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Coming Up on DONJON LANDS
I’m working on a few articles for the near future. One is a follow-up to “Strategy on the Jousting Matrix.” I further the analysis, taking into account my brutal defeat in the live tourney with Dan Collins on last week’s Wandering DMs episode.
Another is the next in the series outlining a B/X campaign. After areas under human control in “Thirteen Graves,” we look at “Monstrous Denizens of the Pale Moor.”
And I’m finally going to come clean with all my talk about the “Rending” and the “Greater Ones” and just what do I mean when I say DONJON LANDS. “Song of the World Dragon” is a creation myth of Earth’s far future—a world with magic, monsters, and a ring around it, with stars that aren’t fixed but dance and swirl.
Your Comments Welcome
Whether by email or in the comment section, I am open to your suggestions or requests. Let me know what you’d like to read.
DONJON LANDS is back online. The CMS migration was successful. There were traps, there were illusions, there was… some… waiting—and a wandering monster! But all planned actions scored a hit.
In the migration, I strove to recreate the design from the old system. You might notice minor improvements allowed by the new. A biggish improvement is the search function, which now finds things like a clever party. Also, making a comment should be less onerous. Soon, I hope to implement email subscription to new posts and replies to comments.
The web feed addresses have changed. Feed readers and blog rolls can subscribe to the RSS feed or the Atom feed. I apologize for the inconvenience. [18:03 27 July 2022 GMT]
DONJON LANDS will be offline for some time on Wednesday, July 27, while I migrate the content management system. If all goes well, the process could take a few hours. If less than well, a couple days…
Migration Success: the site is back online. [12:28 27 July 2022 GMT]
Oft repeated on Emmius’s Tabula is “Amt” in conjunction with names of marked political regions. An amt is an administrative area akin to a province or county. Such small regions ruled by counts or nobles of similar rank seem appropriate.
Emmius shows ten provinces bordering the central region. Including the two small, more remote provinces—one on the river east of the Dollart, another on the opposite side of the map (left of the eastern inlet)—brings the count to 12. Twelve is a good number. Too good for a campaign with warlocks and witches, when we’re so close to 13. I’m going to carve one more county off the central region’s west end. It’s a “soft” border: the county claims, though does not control, the central region, which is the Pale Moor.
Competition
Going further with that notion, we already know that the warlock discovered much wealth and magic in the Pale Moor. So, the counties compete in some way for the forsaken interior’s resources, but they are confounded by the moor’s denizens. To increase the tension, we’ll add a curse: any who die within the confines of the Pale Moor return as undead, which also hinders incursion into the interior.
Opposition
Now, we have counties that desire something. Let’s also give them something to fear: an outside force. From the Valormr Campaign, we know that the dwarven empire of Throrgrmir lies to the east, and to the west, Darkmeer, a collection of belligerent fiefs. While Throrgrmir is a potential ally, Darkmeer is a certain enemy to civilized realms. Some time—decades or centuries—has passed since the Throrgrmir war. Darkmeer has recovered its losses and now threatens the counties with invasion, subjugation, and enslavement.
Character
Our thirteen counties should each have its own character to differentiate one from another. Space prohibits going into great detail, but we can sketch an overview of the political landscape and let the DM fill in the blanks. A handy way to divide the counties is by alignment.
Law: The counties united in an alliance against Darkmeer, a common threat. The alliance formed a duchy and elevated the ruler of the strongest county, whose seat is our base town (Emden on the Tabula), to the office of duke. The duke’s domain is shown in purple on the map, the other lawful counties in blues.
Map of the Forsaken Peninsula Showing Political Boundaries.
Chaos: Among the counties were some abstentions from the alliance. Notably, the county that claims the Pale Moor did not join and considers itself an independent state, as does the large county on the moor’s eastern border. These counties, and others shown in reds, are chaotic.
Neutrality: A few counties that joined the alliance are less keen on subjugation to a higher ruler. Some may pay homage to the duke, but when it comes to either defending the larger realm against chaos or making fruitful gains in the Pale Moor, their fealty is uncertain. Neutral counties are shown in greens and oranges.
Atlantis of the Clay
We don’t ignore the mythical source of our inspiration (see “Atlantis of the Clay”). An order of knights once held land on the west bank of the western inlet, where now is a bay. The order charged itself with the protection of the counties against the threat of chaos. Some decades ago, the land was submerged by a sudden deluge, possibly an act of divine retribution for some transgression. Villages were covered in mud. Castles were flooded, their lower floors inundated with silt. Many knights were lost. Survivors reaffirmed the order and its mission, and the strongest county gave to the order a tract of land on the river, where the knights established a palatinate.
