9:00 A.M. I call Ivan A. Boesole. Boesole is a miniatures collector, but he is also the owner of the largest goblin collection in Wisconsin and I’ve just read on Craigslist that he’s decided to sell it. I have no idea when I call that just two weeks from now Boesole will plead guilty of stealing books and dice from his party, and that the real reason he’s eager to sell the collection is that he needs to raise cash fast.

My idea is to get Stevia Rube and Iam Stranger, the designers of Palladium’s Fantasy Role-Playing Game, to strip and repaint them for me. Stevia is an incredible miniature painter, and he’d make the goblins hot as hell again. I get Boesole and tell him I’m very interested. He tells me Morgana Flemeth’s LARPing witch coven is handling the sale, and I will get a message from their people shortly.

I like goblins. I spent a lot of weekends there during the 1970s slaying and running encounters with them, and I always keep a few in reserve for bastard tactics. But I won’t let my personal preferences affect my business judgement. Much as I like goblins as a mob, I’m interested in it only if I can get it for a much better price than they’re now asking.

9:30 A.M. Allah Greenburg calls. We’ve purchased another hundred 28mm goblin miniatures, and the locally listed prices are up to $7 now. Craigslist is very active. I tell Allah I’ve heard that the top guys at Hobby Town are in a panic and that they’re holding emergency meetings to discuss how to react to me. Allah says that he thinks Hobby Town will enact some kind of “poison pill” as a way of fending off any attempts I make at monopolizing the goblin miniature market.

Our call lasts less than two minutes. That’s one thing I love about Allah: he never wastes time.

10:00 A.M. I meet with the party who wants to build a trade-hub in Hex 2033 south of Dreadwood. It’s a 30,000 gp job, and they are here to give me a progress report. They tell me they’ve cleared the neighboring hexes and established a trade route Grayhill.

The trade-hub will be ready in CY 584 — the biggest year in Greyhawk — and it’s going to increase their tax revenue enormously. Right now they are doing well with virtually no income. The trade-hub is located near the elf-lands, and it’s connected by a road right toward the main thoroughfare to Grayhill. Anyone who travels between the two are funneled directly towards the trade-hub.

11:00 A.M. I meet with a high ranking league player at my office. He’s come to try to join one of my parties, and we have a general talk about sessions I’m running. It’s funny what’s happened: players now come to me, to ask if I might be interested in running sessions for them. They know a good DM.

12:15 P.M. Norma comes in and tells me that we have to switch the Wahl Arena playtest demo from Thursday to Wednesday. Brock Lee, the NTL’s commissioner, has a conflict: on Thursday he is also scheduled to run a playtest for Tunnels & Trolls Heritage, DM’d by Ken St. Andre, Tunnels & Trolls creator.

The problem is that there’s no way we can change the printing date, which was why we called for the playtest to begin with. But what the hell? I’ll wing it and things will work out. I’m reluctant to give Brock a hard time. Last week, my league refused to let him submit an After Action Report without my permission. This was taking good campaign organization a step too far. As you can imagine, Henry wasn’t thrilled.

12:45 P.M. Jack Min-Max, my party’s accountant, calls to discuss the tax implications of a deal they are doing. He asks me how the new Duke’s tax levy is going to be for adventurer treasure imports, since it changes many of the current definitions of “culturally significant items”.

To his surprise, Min-Max learns that the law may be an overall plus for the party, since much of their cash flow comes from beastmen and cults and the top tax rate on found coinage is being dropped from 50 to 32 percent. However, he still believes the law will be a disaster for the dutchy, since it eliminates incentives to raid tombs and crypts — particularly in secondary locations, where no man will wander unless there are incentives.

1:30 P.M. I tell Min-Max to call Johnathon Johnston, a player with a retired PC within the dutchy. I don’t know Johnston within the league personally, but he’s one of the few who fought hard against the Duke’s tax levy. It’s probably too late, but Min-Max just wants to congratulate him on having the courage of his convictions, even though it might cost his character politically.

Johnston isn’t in, but his DM tells Min-Max he’ll call back.

1:45 P.M. Norma sees an opening between sessions, and she comes in to ask me about several DM session requests. Dan Dwiki, a thief with a successful racket selling drugs, has asked me to be the DM for his latest heist. I’m already DMing two other campaign actions this month, one for Wahl-to-Wall Brawling and the other for Guards-R-Us.

I don’t kid myself about why I’m asked to DM at so many sessions. It’s not because I’m such a great guy. The reason is that people who run campaign actions know that I’ve got my own party on lease and can get them to help rig events in their favor. I understand the game, and while I don’t like to play it, there is no graceful way out. However, I’ve already hit up my party twice this month — and there’s only so many times you can ask people spend their precious weekends at another party’s table. I tell normal to turn Dwiki down with regrets.

The other invitation is from the Young Dungeon Master’s Guild, asking me to guest-DM at a session they’re planning. YDMG admits DMs with less than 5 years of experience running a continuous campaign. My campaign turned five two weeks ago, so in their eyes, I guess I now qualify as an experienced DM.

Norma also asks me about a half dozen party invitations. I say yes to two. One is from Alison Chains, a paladin who has managed to turn herself into a hot party item by recovering from being fallen and gaining the benefits of both. The other is a Bard, Mersa Mers, who just attained the hallowed class a few months ago.

Frankly, I’m not too focused on party balance, because I can’t stand the meta. Unfortunately, it’s part of running a game, so I find myself looking for competent characters more than I’d like — and then trying hard to ensure the player deserves such a character. A few of these characters, fortunately, survive. But more often I will accept a character to a session, thinking they will survive many months. When they don’t, I get mad at myself for having accepted them in the first place. By then, it’s usually too late and a new character has to be rolled.

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2:00 P.M. I get an idea and call Allah Greenburg again. My idea is based on the fact that if I purchase all the 28mm goblin miniatures, I would have to spend days posting, meeting, and selling them without an actual storefront. “What do you think,” I ask him, “about just selling all the goblins right now, taking a profit, and then rethinking purchasing goblin minis after I get a storefront for the league?”

Allah argues for holding tight with what we’ve got. I say okay, for now. I like to keep as many options open as I can.

2:15 P.M. Min-Max calls back. Johnathon Johnston reached back out to him. They had a nice talk, and Min-Max told him to keep up the good work.

2:30 P.M. I plan a small encounter about a gambling ring in the Bright Desert. It’s an undeveloped section of Greyhawk. If the players enjoy it, I could flesh it out into a module.

I like writing modules. I like the scale, which is huge, I like the glamour, and most of all, I like the cash flow. If you know what you are doing and you run your module reasonably well, you can make a very memorable session. If you run it very well, you can make a ton of money.

2:45 P.M. My brother, Bobert, and Hardly Freeman, both senior DMs in the league, stop by to give AARs on their own pre-playtest sessions in preparation for the Wahl Arena event. There was a dispute over a tower near the arena and if it could be used to descend into the central area itself.

Bobert, who is two years younger than I am, is soft-spoken and easygoing, but he’s very talented and effective. I think it must be hard to have me as a brother, but he’s never said anything about it and we’re very close. He is definitely the only guy in my life whom I ever call “homey.”

Bobert gets along with almost everyone, which is great for me, since I sometimes have to be the bad guy. Hardly is a different type: no-nonsense, not too big on laughs, but he’s got an absolutely brilliant analytic mind.

The Wahl Arena event mapper, I’m happy to hear, has decided that there is no reason to believe the presence of the tower will effect play. Unfortunately, the Wahl Arena mapper won’t be the last word. Before we can get the map approved, we’ll have to get an independent DM to give an impact statement.

3:15 P.M. I call Sherbet Starz of the Faerûn Mapper’s Guild, which will be the first agency to approve or disapprove our latest plan for the Wahl Arena maps. Starz and his people are scheduled to have a preliminary look on Friday.

He isn’t in, so I leave a message with his acolyte mapper. I just say I’m looking forward to seeing him Friday morning.

3:20 P.M. Geralt Razor calls. Gerry’s a top RAW Lawyer at Drizzt & Tasha, one of the best freelance DMs in the county, and he’s handled nearly every one of my major disputes since I started the league back in 1974. Gerry is more than a Rules Lawyer. He’s an absolute autistic machine, and he can see through to the essence of the rule as fast as anyone I know.

We talk about the 28mm goblin market and several other deals that are in various stages. Like Allah Greenburg, Razor isn’t big on wasting time. We cover a half dozen subjects in less than ten minutes.

3:30 P.M. My wife, Ivana, stops in to say good-bye. She’s on her way to fuck the yoga coach, 9 inches. I like to kid her that she gets worked harder than I do. Last year, when I rented out a hotel for an expo, I made the mistake of neglecting Ivana. I walked in on her with the NTL president. She’s incredibly good at anything she’s ever done, a natural cuckold. After that, I sat down and learned a lot about Ivana.

