It's been a frustrating wait for the new Rolemaster unified rules from Iron Crown, but it has fueled amazing progress in the setting of Heroic Mykenaea.
Ever since
the announcement (back in July) that a new edition of
Rolemaster would enter playtest in (ahem) August, we've been preparing to run a campaign using the playtest rules.
Regular readers may remember
my previous post in which I began to prep... and it's nice to report that things have ticked along nicely.
Iolkus
Iolkus is the polis (city) in which the campaign begins. It's the homebase for the heroes and an interesting stage for adventure in and of itself. The map (above) was produced for us by
Patrick Trempond and, you have to admit, it adds a lot to the sense of a setting coming alive. (You can
download a .pdf of the map)
In anticipation of needing to provide background information for the players, I've begun a
wiki for the setting and added basic details for the city and the immediate surrounds. The plan is to allow the active players to update the wiki as they uncover information about the world, hopefully increasing their sense of involvement.
A Few Useful Tips
To be honest, I couldn't have got this far without three things: advice from other gamers, a generous cartographer, and "
Never Unprepared".
The first thing that I did after deciding to choose Greece as a setting, albeit a fantasy version with massive cities like Iolkus, is to grab a Google Maps screen-shot of the area. Printing this off, I then annotated it with key details from my head. The outcome was this file:
Iolkus Area Map.
From here I took advice from gamer friends via social media, connected to
The Cartographer's Guild, and accepted an offer from Patrick to do the Iolkus city map. The process began with a crappy sketch scanned and emailed. Patrick added, refined, consulted and questioned... and the final outcome is all the better for his work.
Finally, setting up a writing schedule using
Never Unprepared, I have been using the advice in the excellent books on campaign writing from
Sine Nomine Publishing. The tips on sandbox gaming, although not entirely our style, combined with the old
Ray Winninger essays on campaign design have powered me through to a sense of a setting come alive with details... but not too many details.
What's Next?
Well, the first adventure is conceptualised and in writing. We merely await the release of the Rolemaster rules, which we hope will be released before the next meeting of the group on Friday 14th.
From here it's character design and then off into the gaming. With a regular writing plan in place, lots of background already written, and an excited group... well, let's hope we can keep this campaign going.
Oh, and Patrick is working on the local map for the Iolkus area too.
Game on!
Labels: fantasy, GMing, Mykenaea, Rolemaster