Titles
Taking title names from English’s Germanic roots, I exchange duke for herzog, or feminine herzogin, and count for landgrave or landgravine. A vassal to a landgrave is a graf or grafin. A more martial province is ruled by a margrave. The head of the knightly order and ruler of the palatinate is a pfalzgraf. Then, for the ambiance in it, I want to play with words a little and, instead of counties, the political districts are graves.
Secret
Secret #4: Members of the ruling family of the chaotic grave that claims the Pale Moor are witches and warlocks, who consort with demons. Maybe they are possessed, maybe willing. Their goal is not to annex the Pale Moor but to reopen the gate beneath the ancient demon city.
“If ever Dan challenges you to a game of Chainmail Jousting, don’t do it. Just don’t do it! He has a system…”—Paul Siegel, Wandering DMs
I was properly warned. But when I got an email from Wandering DMs co-host Dan Collins earlier this week with the subject line: “Jousting Sunday?,” did I heed the warning? Of course not, I’m an adventurer after all.
This week on Wandering DMs, Dan and I tilt in the lists. My strategy is based on an analysis of Chainmail’s Jousting Matrix, outlined here. I rank each aiming point and defensive position using a simple point system.
Dan’s strategy is based on the Nash equilibrium. It’s a math thing. Essentially, as Dan explains, the goal of calculating the Nash equilibrium is to “optimize the possibly-infinite sequence of ‘if you know that I know that you know that I know’ decisions.” Or, as I understand it, Dan fed the Jousting Matrix to the machine, which coughed up the optimal strategy for winning a joust, and Dan turned the results into a weighted table.
It’s an age-old scenario: a human does a thing well until some other human builds a machine that does it better, faster, stronger… I’m not talking Steve Austin. I’m talking less fictional characters against automated opponents: John Henry vs. the steam drill, Garry Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, Jeopardy! champions vs. Watson.
In all these cases, the machine wins! Have I got a chance…?
How many times I’ve stepped through the process I cannot count. Maybe there are other ways. Maybe those ways are better. But the D&D Expert Rulebook’s Designing a Wilderness (X54) has the advantage of brevity and, after long use, familiarity. Furthermore, even after all these years, the lettered steps never fail to spark the imagination.
After determining the campaign hook in “Warlock of the Pale Moor,” we embellish the old map, original source of our inspiration.
Reading Map
Outlining a B/X D&D campaign. As sometimes happens at the outset, I thought to do this all in one article…
The setting is based on a historical map, Ubbo Emmius’s Tabula Frisiae Orientalis. On the map, a broad, lowland peninsula lies between two inlets, east and west. It shares a long land border with the mainland in the south and is accompanied by a chain of islands in the north.
The map’s political boundaries (in color) define a large central region that extends to the peninsula’s west coast and is otherwise surrounded by smaller areas. To incorporate our campaign hook—opposition to the warlock and infernal hordes—I imagine that the center is a forsaken wilderness. The surrounding areas are civilized fiefs, inhabitants of which dare not enter the interior for fear of the aforementioned hordes. Each of the islands belongs to one or another of these fiefs. Beyond the colored boundaries, a few other domains, extending off the map, make land neighbors of lesser importance to the campaign. All this keeps the setting contained, focusing on the Pale Moor.
B. DRAW A MAP OF THE AREA.
We could just print Emmius’s map at a suitable scale and lay a hexagon grid over it, possibly borrowing the transparent hex sheet from the 1987 Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting box. Or we could use that as the starting point and tailor a new map to the campaign needs.
Moreover, nothing says we can’t make the peninsula larger than its real-world instance. But, as the area is part of the greater DONJON LANDS setting, I use its actual size. Another DM might do different.
Emmius’s scale (top center) is in German and Belgian miles. Forgoing the conversion, I conjure a modern satellite map. Between the points where the coast meets map’s edge, east and west, I get a distance of about 72 miles and, from north to south, around 60.
Some might balk at these dimensions. Fourty-two hundred square miles is not large for what we usually think of as a campaign area. But I am sufficiently intrigued by the map’s offerings. Plus, I’m interested to find out if we can run a campaign up to domain-level play in such a small area.
At the standard six miles to a quarter-inch hex, the map would measure a minuscule 3" × 2½", and the “postcard campaign” would become all the rage. One mile per hex would make it 18" × 15", out-sizing a US tabloid or international A3 page. Going to the extreme, if we up the one-mile hexes to a half-inch, we’d have a beautiful poster map 36" × 30" for the game room wall.
A tug on the reins and we find a happy medium at six miles per inch. The map area is 12" × 10", which fits nicely on a tabloid/A3 page with space for a legend. The larger page size allows more data. While the campaign area lacks breadth, it might compensate with detail.
