The Sandbox

Procedures of Play in the Eldritch Earth Campaign

You are an adventurer because you feel a strong call in your bones to chaos and exploration. The boredom of a calm life doesn't appeal to you – you are driven to leave behind the safety of civilization and explore the wilds to make your name. Regardless of what drives you, you are driven. You choose where to go and what to do. There will be a handful of obvious choices, but you don't by any means need to take them. The adventure is in your hands.

Players should be aware, it is their job to decide what will happen in a session. They will be provided with a Campaign Action map that will have a number of places indicated on it. It's entirely player decision where to go and what to do during any game session or between sessions, for that matter.

For example, there is bandit country to the North-Northwest of Jorvikshire, you can always harass the bandits. There are Danes to the East, you can go mess with them. You can rob travelers, go the Kingston and shop, burglarize or mug people, if that floats your boat. There are several Atlantean Ruins nearby, each crammed with monsters and treasure to loot, you can go there.

Each place of possible adventure on the map will have a “Danger Rating”, which offers a rough guideline to the HD totals of typical encounters in the area. The higher the Danger Rating, the more treasure will be found and the more perilous the fights.

Experience advancement comes only through spending money. If gaining levels is the most important thing to you, you need to get gobs of cash. But, if you'd rather establish a reputation as the greatest singer in the land, you could spend your time in that sort of thing.

• Players may choose an adventure goal ahead of time and arrange that with a GM at least two days before the game session
  • For example “We want to go to the Cavern of Screaming Dung”
  • Such an arrangement, agreed to by all players will provide an XP reward multiplier of 5%
• If no adventure goal set, players will begin in Jorvikburg where they can roleplay coming up with a plan
• If no plan is forthcoming, the session will break into successive lighting rounds for each player
  • The spotlight will keep rotating until some coherent action happens
• The session ends at 8:45 with the player characters “back home” in Jorvikburg one way or the other
  • Returning home may require one or more rolls to return
• Unless the players have other plans or actions actions such as months of crafting or training, weeks of ability score healing, or other endeavor, two game weeks pass between each games session as in life
  
• Players may have several active characters in the campaign, but may only play one in any “party or expedition” at a time
• All player characters should appoint an “heir” such as another player character, a henchmen, a retainer, or other NPC to inherit their possessions if they should die
• Active characters of a single player may not pool resources under any circumstances, but they may designate one another as an “heir”
• A player character does not gain any XP for wealth gained as “heir” to another player character's fortune
• Any player character may do a side quest between game sessions if a GM is willing to accommodate
• Side quests may be carried out online, by email, or live as long as time and maintenance are tracked

There are several roles that the gaming group should have for the campaign in addition to the normal GM responsibilities

• One GM should be “Time Master” keeping track of all time used by various characters in a centrally accessible manner
• Since XP is granted by spending gold, each character needs record all spending and submit it to the “Advancement Master” to be credited for XP in a master log.
• One GM should be the “Master Cartographer” keeping a master GM map of all known (and unknown) points of interest and spheres of influence.

As player characters advance, any new player characters starting at first level will make for a challenging game to play for GMs. To address this problem, the campaign will add a “sliding scale” that will gradually raise the level of starting player characters. Whether this is done based on the session number, milestones, or as legacy player characters reach certain levels is up for discussion. The ruling will be made by the consensus of the GMs.

The campaign may add new players every so often. These players may choose to play a trusted henchman for a session if they are just “dropping in” or they may decide to create their own new character for play. At this time, players who have an existing player character may create a new player character of their own to add to play. All new characters to the campaign start at the level floor set by the sliding scale as decided by the GMs.

Players may lose their player character to death, insanity, or maiming. Similar to when new players are added to the campaign, when an existing player character dies all players may decide to roll up and play a new character in a session where a replacement character is generated. Replacement characters start at the level floor set by the sliding scale as decided by the GMs.