The Broken Yonder, a collaborative campaign.

So, our regular Thursday night group is coming to a natural break in our Traveller Pirates of Drinax campaign.  We are now considering what to do next, we play D&D5e, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Traveller but I've been introducing Gumshoe games into the mix, during breaks in campaigns.  Thanks to the proliferation of online conventions, we've also been trying out new systems, our regular GM played a game of 13th Age and is itching to try it out, so after my one shot of Agon, we'll start a new campaign with this system.

The campaign will be set in a collaborative world, we are using a procedurally generated map from Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator this is awesome, as it allows the GM to update the map with our inputs and then make this available as an image for use in-game, as we discover new things, we add it to the map and share it with the group.  We can set the weather, change the cultural makeup of cities and record our adventures and impacts on the land.

We are also spending time defining new Icons and our Characters, adding these into Kanka a nice fantasy RPG campaign management tool.  We set out our backstory and the GM then starts to define the Icons, key NPCs, locations and within the conversations we refine these.  The aim is to build out this world as we play, enriching the map but also the characters, locations, events that shape it.

My character is a human rogue, Mocholla Ó Siadhail, he's from Wiegenho, in the north, a fisherman to start with, he's travelled far, discovering new trade routes and bringing home riches, he is well-loved by his people.  But on one such journey he finds himself at the mercy of a treacherous an evil cult, his problems are only just beginning as he is sold into slavery and cruel tortures and magical experiments are performed on him.  This provides the basis for how he ends up who he is, where he is and why he'll join the rest of the party and go off adventuring...

The GM then uses some basic info that I provide to ask questions, whilst also setting out the basics of the quest, we are to start in Pharta and travel west across the great deserts, but why am I here, when Pharta is about as far from Wiegenho as you can get?  And why am I joining a caravan to head into such a godforsaken area?  And who are all these other misfits I am with?

We are probably a few weeks away from starting but it is interesting to see how between the GM and the players, the characters and the land and our quest takes shape - 13th age actively encourages such storytelling, building it into the character through Icon relationships, the One Unique Thing and Backgrounds.

Lastly, our GM is using Foundry VTT to manage our character sheets, dice rolls, combat and to actively bring the game to life - Roll20 works fine for me on Gumshoe, but I can see how our GM (as a programmer) loves the control that Foundry gives for crunchy games, even though it is new, it seems slicker and quicker to get things working and to run games. 

I hope to update regularly on how the world and our first experience with 13th Age works out, but also how some of these technical tools help or hinder us as we progress.