5e Setting Building: Dwarves; the sons and daughters of Tir Varnrag

When the people of the borderland speak of Dwarves, they think of the The Dwah of  Tir Varnrag. They are creatures of myth and legend, peerless smiths. Tireless miners, greatest artificers of any world, but cursed by their fey nature too.

So meeting one of the creatures who on occasion walk the physical world referring to themselves as dwarves, comes as a shock to most.  For legends are not meant to walk the land, nor should they insist on doing so, should they so thoroughly confound the tales that are told of them.

But every so often, that is exactly what happens.

Every so often, a handful of short but tough creatures with the look of the fey emerge into the world. They travel widely, have adventures, learn all manner of things, for a hundred years or more. Then, as suddenly as they appeared, they disappear back into the Fey Realm.

They describe themselves as the sons or daughters of Tir Varnrag, but the importance of this statement is lost on humans. For The Dwah are not born, nor do they breed as man would know it. Rather they spring full made from the stuff of the feyrealm, and disappear just as quickly if no one is paying attention. Understanding why the Dwarves call themselves the children of Tir Varnrag is the secret to their existence.

Born from frustration.

The Dwah are the greatest of all artisans, no other hand can craft so finely as theirs. Their work is perfect and none may claim it is other wise. But they are cursed, for while their work can be surpassed by no other, in terms of quality, even the lowliest child can surpass them in creativity. The Dwah are entirely incapable of creative thought or invention, it is simply not part of their nature. They do not learn, and cannot innovate in anyway, rather, if the knowledge of how a thing is crafted, exists as a schema, within the the book of iron, at the heart of Tir Varnrag, they simply know how it is done, and they can produce it, in its most perfect form.

This truth is a large part of why it is that the Dwah are always gruff and angry, for their failure is well known to them. Every so often, when confronted with something new, the Dwah, must confront their inability in a very personal and intimate manner. As attempt after attempt fails, they find themselves growing angrier and angrier. Eventually, they will start to hammer at some part of their own being, usually a hand or a foot, and they beat it and beat it, until it is useless. That achieved, they cut it of, and beat it some more. Though they do not intend it, they shape that flesh into a new born baby. This new child, is a dwarve, and such creatures are usually raised by members of other fey races until they are old enough to hold a hammer. The Dwah being ageless artisans who come into existence as ancient and grumpy have little understanding of children, and will as soon as the child appears able to hold a tool, try to put them to work. It is at this stage that the Dwah discover the most horrifying thing about their children. The new born dwarf does no know how to perform any craft, let along anything else. To the Dwah, this is unthinkable and a source of great shame.

It is for this reason that the children are called Dwarves, for it is a term that in the tongue of Tir Varnrag means "poorly formed". Despite this, Dwarves are blessed in ways their parents are not, for they can learn and innovate.

They often feel the call of adventure strongly, and enter the physical world, to their learn and experience new things. Over the course of the next hundred to two hundred years, they learn new things and engage in much excitement, before returning home, and their forge all the new techniques they have learned in iron, adding them to the sacred book.

Before you go, check out todays world building blog on the progess with the town of Mistley

5e Adventure Building:Introduction and brainstorming setting intro adventure

World building a great! But world building with a purpose is better.  In the posts to follow, I am going to start building encounters and adventures set in the borderlands to delight my players with.

 Legacy of Adder's keep

Below you is a scan of my brain storming for legacy of Adder's Keep

Something that is really important to me as a GM, is that their be many paths to success.

If you your skill based encounters are achievable by a number of approaches, with different difficulties and different rewards, you have a situations where players are faced with meaningful choices. While they do the thing that offers them few rewards but they are unlikely to be challenged by, or while they take the greater risk and greater rewards. Will they make an enemy for the future to ensure their success today? It also rewards players who generalize rather than specialize.




For Adder Keep, I amd going to be using the Chainspire Fortress  map by Dyson Logos.

Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

5e Setting Building: Proper nouns, Map making and the PCs initial base of operations.