Ivana grew up an only child within the hobby. She knew the nerdy men in our hobby would look at her like a once in a lifetime lay. She grew up a virgin slayer, taking hearts and breaking them left and right, watching men fall for her and then crumble. It wasn’t until her family had moved for the fourth time and she graduated high school that she could actually understand what she wanted.

We met in an arcade in August 1976. I’d dated a lot of different women by then, but I’d never gotten serious with any of them. Ivana wasn’t someone you approached casually. Ten months later, in April 1977, I was completely drawn into the hobby that I never noticed her infidelity and we were married.

At first it was crushing to learn that she had been with over 200 men and I wasn’t even the best. But then I realized how excited I got that she still chose to marry me over all the others, and I got even more exited when she let me watch. Ivana opened up a new part of my life I never thought I could enjoy. It’s a shame it took several years for us to notice it.

This year’s expo looks great, but I still give Ivana a hard time about the fact that she’s still not yet my number one obsession. I tell her she’s got the biggest tits in town, so by all rights it should be a no brainer. Ivana is almost as much a cuck as a I am and she insists she’s at a disadvantage since I spend so much time DMing. She says I need a more public hobby. She doesn’t notice that me creating the league and conventions is making my hobby more public. All she knows is that not having table clothes is starving her sexual appetite and making it tougher for her to cuck me. I’ll say this much: if she realizes how public the hobby has become, I’ll be a drained dry.

* * *

3:45 P.M. The most senior DM for the league the next state over is on the phone. He’s calling at the suggestion of his party leader, Jawn Grendelberger, the epic level Fighter whom I know from Minnesota. The Minnesota League, it turns out, is interested in cooperating in the production of a new megadungeon module that would be named the G Golden Series. I like the idea. We set a date to sit down and talk in two weeks.

4:00 P.M. Don Awl’d Lee, a half-giant barbarian in an up and coming party, stops by with several of his partymates to discuss being part of the miniatures market and break into 32mm goblins.

Milkael Milken, the guy who pushed for 32mm miniatures in Wisconsin, has called me regularly for the last several years to try and get me to move from 28mm to 32mm scale. I have no idea that he’s about to get enmeshed in a lawsuit for using lead to create his miniatures. In any case, I happen to think Milk’s a brilliant guy. However, Allah Greenburg is exceptional himself, and I’m loyal to people who’ve done good work for me.

I hear Lee and his guys out on their deal, but in truth, it doesn’t excite me much. We leave it that I’ll get back to them.

5:00 P.M. Larry Bazonka, former party caller for the Dolphin Fuckers party, calls. He has an idea for keeping the USTL alive. He wants to merge it with the Canadian Tournament League. Larry’s both a bright and a nice guy, and he’s very enthusiastic, but he doesn’t convince me. If the USTL couldn’t get off the ground with players like Hogre the Ogre and Taraji the Raj, how is Canadian tournaments, with a lot of players nobody has heard of, going to help? We’ve got to win in the ruling tribunals first, to break away from the NTL’s monopoly.

5:30 P.M. I call Gerald Brom, the Dark Sun artist, to congratulate him. Back when our league first opened, Brom converted an entire wall into a mural titled, Obsession. It was so popular that within a year, we convinced him to do another on the second wall. Now his art is doing better than ever, and so he’s now taking a third wall.

I have a lot of admiration for Brom, and I tell him so. He’s a very talented artist, but he’s also a very good player and dungeon master — and it’s the combination of those qualities that make him such a wonderful artist.

6:00 P.M. I draft a letter to Peter Keating, architecture designer for Judges Guild modules. A week ago, in a column in Dragon Magazine, Keating boasted of the temple designs he provided for Tom Moldvay’s The Lost City reboot for DCC. He also threw a stunning contrast on this reboot module and how it is the ultimate version of The Lost City. In other words, his module will kill ours.

There’s just one catch: we’re in the middle of our lost city reboot for OSRIC, with new architects and concepts, and nobody — including Keating — has seen our new plan yet. He was fluffing up a module in preparation for something he hadn’t even looked at yet.

“Dear Peter,” I write. “Your recent article is an obvious ‘setup’ in preparation for the positive reviews you expect to get for The Lost City — no matter how well ours does. Just think, if you could muster enough positivity (which I am sure you are able) you might even help convince the NTL to move out of Wisconsin.”

My co-DMs keep telling me I shouldn’t write letters like this to critics. The way I see it, critics get to say what they want to about my work, so why shouldn’t I be able to say what I want to about theirs?

The Forever Codex

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The following is an original interpretation of copyrighted works and well loved modules, mega-dungeons, and settings. Please know that, as with all things, the table is alive and it can take carefully planned intentions and twist them however it wishes. If any of the original lore is wrong, that is by design and not by mistake. I have no doubt the FOREVER CAMPAIGN can become it’s own thing with a few name changes and original drawings. But right now it is not, it is still alive, not a corpse to be ossified and preserved in books.

The Planet — Magae

The world in which the FOREVER CAMPAIGN takes place is known as Magae1 . It is an Earth-like planet with much of the world not yet explored. There is a single moon: Luna, which completes a rotation once every 28 days. The Wine-Dark Sea is the ocean that binds together all continents and islands of northern Magae.

The current dominant society in this section of the world is the Archontean Empire. They have effected every section of the world displayed above though a recent civil war has caused a massive retraction of their forces. Much of the knowledge and terms used throughout the FOREVER CAMPAIGN are through the lens of the Archontean Empire2.

The following geographical history will be truncated as much of the surrounding areas are not relevant to the plot at hand.

Mithruin

In the center of the Wine-Dark Sea sits the island of Mithruin3. It’s name means “of mythic divinity”. This is where the Archonteans began and where they spread from. The only city of note is Archontos, the mega-capital city of the entire empire and their emperor: the Archon. Much of Mithruin is home to estates of Archontean nobility, the great imperial silver mines, and millennia of accumulated magical and mundane treasures. While Mithruin is obviously home home to the Archontean people, it is also home to a sizable population of ‘imperial goblins’, now civilized by centuries of enslavement, as well as a small colony of dwarves.

Also known as Archontea4.

Grain Islands

A chain of islands east of Mithruin, perfectly suited for agriculture. Halflings originated here and were the first outsiders to join the Archontean Empire.

Irthuin

Irthuin5 is a huge continent lying west of Mithruin across the Wine-Dark Sea. It’s name means “not of myth” or “of mundanity”. The eastern coastline had formed numerous provinces of the Archontean Empire in antiquity, before the empire receded during the 95 year War of Sortians and Theosophs, leaving behind the abandoned cities of Narsileon and Arcturos.

The Thorcinga, Khumus, True High Elves, and Mountain Dwarves of Kazildor all reside on Irthuin.

Also known as Occidentos6.

Borealios

The Archontean name for the island chain to the north of the Wine-Dark Sea. Borealios7 is home to the Wiskinga. Although the Archonteans have claimed Borealios as theirs, and the emperor has assigned a general to pacify the region, Archontean authority is limited to a few small towns near Freyr’s Landing.

Borealios is under a constant demonic incursion rushing over the northern mountain ranges. Orcs and their dark masters have destroyed and pillaged hundreds of human settlements and led to the birth of Half-Orcs. These Half-Orcs can pass as human in most cases and have spread beyond Borealios.

Ostralios

The continent lying to the south of Mithruin across the Wine-Dark Sea. Ostralios8 is the home of Gnomes and the site of a great dragon war known as The Saints’ Draconic War. The northern-most three hundred miles or so of Ostralios are thickly-forested tropical jungle, inhabited by monsters, refugees, and fierce local tribes. It is said the ruins of older empires lie buried in the jungles, as the ruins of the Archontean city of Agoreon still lie unconquered. To the south, beyond the belt of mountains that rim this jungle, are said to lie exotic civilizations of great wealth and power; to the Archonteans, however, these stories are mostly legend.

The Culture of Magae — Calendar, Languages, and Deities

Calendar

The dominant calendar used in the eastern portion of Magae is the Ennian calendar, that is, the official Archontean imperial calendar. The founding of the Empire is traditionally dated from the year of the signing of the Compact of Ennius (Ennii pactum). Dates are thus given either as SP, or before the compact (literally sine pacti, ‘without the compact’), or as AEP, or after the compact (literally ab Ennii pacto, ‘from the compact of Ennius’). The calendar is called the Ennian Calendar.

The current year is 1992 AEP9. In official documents, however, it is common to date documents to a specific year of the reign of a given Emperor/Empress; thus, the current year (1992 AEP) might also be presented as “in the first year of Emperor Phocius”. For this reason, lists of emperors with their regnal dates are held in all administrative offices of the empire.

The Thorcinga once had a distinct calendar, but it has been completely overshadowed by the Ennian calendar and is almost entirely forgotten. The Wiskinga never developed a distinct calendar system; in the north, then, years are reckoned by the season and/or by the lifespan of local jarls (although civilized Wiskinga use the Ennian calendar).

