Closed Campaign Notes

by Eric McColm

The role-playing games known as Honor Bound, World in Commotion, and Star Quest have all been terminated for personal reasons. Players with an interest in knowing what was really going on should wait for the game logs to reappear as fiction. Alas, players often don't really know what was going on in my games.

Understanding isn't the point.

Just so I don't leave the players in complete darkness:

World In Commotion

Set in 1991-2 in the USA and western Europe. Teenage misfits with minor super-powers versus criminal masterminds, anarchists, government agents, Men In Black, and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs. Used Champions. Campaign Quote: Ask Agent.

• There really was a conspiracy to hide the medical experiments Paul Frobriskin was undergoing when he died
• The goal of the experiments was to infect subjects with more predictable strains of the Exotics Plague
• The experiments were successful
• The experiments were at the center of a feud between the Bavarian Illuminati and the Gnomes of Zurich
• The miraculous defense of Basra was the work of WarLord, a powerful Exotics Plague survivor, who held the allied armies at bay with illusions for over 30 days before collapsing from overwork

Honor Bound

Set in England and Wales in 1207 AD. Two young noblewomen from the provinces go on many adventures, dragging their reluctant Knights and Retainers along. Originally intended as a Fast, pick-up game of Fantasy Hero, this grew into the most intricately detailed game I've refereed, though not the most sweeping in its scope. Campaign Quote: We'll never get to London!

• Sir Peltis' horse was a dark Faerie
• Archer Daffyd ap Owen was geased by a witch to fetch her the sword that King John I offered as the tournament prize; all Daffyd ap Owen had to do was take it from the victor...
• Master Marr and his cronies were consorting with demons
• The elusive Lady In White was a nun who could change her shape into that of a dove; she was a spy for the now-deceased Archbishop of Canterbury
• King John I desired having Sir Peltis under the Crowns direct command, so the Crown might use Sir Peltis as a spy close to Ladies Rosamond and Catherine, and their heroic but unpredictable vassals
• King John I was planning to sell the hand of Lady Rosamond to the highest bidder at Midwinter Feast, for which she had promised to appear
• Lady Rosamond had a face to die for, the personal ire of a Duke of Hell, a visitation by an Angel, and a fate to fulfill to Faerie, in addition to her by then 14 promises

Star Quest

Set in a legendary early-middle-ages land of high fantasy, using Fantasy Hero with virtually unlimited point totals and powers. And you needed them. Grand prize for the most background material for a single game. Campaign Quote: I don't want to be a rug!

• Star Stones are evil, and all good things wrought with them are tainted with a fate toward perversion
• The Goblin Wars had begun; their causes were...
  • an influx of demons into the shadowed valley beneath Seekers Peak, which the party was supposed to find, drove giants, trolls, and goblins northward into Human lands
  • the Goblin King had consolidated his hold on the throne using the power of the largest Star Stone, and sent his armies eastward into Human lands
  • the Orcs to the north had driven out the last of the Dwarves, and began expanding southward into Human lands
• Mahogany's unborn child was destined to marry the boy Hatchet; he is half-human and half-god, while she is half-faerie, quarter-elf, and quarter-human
• The goblins walked by day because the Goblin King used his Star Stone to make potions for his army
• Honorable General Wyvernsbane was vying to be the next King, for which he needed a Star Stone
• The Queen of Big Rivers was a vampire, and she desired General Wyvernsbane as her consort; if he were King of Kings Charge, so much the better
• The only way to get rid of a Star Stone is to give it back to the gods, who don't want it

In addition, fictionalized i.e. more readable accounts of Highlands, A Land Apart, Barradarnis, and several one-shot adventures may appear, over the course of eons.

I'm a terrible mapmaker. To make up for this, I used WAC and ONC general-aviation maps for my campaigns. These maps are highly detailed, full color, not too expensive, and mainly show land/water, elevation, and man-made landmarks. I like them.

So here's the highly secret scoop on campaigns. All my fantasy campaigns were set in the same world, except Barradarnis and Honor Bound. Honor Bound was set in a semi-historical England in 1207. Barradarnis was set in an extensively remade City-State of the Overlord from Judges Guild.

Picture the North Pole moving to the Kurile Islands north of Japan. The Arctic Ocean is mostly free of pack ice, and filled with Vikings. The Bering Strait and Denmark Strait are major trade and raiding routes.

• A Land Apart was set in southern Alaska
• Star Quest and Highlands were both set in Oregon and Washington, and took place at least 400 years apart
• Crater took place on a vast, extinct volcano on Sicily; it didn't matter, because no-one successfully left the city-states in the volcano crater

Players had no maps of this game world, or of any reasonably large part of it. I didn't stop anyone from making maps...they just didn't. So, of course the changes in climate and weather made the land unrecognizable.

If you decide to use real maps, take this advice: don't move the north pole. Changing the compass points in your head all the time is too hard to remember.

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