Of all the visual snapshots that get etched in my mind during my days, I think this is the one I will remember the best. A lone, solemn birch guarding the crops. A straight, white tree, standing on a rocky island amidst the golden sea of wheat. A sentinel swaying with the winds instead of breaking from them or ignoring their power. Clear blue skies above and behind as a painting-like backdrop. Quite majestic a sight. And approaching really really fast. Well, from my perspective.

They tell us that the people of days gone by thought that the birch represents a connection between the land of the dead and our world. That old birches get their white bark from the bones of the deceased. And that this belief still holds true in the modern age of rationality. The story goes so that when the first sailors who crossed the Great Divide and reached the New World, had seen the wall of white trees, had thought their lives had ended on the way through the great storm. And that they had reached afterlife.

The things that stick to your mind from classes.

In my defense I have state that I’m not a slacker. I just don’t always agree with the methodical way of teaching we’re presented with. I like books, adore all sorts of stories. But can’t just get my head around the whole “magic can be presented in formulas and calculations” thing and can’t be bothered to memorize the mathematics. And that’s probably why this huge snake made out of granite, with eyes of fire and a temper to match, managed to fling me across the wheat field and at that the only birch standing there.

Now, as my field of vision is more and more filled with the impending birchness, there are two surprisingly clear thoughts on my mind. First is that I might be a total sucker when it comes to playing the knight in shining armor to girls who aren’t exactly damsels in distress, and how I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t spent the better half of this semester ogling the fair Alissa (she’s one of the popular ones) instead of paying attention at classes. And the second thing… for a soulless elemental entity, that thing has a really good aim.

Ouch.

Where do we go from there? What got us there? What’s really important, anyways?

Been looking up the old College of War stuff on my computer. Character sheets, mechanics, themes, names. Lots of things to look and consider before going to work on the next one. Really.

The campaign started out as a simple d20 variant fantasy homebrew with IOU flavoring. A silly world, with a strange College, where the player characters were studying to become magicians. This was years before Harry Potter, mind you. A College with the idea “what would a school be like if the world was epic and magic was commonplace.” And boy, did it turn out weird. Parodies after parodies, week after week, for a good year or two. The first campaign ended. But we returned to the world several times. After a few ends of the world, the setting has changed a lot. Toned down on the funny, explored the underlying ideas. The school hasn’t been the focus in a long while.

The definitive College of War campaign was a long one about a group of young Fieon (France expy) nobles finding their place in the world and eventually reshaping it by returning one of the moons to the sky. Lot of the imagery and feeling came from the movie Le pacte des loups (as well as half the family names). And as you can expect, it didn’t have anything to do with the school from the title (it did make a cameo appearance by the end of the game, but that was it), and was really something else than a light-hearted comedy romp. And it’s been going to directions from there.

The latest campaign of CoW I ran got cut mid-way because of a player leaving the country. It is pretty much the thing I’m basing my future work on – There’s a New Continent on the other side of the world. The three major kingdoms have established colonies there. There is a new College of War there, that pretty much mimics and mirrors the one in the Old World. It’s one part colonial America (frontier in the west / foothold in the east), one part Finland from the Swedish rule era, one part <insert baltic country here> under Russian rule. There’s armies, conspiracies, cults. The unease with the natives. There’s themes of obedience, independence, duty and devotion to be found. With everything like this in the air, the atmosphere could be very dark. But the truth is, life goes on as usual and for most part it’s quite light-hearted.

One of the defining things still is high magic, to the point of “sufficiently advanced magic can be viewed as technology”. There’s emergent magical transhumanism going on – magic used to build constructs, such as golems, is getting “commonplace” and the idea of moving one’s soul to a non-human body is out there, even if no-one’s been successful with it yet. Combat has moved from knights in armor to the more agile combatant (if a beginner mage can propel an enchanted rock at the speed of a bullet, then a plate mail armor is more a burden than a blessing on the field against one). Leaps have been taken in areas such as medicine. And there is a lot of flair in everything.

The west is still unexplored. The colonies are not at full peace with each other. The noble families don’t really find each other the best of friends. Lots of fertile ground for teen/tween drama. Yeah. I’m one of those people who love a good romance (gone wrong, just think of Romeo+Juliet). University life the way it should be in a fantasy setting. Whatever that means. Want to go hunt for the legendary beast of the Ash Hills? There’s extra credit waiting to happen right there. And it would make a hell of an impression to that girl you’ve been pining over.

And when the characters walk out there, it should feel like it feels when I walk into the woods here. There should be something mystical there, a deeper connection with life and nature, that just can’t be put into science, no matter how you try. Something out there. Something about that birch tree standing there. Seasons doing their thing. That sort of reflection of where I come from. And of course there’s the giant intelligent elemental snakes who just want to use you for a baseball.

In a way, it’s come a full circle. Taking account from everything that has happened so-far, but putting it back into the original milieu of University environment. Back where we started, without forgetting any of the stuff that happened on the way here.

(The next run of CoW will start December 12th, 2012)

Alissa, the girl mentioned in the fluff. An elf-blooded student at the College. Possible iconic example character for the game text. Of the privileged, wealthy, magical nobility type.

Some mood text for a campaign I’d love to run one day. Cthulhutech-y enhanced humans -thingy.

The Slow Game

The dust has cleared. I approach the officer in charge.

“What just happened? Captain Adams? Sir?”

“We won. That’s what.”

“But that’s a dozen of our men down, two seriously injured!”

“Son, have you ever encountered a precog before? Dozen scratched soldiers is a small price to pay to catch something that can see possible futures.”