The dwarves use an entirely distinct calendrical system, one based on the founding of the great hold of Kazildor, an event that occurred in 1877 SP (by Ennian reckoning); the dwarves date years ‘from the stone, and thus the present is the year 3869 ‘from

the stone’. Elves use a calendar based on years from the creation of Gildorin, the first elf; according to this reckoning, it is the year 8,532. Halflings and imperial goblins follow the Ennian calendar.

Days, Weeks, Months

Years on Magae are comprised of 372 days. The Archonteans, and most other human civilizations, divide this period into twelve months of 30 days based on the lunar cycle.10 Two six-day intercalary periods are added to the year, one in the late summer (harvest festival) and one in the winter (the winter solstice).

Weeks are seven days long. The Archontean names for the days of the week are: Basilsday, Lunday, Totsday, Mitrasday, Tasday, Horasday, and Demmasday (these are named after, respectively, the basileus, the moon, Thoth, Mitra, Ptah, Horus, and Demma).

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Languages

Language is a picture into a culture. It is something organic and wild that only recently in human history have we attempted to tame it and control it. In a world where nations do not exist and empires are crumbling, it makes sense that a Common tongue should not fully exist and a traveling group would need to learn many different languages to be effective during said travel.

Know yee that the exploration of language is not an endevor of the Archonteans who wish to iron out the folds11 that make us different but rather myself, the author of the FOREVER CAMPAIGN. If I go on a tangent here, it is because I fell into a rabbit hole.

Mithric — The Language of Magic and Arcana

Mithric is a dead language. It is still employed as the language of arcane theory and practice, so all magic users trained at one of the imperial collegia have some knowledge of Mithric.

Mithric was the original writing system of the Archontean Empire. In expressing the spoken form of Mithric, the early Archonteans employed a set of angular letters (30) alongside a relatively small corpus of symbols (50); the symbols were mostly those used for public expressions of power and might. In the decline of the empire, spoken Mithric has largely fallen out of vogue, having been replaced by its linguistic daughter, Archontean.

Archontean — The “Common” Tongue or Lingua Franca

While Archontean uses the same Mithric alphabet, four letters and all the symbols have largely fallen away; this means that modern written Archontean uses only twenty-six letters of the old Mithric alphabet. As citizens of the empire, both the halflings of the Grain Islands and the imperial goblins speak Archontean like their masters and use the exact same version of Mithric for writing. The Thorcinga adopted the Mithric alphabet to their own distinct spoken language; in so doing, they retained two of the now-lost original Mithric letters and have added three others (for a total of 31 letters).

Ave Vox — The Native Language of Ostralios

A Mithric adjacent language akin to how Greek (Vox Script) is to Latin (Mithric). It has a rare cognate here or there with Mithric but just as English stole Latin from the Romans, there is not enough in common to gain a pidgin or mutual understanding.

Archae Vox — The Ancient Tongue of a Lost Civilization

Archae Vox12 is more akin to how Greek (Ave Vox) is to Byzantine Greek (Archae Vox). There is some mutual understanding but archaic phrases or references are commonly lost in translation.

Dwarven — The Rigid Endeavor to preserve the core of a language at all costs

The Dwarvish language is a touchstone, a solid rock of comfort, it is supposed to be something immutable and inalienable. However as more and more vaults become increasing isolated by witholding whatever secrets they’ve unearthed, and by unwilling to request outside assistence, the Dwarven Language is very slowly mutating. Sometimes a chronicler will go to spend time at a vault and audit the language but it takes centuries for that kind of resource to become available.

High Elfish, Irthuin Elvish, or Sylvan — Lost Immortality and the New Sin

In the distant past the elves contented themselves with a set of 275 runes (known as Sylvan Runic) that were used primarily for aesthetic and simple descriptive purposes (e.g., in smithing). Their system was adopted and modified by the intelligent Fae. While the elves eventually adopted a true alphabet (see below), they still employ Sylvan Runic for artistic, decorative, and symbolic purposes.

In response to the growth of human culture and writing, the elven lords commissioned a true alphabet to complement Sylvan Runic. This system (known as Sylvan Alphabet), begun 3,500 years ago, was intended to represent spoken Elvish in both aesthetic and functional ways. Sylvan appears as a cursive, semi-continuous script of 31 letters, in which new thoughts are represented by elaborate geometric patterns which themselves carry hints of meaning (that is, each symbol, including symbols denoting pauses, connotes a different intention, emotion, or expectation).

Goburin and Gobblygook — The Taint of Civilization

Goburin is a pidgin between Archontean and Gobblygook. Gobblygook is thought to be unintelligible noises like what animals make.

Draconic — Raw Power and Awe

To those who do not speak it, Draconic is a single language written using Draconic Runes. Scholars who have studied Draconic but never spoke or used it have created an alphabet of sorts to mimic the Draconic Runes (like the Korean language), but this is actually a dead end.

To those who do speak and use Draconic, the actual name of the language is Glav (to speak or converse) and is written using Iokharic. There are several dialects to Glav which vary between species, environment, and culture; meaning that Draconic is more of a Common/pidgin equivalent or basis for other dialects to branch from.

Khumus / Thorcin / Wiskin — World at Large

Khumic developed without any influence from Mithric. It contains 19 letters and 200+ symbols, all of which are typically joined together in an elegant, cursive hand.

The Thorcinga adopted the Mithric alphabet to their own distinct spoken language; in so doing, they retained two of the now-lost original Mithric letters and have added three others (for a total of 31 letters).

Wiskin Runic is a simple runic system modeled on Dwarven Runic. It is able to convey numbers from 1-10 and in groups of 10, 50, and 100. It also includes a set of 200 or so angular runes used to describe concepts, temperatures, time, and nouns.

The Timeline — History Marches on FOREVER

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The Great Pantheon

There were twelve original gods of Archontos, with the earliest written reference to one of them dating to 1218 SP (it refers to Thoth). Certainly, all of the Twelve were acknowledged by c.500 SP, and thus they were the gods whom the Archonteans brought with them in the great period of imperial expansion. During this golden age, the Twelve each boasted broad portfolios of ‘expertise’. This made syncretism not only possible but common during the Archontean expansion: it was easy enough for the Archonteans to see in some foreign god a particular ‘aspect’ of one of the Twelve.

Many aspects were thus ‘discovered. For instance, Sekhmet (F) came to be understood as an aspect of Wadjet, with special influence on fire and warfare. Of course, whether or not such foreign ‘gods’ were distinct entities or merely aspects of the Twelve was, of course, a hotly debated theological point. Some modern theologians blame this flexible and accepting approach for the gradual decline of the Twelve; these critics suggest that by claiming to encompass all things, the Twelve lost their uniqueness and thus their appeal to the broader populace. For whatever reason, worship of the Twelve had become ossified and ritualized by the time of the War of Sortians and Theosophs.

By 1855 AEP, the imperial government decided to officially link itself to a new slate of deities, ones whose divine support promised to revive the empire. The new pantheon centered around ten very powerful deities (“the Ten”) who were served by seventeen (or more) lesser gods. Theological cynics could and did note that many of these ‘new’ gods resembled the most popular of the ‘aspects’ of the old pantheon, but the official position is that the Ten are distinct from the Twelve.13

For the past 400 years, the emperor has also been the subject of a cult; the theology of this is a bit fuzzy, and ‘worship’ of the emperor is primarily understood as a measure of loyalty more than anything else.

The Ostralian Pantheon

Ostralios’s critical religious event is known as The Saints’ Draconic War, which occurred over 2,000 years ago. While many different versions of the events are told, the following are the core facts:

• ˆ Falazure’s expansion and cruelty caused mortals to begin rebelling.

• ˆ Tiamat took this as a right to make examples.

• ˆ Bahamut began conscription to oppose Tiamat.

• ˆ Four heroes approached Aasterinian outside Io’s Temple to entreat Io but was denied.

• ˆ Simeon played a battle of wits with Aasterinian while the others ransacked the temple.

• ˆ Taking an artifact from Io’s Temple, Cuthbert approached Astilabor for the right to create a horde.

• ˆ Astilabor said if Cuthbert could beat her in battle, it would be considered.

• ˆ Using the artifact from the temple, Cuthbert bested Astilabor who then denied him.

• ˆ Cuthbert slays Astilabor and claims her horde as his own.

• ˆ Lendys recognizes Cuthbert and agrees Falazure, Tiamat, and Bahamut have gone too far.

• ˆ The heroes with Lendys route both Tiamat and Bahamut.

• ˆ Both Tiamat and Bahamut entreat Chronepsis for help and all three disappear.

• ˆ Garyx begins to raze the lower half of Ostralios (rendering it into a desert).

• ˆ Hlal intercepts Garyx and both perish fighting.

• ˆ The heroes lay a trap for the fleeing Falazure and end him.

• ˆ Tamara negotiates peace and withdrawal of dragonkind from Ostralios.