Again we have a, with a region of northern Arnel being without name. Lets fix that right now. The river flowing through this area  is the Ashwater, and the region is commonly known as the Ashwater vale.

I love mapping, and it is a huge chunk of what this project is all about. So, before we get further into describing the region, lets look at the progress in mapping it since last post.

This is where things were. Boarder and coastline drawn, grid added

Base colours added, coast fractalised, rivers added.
Grid made lighter

First few roads added, along with the outline
 of one section of woodland

More woodlands added, and base colour for woodland added.
Villages added at a distance from each other of about a mile.

Most of the detail is in the bottom right hand corner, it is in this hex that the campaign will begin, with the PCs arriving in Mistley. There are also the villages of Boxford, Borrow, Blackwell, Higham, and Ornley

Mistley

Mistley is a large village (on the cusp of becoming a small town) on the banks of the Ashwater, where it flows into its estuary. Mistley is going to be the first location that the PCs spend anytime, so it is going to need to be fairly well detailed, Which sounds like the kind of thing for another blog post, all it's own.

Augh!!! I am bored of high level planning....

...so lets get a little closer in and start thinking about where the campaign will start. So lets dig down into what the Province Scale of world building and look at the starting region. The campaign I am going to be running is going to to start in Northern Arnel, near the border with the bleakmarsh. Northern Arnel has been designed to be a place where traditional governmental structures have fallen to pieces, there by allowing PCs to fill that void, either creating a new aristocracy, or building towards something new.  The form of this collapse is the destruction of a great many northern aristocratic families during the civil wars, the slow collapse and corruption of southern lines put in their place, and abandonment of the region by the south, who frankly have enough on their plate as it is. Were the high King even aware of the players actions, it is questionable if he would act on them in the early stages of their rise to power, thanks to his inherited delusional state.

Worse still, society is in a state of apocalyptic shock.The great plague killed 1 in 10 adult and 1 in 5 people under the age of 5, just fifteen years ago*, and this after only a hundred years of rest from a civil war that had been very nearly as devastating to the north. Even before this the north suffered huge economic privation, as the wealth of the nation concentrated in the south.

It is also a place rich in a history of connection with the fey and the dead, but with relatively weak modern understanding of it thanks to the witchhunts sponcered by High King Tobin  and his decendents.

All these fact make for a place that desperately needs saving, and a political climate might actually allow a few mercenaries to become the solution

Kingdom Scale placeholder map for Arnel, Alass and Norren (most of).
Highlights initial area of play

As by now, you may have guessed, this is going to be a sandbox campaign. Which means lots of overland travel. Two considerations come of out of this at this stage, scale and environment.

First WIP of region level map of initial play area.

Scale

When planning a Sandbox, getting the scale right is important. You get it wrong and you end up with a setting that makes no earthly sense. To date, the best scale I have found is the six mile hex, with half mile sub-hexs. It is worth checking out this post from Steamtunnel's blog "hydra's grotto", which explains the advantages of the six mile hex far better than I ever could. 



Environment

The area in which the campaign kicks off, is going to be the watershed of a river, roughly equivilant to the river stour on the essex and suffolk border, here in the UK. The Stour is known for the painting  of the english artist John Constable. 







I grew up a short walk from the river, and the areas lush meadows and gently rolling hills hold a special place in my memory. The stour is also interesting for it is in many ways the border of civilisated influence in east anglia. Once you pass the river valley; the land, while still mostly cultivated, becomes wilder and wilder. The influence of the northsea on the wealther and feel of the land grows as you travel eastwards.  Woodlands grow larger, heath and fen become more common and houses ever rarer. It is a mixture of these two elements I wish to weave together in this place. It should be a place of great beauty, but also isolation and bleakness.






























Next time, I will be talking about the  geography of the watershed, and detailing some of it's landmarks.  

5e Setting Building: Introduction to Arnel and it's History.

The campaign I have planned for my players, will cast them as "great people" from the get go.

