The Why

Welcome to Kota’s Cavern.

I recently started GM’ing a Dungeons and Dragons session semi-periodically, “when we can get together”, some of us work full time and some go to uni, some of us are married, some dating and some single, finding a schedule we can all meet on is challenging. Sometimes it is weekly, sometimes only once in a month, but it seems to be an ongoing activity so I thought I would write about it.
 In this blog I want to try and share my enthusiasm for the genre and the process of role-playing, and also share the resources I have found and developed for my own world and campaign. I like creating my own fantasy maps so I want to share those as well. I am not an artist, but I have created some interesting and intricate maps using a variety of styles over the years.

We are using AD&D 2nd edition rules for two reasons. Firstly they are what I mostly used in the 80’s and early 90’s, so while I am rusty, I am at least familiar with them. Secondly, one of the players did a little digging around the internet and found some comments that 2nd edition is the best rules for “role playing” as opposed to miniatures and fantasy battle combat. So 2nd edition it is.

I already have a world ready-made that I have used for many campaigns in the past. It has over twelve thousand years of history, a multitude of realms, varied climate regions and some unique features that I always hope will make it interesting to players. I have several of the countries (kingdoms and empires) fairly well developed for play, however one of the players is fascinated with Lizardmen and wants to play one. The country that is best suited to having Lizardmen players and NPC’s is not one that I have spent a lot of time developing. However it is right next to one of the most developed kingdoms I have. I do have a fairly good idea of the kind of culture and politics I want in it, and I have lots of information about its neighbours. So I decided to use it for the campaign.

About the time that the players mentioned they would like to get involved in a campaign with me as GM, I gave them my “Notice of Rule Changes”. I play with a lot of house rules that I feel add some depth, flexibility and realism to the game. I had previously (in the early 90’s) developed a document briefly explaining the house rules to give to players. I dusted it off and gave a copy to my potential players. Rather than be put off by the changes they seemed interested in the new rules, so I took that as a good sign and started preparing for a new campaign.

Allow me to introduce my world: Argand.

If there are any mathematicians or electrical engineers, out there you may recognise the name as being particularly apt for a fantasy world.

When I designed my world (back in the 80’s) I wanted several things from a fantasy world. A big scope, a large canvas and a deep history! I will explain these in later posts.

So long for now.