As part of the SaveOrDie group, there's a new campaign coming up called Hardly Heroes. It will feature, primarily, MrMouton and GreenZerg as our players, but the other cast members may make an appearance. Let's talk the big strokes.
Core ConceptOur heroes will be playing a pair of AD&D 2e thieves in the squalor of Stromheim - that heavily damaged, depopulated, partially ruined, gang ridden capital city of Eridon. They're gonna get up to some thiefy stuff of different kinds. Unlike all the other campaigns I've run in the past, for this project we're going to record sessions ahead of time, not live, and then use the backlog of filmed sessions to fill in weeks the main SaveOrDie campaign is off or has a last minute cancellation. This way the SaveOrDie channel will have new content every single week, rain or shine, and a cancelled session just means an episode of another amazing campaign. Final details aren't ready yet, but the idea is being kicked around that a certain level of Patron (for SaveOrDie, not for me) will get access to VODs before their release date.
Why 2e?After years of abuse, my players have been beaten into submission and now actually enjoy AD&D 2e. They're so badly damaged that they both actively want to play 2e thieves and foresee a grand and beautiful future for their characters. The fools.
But in all seriousness, if you're gonna run a thief based game, a system that has a lot more granularity around thief mechanics is a good idea. In 5e you have hide, stealth, climb, perception, and slight of hand for abilities. In 2e you have Pick Pockets, Open Locks, Find/Remove Traps, Move Silently, Hide in Shadows, Detect Noise, Climb Walls, and Read Languages. On top of that, 5e thieves don't really progress in their skills very well. Skill get their most significant boost at level 1, and then have incremental progress (+1 or 5%) at levels 4, 5, 8, and 9 via stat increases and proficiency bonus increases. More importantly, the rogues will be pretty identical. Max out dex as fast as possible, skill the few stats you use, and you'll be running almost totally interchangeable rogues.
2e, by contrast, lets each character focus on one subset of skills in order to create complimenting characters that need one another to be fully kitted. Since stats are less important in 2e, especially dex for rogue stuff, we could end up with pretty wildly different characters on a mechanical level.
Also, 2e is such a good system. It certainly has its flaws, but its heightened granularity works great for advanced roleplaying. That's why it's called Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.
Why StromheimOriginally the idea was pitched as being in Crownhold, the capital of Mistrya, in order to sit more deeply in the aftermath of Tombs of Scoria. Our former Tombs of Scoria players want to feel that connection to their last great campaign in the region, but I nixed that idea for the following reasons
Thieves in a city are bound to run afoul of the law, which would mean at some point the PCs would be working against the Kingdom of Imrik (not it's real name, just emphasizing the connection), and they didn't want to be undermining all of their hard work.
Crownhold is in really bad shape. I mean really bad. Its castle was burned, the city was overrun by monsters for a time, its currently ruled by an outside empire and the occupants aren't exactly happy about it. There's lots of violence going on here, and not a ton of wealth. Mistrya has been a pretty poor region, so maybe not the best place for a thief based area. Also, the current rulers are trying quite hard to establish peace, so the amount of government pressure / precence will be quite high.
Stromheim too is in poor shape,after an invasion of demons, the fall of the kingdom, and a siege of undead - yet it survived all those things. As the former capital of a large, long standing, and prosperous society, there are many secrets lurking in Stromheim.
Stromheim is in a state of flux. If the PCs get involved in politics, or fighting against the law, they won't be working against the interests of their former characters, but instead the local power structure. Their enemy won't be Imrik, it'll be gang#5 or new-king#3. These are great enemies to have since it won't put the PCs in direct conflict with the growing Empire of Drekis.
Sandashar and Akuba are great options too, but the Akuban-Drekis relations aren't great and the PCs really don't want to be too stuck to the Anti-Drekis sentiments.
Stromheim has an excellent central location with a combination of settlements, wilds, ruins, and colonists arriving, leaving the door open to many potential storylines, resources, trade, and characters.
Where does this fit in the timelineThe exact year hasn't been sorted yet, but we'll be doing at least 1 year after the end of ToS, and maybe as far as 10 years down the road. So somewhere between 1516 and 1525. For reference
Rise of Drekis: Chapter 1 is in the year 1516
Rise of Drekis: Chapter 2 is in the year 1517
Rise of Drekis: Chapter 3 is in the year 1517-1518
SaveOrDie: Outcasts is in the year 1521
This means that Eridon will be in the process of reconstituting a government and reestablishing control. Most of the surviving kingdom is in the north, with the capital temporarily in Highcastle(?maybe?).
What's going on in the city?During the fall of Eridon, the city of Stromheim was in a lot of trouble. There were clashing from outside forces, fights from within, flights of the populace, the queen and her guard just dipped one night, sections laying in ruins, and order disrupted. Currently different gangs claim ownership of different parts of town, and we're in a might-makes-right period on the streets.
How you dress and what gear you carry is an outward sign of your position. The more arms, armor, and wealth you have on display - the more power you wield but the bigger target you are. This means we'll be dealing with a lot of AC 10 characters armed with knives. You'll be able to spot powerful people in town simply by the presence of arms or guards, while the addition of armor or shields will signal very high threat areas.
One of the wonderful things about Stromhiem is that it is old and has been wealthy for a long period of time. That means there's lots of hidden treasures to be found in the city, mostly hidden in the underground areas. Like any good ancient city, Stromhiem has a certain degree of underground passages space that has been carved out over time. Different depths correspond to different types of spaces. Just below the city streets we have the basements, cellars and passageways - pretty common stuff. Deeper than that are the dungeons, a water table, a layer of stone, the deeply dug lairs, and finally the pits that go waaay down into the earth. Each of these different strata contain different levels of threats and rewards.
Last but not least, the inner city is still pretty well protected and functional. They've got their own wall between them and the squalor, their own guards, and more importantly access to clerics. Our PCs may be able to purchase healing from the inner city if they can make the right connections (or have enough money), which will give us a really nice way of spending all their hard earned cash.
In a future post I will detail the levels of power projection, chase mechanics, city map, and city layers.
When does the campaign start?That's a great question!
That's all for now on this topic, but Hardly Heroes will be coming to a monitor, tablet, TV, phone, or set of headphones near you in the not-to-distant future. The next post, coming sometime this week, will talk about a very specific DMing problem we faced in Rise of Drekis: Chapter 3.
gl hfNeal "Koibu" Pass Erickson
p.s. the logo at top is not final, it might change