Lets be clear, in the real world, the actions of individuals are rarely if ever that important to the outcomes of regional or national events. Even when it appears that they are, very often such outstanding individuals are more an expression of a social trend than the drivers of change. But in the kind of story you tell where the characters aren't the movers and the shakers of destiny, there tend to be a lot fewer fairy knights, and a lot more murder in pubs, than I am aiming for.

Of course, if near superhuman mercenary murder hobo's started plying their trade in the real world (or worse still tried to change the world), governments would squash them with a drone strike and say "no thank you very much" before trying to pretend the whole sorry episode never occurred. The same should be true of any moderately competent fantasy government. So we need a pretty good rational for why adventurers are going to be able to set themselves up as noblity, rise armies, and try and become power players in the nation.

Fortunately, the real world gives us a few situations where skilled, violent and/or charismatic people are able to steer the path of whole nations, as opposed to being steer by the populous or events. Perhaps the most appropriate example is that of warlords in failed states.

That is why Arnel is what it is.

What is Arnel?

Well the short answer to that is, a mess. War and plague have decimated the nation, at a time when it's past strength is sorely needed. Where once it was a magical nation, with many allies amongst the fey and the dead, it has now lost almost all its knowledge of the arcane art, and the other world.

The times are changing, the nations leader is utterly mad, and their are opportunities a plenty for heroes.

The origins of Arnel 

The time before: The black kings of Vortmarr ruled  a terrible kingdom of dark magic on the western coast of the Solenel peninsular. It expanded ever outwards, consuming nations and tribes. Their kingdom is said to have lasted a thousand years. At sometime during the late stages of their rule, the Arnlings pass through the forest of shadows, and settle to fey haunsted lands beneith the Iceclaws, the forest of shadows, and the Sundel Sea. Meanwhile, a warlord named Horran Vard goes to war with Vortmarr, and for the first time in hundred of years, hope is granted to the people of the penincular as it becomes clear that the black kings may be defeated.

0: To the west, Horran Vard slew Azak, the last of the black kings of Vortmarr. In the chaos and terror that follows, the black fen is formed, as the rivers burst their banks and coastal defenses fail, drowning the greatest cities of Vortmarr, and the remains of their Sorcerer kings.

10: Arnling settlements are common throughout the northern reaches of what will become Arnel. Folk  tales and chronicles report that during this time, the Arnling settlements are isolated and fiercely independant. Many are troubled greatly by the fey.

11: Thomas Witt, aged fifteen, becomes the first wizard to be recorded in the folklore the Arnlings. He is said to have stolen magic from a fairy maiden. His adventures over the next ten years form the chronicle of Thomas Witt, and are often claimed to have laid the ground work for nationhood, as his adventures gave every Arnling settlement reason to be thankful to him. The roguish nature of Thomas Watt is the foundations of a view of wizards as tricksters and trouble makers in Arnling cultures. Simon and Tasha Osret are born to the Caleb Osret Chief of woodsedge, and Meli, a priestess of the war goddess.

12: Aaron of Redford, is born Elspeth of Redford, a blacksmith in that village. Katie Waterchild found wandering aged two near the rivers edge at Tallowback ford. Her parents are never identified, and she is adopted by Thomas Witt, who is travelling in the area.

21:Thomas Witt builds home atop the cliffs of the coast of daggers. He names it the High House, and fills it with many treasures, magical and otherwise. In the centuries since, many have tried to enter the High House to steal from it, most have not returned, and those that have, are almost always changed by the experience (rarely for the better).

22: The Frost Giantess Aslaug leads a small raid down from the Iceclaws, destroying the settlement of Holm. The spreading news of this raid and its perpetrators caused panic. Two more raids though out the year are slightly less devastating for the targets, thanks to the warning left by Holm.

23: Giantish raids continue. Thomas Witt, gathers Arnling leaders, persuading them to forge and alliance. On the winter solstice, the alliance and a force of giants clash in what will be known as the battle of Black Axe Field, giving the Arnlings their first glimmer of hope as they successfully drive of the giants. During this battle, Tom Witt scorches out Aslaug's left eye with magic flames. She takes the name Aslaug One-Eye, swearing the destruction of the Arnlings.

24-27: Arnling-giant conflict continues.