One-inch hexes lack granularity. Three miles to the half-inch hex might work. Smaller one-mile hexes would be 1⁄6″. Tiny but tempting. Because, if we draw a beautiful map, we can let go the reins, print our work at 300%, and have it mounted.
A Preliminary Map, Showing Coastlines and Counties.
Each version employs a different hex size: one-inch, half-inch, and sixth-inch.
C. PLACE THE DUNGEON AND THE BASE TOWN.
Magic words. “Place the dungeon and the base town” hold power. Whether read silently to oneself or spoken aloud, they deliver a zap! to the mind that brings the process of wilderness design alive. This small step joins the wilderness environment and the adventure locale to create the microcosm that is to be a campaign setting.
Primary Dungeon
On Emmius’s map, the upper right inset shows the domain of Aurich, which is near the center of the interior region—ideal placement for the campaign’s principle adventure locale. We may well preserve the domain’s design: fortress with walled garden. We might embellish the garden with a necropolis, excavated by the warlock, built by the demons in ancient days or, earlier, from the time of the Greater Ones.1
Base Town
The upper left inset depicts Emden, a port city protected on its land flanks by a formidable wall. An obvious base town. I’m thinking to scale it down from city to a large town, leaving room for it to grow into a larger metropolis through the efforts of high-level PCs. We call this the “base town,” but PCs might begin their careers in smaller towns or villages, especially at campaign start.
Secondary Dungeon
Of course, we don’t forget the Pale Moor Keep itself. Laying the Valormr campaign map over the Tabula, I find the fortress in the lower east corner of the Pale Moor, in close proximity to what might be a village marked by Emmius as Straitholt. The landmark, which lies within a wooded area, serves as the location of the now ruined keep.
Secret
Secret #3: Deep below the former demon city is a gate to the Abyss. Its closing marked the downfall of the infernal metropolis. In his tower on the surface above, the warlock either works to reopen the gate or to keep it closed.
1 I should apologize for obtuse references to unexplained aspects of the DONJON LANDS setting. Instead, I promise a forthcoming article that will shed more light.
Inspired by the map and the myth from last week’s “Atlantis of the Clay,” let’s make a campaign. To keep the task manageable, we’ll do only a broad overview. A DM can fill in details to suit.
I intend to follow the steps for Designing a Wilderness provided in the D&D Expert Rulebook. To begin campaign design, though, I refer to an early article from Ray Winninger’s Dungeoncraft column. Again for brevity’s sake, I won’t go through Winninger’s entire process, but the second installment of Dungeoncraft (Dragon #256) is a great way to get started. (See below Old-School D&D Campaign Building and Mapmaking Resources.)
Campaign Hook
After laying down the First Rule of Dungeoncraft, which is worth repeating to oneself every morning and every evening: “Never force yourself to create more than you must” (20), Winninger tutors the campaign builder to begin with a compelling hook. This is the “concept that captures your players’ imaginations and draws them into the game” (21). Winninger divides campaign hooks into five categories:
Culture
Environment
Class or Race
Opposition
Situation
Even attentive readers may be forgiven for not recognizing the landmass depicted on Ubbo Emmius’s 1730 Tabula Frisiae Orientalis as the location, far into our own future, of the Keep on the Pale Moor.
From the Valormr Campaign, we know the keep was constructed by Chaos Armies commander Hadewych the Arbiter to serve as a staging area and supply outpost during the Battle of Throrgrmir. We also know the Forces of Law stormed the fortress as part of a successful plan to cut off Chaos’s supply route.
From my campaign journal, second week of spring, “Day 4, morning: Law storms Keep on the Pale Moor. Garrison destroyed. Warlock saves.”
“Saves” refers to a method, part of a simulator used to expedite the lesser battles, in which heroes and wizards are determined to survive or perish when their unit is defeated. This was the warlock’s second save.
At Valormr’s opening, the warlock was stationed with the Chaos garrison at Port-of-Sands, a day’s march east. When the Forces of Law took the port, the garrison was destroyed, and the warlock, making his first save, retreated to the keep.
Two days later, having saved again following the keep’s storming, the warlock, so I now imagine, fled into the Pale Moor… Here I see the silhouette of an opposition campaign hook.
The Valormr Campaign uses Chainmail, wherein a warlock is a wizard “able to manage” four spells. To fill out the opposition hook, I’ll read the denomination in the traditional sense: the warlock is a practitioner of the black arts who calls on demons and devils to work his malevolent magic. So, while the “warlock” may be the campaign’s arch villain (and probably further advanced in experience levels), he is accompanied by demons and devils, witches, warlocks, and other evil magic-users, as well as evil clerics and—for the old-school in it—an “evil high priest” or two.
