Reflections on a setting written by a child

Memories

Boy, they sneak up on you. January 1st is coming up in just a few weeks and that day constitutes not only another year spent circling the sun but my 6th year playing RPGs. Not much of a milestone, especially compared to others in the blogosphere who have been playing since before D&D was even published. But it's still more than a quarter of my life.

In honor of this unimportant anniversary, I'm going to share one of my earliest creative thoughts born from RPGs with you all.

Bear in mind, I was 15 at the time.

ZOMBIE ISLAND

Yeah, my creativity sectors needed some work. They still do.

So here's the skinny. There was this ancient empire a thousand years ago. the "Totally-not-Roman Empire". They held sway over such vast territories that, after the fall, communication between these many distant lands broke down.

One such place was a tiny island hundreds of miles away from any nearby coastline. The place had been settled shortly before the fall by a young prince as a sort of pet project. He founded on the island a town to house the workforce as well as a castle for himself and his friends.

Eventually, this Prince went on and inherited the Empire, doing his part to cause its decline. But the island was still inhabited, thousands of people farming the land, fishing the seas, and thriving off of the goods shipped in by the Empire.

When the Empire fell, the ships stopped rolling in. By the time powers on the mainland had reached the point of wealth and stability where they could take ownership of the island and support it with long-range shipping, the island had been utterly forgotten. What few scholars and administrators who tried to reach out to the island were met with ambivalence by a world more consumed with its own petty squabbles.

In this time, the island fell into disarray, the population which numbered nearly ten thousand before the fall, dropped to less than a thousand within a decade. The issue was not just that the island couldn't support the former population by itself, but it was also hit with an infestation of the dead.

Where exactly they came from nobody knows. Some say a necromancer, some say it was just part of the cataclysm which befell the Empire, some thought it was the Gods taking revenge on their faults. But no one knows for sure.

During the collapse, the people of the town quickly fell to the dead. But, eventually, the town organized a defense. They tore down houses and villas to build walls and protect themselves from the onslaught of the dead. But not all the survivors currently living can be found within the ruins of the town.

The castle is still occupied, but not by the Prince's decadent friends, no. The new denizens of the fortress can be charitably described as "insane". A pseudo-religious cult of about 50 "knights" who don thick plate armor and mount up on their barded horses and ride forth to kill the dead who cover the island.

That's about as far as the setting ever got back when I first wrote it in 2014. Here's the original design document. The last edit I made was in 2016, when I came up with the god awful name "Roltarich".

Some comments I have on this setting as an adult.

It certainly has potential. There are some interesting questions raised: Why can't ships reach the city now? How was it forgotten? What befell the Empire?

Why do the Knights ride out daily? Where do they procure armor and horses from? Are they religious? Insane? Scared?

What really caused the dead to rise? A necromancer? A plague? The gods?

If fully fleshed out, this could make an interesting mini-setting. I may take the time to do that, I may not. Only time will tell.

Did you have any questions about this setting? Did you like it? Hate it? Drop a comment and let me know!

Silver Swords issue 2 is is live on Kickstarter!

As of yesterday, the Kickstarter for the second issue of the Role-Playing Game zine Silver Swords is online, and we're already almost halfway to our goal!

Come check it out and see what you think of the project! I'm happy to answer any questions you may have!

Silver Swords Issue 2 Kickstarter!

With art by our returning layout designer Ariana V.S.!

Silver Swords Issue 2 is looking for contributors!

Hello!

My name is William Cord, and I represent Stronghold Press Games. We are looking for contributing authors and artists to provide quality content for the second issue of Silver Swords, the roleplaying zine!

First and foremost, we are looking for dungeons, small adventure modules, maps, and worldbuilding for Fifth Edition and OSR systems, but we are also open to ideas you may have for content and would like to discuss that with you. We expect these articles to come in around 750 words but are flexible to change on the subject, so long as it is well communicated.

As well, we are interested in including short comics to this edition of the zine, and would love to hear from artists on this!

Payment for articles will be a $20 flat rate as well as a pdf copy of the completed zine, if accepted.
Payment for comic strips will vary depending on the work. For $15 for a 1-3 panel strip, up to $45 for a full-page comic, if we accept it.

The deadline for submission is tentatively September 30. We would like to be in contact with you before then.

As mentioned above, all articles are subject to approval before you are paid. Poor quality content will not be purchased nor published. Thank you for your understanding.

Please feel free to send an email to strongholdpressgames@gmail.com with your content ideas and we will discuss the particulars of the project!

I look forward to hearing from you!

Silver Swords Design Survey results!

A few days ago, I put together a survey and posted it to a couple of subreddits and a few MeWe pages. The results everyone has given us has been very useful in helping decide how to layout our next issue and what to fill it with.

We asked a total of 5 questions with an extra response line for adding your email to the list to hear about our next issue. We aimed for as few questions as possible to get the data we need in order to keep the response time nice and short.

We got a total of 51 responses over the last few days, not exactly a Pew Research Center survey size, but more than enough for us to gauge the general opinions of those who would read our zines.

Firstly, we asked the respondent's age to help us understand our audience. This one somewhat took me by surprise, as a young man of only 21, I expected the ages to be weighted around the 20's, but that wasn't the case.

Under 18: 5.8%
18-25: 7.7%
26-35: 25%
36-45: 25%
56-55: 30.8%
56-65: 3.8%
Over 65: 1.9%

Next came a question asking how interested respondents were in buying Zines. This one also happily surprised me, with over 2/3rds of all asked selecting positive responses to the idea.