28: With no solution to the war with the giants in sight, Thomas Witt gathers 4 young men and woman from across the Arnling settlements, they are Aaron of Redford, the twins Simon and Tasha Osret, and his own adopted daughter Katie Waterchild. He binds these exceptional young people together by powerful oaths, creating the first Oathbound in the process. He leads the young heroes into the fey realm and the underworld, there forging alliances and seeking artifacts to help defeat the giants. Meanwhile, Aslaug One-Eye gathers more giants to her cause, and the Arnlings suffer two terrible defeats.

29: Aslaug One-Eye marches on Whitehold, the greatest remaining Arnling settlement. As Aslaug One-Eye leads the attack on the settlement, the Oathbound return at the head of an army of fey knights and the dead, driving the giants back into the mountains. They carry with them the corpse of Aslaug One-Eye atop her shield. Aaron of Redford and Tasha Osret marry, and are declared high king and queen of the Arnlings. The Nation of Arnel is born.

30-372: Arnlings spread southwards along the coast of daggers and the edge of the forest of slumber, settling the wilderness*. During this time, Arnel transforms from a collection of loosely allied settlements, to a full feudal system. Kate Waterchild and Thomas Witt slowly by surely spread the art of wizardry. It never becomes common, but the nation does have a near monopoly on wizards in the peninsular, which while they are mostly isolated from events elsewhere, earns the nation a reputation that will last for generations to come. Giant raids remain a threat, even if they are uncommon.  

373: Arnel's expansion brings it border into contact with the border of  the kingdom of Halwick for the first time. King John the second of Arnel meets with the Kings Oleg Ironhand of Halwick, and they agree a common border. This meeting is cordial, thanks in part to generations of sea trade between the two nations. The folk of Halwick are Endels, and Ironhand informs King John of several other Endel nations to the south, and west, including Halwicks neighbours in Alwick.

374: Arnel's southern border expands to meets the kingdom of Alswick. King John the second of Arnel meets with King Skath of Alswick. The two are unable to agree a common border, and tensions run high. This is in part due to both Arnlings and Endel's having settled much of the same land along the boarder region.

378: Banditry and raiding between Arnling and Endel lords in the border  region draw Arnel and Alswick into war. For the first time, a major nation feels the effects of Arnels magical and martial traditions. The war lasts fifty day, before Alswick sues for peace, seeding the borderlands to Arnel

385: King John the second dies, his war-like son, Ethelred the first(also known as "the Goblin King"), is crowned. The economy of Arnel, driven by it's constant southwards expansion has suffered since 373, and Ethelred the first invades Alswick. At the same time, he calls forth a horde of goblins from Alswicks forests with a magic horn. Arnel's forces and the goblins progress deep into Alswick.

387: On the eve of total victory in Alswick, two events set Ethelred's plans to chaos. From the north, the largest Giant raid since the days of the Giantess Aslaug One-Eye, comes down from the mountain, and a bannerless force of raiders strikes at Ethelred's supply lines. The Goblin king is forced to flee back into Arnel to deal with the threat, however, he is ambushed on route, and slain.  Most historians believe that these raiders were in fact the forces of King Oleg Ironhand, king of Halwick, who feared that his nation would be next to suffer Ethelred's attentions. Ethelred's younger brother, is crowned King Thomas the third.  He gathers Arnel's forces, and marches north to face the giants. His wife, Morgan Stormchild, a priestess of the goddess of war travels into the battered nation of Halwick, there she meets with the elderly King Skath of Alswick and an envoy of King Oleg Iron hand. In a masterful example of diplomacy, she is able to convince King Skath to seed a third of his nations original land, in exchange for one hundred years of Oathbound piece between Arnel and Alswick.  In addition to this, she is able to ensure nearly thirty marriages between Arnling and Endel noble lines, and favorable trading conditions. Meanwhile Thomas the third, drives back the Giantish invaders, but looses an arm in the process.