St Cuthbert

A man who became a paladin after a close friend was taken as a slave by Falazure.

St Pontoise

A woman who worked as a battlefield nurse and was found by Cuthbert.

St Simeon

A bard who heard Cuthbert and Pontoise were creating a counter army and knew of an artifact in Io’s Temple.

St Ulrich

One of Bahamut’s military generals who was the sole survivor of a skirmish. Joined Cuthbert immediately upon hearing of his uprising.

The Lost Saint

No one knows who the Lost Saint is. It could be a hero who died fighting Falazure, a fallen soldier during the fight, or an innocent killed in the beginning.

Aasterinian

Messenger for Io and trickster deity. Apparently easy to distract. Often mocks or taunts very lawful creatures into folly.

Astilabor

Astilabor represents the desire in all dragons to acquire wealth and power. However, she dislikes greed. She cannot abide thievery unless such an act is done in the name of building one’s hoard.

Bahamut

Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon, is the King of the Good Dragons, and a child of Io. He is also referred to as the God of Dragons or the Lord of the North Wind. Bahamut is depicted as a massive dragon with platinum scales and blue eyes.

Chronepsis

The draconic god of fate, death, and judgement. Has infinite hourglasses counting down the life of all dragons, mortals, and deities. Chronepsis knows the future and fate of all from creation to the end of time. He is silent, unconcerned, dispassionate, and a watcher. No one directly worships Chronepsis but pay respect to him.

Falazure

The terrifying Night Dragon who enslaves mortals to becoming mindless juju zombies. Falazure is wretched, crawling thing who is terrifyingly beautiful with skeletal wings. Falazure is not able to fly.

Garyx

Cleansers of worlds, represents sheer power and destructive force of dragonkind. Razed half of Ostralios.

Hlal

Hlal is a sleek, copper colored dragon with a ready grin and a happy glint in her eye. Of the dragon gods, she is the most friendly to non-dragons. Hlal enjoys sharing stories and songs with those who appreciate such things, regardless of the listener’s race or background. She has little use for tyrants, and even less patience for cruelty or bullying. She teaches that one must be free of restraint, whether real or psychological, in order to freely express one’s opinions.

Io

Io is the chief deity worshipped by dragons, god of dragonkind, balance, and peace. Io is unfathomably large; it is said the largest dragon who ever lived is smaller than a single one of his scales, which are blue, gold, brass, or red, and edged with silver and dark purple. He can, and does, appear as any age or breed of dragon, however. Io is revered by dragons as the creator of the multiverse and of their race. He is also worshiped by some half-dragons, kobolds, lizardfolk, troglodytes, and even some humans.

Io never engaged with mortals directly on Ostralios but worship was forced by both Bahamut and Tiamat.

Lendys

Lendys is the dragon god of balance and justice. Unlike Chronepsis, who judges dragons after they die, Lendys metes out justice during a dragon’s life.

Tamara

Tamara is the dragon goddess of life, light, and mercy. Tamara is the kindest and most benevolent of the draconic deities. Some mistake this quality for weakness, but such beings never make this mistake twice.

Tiamat

An avaricious, supremely vain, and self-proclaimed creator of all evil dragonkind. She enjoys destroying treasure, torture, and one-sided combat (murder). She is a five-headed dragon with each one being a different color: red, white, green, blue, and black.

Bahamut and Tiamat

One myth reveals an unusual reason for the enmity between Bahamut and Tiamat14. Long, long ago, Io created his first children, intent on perfecting all aspects of dragons. His first child was a striking creation, full of all the perfect, physical characteristics of dragonkind. Io named it Vorel, which means “beautiful” in Draconic. As it happened, Vorel had very limited intellect and discernment. Vorel was sweet-natured, bright-eyed, and eager to please, much as a friendly dog is with its master. Though it was flawed, Io still loved this little dragon.

Io found that one form was too limited to contain everything he wanted to include. So he made two—one male and one female, one good and one evil. Embodied in them were the passions and propensities of all dragons.

These offspring were Bahamut and Tiamat. Io intended for the two wyrmlings to grow up together, learn from each other, and eventually mate, bringing together all the attributes of dragonkind. The children of Tiamat and Bahamut would be wonderful, perfect dragons.

Instead of filial love and affection, immediate rivalry sprang up between the two. Their natures were too much at odds to allow them to feel affection or even respect for one another. Both of them sought Io’s approbation and competed for his favor.

Bahamut strove to gain his father’s good regard through exemplary behavior, trying to be the noblest creature he could be. Tiamat, on the other hand, used cunning and caprice. After several schemes failed to raise her above her brother in their father’s affections, Tiamat designed a dramatic plot.

The wyrmling goddess endeavored to sow jealousy and enmity between Bahamut and Vorel. She had Vorel destroy some of Bahamut’s favorite magic devices. Although Bahamut merely reacted with regret at the loss of his treasures, Tiamat told their father that her brother had been enraged by the destruction. Then she waited until a time when all others in the household slept the deep sleep of dragonkind. She slew Vorel, Io’s first creation, and spattered some of her victim’s blood on Bahamut.

Tiamat knew that Io loved Vorel and anticipated that Bahamut would be slain or at least exiled for his apparent murder of the firstborn—but she erred. She supposed that Io would react as she would to such an incident. The Creator of Dragonkind, however, did not respond with the shortsighted rage and impetuousness Tiamat expected. Instead, his love for his children led him to investigate and ascertain the truth. Grievously disappointed, he banished Tiamat from his presence. He still cared for and loved his daughter but could not continue to foster her in his household.

With this rejection, Tiamat’s love for her father turned to hate. She then decided to bring forth creatures of her own and became the Creator of Evil Dragonkind. Bahamut felt driven to oppose his sister’s evil and became the King of the Good Dragons.

In this way, Io lost three children—one to death, one to evil, and one to good. Some say that he still hopes to create a perfect race of dragons through the offspring of Bahamut and Tiamat. The Great Eternal Wheel turns, and Io is patient.

The Races — Finally Some Good Fucking Food

The following is only the people the party have met and interacted with. There are lots more but this is getting too long for Substack.

Humans — The Fleas

Humans are one of the youngest races on Magae. While the elder races hid away in forests and mountains, remaining elusive and exclusionary, humans spread. Their ingenuity and drive were novel to the world and, despite their relatively short-lived lives, a concept of legacy and heritage enabled generations to build villages, towns, and cities. Their fecundity and adaptability also allowed humans to fill many niche roles no matter what environment they spread to. This includes when exposed to the elder races, with many humans finding ways to enable trade and diplomacy.

The greatest challenge to humans and what they construct is their relative instability due to their short lives and tendency to swing for extremes, whether that extreme is complete dedication to a profession or craft, or an ideology. This leads to human lands being in a constant state of flux, new ideas arising and disappearing within centuries, and racial relations drifting between bigotry and acceptance. The elder races often find themselves outpaced by the constantly fluctuating human civilization but once an elder race discovers or perfects something, it becomes doctrine for human society.

Humans often find themselves becoming adventurers for any number of reasons. It can be wanderlust, ambition, or simple happenstance.

Archonteans

Properly the term refers to the humans from the great city of Archontos, capital of the empire and dominant center on the island of Mithruin, but it has come to refer to any citizen of the empire, regardless of where he/she resides.

Archonteans are typically medium height (5’4” to 5’7”), with black or dark brown hair and slightly olive-colored skin. They are naturally arrogant when dealing with ‘barbarians’, even while deferring to the myriad social hierarchies that govern Archontean society. Archontean society is highly ordered, with a strong belief in the ‘city’ as the natural building block of civilization.

While Archonteans do farm, the elites typically run their plantations from the nearest ‘civilized’ location. As a result of their urban focus, the Archonteans have been great builders, of towns and cities, bridges, aqueducts, roads, and fortifications.

Ostralians

These peoples claim a heritage over 3,000 years old and started out as dragon worshipers until the Draconic Wars 2,000 years ago. At that time, five heroes slew the more evil draconic rulers. The remaining dragons swiftly withdraw, leaving the cultures they helped stabilize and govern on their own. This led to power vacuums forming and civil war. Then the Archonteans landed and easily subdued the warring native populace.

The Archontean Empire first set foot on Ostralios in 357 AEP and established Agoreon. However, due to the War of the Sortians and Theosophs in 1775 AEP, in the Archontean Empire abandoned their Ostalios colony of Agoreon after 1400 years. This all occurred outside living memory but those that were left behind and the natives of Ostralios live on. Some still worship the dragons while others worship the heroes that vanquished them. Others still worship the gods brought over by the Archontean Empire.

Zaharans

The road to power requires sacrifice. For some, it was blind faith in a higher power. For the Zaharans15, it was crafting dark pacts with careless powers beyond the blackness of space. Gods, in a sense, yes. But these powers have no interest in man as a race or society. These powers are strictly interested in the use of mens’ souls for their own practice before returning the remains to the wheel. Zaharans used to span all of Magae until their hubris led to their terrible downfall over 2,000 years ago. Whatever great cataclysm that befell them is lost to pre-history as most of their knowledge and society are nothing but ruins or dust.

