[CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

[Savinien]

lezentauw finally started his Fantasy Hero campaign set in the Kingdom of Kalamar setting by Kenzer Company. The setting was created for d20 and has a LOT of material.

 

There were three players consisting of me, my cousin Todd (a HERO system n00b), and Kenn (long-time Champions player/GM). lezentauw was the GM. He's been working on and off with converting his system for a few years and I was happy to see a campaign finally kicking off.

 

We'd expected two other HERO newbies and didn't want the first session just to be chargen. So, lezentauw created all the characters ahead of time. He planned on having this initial group be more of a DEMO of the HERO system more than anything withthe option of either keeping these characters after the initial sotry arc, or building new ones with player input.

 

There was some miscommunication concerning who would be completing my character so, he wasn't done. We spent the first hour going over who was playing who while lez finished my charsheet.

 

CHARACTERS:

Crend - Village Blacksmith's son and apprentice

High STR character with a magic hammer

 

Shanko - Previous slave/man-at-arms

skilled fighter

 

Ithan - Hunter's apprentice

High DEX with WF: Bow and Spear

 

Glandal - Sorcerer's apprentice

Sorcerer/Runecaster

 

(charsheets pending)

 

SETTING:

The campaign started in the non-canon village of Narmaren. lez placed it a few miles north of Pompeldia, City of Thieves along the Trade Route with the northern countries.

[Savinien]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

Journal of Glandal

Day 1 –

Avil has been kidnapped and Itchel, like the moon after the sun, has followed after. The Village Council has sent us after the kidnappers hoping to catch Itchel before he comes to harm. Others have gone missing from the surrounding area with no word or answer why. If Malvus and Fortren haven’t found them, what good are my friends and I?

 

Itchel is captured. Ithan pointed out the marks of a struggle in the grass, but I could not follow them. As Ithan would trust my knowledge of the healing arts, I will follow his words in tracking.

 

The trail ended at the Trade Road. The kidnappers must have headed north, towards Northford. They couldn’t have gotten the missing shepherds, nor Avil and Itchel back through Narmaren without someone recognizing them (we hope!).

 

We came across a half-dozen riders near Mid-day. These days the Trade Road is dangerous and un-patrolled and seeing the riders around a wagon had me wary. We saw them from a ways off and Crend identified their tabards as those of a Pompeldia Great House. Ithan covered us from high ground as we parlayed. They kept us from a wagon bedecked with dyed cloth and ribbon, the bridal wagon of a betrothed Prince, his bride and her guard gone missing like Avil and Itchel. The Man-at-arms promises to meet with us in Narmaren in one week as we forage ahead, searching for the kidnappers. It is possible the wagon held more clues, but they disallowed closer investigation.

 

We’ve all been blooded. Just after Mid-day repast, we happened upon Hobgoblin slavers from Norga-Krangrel on their way to the Market in Pompeldia. Shanko parleyed, knowing the Norga-Krangrel tongue. The talk was short and ended with drawn blades. I had never used my sorcery against any Malvus in practice, but was forced to today. We killed two of their number and subdued two more. The last two fled. As far as I can tell, they had nothing to do with our prey so we sent them desert-ward in their wagon-bed shackled in their own irons. Presumably, their fled comrades will catch them well after we’re beyond them.

[ghost-angel]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

sounds good so far... though there's not much brackground who Avil and Itchel are, it's not entirely needed but might help put things into context a bit.

[Savinien]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

sounds good so far... though there's not much brackground who Avil and Itchel are' date=' it's not entirely needed but might help put things into context a bit.[/quote']

 

Your wish... is my command!

 

NPCs:

Agemon Avil - Daughter of Agemon Voldemar

Agemon Voldemar - Owner of the Inn and member of Village Council

Agemon Itchel - Foster son of Voldemar, friend of Glandal and Co.

Shanko - At this point Shanko is an NPC

Crend's Father - Village Blacksmith

Malvus - Town healer/wizard, Glandal's mentor

Fortren - Town Hunter/Ranger, Ithan's mentor

Dolmar - non-descript townsman

 

 

Player Notes:

The journal was done in the first-person, so it didn't include a lot of detail that a GM synopsis likely would. I wrote it that way on purpose. I was sort of hoping the GM might come in here and post stuff he is able (without giving me OOC info).

 

The magic system is a novel approach as far as I'm concerned and could due with some discussion.

 

I will comment on one thing. The KoK material seems pretty good. Our GM (lezetauw), emphasized this weird naming convention. Apparently, formality is an important distinction to the Brandobians (Narmaren and Pompeldia beyond is settled primarily by Brandobian stock). They always word the surname first and then the personal name preceded by any titles.