399: Queen Svella Ironhand, daughter of king Oleg, invades Arnel, with her nations armies, and a large force of mercenaries. This war will last  two decades, and eventually result in the subjugation of Halwick by the sword

405: The true scale of the cunning of queen Morgan becomes clear, as Arnel absorbs Alswick as a Duchy, thanks to economic and social colonisation over the intervening years. This becomes official when skath's only grand child, Sara, marries prince Aaron, son of  Thomas the third and Morgan Stormchild.

421: The annexation of Alswick secure and the subjugation of Halwick complete, Arnel finds itself with new neighbours in the form of  Alass and Norren.

423: Modern borders of Arnel formed. Increasing sea trade in the Sundel Sea and with the ocean beyond, a near complete end to giant raids, and the growing shadow of Highmarch to the west, ensure a two hundred year period of peace in Arnel. This is widely considered the golden age of Arnel. During this time, the center of Arnel's political life moves south into the lands which were once Alswick and Halwick, with traditional Arnel lands being seen as backwards and superstitious. Meanwhile the high king sells the services of his vessels as mercenaries throughout the peninsular.

650-655: Several Barons of Northern Arnel refuse the call to service of High King Tobin the first, a short lived civil war ensues. During this conflict the king commits a number of Attrocities against his own people. Many historians see this as the end of the golden age of Arnel. After the massacre at Blackhill, it is said that Thomas Witt appeared to King Tobin, and pronounced the doom of the line of Redford. This is the last documented claim of the appearance of the wizard, who had been believed dead for hundreds of years.  Since the King was the only witness to this appearance, it is uncertain if the wizard truly appeared, but none doubt the sincerity of Tobin's belief in it. From this time on, madness is a common ailment of the line of Redford. High King Tobin banished wizards from his court, and bans consorting with the fey.

656: The high king levies taxes against the north as a form of collective punishment. Additionally King Tobin attempts to lay siege to and destroy the High House of Thomas Witt, but his armies are unaccountably unable to find it. Serveral laws are past, banning wizardry, druidry and other non-religious magics

671: Plague decimates the northern city of Redford. King Tobin orders the inhabitance slaughtered and the city burned to the ground to stop the plagues spread.

700: An alliance of northern lords and wizards, along with fey allies strike against the south and Tobin's son Ethelred the second. A century of civil war ensues, literally decimating the north. Even by the present day, the north has not truly recovered

800: Weakened by a century of war, the south withdraws from politics in the penincular. Highmarch takes this opportunity and invades several nations which had historically recieved protection from Arnel. While the royalty of Arnel grows weaker and stranger thanks to its heritable  madness,a new middle class of merchants rises from the shadow, spreading out from the capital. Mercenary companies become increasingly common, and individual lords start to use their feudal rights to raid one another, rather than protect the kingdom.

850: The renewed Merchant endevours across the eastern peninsular and in the lands beyond the Sundel sea bring unprecedented wealth to the merchant classes of Arnel.  This success brings them into conflict with the merchant houses of Salerna.

900: A great plague sweeps the peninsular, brought by trade with other nations. In Arnel the slowly recovering north is hit hard, but not nearly so hard as the south. In desperation the high king retracts laws banning consorting with the Fey, and the practice of wizardry, in the hope of finding a solution to the plague, however, the traditions of magic in the south that might have aided have been utterly lost.

910: With the plague past, rebuilding begin. International trade continues to spur the rise to power of
merchant houses. The north is in ruins, and the king has utterly given up trying to rule it, focusing on ensuring the recovery of the south. New technologies of war and culture flood into the great cities of the south. Perhaps most importantly, is the rise of the Pike. professional soldiers armed with Pikes have started to challenge the battle field supremacy of the heavy cavalry of the noblity. highmarch looks set to invade Vodda, causing the alliance of princes.

914: First Bombard used on peninsular soil

915: The present day.


*these lands were ofcause not truly wildernesses, nor was the land they first settled when passing through the forest of slumber. However, the people of Arnel have a strong cultural myth of having been the first to settle the area.

5e Setting Building: The Gray Elves of Nil

The Underworld of the Bordermarches is home to ruins long lost to the living, and native horrors which have never lived. Perhaps strangest of all, is the city of Nil and it's elfin inhabitants.