However that does not mean there are no Zaharan anymore. While their lineage may not be as evident to the eye, the dark pacts they made have polluted the stuff that made their soul, leading to odd children being born. These children still carry some of that forbidden lore within them, find themselves drawn to places of unknown power, hear the whispers of things not there and yet so very real. Those who manage to suppress (or at least hide) their fey urges to kill or consume sapient flesh grow into warped and unstable humans capable of some of the most horrid abominations without second thought.

Some say that actual Zaharans still exist, that their bloodline is strong in the forgotten corners of the world; that they hide, biding their time until they can rebuild their empires anew. Some do not dare utter the word Zaharan for fear one of their demons will come and rip the very words from their throat. Only in hushed or careless tones does one even mention this cursed bloodline’s name.

While their nature of individuals whom society has rejected leads to a majority of Zaharans to be Chaotic, a scant few turn away that darkness and strive to better the world they were born into. Those who find they cannot suffer to live on either path choose self-exile, to not be tempted by the darkness they carry nor feel the shame it brings.

While blasphemous to even talk about, it is estimated that only about 1 in 100 million born carry the taint of Zahar. Those who survive to adulthood and produce children have a 25% chance of producing a Zaharan child. And if two Zaharans have a child, it is 100% chance the child will be of Zahar.

As the bloodline begins to recongeal, certain traits become more noticeable. Tall statures with slender builds, long of limb and slim of fingers, oval- or diamond-shaped faces with near-pointed slanted ears, prominent cheekbones with narrow jaws and full lips. Noses are straight, long, and rooted high near the brow with large, almond-shaped eyes colored between black, amber, or hazel. Hair is almost always black or bluish black in color with thin, dark eyebrows.

Zaharians speak Archae Vox.

Dwarves

Dwarves appear cold, distant, and avaricious to humans. By nature, they are clannish, wary of outsiders, and extremely vengeful, to the extent that they frequently seem xenophobic. Sarcastic jokes about ‘the generosity of dwarves’ are common in Archontos. Dwarves are reputed to be masters of stonecarving, metalworking and enchantment; still, as a rule they refuse to offer their goods for sale, so few are able to evaluate these claims. In keeping with their flinty, avaricious natures, dwarven nobles are often teetotalers, as they fear that the effects of alcohol may render them open to being tricked or cheated. They prefer dour black clothes, sometimes embroidered with silver or gold thread. A majority of dwarves, especially warrior clans, favor beards, but most dwarven craftsmen do not due to the danger it presents. The dwarves are locked in a constant shadow war with the doppelgangers, who they believe are infiltrating and replacing those in their society for millennium.

Dwarven society is two-tiered. The upper tier is composed of the established clans, most named after a type of rock or similar substance (e.g. Malachite); members of these clans are the elites, and enjoy special privileges within dwarven holds. It is said that members of a clan will go to any end to rescue a clansman, or at least to recover his/her body and life-stone. The lower tier of dwarven society is composed of the clan-less. Some of the clanless were born that way, others were exiled from their clans for misdeeds, while still others are survivors of clans that imploded or were eliminated in factional politics.

The clanless do much of the mining and shaping, usually under the supervision of a dwarf from an established clan. Those who do not mine, travel and establish outposts, trade routes, and deal with the ‘lesser races’. In truth, the further one goes from the mountain homes, the lower they are in dwarven society. Dwarven names are usually derived from types of rock or stone, and/or stone-related crafting, mining or related skills. Given names vary widely, but clan names (if a dwarf has a clan) are relatively few in number, and are of great antiquity.

When dwarves die, they are said to ‘take to the stone’; whether this is literal or figurative is an open question among human sages, for the dwarves are particularly tight-lipped about such intensely intimate practices.

Inside Dwarven Culture

When a dwarf exclaims an oath, it is no light matter. Dwarven oaths spoken are as concrete as if they written into the crust of the earth itself. If the dwarf who made the oath perishes, then it falls onto their children to carry the burden, and so it continues. Therefore, a dwarf without children would be speaking in vain if they proclaim an oath with other dwarven witnesses.

When a tool fails a dwarf and leads to a disaster, a major investigation is conducted to determine who was at fault: the tool’s maker, the tool user, or the item upon which the tool was employed. If it is found the tool’s crafter is at fault, they must either exile themselves from the vaults or swear an oath to rectify the disaster (which may include replacing a dead dwarf in labor). If it is found the tool user was at fault, a minor funeral is held as no dwarf worth remembering would perish due to reckless use in the line of duty. Finally, if the item is at fault, a new methodology to prevent further mishaps must be created. The use of the word “item” is loose enough to encompass creatures, locations, and even rituals.

Dwarves cannot use arcane magic, being creatures of the earth itself. Only the infertile order of Furnacewives can channel the Maker’s Fire of creation into destruction.

Dwarves are slowly going extinct and the war between Doppelgangers16 and other races vying for underground territory is only exacerbating this. A dwarven woman can only produce four offspring in her life and only 1/3rd are female. Any attempts to increase this pace leads to stillborn children (and there is still a 10% chance of miscarrying after the first birth when observing this slower pace).

Mountain Dwarves

Mountain Dwarves are all clanned. Some specialize in warfare, some in crafting, some in bureaucracy, others in trade; but all carry a life-stone which proves they are of a clan and not a doppelganger in disguise. There are clan-less dwarves in the mountains as well and they do live with elevated privileges than those sent beyond the mountains.

Hill Dwarves

Hill Dwarves are a step removed from the rest of dwarven society. They are keepers of forts, outposts, trade routes, or strategic positions. Often overseen by a clan dwarf, they live militant and rigid lives.

Plains Dwarves

These dwarves are nomads, outcasts, and exiles. A few become tinkerers or merchants but none wish to encounter a clan dwarf. These dwarves are some of the most common seen outside of the mountain homes and have built a majority of the stereotypes other races have crafted. At best, they are victims of a merciless hierarchy; but at worst, they are the dregs of dwarven society, drunks, gamblers, and hired blades.

City Dwarves

There are only two types of city dwarf: a disfavored clan dwarf on diplomatic duty and an outcast so far from home, they have little hope to ever recover their dwarven pride. They have forsaken their heritage for that of another race’s comforts.

Half-Dwarves

A half-dwarf is also known as a Mül. They have no distinguishing features that betray their half-blood heritage except for the lack of culture so blatant on their demeanor. A Mül from a female dwarf looks just like a dwarf and often adopts the visage of a city dwarf to avoid the horrific persecution they would suffer if their parentage was ever found out. A Mül from a female human looks human. All Müls are technically the same race as their birth mother.

Elves

Elves were originally part of an immortal fae society outside of the realm of Magae. However, for one reason or another, they found themselves upon Magae and mortal. Over the last 8,000 years, their culture has fractured with the elves who accepted their mortality being known as High Elves; the elves who replaced their fae worship with nature (the Sylvan) being known as Wood Elves; and the elves who conspire to return to their original realm of the fae being known as the True High Elves.

Elven society is broadly collective, with younger elves associating themselves with seniors who have established reputations for great deeds, excellent craftsmanship, or particular wisdom. Elves prize core balance in all things. Those elves who are able to blend their emotions, magical sensibilities, knowledge, and connections with the Sylvan or Fae are held as paragons. Elves are curious and inquisitive, with most elves pursuing a highly specific intellectual interest, as well as a specific interest in magic of some sort, whether as a practitioner, theorist, or amateur. Elves are particularly attracted by wisdom, by knowledge, by beauty, and by magical lore.

Elves have two names, one given name and one that describes one of their parents. Only the most venerable and powerful of elves dispense with the parental name.

High Elves

High elves are the most abundant of the elves. After losing their immortality, these elves accepted Magae as their home and, while still wary of humans, often find themselves intermingling with them. The assassination of Gillethorn Ellagelsson in 1833 AEP has led to a majority of proper elven society withdrawing away from Archonteans though they still deal with other humans.

True High Elves

True High Elves are rare in the human-dominated areas of Magae. The largest and best-known enclave of true high elves is the realm of Lady Ellagel and Lord Gallador, located deep within the central forests of Irthuin, plotting for a way to regain their lost immortality. Those elves that travel in human society are either high elves or wood elves. True high elves only do so for highly specific, temporary reasons (searching for a specific object or piece of knowledge); on occasion, they reside as advisors in the courts of human lords. Most humans have never seen a true high elf.

Wood Elves

Turning their back upon the fae, the wood elves intend to use the Sylvan to regain their immortality. Choosing the preservation of nature and rejecting the opulence and perceived vanity of their previous elven culture, wood elves strive to integrate with nature. These are the most common types in Ostralios.

