The Origin & Inspiration for the Shadow Over Sojenka Campaign.
In 2021 I started an old-school campaign based on Low Fantasy Gaming, which went on for a little more than two years. I had previously re-read the Fred Saberhagen novels in the Empire of the East omnibus, and was interested in trying to develop a magic system based on these stories. The World of Weirth Campaign was intended to be a playtest vehicle for this magic system.
Goodman Games had released an Empire of the East supplement for DCC, but I thought it fell far short of what it could have been.
I chose LFG because it was NOT D&D, it was designed to be more sword & sorcery in a strange world, rather than knights & wizards in a fantastic western Europe. I wanted to get away from the Western Europe/LotR mindset and explore a setting that FELT and PLAYED differently. Well, it did, and it was popular enough that the players decided to just go on and play it as a full-on campaign.
While I was doing the ongoing research and Campaign prep, I started digging into the history of D&D. I studied the Appendix N books, the old wargames like Chainmail and Tony Bath's Ancients. I wanted to get a feel for what the gameplay would have been like in 1979 when the participants were avid wargamers who were heavily interested in vast, sweeping campaigns of nation vs nation. I read The First Fantasy Campaign, by Dave Arneson. It was difficult to understand... until I caught up with my research into the old wargames and discovered (with some encouragement and prodding from Jeffro Johnson and Jon Mollison) that the "hard to understand" parts of the game were built on Wargame Campaign principles that Gary and Dave ASSUMED the participants would understand because they had been playing this way in Napoleonic Era formats for years.
Strategic-map level movement and timekeeping
Domain-level play featuring politics, trade, diplomacy and army-scale conflict
Principles of massed combat such as formations and morale
This led to incorporating 1:1 Downtime Pacing into my campaign, which opened up all sorts of possibilities that never existed before.
In late 2022 it was announced that an inexpensive softcover version of the incredible Tonisborg megadungeon would be released. I jumped on the pre-order and put out on Twitter that I was going to run a megadungeon campaign based on Tonisborg, Chainmail, and Tony Bath's Wargames Campaign principles. When I received the book in March of 2023 I tweeted an invitation to anyone who wanted to play in this kind of game, with the specific intention of using two intertwined philosophies:
"BROsr" principles like multiple characters for each player & 1:1 Downtime Pacing and,
Wargame Campaign principles like Faction-play at low levels & using large numbers of men at arms
So we could study how to run a megadungeon-centered game.
I wanted to use old-school rules, in order to simulate the play environment of the original 1970s dungeon participants. Tonisborg comes with a set of rules, called Zero Edition Dungeoneering, but they were not available separately. The next option for a proto-D&D was Champions of Zed, but that was long out of print and the author had no intention of re-releasing it. As I had planned to make this campaign design playtest fully public, I wanted to avoid any copyright/ethics issues. This led me to use Blueholme, which was free for the first three levels, and inexpensive for the expanded version if players decided to continue beyond the third level. In retrospect I should have used the OD&D rules, however, I would have run into the same problem of incompleteness later, anyway.
Starting the Campaign
The response was so great that I needed to set up two sessions a week in order to fit in all of the players!
Both session groups dove into Tonisborg with aggressive intent. They discovered it was hellishly dangerous, and that there were strings attached to the treasure they recovered. I think keeping the taxation concept was a mistake on my part, but I was trying to re-create a "lost" game form. I did not anticipate the repercussions.
It has been remarked many times that players will go to insane lengths to avoid paying taxes on their loot, and it was no different here. They lost interest in Tonisborg almost immediately.
The Thursday group decided to go look into other opportunities, so they could earn gold and experience and level up before attempting to plumb the depths of Tonisborg again. They have returned a few times, and interacted with some of the Factions found within, but have not made it the focus of their attention.
The Tuesday group went in a similar direction, but soon veered way off in a very unexpected direction! I have asked the Tuesday group to participate in a short chat, where we will discuss a few salient topics:
What was your initial impression of how you thought participation in this campaign might unfold?
Did you have any idea of "Win Conditions"?
What caused you to discard the concept of studying megadungeon play for creating a significant Faction?
How would you describe the impact of 1:1 Pacing on the development of your Faction and nascent Domain, as compared to conventional, pause-time play?
Have your ideas regarding "Win Conditions" changed over the past year of play?
What is the most compelling aspect of this particular game for you?
A “Video” of the conversation is here:
I look forward to any comments or questions!