Nil, is a beautiful, deceptively vast city; though from a distance it appears to be little more than a few towers, an explorer quickly discovers that the city is in fact huge. While it is large city, it is also a near empty one. Only a few thousand of its inhabitants live within the city, with a few thousand more travelling abroad at any one time. Reaching Nil is a task few save it's inhabitants take lightly, as it requires travelling across the the Bleak Moor, following the light of the Widow's Star. Because the night of the underworld is a time of danger and creeping fear, few risk the journey.

The city is built of empty towers, long, covered arcades, and beautiful monochrome gardens. During the day, the low grey clouds scrape the top of the towers as they scud across the sky, and the towers sing with sonorous tones, like giant pipes, as the wind plays across their tops.  At night, the towers appear to reach towards the few stars in the inky sky. The Grey Elves dwell as nomads within the city, living in isolated camps beneath the arcades or at the base of one of the singing towers.


The Grey Elves of Nil
The Grey Elves of Nil are a strange lot. They make their living in the underworld as crafts people, herders and hunters. Outsiders who have observed them, are often puzzled as to how it is that the grey elves are able to support what appears to be an advanced culture. In the rest of the borderlands their economy would mean a culture of hunter-gatherers. The Grey Elves do not farm, yet their tables are laid with bread. They do not gather firewood, yet their fires burn ever brightly. When asked about this, the Grey Elves have no answers for their questioner, for it is simply the way of things in their experience. Indeed, in human lands they struggle, for concepts such as trade, money and labour are entirely alien to them.

Despite this, the grey elves are a people who have elevated their crafts to the highest levels of excellence; they are capable of weaving complex geometric patterns so finely that they appear to be blocks of pure darkness and light, while their furniture has a fluidity and grace, found nowhere else.

The grey elves dress exclusively in black, white and shades between, though despite the lack of colour in their fashion, their is great care and beauty in their garments. Both males and females tend to wear floor length robes, a tight sash to hold the robe closed, with a shorter, loose fitting coat over them.The lower layers of clothing are patterned with complex tessellating shapes in black and white. Outer layers are exquisitely fabric painted with pictorial scenes from the myths of the Elves of Nil or with beautiful star fields.

The Grey Elves of Nil have thousands of stories, and an oral tradition that no other culture can compare. This is strange, for all evidence suggests that if they are not immortal, then they are so long lived as to make no difference to the mayfly species of the borderland. Many of the subjects of the tales must still live, and certainly members of their kind who share the names and appearances of those mentioned in the tales can be found in the city of Nil.

Grey Elves have a memory of experience and events which erodes in a matter of years, but they have a profound capacity to remember stories. So it is, that the grey elf who tells the tale of a great hero slaying of a hoard of hungry ghosts, maybe said hero. They may have neither memory of the event, nor realization that they are the subject of the story, despite it having happened but a human lifetime ago. Skills that a grey elf neglects are also quickly eroded, meaning that said elf may also be an apprentice weaver, with no idea how to swing a sword or cast a spell. Despite their inability to understand this aspect of themselves, the Grey Elves are gripped by a profound and lasting sorrow at all they have lost. This sorrow is lessened only through creation and the forging of new stories in the role of hero.
    

5e Setting Building: Welcome to the bordermarches.

When I started this project this, it was with but a few images in my mind and a general idea of "I want it to be like these things". It has come a long way from that already, but one side effect of this is starting to  really effect this process. That is a lack of a name for the setting. Over the last few posts, there has been a lot of referring to this place and time as "the setting". Well that ends now!


Welcome to the Border Marches.


The Border Marches is the name for the wider setting. It is a world between world, where hard bitten sell swords fight bandits in fey touched forests. It is a world where merchant princess conspire together to raise prices in coffee houses by day, and sacrifice vagrants to their  hungry ghost ancestors by night in exchange for aid in their intrigues. The fey and the dead are always near, and the physical world must always be mindful that they live on the boards of these two worlds.