Half-Elves

There are always elves who break from the norm and adventure into the unknown, these elves inevitably come into contact with humans and, so distant or personally removed from their origins, fall in love. The spawn of an elf and a human is known as a half-elf. Half-elves are very rare outside of established elf settlements near or within human civilization. Note that there are no elven settlements within Archontean cities since 1833 AEP.

Gnomes

Natives of Ostralios and with limited Archontean contact outside of the invasion leading to the construction of Agoreon, Gnomes frequently work alongside the humans of Ostralios and share the same language. Gnomes are inquisitive. They love to learn by personal experience. At times they’re even reckless. Their curiosity makes them skilled tinkerers, as they are always trying new ways to build things. Gnomes are inveterate explorers, tricksters, and inventors. They have a knack for both illusion and alchemy.

Gnomes tend to live in hilly or wooded lands, almost always in burrows of some sort. Gnome communities are relatively small with burrows typically clustered together within nature. Gnomes who wish for more than a safe home build aboveground and usually near another race’s settlement. These gnomes offer gem cutting, alchemy, or tutoring as services. Gnomes generally wear leather or earth tones, though they decorate their clothes with intricate stitching or fine jewelry.

Halflings

Halflings are uncommon, and largely found in segregated agricultural communities. Most halflings known to the Empire live on the Grain Islands to the east of Archontea, where their agricultural prowess provides important food supplies to Archontos itself.

These halfling communities are largely self-regulating, although they are under the loose supervision of the imperial strategos and his legion. Halflings were thought to live in secluded communities or ‘shires’, however no evidence has been found. Local halfling lore does not fully account for their existence on the Grain Islands, being content to distantly recall the Great Voyage on the Big Ships.

Although most halflings are content with their rural lives, a few bold sorts attach themselves to the staff of the Strategos and end up traveling ‘across the water’ to Archontos. These halflings are seen as exotic and rustic, and they tend to suffer some general paternalistic patronizing from Imperial citizens. Imperial officials treat halflings in a genial but patronizing way, and will assume them to be political naifs. Ordinary citizens of the Empire treat halflings as great curiosities, and will often approach them, pinch them, and ask them simplistic questions.

Half-Orcs

Half-orcs are the offspring of humans and orcs, the latter being demonic shock troops pouring over the Borealios mountains. While orcs remain engaged in a protracted and culturally ingrained conflict against human settlements, half-orcs do not inherently share this aggression or the same ideology of orcs themselves. Although half-orcs do have a hint of their orcish heritage, they appear nearly indistinguishable from humans. Some may have more stooped features or pronounced teeth, a grayish tone to the skin, or strange colored irises.

Half-orcs typically grow up in human settlements if they are not killed and were initially distrusted due to their lineage and the ongoing state of war. However, centuries of conflict have shown half-orcs growing up in human settlements often take up arms against the demons. Despite their demonic orc blood, half-orcs demonstrate a full range of moral behavior and cultural adaptability. Their physical resilience and adaptability make them well-suited for a variety of roles, including honorable service among human clans.

Imperial Goblins

The humans of Archontos enslaved the goblins of Mithruin in antiquity and put them to work as miners and as laborers on the vast imperial latifundia of Mithruin. Millennia of servitude — but also of exposure to the ‘civilizing’ forces of the Archontean empire - have created a distinct racial subgroup. Even if they resemble ‘wild goblins’ (monsters) physically, these ‘imperial goblins are culturally distinct from their monstrous kin and thus look at wild goblins with disdain.

Imperial goblins are short, long-armed, and bandy legged, with yellowish skin and, frequently, yellow eyes. They possess black hair and are comfortable wearing minimal clothing, but possess their own standards for fine dress (these include tall conical caps, colorful vests, and jodhpurs tucked into beautiful leather boots). They reach a maximum of 4’ 8” in height. Goblins are known for their wiry strength and tough constitutions.

Many imperial goblins have been freed from slavery over the years, leading to a large number of imperial freedgoblin citizens. Although these freedgoblins are noted as highly effective merchants, estate managers, and bureaucrats, they are typically treated as second-class citizens by ordinary Archonteans and are the object of casual racism on the part of the Archonteans.

Tieflings

Extraordinarily rare, tieflings are considered twisted, devious, and untrustworthy. Common folk believe tieflings follow an inherent tendency to commit evil due to their strange appearance. Despite this persecution, tieflings have all the same moral tendencies as their human parents. However, tieflings still feel out of place or unnatural, and often must contend with a feeling of otherworldly “wrongness”. In truth, tieflings are the result of a pregnancy carried near an extremely potent source of magic.

Shunned and maligned by the world at large, tieflings maintain a low profile and make their livings as spies, thieves, assassins, or smugglers. Few find the “legitimate” world very appealing or hospitable, and instead are forced into the seedier parts of society.

Tieflings appear human at a glance, although they all possess at least one unnatural feature that reveals their warped heritage. At the least, tieflings have a disturbing demeanor or odd skin color, but most also possess small horns, strange colored eyes, or needle-sharp teeth. In extreme cases, a tiefling may have a barbed tail or cloven feet. No two tieflings have the same appearance.

Tieflings are treated as monsters and universally reviled by members of almost every other race, good or evil. Most are persecuted and cast out from society when discovered. In such cases, the outcast takes to the wild, dons a disguise, or, more commonly, works themself into a position of power and authority so that they can make their own rules. Tieflings find easier acceptance among monstrous races such as orcs, goblins, and gnolls, but only if they prove their own strength and power. As a result of this relentless rejection, tieflings view other races as cruel monsters and reciprocate the cycle of violence.

11

Most people are surprised by the way I DM. I play it very loose. I don’t carry prep material. I try not to pre-plan too many encounters. I leave the game open. You can’t be imaginative or adventurous if you’ve got too much structure. I prefer to come to game each time and just see what develops.

There is no typical session in my campaign. I start most sessions very early, around six, and spend the first hour or so of each session reading the players’ downtime activities. I usually get to playing by nine, and I get on my players’ asses. There’s rarely a day with fewer than fifty disputes, and often it runs to over a hundred. In between, I run at least a dozen encounters. The majority occur on the spur of the moment, and few of them last longer than fifteen minutes. I rarely stop for lunch. I end session by six-thirty, but I frequently make discord calls from home until midnight, and all weekend long.

It never stops, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That’s where the fun is. And if it can’t be fun, what’s the point?

MONDAY

9:00 A.M. My first dispute is with Allah (“Ace”) Greenburg, on the miniature economy of Pathfinder 2E, a major TTRPG ruleset. Allah is the Party Face of the Berenstain Bears, he’s been my group’s Party Face for the past five years, and he’s the best there is. Two weeks ago, we began pooling cash for 28mm goblin miniatures. They were selling for $5. As of this morning, Allah tells me, I own just over one hundred miniatures, or slightly more than 4 percent of Wisconsin’s stock. The miniatures are selling on Craigslist for $6.50 each, mostly, Allah says, because word is out on the street that I’ve been a big buyer, and there’s speculation I am planning on buying all 28mm goblins.

The truth is I’m keeping my options open. I may ultimately go for control of 28mm goblin miniatures, which I think is somewhat undervalued. At the current price, I could get majority for less than selling my Honda Civic. All the goblins in Wisconsin could be worth nearly that much — and the goblins come in another 7 variations besides.

A second option, if the price goes high enough, is to sell all my minis and take a very nice profit. If I did that today, I’d already be up about $7 a goblin. The third possibility is that the game stores may eventually offer to buy back my goblins, at a premium, simply to get rid of me. If the premium is big enough, I’ll sell.

In any case, I enjoy seeing the length to which bad collectors go to preserve what they call “must have” miniatures — which really just means their DM sessions.

9:30 A.M. Abra Kablamo texts me, looking for advice. Abra is a successful DM but he wants to break into podcasting. Unfortunately for Abra, his name is a Pokemon and he’ll get sued into the center of the earth by Nintendo.

This fall, Abra tried to launch a livestream on Twitch to compete with Mark Masser’s hand-crafted side-campaign, Assmold Gold. Masser led a mass reporting campaign to get Abra banned on technical grounds for wearing fishnets, and sure enough, halfway into the stream, Twitch banned Abra. Abra knows I’m friendly with Masser, and he wants my advice now on whether he should brown nose to get in on Assmold Gold or switch sides and endorse Jesus Charlie’s livestream campaign. I tell him it’s no-contest question — stick with the famous one and a good DM at that.

We set a session for Thursday.

10:00 A.M. I call Dom Inus to thank him. Inus has one of the most successful Bards in my campaign, and he’s been helping to save Miss Hall’s AD&D game.

I’m amazed at how this has snowballed into such a media event. It began last week when I saw a blog by Thom Blokaw about this adorable little lady from Georgia, Miss Hall, who was trying to save her campaign from being abandoned. Her co-DM TPK’d the party a few weeks earlier, hoping a fresh start would save the campaign, which had been running for in-game generations. But the character deaths pissed players off. It was a very sad situation, and I was moved. Here were characters who’d worked very hard and honestly all their lives, only to see it all crumble before them. To me, it just seemed wrong.