 

Kenzer Co. also added some fluff pertaining to common letter structure used in Brandobian names. Our GM emphasized this stuff, but we were all stumbling over the wierd word structures (for us). I mentioned more than once that it was sort of distracting to the game.

 

When fluff material for a setting is alien enough to player and GM alike, should the fluff be dropped?

[ghost-angel]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

I will comment on one thing. The KoK material seems pretty good. Our GM (lezetauw), emphasized this weird naming convention. Apparently, formality is an important distinction to the Brandobians (Narmaren and Pompeldia beyond is settled primarily by Brandobian stock). They always word the surname first and then the personal name preceded by any titles.

 

Kenzer Co. also added some fluff pertaining to common letter structure used in Brandobian names. Our GM emphasized this stuff, but we were all stumbling over the wierd word structures (for us). I mentioned more than once that it was sort of distracting to the game.

 

When fluff material for a setting is alien enough to player and GM alike, should the fluff be dropped?

It can add to the enhancement as you settle in. Sometimes a slightly steeper learning curve results in a richer experience.

 

The naming convention is very Japanse...

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

Cool. Im a big fan of Kalamar myself (everything EXCEPT the name -- sounds too much like an Italian squid dish). And the ATLAS is just amazing.

 

I actually integrated Kalamar into my Greyhawk campaigns conceptually -- none of the PCs every went there, but they briefly encountered some NPC that were from that region.

 

I spliced it onto the map to the west of the Greyhawk map -- the scale is different, but if you look at the "rest of Oerth map" in the Dragon Annual 1, reprinted in the Living Greyhawk Gazeteer, tell me if the "hook" of Kalamar doesnt bear an uncanny resemblance to a very similar land feature off the western edge of the Greyhawk Flanaess map. If you line the maps up on that and mentally adjust for scale, allowing for curvature of the earth at the top of the map and some primitive cartographic techniques, there are a LOT of features of the Kalamar map that match up to the Rest of Oerth map. So much so that I find it unlikely to be a coincidence.

[John Desmarais]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

lezentauw finally started his Fantasy Hero campaign set in the Kingdom of Kalamar setting by Kenzer Company. The setting was created for d20 and has a LOT of material.

 

Fortunately, even though is a D&D setting, the books are high fluff low crunch, making it almost system independent. I've used KoK a couple of times for Fantasy Hero. Great setting.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

Nice! The language is poetic, the tone and mood are set very quickly, and it's obvious that at least the narrator is pretty new at this fighting thing, and well-educated. I look forward to more.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

Couldnt find a full size, but check out the inset map in the bottom right corner of this map:

 

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.geocities.com/greyhawk_dm/images/lower_right.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.geocities.com/greyhawk_dm/oerth_maps.html&h=815&w=1067&sz=268&tbnid=gvmmJdi2fCeDTM:&tbnh=114&tbnw=150&hl=en&start=3&prev=/images%3Fq%3Doerth%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DG

 

 

and look at the map of Tellene.

 

If you have the real maps its a fairly interesting exercise to put them side by side. You have to mentally adjust for scale, but you can definitely see a resemblance.

[Savinien]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

Couldnt find a full size, but check out the inset map in the bottom right corner of this map:

 

[link snipped]

 

and look at the map of Tellene.

 

If you have the real maps its a fairly interesting exercise to put them side by side. You have to mentally adjust for scale, but you can definitely see a resemblance.

lezetauw has all the Tellene maps, but I'll try and compare. A pretty interesting theory...

[Old Man]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

You know, KoK Fantasy just doesn't get my juices flowing....

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

I actually made a lot of notes at one point about combining the two settings. Most of them are on paper, but I had started to type them up at some point back in 2003 before getting distracted and here is what little I got typed:

 

 

The intention of this document is to splice The Kingdom of Kalamar onto the World of Greyhawk map, to the west of the lands of the Bakluni and the Sea of Dust.

 

Kalamar/Oerth Splice

When I first looked at the Kalamar map I was struck by the similarity of its overall topography to a hand drawn map that was published in Dragon Annual #1 showing what was supposedly the planned remainder of the World of Greyhawk. After WotC bought out and ressurected the WoG the overall topography of the map which appeared in Dragon Annual #1 was reproduced (in a freshly done professional drawing, sans placeholder nation names on the original). The hook of Kalamar lined up nicely with an almost identical land feature depicted on that map, as well as certain other features. Allowing for "ancient topographical errors" conceptually, and tweaking the map scale a tad results in the exciting prospect of merging Kalamar directly into the World of Greyhawk, extending the good old and well-played Flanaess to the lands beyond the mysterious West.