I look at the old guy. Seen him from afar before, but never actually spoke to him. Trimmed goatee, old army greatcoat, some high-tech mesh armor underneath. He’s probably in his 40s, but something in his eyes make him look much, much older. I clear my throat and reply as firmly as I can.

“No sir. I was just transferred from Winterhampton unit. Never been in combat with anything beyond clearance seven. Precogs are a bit above what they’re willing to tell me, sir. But we didn’t catch him. He ran and our men got injured by freak accidents.”

The man looks at me with a crooked, mischievous smile on his face.

“You do know how they work, right? The basics?”

“Well, I’ve heard the stories. They can see the consequences of their actions and choose the one route that brings them the best outcome. That’s why we can’t catch them. That’s the whole point.”

“I’ve caught nine. This one makes it an even ten.”

“So, are you a future-glimpser as well, or how on Earth do you do it? Takes one to know one?”

“Boy, do I look like a twitchy freak who spends his every moment considering the consequence of his every action. I’m a human just like you and me and him and him and … ok, honestly, I think she’s a clearance two with those legs of her, they just can’t be human. Damn. But, to answer your question. Human. No powers.”

“Then how?”

“The basic thing to remember with any clearance four or higher is that their anomalies cause them to be pretty fried in the brain department. The need to survive and stay alive, the paranoia, those things take over when they’re threatened. With a temporal-causality enhanced perspective, the freak can see the multitude of paths their actions cause. And go through them, one by one, until they find one that leads them to safety. Just like it did today. It knew it had to come here to pick up the ransom money, but it also knew it was a trap. It’s known for hours before it ever came here. The really powerful ones can see their actions’ consequences to up to two days into the future, but with a punk like this, and judging from the results, I’m thinking some seven to ten hours.”

“The results?”

“He came in knowing the flaw in our trap. He was in and out just the way I wanted. If he had been a more powerful precog who could have seen twelve hours or further into the future, he wouldn’t have come. Or would have taken a different corridor, even if it had meant going into actual battle with my men.”

“How so?”

“It was filled with nice little cloud of nanites. They’ll flood his body with sleep-inducing chemicals in twelve hours that’ll keep him under for good full day. And start sending a homing signal while he’s dreaming away. We’ll have a good 4 hour window of picking him up and locking him away for good. It’s a slow game that works so well against these buggers, even if it means a few sacrifices along the way. Of course, my men know nothing of how the plan works so that they just follow orders.”

I smile and return from the scenario in my mind to the present day.

So the thing is a double-trap.

Sometimes it pays to play it safe and secure. Take it nice and slow. Think out side the box. Considering to return back after the theft, disguising myself as a trooper and asking questions, was very much worth it. I’ll have to re-think my course of action.

—

It’s been two weeks since the ransom drop incident. Killed a man there. Thought it would be easier after running through the scenario in my head a few times. Wasn’t. Haven’t been able to sleep without pills since. Going to bed at a warehouse hideout. Checking the morning just in case.

Can’t see anything in my future. Just the feeling of being restrained and hearing some unfamiliar voice telling me that “Sometimes it’s worth waiting for a very long time before taking action. The longer we wait, the harder it becomes for you to form a link between what you did and what effects it causes. And the harder that becomes, the more unlikely it is that you can precog it. And that’s where I come in. I design the next level of the trap, the level that works even if Captain Adams’ plan fails. Now just relax and get ready to be transported back into a holding facility…”

I was pretty inspired by the combination of Pathfinder GameMastery Guide and the discussions I had with Keith Baker at Ropecon 2010. This inspiration, combined with the fact that the only game I’m running at the moment is Century, made me think of a new D&D campaign.

The basic concept steals quite a lot from existing campaigng D&D material – Eberron, Planescape, even bits from Dark Sun. And some from Pathfinder as well.

The world was a very typical D&D world, probably the one described in the 4th edition core books, until something went horribly wrong and the local Death god died, her body crashing down from heavens into the middle of a wasteland. This caused some interesting things in the world:

First of all, souls have stopped flowing into the afterlife. The other gods are as mystified as the mortals – no-one knows what happens after death. It was the Death god’s job to sort out the dead souls into the Planes. This just doesn’t happen anymore. This means that resurrection is no-longer an option, and speaking with the dead doesn’t work.

The political ramifications from this amongst the mortals are massive – regular assassinations are suddenly an option again to overthrow the throne and those who had struck deals with darker powers that involved the destination for their soul found themselves renegotiating their contracts since they were no longer capable of holding up to their end of the bargain.

So, turmoil. Wars. New leaders. Churches trying to hold on to their power even if they can’t promise a life after death.

And second, from the corpse of the Death god, life begun to appear. First just a spring in the middle of the desert. Then an oasis. After that, the ruins of an old temple that might have stood there in the desert some thousands of years ago. Just slowly appearing from the waters. Followed by ruins from other parts of the world – things that had been long forgotten by man. Covered in moss, algae, plants, mold and other plantlife of decay. It didn’t take long for a whole city to spring up from nothing in the middle of the wasteland.

A city surrounded by a weird anti-magic field that pretty much nullifies the influence of gods and makes all normal magic a bit unpredictable. A city that draws celestial refugees from both sides to it like flies. A city that has a soft spot for the unwanted. A city that grows and changes every night. A city ruled by ruin, dominated by insects and moss. Rats and rust. Decay and memories. And filled with the things the world has forgotten. Treasure. Adventure. Danger!

So, fast forward some years and enter the player characters: ragatag team of .. private investigators, living in the City of Death. Looking for a quick buck tracking down lost people, items or artifacts, finding out if the succubus is cheating on the noble or solving the murder of a prominent political leader, who also happened to be a patch of sentient mold.

What?