Through Reddit I was put in touch with a wonderful guy from Georgia named Frankly Argonsbright, who’d become very involved in trying to help Miss Hall. Frankly directed me to the Party Caller who was threatening to walk out on Miss Hall’s campaign. The next morning, I called and got some neckbeard on the line. I explained that I was a DM from Wisconsin, and that I was interested in mediating between them to help Miss Hall. He told me he was sorry, but that it was too late. The whole party was going to get up and start a 5E game, he said, and “nothing or no one is going to stop it.”

That really got me going. I said to the guy: “You listen to me. If you do walkout, I’ll personally run a dungeon for you so hard, you’ll wished your characters were railed to death by Straud and plead to never leave Barovia.” All of the sudden the neckbeard sounded very nervous and said he’d get right back to me.

Sometimes it pays to be a little wild. An hour later I got a call back from the neckbeard, and he said, “Don’t worry, we’re going to work it out, Mr. G.” Miss Hall and Frankly Argonsbright told the media, and the next thing I knew, it was on the front page of Reddit.

By the end of the week, we’d managed to raise four of the characters. Inus alone raised two of the characters by appealing to the campaign’s kings and lords. As a Christmas present to Miss Hall and her family, we’ve scheduled a grand session for Christmas Eve in the outskirts of the Tomb of Horror. By then, I’m confident, we’ll have raised all the PCs. I’ve promised Miss Hall that if we haven’t, I’ll make up some reason for the rest to come back.

I tell Inus he’s the greatest, and I invite him to be my guest one day next week at the regional tournament at G-Con. I have a personal table I used myself almost every day. Now I’m so busy I mostly just send my friends.

11:15 A.M. Harry Thrasher, the Commissar of the United States Tournament League, calls. Last month, the jury in the 3/4 cover AC bonus suit we brought against the National Tournament League ruled that the NTL was incorrect to only award a +2 bonus to AC, but awarded us only a token healing of one hit point. I’ve already let the better players on my team, the Jarl Gin Dwarves, sign with the NTL. But the ruling was ridiculous.

We argued about the approach we should take. I want to be more aggressive. “What worries me,” I say to Harry, “is that no one is pushing hard enough on an appeal.”

12:00 noon Gerry Mander, DM of the Ciradoc Party, who run the biggest bardic college in Clerkberg, calls to recommend a woman for a job as a party chronicler. He tells me the woman specifically wants to work for the G Man, and I say she’s crazy but I’ll be happy to see her.

We talk a little about the bardic college business, and I tell Gerry I’m about to take my players through By Bardic Plight, one of his modules, for a second time. He asks if I’m buying the supplements through his storefront. I tell him that I don’t like to do that sort of thing. “Don’t be silly,” he says. “We have a woman here whose job is to hand out supplements to our friends. Here’s her number. Don’t hesitate to call.”

It’s a nice gesture from a very nice guy.

1:15 P.M. Michael Hunt stops to discuss the Wahl Arena project. Hunt was map designer under Ed Greenwood. At the time we fought a lot, and even though I ended up beating him in a magical duel, I always thought he was bright. I don’t hold it against people that they have opposed me. I’m just looking for the best players, wherever I can find them.

Mike has been helping to coordinate the placement of the Wahl Arena in Cormyr, a city ill explored in central Faerûn. In June I offered to draw the thing myself. Now we’re ahead of schedule, and Mike tells me that he’s set up a playtest demo for Thursday to celebrate the last important step in map module creation: sending it to the printer.

It doesn’t sound like much of a playtest to me, and I ask him if anyone is likely to show up. He says at least a dozen play groups have RSVPd yes. So much for my playtest judgement.

2:00 P.M. I get deposed by a party in the Tomb of Horror. Halfway into the adventure we had a near TPK due to total incompetence, and I’m just dealing max damage. I hate these kinds of disagreements, but the fact is that if you’re right, you’ve got to take a stand, or people will walk all over you. In any case, there’s no way I could avoid being deposed, even if I never tried to TPK the party myself. Nowadays, if your name is the G Man, everyone in the world seems to want to sue you.

3:00 P.M. I ask Norma Letty, my co-DM and the person who keeps my campaign organized, to bring me lunch: a can of tomato juice. I rarely go out, because mostly, it’s a waste of time.

3:15 P.M. I put in a call to Sir Charred Goldstained; he’s out, and I leave a message. He’s a successful Fighter/Thief, but not one of my favorites.

I’m pretty sure Charred Goldstained is from the Black Box, but he’s a very pompous guy and has a tendency to act like royalty, so I call him Sir Charred. Over the weekend, I heard that Anelle Angus had invited Sir Charred to deal interference on an orc encounter where Anelle and I intend to co-DM. Anelle had no way of knowing about my past experience with Sir Charred. A while back, I was in the middle of a session with a party who lacked thief skills and staying power, and I recommended Sir Charred. The next thing I knew, Sir Charred was talking shit about my DMing. I couldn’t believe it!

This encounter was to dethrone an orc shaman who enchanted the local hill giants. I had built a dungeon near here — a spectacular place called Jotenheim in the mountains — and one day last winter, when I was running the session for a weekend, the party went out to explore the hex. On the way, a pair of bulging hill giants bore down upon them. I made a couple of critical rolls. It turned out the party had just stumbled upon a Hill Giant Lair! The next thing I knew I was mapping out an entire module titled G1.

A mutual friend, Richard Fuqazy, first mentioned that Anelle and I should run a game together. I think Anelle is an extraordinary DM who has done wonders in turning the Good Boy Adventuring Party around, and I also like him a great deal personally. So one thing led to another and we began talking about the dungeon. It’s a substantial undertaking, and I’m not certain Anelle is absolutely sure yet that he wants to go forward. If that’s the case, it occurs to me, he’s done the perfect thing by inviting a player I don’t like. And that’s precisely what I intend to tell Sir Charred when he calls me back.

3:30 P.M. I call my sister, Miss G, to discuss a recent decision in a league ruling we are contesting in Atlantic City. Miss G is a master rules lawyer in AD&D, and her husband, John, is a talented Cleric I have used on many occasions.

“Can you believe they ruled against us?” I ask her. Miss G is very smart, she obviously knows a lot more about the rules than I do, and she’s as surprised as I am. I tell her that I’ve arranged to have all the campaign notes from the rule use in question sent to John immediately, because I want him to handle the appeal.

4:00 P.M. I go to the local game store to look for miniature trees and bushes for the outside of the Tomb of Horrors. The spectacularly deadly dungeon has become one of the leading attractions to my campaign. More than a 100 characters a week perish in it and adventure near it, and it’s now a symbol of the G Man Campaign. That’s why I still get involved in details like what trees and shrubs we should use.

I don’t like most of what I’m shown. Finally, I see a huge and magnificent gaping mouth for the entrance of the tomb, and decide we should use just that. Sometimes — not often, but sometimes — less is more.

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4:30 P.M. Nick-Whole-Ass, a new DM who just got his league license running Against the Cult of the Reptile God, calls to say he’s about to leave for California to attend a Con I was considering. He tells me it’s got a twenty-four-hour layover, and I tell him I’m very glad he’s going instead of me.

The Con, however, may be worth the trip. The organizer is in the midst of choosing a DM to organize and run what they envision as the world’s largest Live Action Role Play. We’re a front-runner for the job, and Nick is going over to meet with key event organizers. He tells me he’ll call from California as soon as he has any news.

5:15 P.M. I call Henry Skeggsburg, the owner of Model Trains and Toys (the largest conventional hobby store chain in Wisconsin) who is looking for the next location for the chain. We’ve been courting MTT for more than a year, trying to get them to move into the shopping center that houses our league’s building — seventy-eight acres along Geneva Lake that I’ve been shilling for over a year and on which I’ve announced plans to get the city to build the world’s largest convention center.

I know Henry has just been shown our latest league membership numbers, and I’m following up. I mention that Arby’s is dying to become the anchor store in the shopping center, which will give it real prestige. I also tell him the city seems very excited about this booming industry. Then I say we expect to get our preliminary tournament playoffs concluded in the next several months.

Skeggsburg seems enthusiastic. Before I get off, I also put in a plug for MTT locating its offices near to the world’s largest convention center. “Think about it,” I say. “It’s the ultimate symbol.”

5:45 P.M. My nine-year-old son, G Jr., calls to ask when I’ll be home. I always take calls from my kids, no matter what I’m doing. I have two others — Ginny, six, and Gaggy, three — and as they get older, being a father gets easier. I adore them all, but I’ve never been great at playing board or card games. Now, though, G Jr. is beginning to get interested in miniatures and dice and role-playing, and that’s great.

I tell G Jr. I’ll be home as soon as I can, but he insists on a time. Perhaps he’s got my genes: the kid won’t take no for an answer.