 

Flavor and Tone

Concurrently, Oriental Adventures was released as well. I decided, in the interests of making the lands of Kalamar a little different from the well traveled expances of Furyondy, Aerdy or Nyrond, I'd flavor them slightly with Oriental Adventures material. Not to the extent that Kalamar = Oriental, but kind of a melange.

 

History

Also, to inter-link the two settings, some revision would need to be made. Looking for hooks, I noticed that the Kalamar history is only 1044 years long. That corresponds very closely to the Invoked Devastation of the Ancient Suel and Bakluni. Another coincidence? This event was the crux of the migration of both the Oerids and the Suel into the Flanaess in the WoG background. However, wouldnt the Oerids and Ancient Suel living more westerly have headed the other direction? Into the lands that are now Kalamar? I decided to use that as the linking thread.

 

Migration Patterns

The WoG details in fairly exact terms the migratory patterns of the Oerids and the Suel, and I wanted to follow thru with that attention to detail and provide a similar coverage for how the lands of Kalamar were settled by Oeridian and Sueloise peoples after the Invoked Devastation.

 

Kalamarans Oeridian descendants

Reanaarians Oeridian descendants

Brandobians Ancient Suel descendants

Dejy related to Bakluni

Fhokki Suel Barbarian descendants

Svimohz related to the Flan

 

Nations

Some of the nations would need to be tweaked as well to allow a smoother transition and to incorporate some elements from the Dragon Annual #1 Greyhawk Map that I wanted to bring forward.

Religion

Similarly, the Kalamar gods would need to be at least partially reconciled with the Oerth gods of the Suel and Oerids.

[Savinien]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

After reading the above, I realized you might of posted the wrong link of the Oerth map. No wonder I was confused.

 

Is this the one you meant?

 

http://www.geocities.com/greyhawk_dm/images/lower_left.jpg

[Bik Britelite]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

Kenzer Co. also added some fluff pertaining to common letter structure used in Brandobian names. Our GM emphasized this stuff, but we were all stumbling over the wierd word structures (for us). I mentioned more than once that it was sort of distracting to the game.

 

When fluff material for a setting is alien enough to player and GM alike, should the fluff be dropped?

 

 

 

Really depends on the caliber of the player and the amount of time you wish to invest in learning the new fluff to make the world come more alive. I know that on the whole things of this nature (the surname emphasis and all) could be a little annoying at first, but for role-play purposes and misjudgement shouldn't affect the character in any way. Besides it would be rather easy to pick up.

 

Our planescape/sigil campaign has an enormous amount of fluff. The 'cant' is the best part, but is rather annoying to learn effectively. Bonebox = head/mouth, jink = coin, berk = jerk, etc. When you eventually learn the fluff though the game seems to come more alive in your mind and makes the time spent much more enjoyable in my opinion.

 

Other than that, keep it up. I love reading Fantasy journals, AliceTheOwl especially.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

After reading the above, I realized you might of posted the wrong link of the Oerth map. No wonder I was confused.

 

Is this the one you meant?

 

http://www.geocities.com/greyhawk_dm/images/lower_left.jpg

Oops! Yeah thats the one.

 

 

I found this which isnt a good map but is at least larger:

 

http://www.peldor.com/world/oerthlarge.gif

 

wait...found it:

 

http://www.sodabob.com/roleplay/dnd/Maps/files/tsroerth.gif

 

 

on this site:

 

http://www.sodabob.com/roleplay/dnd/Maps/?MenuID=36

[John Desmarais]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

When fluff material for a setting is alien enough to player and GM alike' date=' should the fluff be dropped?[/quote']

 

Perhaps not dropped, but de-emphasized. Acknowledge it and, for those comfortable with it, use it - but don't get too wrapped up in it.

[Savinien]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

Is it trademark infringement to post KoK maps? I don't think Kenzer does it on their site.

[Savinien]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

Really depends on the caliber of the player and the amount of time you wish to invest in learning the new fluff to make the world come more alive. I know that on the whole things of this nature (the surname emphasis and all) could be a little annoying at first, but for role-play purposes and misjudgement shouldn't affect the character in any way. Besides it would be rather easy to pick up.