For the foreseeable future, we will be focusing on the kingdom of Arnel, a once great nation in decline thanks to the ravages of civil war, plague and barbarian raiding, but to understand Arnel. We need to know a little more about how it relates to it's neighbours and the region within which it can be found.


Arnel is situated at the throat of the Solenel peninsular, at the base of the Iceclaw Peaks. To its west lays the forest of slumber, Highmarch and the black fens. To the east the Sundel sea and the slithermarsh.To the north it borders the Iceclaws, and direstly to the south lay the principalities of  Alass, Norren, Vodda and Salerna

The forest of slumber
These thick pin woodlands, flow out from the base of Iceclaw Mountains, spreading into civilised lands. They are a place shunned by man, for their are many gateways here to the feywild.


Highmarch
Over the last two thousand years, Highmarch has grown from the shattered remains of Vortmarr, into a powerful and expansionist, militant nation. Ruled by the Sentinal Knights, who's chapter houses dot the land, the entire nation is in constant preperation for war, should the black kings rise once more. In aid of this aim, the sentinal knights have expanded east and south by the conquest of three of its neighbours in the last five hundred years.

The Black Fens
The lands today known as the black fens, were once the cities and fertile farmlands of the kingdom of Vortmarr, home to the black kings. However, when Vard rose up, and led his people to overthrow the black kings, they turned terrible magic against the slave revolt. These magics ruined the cities and coastal farmlands, creating these bleak and terrible fens.

The Sundel sea
A shallow sea lies to the east of the peninsular seperating it from the lands of the east.

Bleakmarsh
To the east of Arnel, a large coastal swamp sits at base of the Iceclaw mountains s

The Iceclaws
Your standard and terrible fantasy mountain range. It acts as a fairly effective barrier to the cold wastes of the north, where giants and barbarians roam. Every so often barbarians raids make their way through the mountains into Highmarch and Arnel. (Need to find something interesting to do with these)

Alass
One of a number of small nations direstly to the south of Arnel

Norren
Another small nation directly south of Arnel.

Vodda
Vodda is sits at the southern border with the forest of Slumber and the eastern edge of Highmarch. The nation is currently preparing for what it believes in an inevitable war with Highmarch.

Salerna: 
Salerna is the banking and trade capital of the penisular, and while it is a small nation with little military might of its own, it has been instrimental in early attempts to forge an alliance between itself, Alass, Norren, and Vodda.

Experiment in 5e Item card creation.

How to be a "better" player.

So Lex, over at Starwalker studios, has done an interesting podcast on being a better player. It is a great introduction, covering perhaps the two most important rules of how to be a good player. These are of course; don't be a dick, and, pull your weight at the table. He goes into a lot of detail on these areas, and it is certainly worth a listen.

But at the end of the day I think it is really introductory level stuff, which shouldn't (but all to often does) need to be said. It isn't the only good advice out there on the topic. Look, Robot's article on 11 ways to be a better roleplayer, goes a little more in depth, and contains what I guess could be called the two most important intermediate level skills when it comes to role-playing, I.e. "do stuff" and "don't deny."

What I thought might be interesting, is looking at the layer of advice just above that.


Work with the story:
When you sit down to make a characters, it is worth talking to your fellow players and GM. This isn't just so you can find out if anyone is playing a cleric yet.No, this is an opportunity to make decision about who your character will be, and how that will reflect and/or compliment the theme and mood of the game's fiction.

It is all well and good playing Paul Pleasant , Paladin of Palor in his Pristine Plate, but if your GM has pulled together a Ravenloft game of dilettante investigators, hot on the trail of a serial killer, Sir Pleasant is going to be a little off key. Take the time to really get to grips with what the campaign is going to be about, and find ways to play of that.

Agree on a social contract: So in 11 ways to be a better roleplayer, their are a couple of a fairly explicit instruction; Don’t harm other players and "If you make someone uncomfortable, apologies and talk to them about it." This is great advice, to this day, I am more than a little bitter about having one of my characters Fisk'ed with a car boot, by another PC. That was the height of fun, let me tell you.


