Amberpeak campaign. Setting outline. Houserules.

Several months ago I started a new OD&D campaign called Amberpeak. In the beginning I decided that I’ll try to reach some English - speaking readers, so all of the posts concerning the campaign were bilingual. The upside was that English readers were up to date with all the info on the game just as the Polish ones. The drawback was that there was quite a lot of confusion: the titles were in Polish, amount of text was doubled, notes lacked in the legibility department. And, what’s quite important, there was no introduction to the setting in English, so the outline of the campaign seemed rather cryptic. Hence I decided to change my approach and publish English-only notes next to Polish ones. Below you’ll find a summary of what happened until now and what houserules I adopted. Events from game sessions from 1 to 10 were already covered in details, you can find the links below. Sessions from 11 onward shall be covered in future posts.

The Setting

The planet is divided into separate hemispheres. Knowledge of the cosmic catastrophe which caused the division was lost in time. The Dark Side is the one inhabited by humans. The Bright Side is the land of the immortals, gods and titans. Between the spheres there is the Rift: a dark land never struck by sunlight, prowled by demons and monsters dwelling in the darkness. There is one way to cross the Rift and get to the Bright Side: Ascension. It is a complicated magical process which needs a vessel, called a Dungeon. It’s a somewhat nonsensical and absurd construction serving no functional purpose but to ascend the constructor to the other Hemisphere. After the Ascension a dungeon is left on the Dark Side and usually serves as a habitat for monsters and other chaotic beings. Usually, Ascension can be reached by individuals only, but in one instance in history, a whole state was ascended. It happened 742 years ago to the Great Meropis led by its wise leader Athena and her advisors - the Twelve Titanides. Athena became the goddess of men who were left on the Dark Side. They believe she can be reached by priests of Church of Athena: they claim that the Bright Side can be seen as a reflection on the mirror surface of Lune - the only moon of the planet. The priests may see reflections of Athena and the Titanides giving signs to those left behind. The greatest of the states on the Dark Side is Tanais by the Unhospitable Sea. Tanaisians try to unite the scattered cities, forts and baronies and prepare for another Ascension.

There are other humanoids on the Dark Side. Ancient races who refused to ascend and embraced Chaos, now demigods leading their degenerate human worshippers. Other cultures. as old as the planet, who dwell the vast caverns of the Underworld, never interested in Ascension or human civilization.

The campaign started in the land of Koban on the west shore of Sea of Mazandarana, discovered less than one hundred years ago. Tanaissians established a colony here, in the Delta of Three Rivers, with the Marshes of Pale Lights in the North, Barrow Forest in the South and Misty Vale in the West. The main town of the colony is Derbent, a large port on the Sea of Mazandarana. The land was inhabited before the Tanissians arrived, however the natives have little concern over the colonists, as long as they do not leave the Delta. Two main groups among them are the Forest People lurking in the Barrow Forest and dwellers of Naissus, a mysterious city ruled by dreaded Invincible Overlord Hespos, Master of the Black Dragons.

Of course, I was inspired heavily by several sources, in particular From the Sorcerer’s Skull blog (dungeon as an ascension vessel) and Hemispheres by Rush (mythological feel with a twist).

Adventures so far

Adventures of the party and further details on the setting are found in ten reports from our first ten game sessions.

Episode 1. Episode 2. Episode 3. Episode 4. Episode 5.

Episode 6. Episode 7. Episode 8. Episode 9. Episode 10.

Next reports will be published in separate posts, so keep track of the blog.

Houserules

1. Hiring retainers.

In order to hire henchmen, you need to spend some gold. For each gold piece spent PC has 1% chance of successful recruitment, so spending 100 gp guarantees 100% chance of hiring 1 to 10 man-at-arms (i.e. Normal-Men). You need to spend more when recruiting class-characters: you get -10% for Fighting Men/Women (you recruit 1 to 6 of them), -50% for Clerics (no. recruited is 1 to 3), -75% for Dwarves (1 to 6), -100% for Magic-Users and -150% for Elves (both: only one recruited at a time). The Referee may adjust the chances, e.g. taking into account CHA of the character or the renown (notoriety)  of the party.

2. Wilderness travel.

The system is simplified. Each hex is 6 miles and the number of hexes possible to be travelled per day is from 1 to 3, dependent on the terrain difficulty (at the Referee’s discretion, 3 is suggested for plains etc., 2 for hills and woods and 1 for rough terrain such as mountains or swamps). The Referee is free to speed up or slow down the travel, e.g. +1 hex per day for following a road or a trail or riding a horse on a plain, -1 for over encumbered characters or using a horse in a dense forest. The travel pace should not however drop below 1 hex per day. In case of exceptionally difficult circumstances (such as forced marched through a desert) the Referee may order a withstand check (based on CON) or the characters may lose some Hit Points.

3. Clerics and Magic-Users.

I decided to replace vancian spell slots with Spell Points (SP). Each character shall have a SP number determined by level, casting each spell shall cost SP amount equal to the spell level (i.e. a first level spell costs 1 SP, second level: 2 SP and so on). All SP regenerate after a full rest. The amount of SP shall be modified by INT (for Magic-Users) and WIS (for Clerics): +1 for an attribute greater than or equal 15 and -1 if the attribute is 6 or less.

Table 1. Spell Points.

Level	Clerics	Magic-Users
1	0	1
2	1	2
3	2	5
4	4	8
5	6	11
6	13	14
7	23	20
8	30	27
9	36	32
10	45	43
11	51	51

As you may have noticed, the number of SP is calculated as a sum of spell slots as indicated in Men & Magic (first level slot is worth 1 SP, second level 2 SP, etc.)

Regardless of the SP amount, a spellcaster cannot cast a spell of a level higher than indicated in original OD&D rules.

Table 2. Experience levels vs spell levels.

Level	Max Cleric spell level	Max M-U spell level
1	-	I
2	I	I
3	I	II
4	II	II
5	II	III
6	IV	III
7	V	IV
8	V	IV
9	V	V
10	V	V
11	V	V
12	V	VI

I also allow Magic - Users to counter other spellcasters in a similar fashion as in Chainmail. There is a chance of failure in countering in case the caster is of higher level than the M-U attempting to counter (1 in 6 if there is 1 level difference, and so on, if the difference is 6 or more levels, the lesser M-U shall always fail to counter).

Each casting class shall start the game with Detect Evil (for Clerics) or Read Magic (for Magic-Users) spells and a number of additional random or chosen spells dependant on WIS/INT level respectively.

Table 3. Additional starting spells.

INT/WIS	Additional spells
3–8	random first level spell
9-12	chosen first level spell
13-15	1 random and 1 chosen first level spell
16-17	2 chosen first level spells
18	2 chosen first level spells and 1 random second level spell

Since the Hemispheres setting has an ancient Greek feel to it, I changed the titles of Clerics. Priests and Priestesses of Athena (the dominant religion among men in the setting) have now level-titles referring to Greek Orthodox Church which sounds pretty “ancient”.

Table 4. Clerics of Athena level titles.

Level	Title
1	Deacon
2	Presbyter
3	Protopresbyter
4	Archimandrite
5	Exarch
6	Suffragan
7	Eparch
8	Arch-Eparch
9	Metropolitan
10	Patriarch/Matriarch

Stay tuned for future posts. All the English-titled ones are for you.