 

Our planescape/sigil campaign has an enormous amount of fluff. The 'cant' is the best part, but is rather annoying to learn effectively. Bonebox = head/mouth, jink = coin, berk = jerk, etc. When you eventually learn the fluff though the game seems to come more alive in your mind and makes the time spent much more enjoyable in my opinion.

 

Other than that, keep it up. I love reading Fantasy journals, AliceTheOwl especially.

 

Hey, no props for Alice in my thread! The nerve!

 

Seriously, I can understand where you're all coming from concerning the 'fluff' overall. Hell, that's what makes a setting different from any other. But, there's a difference between enhancing the game and detracting from the game. The difficult letter pairings have thus far detracted. The GM has difficulty pronouncing them and so do the players.

 

I'll hold off for subsequent sessions before voting further. I do appreciate all of your additions to the discussion.

[Savinien]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

Perhaps not dropped' date=' but de-emphasized. Acknowledge it and, for those comfortable with it, use it - but don't get too wrapped up in it.[/quote']

 

This be wise counsel. The characters obviously wouldn't have difficulties with pronunciations they've been around their whole lives. Penalizing the players is simply wrong. Thus far, we've pretty much done as JD professes. I just became distracted in the middle of RP when each character stumbled over their friend's name or when mentioning places they should have been very comfortable with.

 

I just need to get over it!

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

Is it trademark infringement to post KoK maps? I don't think Kenzer does it on their site.

Not sure. I would tend to take the fact that I couldnt find a single Tellene map of more than a small region via Google as a good sign that it just isnt done though.

 

Which is a shame, because their map is gorgeous -- a real selling point.

 

(Yes, Im a map fetishist. Oh the shame.)

[keithcurtis]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

Here's a link to someone's CC2 maps of a previous edition.

 

Keith "Google-fu" Curtis

[Bik Britelite]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

Hey' date=' no props for Alice in my thread! The nerve![/quote']

 

 

 

 

Seriously, I can understand where you're all coming from concerning the 'fluff' overall. Hell, that's what makes a setting different from any other. But, there's a difference between enhancing the game and detracting from the game. The difficult letter pairings have thus far detracted. The GM has difficulty pronouncing them and so do the players.

 

I'll hold off for subsequent sessions before voting further. I do appreciate all of your additions to the discussion.

 

 

 

Heh, trust me on this part, if there were enunciating issues I would drop it like a bad habit. There is no sense spending more time trying to figure out how to say a name. But the surname thing should be relatively easy. Like John said, "de-emphasize" before you let it ruin the game play. Face it, if you are trying to get into character and have a good role-playing session, spending 20 seconds trying to pronounce someones name means you should go all the way and take a psychological disadvantage—stuttering. The game is what is supposed to be fun, if the fluff gets in the way of it, drop it.

[Savinien]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

I just got word we're finally getting back to this game. I'll try and let you know what is decided upon the naming conventions and finish up the journal!!!

 

Don't expect anything until next Friday, though... The game is being played Thursday night!

 

(Can't tell I'm excited, can you?)

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

Nah. Four exclamation points denote anticipatory pleasure. Excitement takes six or seven.

 

^ v ^

 

Have fun!

[Enforcer84]

Re: [CAMPAIGN] KoK Fantasy Hero

 

lezentauw finally started his Fantasy Hero campaign set in the Kingdom of Kalamar setting by Kenzer Company. The setting was created for d20 and has a LOT of material.

 

There were three players consisting of me, my cousin Todd (a HERO system n00b), and Kenn (long-time Champions player/GM). lezentauw was the GM. He's been working on and off with converting his system for a few years and I was happy to see a campaign finally kicking off.

 

We'd expected two other HERO newbies and didn't want the first session just to be chargen. So, lezentauw created all the characters ahead of time. He planned on having this initial group be more of a DEMO of the HERO system more than anything withthe option of either keeping these characters after the initial sotry arc, or building new ones with player input.

 

There was some miscommunication concerning who would be completing my character so, he wasn't done. We spent the first hour going over who was playing who while lez finished my charsheet.

 

CHARACTERS:

Crend - Village Blacksmith's son and apprentice

High STR character with a magic hammer

 

Shanko - Previous slave/man-at-arms

skilled fighter

 

Ithan - Hunter's apprentice

High DEX with WF: Bow and Spear

 

Glandal - Sorcerer's apprentice

Sorcerer/Runecaster

 

(charsheets pending)

 

SETTING:

The campaign started in the non-canon village of Narmaren. lez placed it a few miles north of Pompeldia, City of Thieves along the Trade Route with the northern countries.

Once met a sphinx outside Prompeldia.