6:30 P.M. After several more encounter tables, I leave the league office and take the highway up to my house in the residential part of Lake Geneva. Of course, I have a tendency to make a few more tables when I get home.

Timeline

• OSE - Aug 2024 to Dec 2024 — ARC I

• Hyperborea - Dec 2024 — ARC I

• Heroes & Hexes - Dec 2024 to Oct 2025 — ARC I

• D&D 3.5 - Oct 2025 to Dec 2025 — ARC I.V1

• ACKS II - Dec 2025 to Now — ARC II

August 22nd, 2024 - The FOREVER CAMPAIGN is Formed

The idea came suddenly in the night. Why are we making one-off stories? Why are we always starting a new game with a new system? Why is there no consistency? Why is there no legacy? After 20 years of DMing, it was time to do it.

My friends had just gotten me the OSE Box-Set Kickstarter and I was excited to start learning and playing. I had also stumbled upon Arden Vul and decided that was the world I was going to use, Magae. There was so much land and lore placed in this Mega Dungeon. I learned the gods, the timeline, the major players and races. I established the languages and the setting.

I won’t go into the specifics yet, this is a time to just organize the world and make it clear how we progressed.

We Started with OSE - Decision Paralysis

I had the Carcass Crawler Zines to help flush out some of the rules. We used Bulk and enhanced the Fighter. The options were starting to pile up with four Core Books for the Players and 6 Zines. I also allowed them to use any B/X supplements they wanted, so one of the major problems of starting a new system reared it’s head: Decision Paralysis.

Players had too many options available, too many books to peal through, and too much lore to parse. I did my best to front and on-load players into the world. I provided PDFs, handouts, guidance — I pinned important Discord links and answered questions like I was an on-call IT support tech.

But eventually OSE ran its course as something that was both too simple and too overwhelming with choice, an oxymoron that comes from Player perspective with a system they haven’t had time to deal with. Especially when these Players are used to the Pathfinder and 5E splats filled with unique mechanics dictating what a class can do. It started a lot of philosophical arguments on how a game should present choice2 to Players and thus stress within the group began to build.

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Hyperborea - No More Races

I love Hyperborea. I dislike only two major things with it: descending AC and the lack of Races. I made a simple chart to replace the Armor chart in the book and Players3 still had issues understanding DAC conversion. The destruction of Races rubbed some Players the wrong way but now it was suddenly for Role-Play instead of mechanical benefit.

However something was boiling way in the background. One of my friends on Discord turned me on to this strange Homebrew Game by Scruffy-Grognard which he considered to be the 3rd Edition of AD&D if TSR never died. It had much of the simplicity of 5E and kept the stunted growth and lethality of AD&D. It had that mystic heart I was craving.

Heroes & Hexes - The Perfect System

I knew that changing systems again would just wear down on the Players. At this point, I was only awarding XP based on monster kills and Feats of Exploration. I needed a bigger carrot. So reading the rules of Heroes & Hexes (back before it was called that), I decided the party would get XP for all Monster Kills, Treasure Brought to Civilization, and Feats of Exploration. Effectively doubling the amount of XP they would get.

I took their sheets, I translated them all by hand, prepared everything prior to the session, and we start playing. It worked wonderfully. The system was going well, or so I thought. We kept that system for a long ass time. Managed to complete an entire story arc filled with thrills and adventure. One Player got up to 9th Level and retired as a political leader, a few others were around 5th Level. It was a good initial campaign. More deets once we enter ARC I.

Compromise — Never Compromise

Alright, here’s where I learned a hard lesson. A group of Players weren’t having fun. They said the magic system was dumb, that it didn’t make sense a mage couldn’t wear armor, that armor should provide DR (damage reduction) instead of AC.

So I started compromising, coming up with custom magic systems, adding Hyperborea’s armor DR system, etc. It wasn’t enough. The group finally broke4. So in a last ditch effort, I proposed 3.5 D&D. The group agreed. I said only use the Core Books, the group broke that and instantly starting pulling from Dragonlance, Eberron, Bullshit Book of Complete Combat, etc.

Now that decision paralysis of OSE was gone. Turns out all these players, they just… they just didn’t want to play OSR. They just wanted to play Modern D&D. They didn’t want wide open fields of possibilities. They wanted me to make a story and dictate it to them. They didn’t want actual character choice, they wanted prescribed bullshit you purchase off the shell.

Maybe I’m being harsh but this is my catharsis.

The first session we played of 3.5E, everything went amazing. Then I got a text from that group of players. They said it felt like I was targeting them as punishment for changing the system. They said they were done.

That blow lifted me off the ground and cracked my fucking skull against the asphalt.

Oh, so me trying to please you wasn’t enough? Me ignoring you using every book under the sun to munchkin a character wasn’t enough? It was me asking if you had a FUCKING FEAT5 that broke the camel’s back? Fuck me for not memorizing everything then.

Maybe I’m being too harsh but this is my catharsis.

So they broke off. I changed my game to be a different day to not conflict with any schedules. We continued playing. The dungeon was meant for Characters from maybe 3rd to 8th Level in the B/X tradition. These 3.5E Characters were chewing through everything.

They had powers for everything, specialized mechanics to manipulate the D20 structure 3.0 started. I eventually started putting myself into an arms race against the Players, making custom creatures and not knowing if it was too powerful or too weak6. The final boss was killed in 4 rounds with most of his powers being neutered.

So with that whole ARC I.V done, I took 3.5E outside, American History X’d it, and declared we are using a different system. No more compromises with my game.

Enter ACKS — Simple Complexity

I don’t remember how I stumbled onto ACKS but I started reading it and it clicked. Class Proficiencies being powers made them modular. General Proficiencies covered mundane dumb shit. The Domain Management made for cool, long-term goal. It had the AD&D feel with the B/X simplicity. I bought the books, I brought ‘em to the table, everyone enjoyed it. The crunchy dudes enjoyed how granular it could be, the guys who just wanted to play appreciated how simple it could be, and I could appreciate that I could ignore or expand out as much as I wanted.

There were some rocky bits. One Player wanted to make a Character for every situation. A Player wanted to focus on Domain Management to a literal microscopic level of dictating who was doing what on an hourly basis. Another Player wanted to spend all their time studying spells and researching. A different Player was waiting for the plot to stroll out and punch the Party in the face. And another Player wanted to manage all the retainers as if he was wargaming. The problems were about too much minutiae and micromanaging, and not enough abstraction. The solution was to simplify.

For the Character Stable problem, I just got rid of it. At first I told Players I wasn’t going to run downtime sessions offline for their stabled characters and those shitheads just don’t get anything. This led to Players trying to rotate Characters for each situation. So I axed the whole thing and had the Players pick their most important guy, then made the rest into hirelings. Pissed some Players off but I explained that the game could now focus on individuals being important and growing.

For Domain Management7, I stopped treating it as a spreadsheet and more like the character being a controlling dictator (which was great because I was tired of being an accountant in my off time). He was Level 3 and telling everyone what to do, managing their time, not letting the system just work via abstraction. So corruption was rife because it was easy to take advantage of a leader who didn’t trust anyone to do their job. He could be a Level 3 king of dirt (Level 9 is typically when Domain Management comes into play).

For studying and research, I didn’t really care as long as the Player understood they weren’t getting experience or money. They could have their guy be stuck in town all day renting a library room. If that was what was fun for them, so be it.

For the guy who wanted the plot to come to him, he eventually quit when he realized no one was going to ask a bunch of strange vagrants to solve the realms problems. He didn’t want to put in the leg work to find adventure or look for plot hooks. That’s fine too. Rule Number 1: There is no obligation to play.

Finally the Player who wanted to manage their retainers like a private army. I simply took control of them and gave them personality. I just started rolling everything for them, moving them around, making them attack and talk. The Player asked why I kept taking away their autonomy and I said, “These aren’t your Characters. They are mine you hired.” So now we split the difference. The Player makes all the rolls but I put the Hirelings where I want and move them where I want.

ACKS is Controversial?

I knew this was going to happen at some point, especially on the internet. Here’s the bottom line:

I don’t give a fuck.

The culture war is real and we are all divided into political sides whether we like it or not. I do not give a shit about the real world when it comes to having fun in my fantasy world. We read works written by fascists, racists, assholes, and shitheads all the time.

We change our spending habits hoping we can hurt billionaires who commit literal crimes and go unpunished. It is nice when good people make good things and are recognized for it but the truth is we are all fucked. Doesn’t matter if you can trace the money to a fascist or not, the money will always go to the bad guys.

So instead of getting pissy online, either accept the futility of this life and become happy, or go pull a Johnny Silverhand and burn it all down with you at the center. Don’t serve me half-measures8 and act like I’m the bad guy for buying some books to escape the horrors around us once a week.

What’s Next?

Well first, thank you for reading this. It is meant to be an inside look at the troubles I ran into trying to make a persistent world and hopefully gives some insight somewhere about something.

As I had said in a post before: