Chronicles of the Consortium

Now that I'm back in the saddle, if you know what I mean, I've been doing a bit of a search for Stormbringer items on the webs. There is a really useful discussion site here . One of the posts recommends a really good campaign site for the game here . I don't know how to post something on that one, but if you see this, Colin, thanks for the material!

These will be explained later... Ehlessa's Narrative Marion skips gleefully down the stairs, even though they are covered with a layer of slippery black mildew. The rest of us follow rather more gingerly. Destiny picks the frozen lock of a large door at the bottom, and we file through. We enter a large square basement hall. The room is bare, and every surface is covered in frost. Marion spots an area of flagstones that is more snowy white than the rest, and investigates. She lifts a large flagstone quite easily - it is less thick than the others and has a ring set into it. Underneath is a hidden well, an internal water supply. Falling into the icy waters beneath would not be much fun. As we look around the room, we see three doors. Also, the entire room is covered in expensive tiling, depicting motifs of timepieces repeated over and over: sundials, hourglasses, water clocks - you name it. Whoever lived here had a real thing about time. One of the rooms turns out to be t...

This is the title of a mini-scenario that came with the first special edition of Imagine  magazine; I think it was a pull-out from the centre of the issue. After an initial wander around various locations, it's basically a set of planned encounters in sequence, leading to an ultimate resolution. It does, though, have some really nice ideas, and can be a bit freaky. Perfect for the Young Kingdoms, then. Ehlessa's Narrative I wake, refreshed , but puzzled. I see my friend Marion, Sir Blanque and the Melnibonean woman - and what is Bomilcar doing here? The others fill me in on recent events. It turns out that the story told us by those raiders is true. My father and Jorthan's are both dead, as is that nice old man Orelius, all killed in an attack on the Nikorn estate led by a powerful fire sorceror from Pan Tang by the name of Theleb K'aarna. Our warriors at the estate are all slain too. Even worse news comes in the form of Syphax, the traitor who was banished by ...

Thanks to The Miniatures Page fantasy discussion boards, I've come across a blog for a new role-playing campaign using the Frostgrave setting here . This is the sort of creative idea I like, so I'll be following and checking in regularly.

Just saying hello - Alastair has the distinction of being the first follower of this brand spanking new old school rather empty at the moment blog thingie. I promise to get more photos on here, honest!

I wanted a good campaign map, so I purchased Hexographer . It allows one to produce maps in the style of the old Greyhawk campaign supplement, with a few extra tweaks. I made it by cropping the region from the standard Young Kingdoms map using Paint, and then I imported the resulting image as an underlay for Hexographer. It was pretty fuzzy to say the least, but it meant I could effectively place the terrain over the top, kind of like the virtual equivalent of tracing over a map using acetates, which is what I used to do back in the days of yore. I hope you can see the main features when you click on it directly: the Sighing Desert is at the northern end of the map, as are the rolling Northern Ilmioran hills. There is a substantial mountain chain to the northeast, and the Weeping Waste to the east. The grim Forest of Troos is right in the centre, with the ancient site of Org somewhere in there. I've added the main trade route, as well as locations that have already appeared in t...

Jorthan's Rescue  was a Runequest scenario published in one of the early editions of White Dwarf  magazine. Believe it or not, before it became the house rag of Games Workshop, White Dwarf  was quite an innovative games publication, carrying all sorts of interesting bits and pieces for a wide range of systems. I bought the very first compendium edition many years ago, and still have it. I have been intending to run this one as the first major scenario in the new campaign, with appropriate changes of course. I've never liked the Glorantha setting, but to people like me Runequest  was a step up from the levels system of D&D, seeming more 'realistic' because of the emphasis on statistics and skill levels. I kept the name, and so Jorthan is the son of Nikorn the sadly now deceased noble adventurer from Ilmiora. Trollkin have become Pikarayd warriors armed with clubs to fit the Young Kingdoms setting. Bomilcar's narrative With the sun rising, we scout out...

I still have a quite a lot of my old role-playing materials, and they are already coming in quite handy. We decided very recently that we were going to play this campaign, and I don't have much that is of the kind of quality available now in the way of game aids. However, I do still have some old character figures, along with some bits and pieces, and these will do until I can get my act together and acquire (and paint) some more. The photo above is of a couple of reversible GURPS hex sheets that came out a very long time ago, I think as a set of three, because that's how many I have. On the other side are building interiors; the photo shows a wilderness map. A trail winds its way through open areas and bits and pieces of foliage, trees and some rocks. Despite having been folded and stored away for what must now be several decades, they now see some use... Bomilcar's narrative We follow the raiders on their way to the southwest. According to the Nikorn estate workers, ...

Bomilcar's Narrative Or at least, what's left of it. A once substantial fortified manor house is in ruins, with evidence of a great deal of fire damage - a conflagration. Bodies of my tribe's fellows lie scattered everywhere, but there is a great deal of the blood of others, mostly leading to a separate funeral pyre that still smoulders. I find three sets of tracks leading off in different directions. The largest grouping leads straight west, directly towards the coast; I reckon about a couple of dozen sets of footprints belonging to tall, heavy individuals, including a healthy scattering of blood marks. The smallest is a couple of sets of hoof prints, heading eastwards; one set is particularly large and powerful, possibly belonging to a warhorse. The other comes from a steppe pony. The third set of prints belongs to about a dozen tall travellers heading southwest on foot. Some of the estate workers who managed to survive by taking cover and going into hiding reveal th...

Bomilcar's Narrative I am Bomilcar, son of Masinissa, Chief Rider of the Pure Horse Tribe. We come from the steppe lands known to the city dwellers as the Weeping Wastes, due to the frequent rain squalls that cross the land, turning dry land and even desert to lush pastures. I have reached my majority, and now that it is spring time I have travelled to Karlaak to meet with representatives of my father's employer, Nikorn. They are to conduct me to Nikorn's castle, there to join my father in his capacity as Captain of the Desert Guard, the feared horse archers who are allied with Nikorn. The three who greet me are equipped similarly, wearing the rare laquered wooden armour of the horse peoples, together with a hardy steppe pony each. There the resemblances end, however. The most striking of the three is also the most disconcerting, even intimidating: a Melnibonean woman who introduces herself as Destiny (" Lady Destiny to humans, don't you know"). She is tall...

My gaming life has gone in waves. Before I moved to Cheltenham, I was mostly running a very long term ancients figure wargaming campaign. However, two years later I still have to find a group that suits me, both in terms of time and location. I have visited a couple of clubs, but neither worked for me. A long time ago, I ran a very successful series in the world of Moorcock's Elric, using a whole range of printed scenarios and campaigns - basically, whatever was available for any system. I still have fond memories of those games, and I hung onto my library of rulebooks and supplements with the vague thought that they might one day come in useful again. My kids have never really been interested in gaming, apart from computer and video games, but I suppose I should count myself lucky, since none of them is hooked on violent games. Now, though, they want to try proper role-playing, so I have dug out my old fantasy RPG materials. The campaign starts in Ilmiora, with a series of e...