"Very Interested!": 21.2%
"If it strikes my fancy": 46.2%
"It's kinda cool, I guess": 15.4%
"If they're cheap": 9.6%
"Only if they're free!": 7.7%

Next were two questions asking people what system they would enjoy seeing get coverage in upcoming issues and what type of content they would prefer. Given that these options allowed write-in answers, there are a bit too many responses to list them all here, so I'll give you the highlights.

Systems:

OSR D&D games got the most love as far as systems go, with 34 respondents selecting it. Next was D&D 5e with 16 votes, followed by Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0., Warhammer Fantasy, and Call of Cthulu all with 8 votes each.

Content:

The responses here were a lot more varied, giving more votes to all sorts of ideas, again I'll list the top responses. 

Adventure modules/Dungeons came in first with 41 votes, that's almost 80% of all respondents indicating they would like to see these in upcoming issues!
Area maps/Worldbuilding came next with 30 votes.
Articles on gameplay came in third with 24 votes.
DM/player advice columns came in a close fourth with 22 votes.
Rounding out the bottom of the list(excluding the write-ins) were Game reviews, New Classes, and Fiction with 14, 13, 8 votes, respectively.



All in all, this survey gave us a load of good information to help in putting together issue two and the issues following it. We're grateful to all who took the time out of their day to answer these questions and help us refine our craft!

Silver Swords Design Survey

You may have seen the link floating around the internet the past couple of days but, if you haven't, here it is again.

We have been working on planning and designing the new issue of Silver Swords, taking into account all the advice we received from the last one and making this the best product we can. To help us do that, I've thrown together a short survey to get an idea of what people want to see in the zine.

We'd love to see as many responses as possible, and thanks for the good feedback we've been getting so far. After it's finished, I'll compile the results and post them here, for reference.

Here's the link again, just in case. :)

Pamphlet Dungeon Jam: Labyrinth

My submission to Nate Treme's Pamphlet Dungeon Jam is live on itch.io and ready to be downloaded, printed, and played!

Here's the gist of the thing:

"The great Wizard Cull is a hero to the peasants and nobles alike, a man of honor who saves all those in need.

Little do they know, he has a darker side. The Magic User is a worshipper of Chaos, and uses his immense power and wealth to play games on unsuspecting travelers. The Labyrinth is his oldest game.

Discovered underneath his tall tower in the Hinterlands, the dungeon has been stocked with many terrible foes for Cull’s endless games.

If you can escape, great riches will be your reward. But if you cannot break free of this terrible place, your corpse will become just another on the pile!"

And here, take a look at the first page of the trifold dungeon! Available now as a PWYW title on itch.io!

The Barony of New Tower

At the Battle of Terric Hills, a skirmish between two quarreling Nobles, Duke Estone d'Lombard(Fighting-Man 13) was saved by one of his soldiers. A peasant from some far-flung village of his. In a moment of gratitude, he swore to the man that he would make him a lord for his actions!

Carrying out that promise was harder said than done, Duke d'Lombard may have no issue with granting just rewards to all, but his vassals didn't like being on equal footing with one of their subjects, and thus objected to every fiefdom with the Duke tried to grant him.

The Duke knew he could never grant a true fief to the man who saved him, but also felt a burning desire to keep his word. And so he found a compromise. Yorick(Fighting-Man 1), the peasant in question, would be granted a tiny plot of land from within the Duke's own domain, but would fall under the vassalage of the neighboring Duke Islay(Fighting-Man 9)so as to assuage d'Lombard's own vassals.

Duke Islay

That spec of territory to be given to Yorick was barren save for a village with less than thirty residents who barely eked out an existence farming the inhospitable climate for what food they can and selling the strange baubles they create in their small thatch huts.

To try and ease his mind about saddling Yorick with this excruciatingly poor land, so poor in fact that Duke d'Lombard had never once collected taxes from it, he had a tower built for him right outside the village. 

Thus the name of the fief, New Tower, the tower itself is a simple structure. A mere two-story building with a hall for attending to the Laird's business as well as a kitchen on the first floor, a trio of bedrooms on the second floor, and a ladder to the roof where lookout can be kept.

To help the Laird Yorick transition into his new ruling authority, he was given a small stipend from the Duke, as well as the aid of three competent men-at-arms. As well, a traveling knight by the name of Sir Colin Byrus(Cleric 4) swore himself to the young Laird out of respect for his heroism and is now teaching Yorick his letters, which he had never learned being a poor miner.

Sir Colin Byrus. Ladies everywhere curse his vows of chastity.

Usually, this small valley, nestled deep into a low mountain range, would be quickly forgotten by all involved. But, as he surveyed the lands for his Laird, Sir Colin discovered a cave, not on any maps, and none of the locals would dare speak of it. While Exploring the place, he quickly learned that there was far more to the cave than meets the eye.

He left the cave, not willing to risk leaving Yorick alone to rule without training, and with some danger bearing down on him. Instead, he sent word to the nearest town to the alert the Duke who would, in turn, alert the Prince at the capitol, Makara, who will then create a Quest and allow the Adventurer's Guilds to dispatch parties to inspect and deal with the menace.

Of course, this bureaucracy brings with it only more bureaucracy, and already Inspectors, Assessors, and even a Banker looking to set up shop have arrived in New Tower. It looks like this dungeon was just what the village needed to bring it into the world...