Potential allies are lawful clerics and other members of the established church. We might invent or borrow a B/X paladin. Furthermore, I imagine the church has got its hands in secular politics. Through its influence, witchery—any dealings with infernal beings—is unlawful, the crime punishable by death.
… Fleeing deep into the moor’s boggy interior, the warlock discovered the vestiges of an ancient city, sunk beneath the mires. Within cyclopean chambers, dank and dark, much wealth and magic remained. The warlock fell upon grotesque skeletons of unknown beasts, stone vats coated in foul residues, and deep pits containing vile creatures, still living. In perilous forays, he unearthed large tomes, whose covers were embossed with gruesome faces, the pages made from human skin, and the glyphs inscribed thereon protected by dire curses.
Secrets
Winninger closes the article with the Second Rule of Dungeoncraft: “Whenever you design a major piece of the campaign world, always devise at least one secret related to that piece.” For the warlock and his discovery, I have two secrets:
Secret #1: The warlock was a traitor. After his narrow escape from Port-of-Sands and seeing the forces—including a wizard in command of a flying carpet—arrayed against the single battalion which garrisoned the keep, the warlock made a secret deal with the opposition commander. He would open the gates in exchange for safe-conduct.
Secret #2: The city is much more ancient than one might suppose, having been built in the time of the Greater Ones. After the Rending, the ruins were taken over by demons and rebuilt in their grand and chaotic fashion. Even that was long ago. Demonic sanctuaries are since caved in. Any donjons of the Greater Ones are long fallen. Only the warlock’s tower, formidable though crumbling, marks the ground, beneath which much more may yet remain.
Old-School D&D Campaign Building and Mapmaking Resources
This is not an exhaustive list. These are a few resources that I have found useful or inspiring over the years.
D&D Expert Rulebook, Designing a Wilderness, X54 (1981)
AD&D Wilderness Survival Guide, Starting from Scratch, 103-6 (1986)
Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide, 51-83 (1990)
While Winninger re-treads some ground covered in the Campaign Sourcebook (above), he integrates campaign-building with mapmaking and does so in an efficient manner, with the goal to get from campaign concept to character creation as quickly as possible while covering all the major concerns along the way.
What resources have you used, whether from D&D or other RPGs, for campaign building and mapmaking?
A few months ago I was looking at some old Dutch maps—as one does, when I ran across an article called “Maps of Meaning.” In it, authors Meggy Lennaerts and Jan van der Molen of the University of Groningen Library tell the story of German cartographer Ubbo Emmius, who advocated for historical accuracy in mapmaking in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Incredible to us in our days of satellite imagery, half a millennium ago maps were rarely accurate and often based on less than fact. One such historical inaccuracy, which is discussed in the article, is the bay now called Dollart and the myth of the Atlantis of the Clay.
Sixteenth-century maps showed, correctly, the Dollart, an inlet that formed the west coast of East Frisia (Frisiea Orientalis). Today, the water is so shallow as to reveal the mud at low tide. Many early cartographers included an inset, showing the area of the bay as a lowland dotted with villages. The insets were labeled “the Reiderland,” and indicated a flood which occurred in the year 1277. The information was based on a 1574 map by Jacob Vermeersch.
“[Ubbo Emmius] criticized [established cartographers] for affording local folklore a credibility that it did not merit.” Emmius omitted the deluge in his 1616 map of the area, discounting fables and legends, preferring to rely on primary sources.
According to the myth of the Atlantis of the Clay, the Reiderland was submerged beneath the sea due to the transgressions of its inhabitants. We have discovered since that, while the land did indeed suffer inundation, the flood occurred in 1509—only 65 years before the first map showing it to have been three hundred years prior.
Tabula Frisiae Orientalis, Ubbo Emmius, 1730.
What caught my eye was Emmius’s 1730 (posthumous) map. We see the Reiderland flood inset (lower right), added by the publisher after the cartographer’s death in 1625. We note, as well, nicely delineated borders dividing a landmass surrounded by an island-strewn sea. We remark additional insets in the upper corners: one a city (left), the other a fortress (right). When we identify these two, respectively, as base town and ruined castle, the historical map transforms into something more magic. That is, a map depicting an area we may explore in a fantasy adventure campaign.
When we identify these two, respectively, as base town and ruined castle, the historical map transforms into something more magic.
While the date is incorrect, and the flood’s cause may have more to do with nature’s whim than human foible, still, the Reiderland’s 33 villages lie beneath the silt of the tidal flat in this Atlantis of the Clay.