However that advice isn't the whole story. There are games where inter-player antagonism is part of the deal, and a lot of fun to boot. Many horror games are all about making the players uncomfortable. The secret is to have everybody on the same page, and to have consented to the material in play.

You see, if wasn't that I object in principle to one of my characters having been decapitated by another players character. Rather, it was that I was working under the implicit assumption that we were on the same side, and would not do such a thing to each other. Knowing that was the game were playing, would have changed the way I approached the game.

Equally, when I sit down to run Call of Cthulhu, I am setting out to make my players uncomfortable. It is for both myself and my players, a big part of the fun of the game. However, I have their permission to take them to that place, and that, combined with my agreement not to touch on certain subjects, frees them to trust me.

So talk with your GM and you fellow players, has out rules as to what is and isn't acceptable at the table. This can be a useful place to cover other things, like those pesky personal hygiene issues which still occasionally plague out hobby, and use of tablets and phones at the table.

Use all your senses:
Two of the best bits of advice Lex gives in his podcast are ask questions and contribute to the fiction. Well I heartily support this advice but would add, use all your senses. Ask what a place smells like, ask about the birdsong that can be heard in the NPCs garden, and describe the taste of the walnut bread at the tavern.

Set yourself goals: 
If your character wants things, and will actively  pursue them, that is another thing for your GM to grab hold of. It can be a way to steer your character towards plot or a meaningful rewards for success. Most importantly, it helps to make your character more rounded and believable.  

Set yourself rules:
An often under-appreciated tool of creativity is working within constraints. Being unable to do the first thing that pops into our heads, forces us out of our comfort zone. It makes us find new and interesting ways to approach a problem.  By applying stict rules to our characters, we can create characters much further outside our norm.

Such rules can be things like, "this character never says no to anything", "will not kill another human under any circumstances" or "this character will not willingly be the target of a spell." Next time you play a new character, try taking on such a rule, and see where it takes you. 
However, if you take this approach, remember not to deny another players actions(unless you've agreed that is okay ahead of time). If the rule stands to act as a block to the ongoing adventure. Make you response proactive. The answer shouldn't be "my character wouldn't do x" it should be "my character wouldn't do X, but he would do Y, which should get him to the same position.

Be Inconsistent
People aren't 100% consistent. The greatest philanthropists in the world have examined prejudices, and even the most cynically criminals have friends. Heroes can have phobias, and villains can act in the common good. When we make characters who are 100% consistent, what we get, is not a realistic character, but a stereotype. Consider ways in which your character acts outside of what might be expected of him.  

Make poor choices:
This is a big one, with effects on various parts of the game, it also acts as the next step on from embracing failure.

The realisation that failure is okay, is a big deal. It allows us to see what else failure might be. Just look at Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Indy's failure to judge the weight properly leads is the trigger for action, as previously established threats are all brought into a new context by the collapse. 

Clealy for the viewer, Indy's failure is a good thing. Failure by our characters can be a good thing for us the player too. The prime example of this being the escape of a recurring villain. At this point, I hope we can agree that failure can be a good thing. Before continuing lets take about decision making.

Then there is the fact that people, as a rule, aren't very good at making good decisions, and there are a lot of things that make them worse at it. This is especially true when it comes to making decisions about things we do not understand well. When I say well, I mean things we can and have applied the scientific method too. As a result, your average PC in an RPG is usually ill equipped to good decisions about such vague and abstract things as say, which feats they are taking.

All this combines to mean that making poor decisions at the table CAN lead to more interesting and believable characters, especially when mechanical choices lead to more generalised and rounded characters, or behavioural choices reflect motivations other than success.

Don't be afraid to say, it does not matter that this is the optimal choice, because the other option is cooler.

The mapping of a city; part1.

Here are some work in progress shots from my latest project. The finished product will be a pair of A1 poster maps. The first will be of the region directly around a major city. I have shared it with you before

The second is of the city itself. I thought I would share some WIP shots with you all today.

It stared life in my sketchbook, after some resizing and attention, made its way to the city map as a guide line to work from.