark gray notebooks are good examples, but maybe they're around somewhere - the chronicles were in one of the yellow notebooks.

-In 1995, probably in the Summertime, a new JJD character was rolled out (maybe this was amidst Hale's triumph as the Emperor of Sol and having conquered to an adequate extent).  I think the decision to create a new character was taken amidst the backdrop of yet another summer school event, which led to Rowan's creation.  This involved the Godlike race of Aiye that I had already dreamed up earlier in the year during a trip to the Deep South (funny how travel can stimulate the imagination in ways other things oft can't).  This campaign was more grounded, but involved many highly adventurous campaigns, which I think were located on a world where the Aiye resided (not on any familiar terrestrial ground, though I could be wrong).  If I recall, the nature of the Aiye made them highly competitive and prone to aristocratic feuding not unlike, say, Greek Gods in the Myths put down by Hesiod and others.  But they were not Gods of a 'pure spirit' or Noeric type, but embodied beings albeit of great power.

-Exiles was a fairly long running affair, with fits and starts.  It probably wasn't defunct until after Summer '97 (it did last at least that long, I know).  By '99 it was definitively done for, and this was, as it happens, the same time that Arkon in its original form was put to rest.  More's the pity!

-1996 was the most important year because it was at this time that gaming on numerous fronts was inaugurated.  I ran campaigns with JJD, JL and JLy, and MW.  There was the Jarlaxle campaign, the Arkon Genesis with the Aceries and Korsos campaigns, and the continuation of Exiles.

-Jarlaxle was probably ended abruptly, though if I remember it correctly, maybe it was merely put on hold.  And not resumed.  The last definite part of it that I remember was the warlike expedition to the new land, which will eventually get an entry of its own.  There were also the campaigns of Vance, Dantrag, and the Tabashi.  All of these inspiredd campaign worlds of their own, with the exception of Vance which was set in Krynn (with the changes made to it about that time, which in retrospect I didn't like very much, at least not unless they could be considered a fork campaign).