The Divided Monarchy (2E AD&D MOD)

[betaraybill]

The kingdom long divided must unite; long united, must divide.

This campaign is to take place during the era of the Divided Monarchy of Ancient Israel. The player will assume the roles of Israelite warriors, priests and prophets in the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

--Edit-- Point of explanation - This is intended to be a somewhat realistic bronze age (c. 8th century BCE) setting in the middle eastern (Israel/Palestine/Jordan) region of Earth.

Before continuing, I'd like to add a bit of explanation to that point.

I do not intend to proselytize or profane through the use of this setting. I am trying to approach it as an interesting historical/fantastical background. Please do not misunderstand my intent. I have done my best to design this campaign to be intricate, elaborate, fantastic and most of all fun.

That said, I do not care in the least about the religious or spiritual backgrounds of any persons involved in this campaign. In fact, I'd rather not even know. I will say, however, that some knowledge of Bible History will probably be useful to anyone interested in playing in this campaign.

Anyway, I'm looking for 3-6 dedicated players. This will be an all human, low magic campaign. Character design will be a joint effort between each player and me (the GM). If you're interested, please speak up. I intend to proceed only once I have found a satisfactory minimum of interest (ie, 3 players).

Also, if anyone would like more information, just let me know.

-Bill

[Jenara]

Welcome to the site Bill, good to see another DM joining our little community.

I would love to join, but from my Signature you can see I am a little overworked! lol.

I'm one of the Admins here, so anything you need in the way of setting up the board or other help, just let me know!

[betaraybill]

Thanks for the welcome, Jenara. From the response so far, I wouldn't hold my breath on setting up a board. It's been only a day or two though...

Oh well.

[JadedDM]

I don't know; historical settings are usually pretty cool, although the words 'human only' and 'low magic' tend to turn me away.

I'd have some additional questions:

What level would the party start at?
What precisely do you mean by 'low magic'? No spellcasters? No monsters?
What method for rolling ability scores?
Do your games involve a lot of hack & slash, puzzle solving, roleplaying, or a combination of the above?
Do our characters have to be Israelite warriors? What about someone from Egypt or even Greece?
How would female PCs be treated in such a setting?

[betaraybill]

Thank you for taking an interest. I will address each of your questions, but I think that a little bit of information about myself would be useful here.

To start off, I'm 24 years old, and I've been playing AD&D off and on since I was about 12. I was actually fairly active on the PlanetADND gaming forums back when they were known as MASSPBMB. Blast from the past, eh?

I haven't actually played a game as a player for about 6 years now. My gaming group was without a DM, and I seemed to be the only person who had any interest in doing it. I've never really looked back since then.

The campaign world that I normally run (which was begun even longer ago than I stopped as a player... maybe 8 years ago), is pretty much the complete opposite of what I am suggesting here. High magic, high power, all sorts of monsters, demi-humans and other worldly beings running around. It's actually loosely based on the real world, with various demi-humans taking the role of the different peoples of the real world. I've grown a little tired of running that sort of campaign however, and have recently decided I wanted to try a historical setting.

This is not my first attempt at such a setting - I have run a few short campaigns in various Shakespearean settings, medieval Japan, and even pre-colonization period North America (IE Native American Setting). They have been met with mixed success. I have always thought that Ancient Israel would be a very interesting gaming setting due to the vast body of information that is available on the subject, but I have usually met with many of the same questions/objections that you raise now.

To that point:

Starting levels will vary depending on class, but they will be of 1st through 3rd level.

By 'low-magic' I mean that magic, as it is known in traditional AD&D games, is virtually non-existent. However, there are spell-casting character options (quite a few of them, actually), that are significantly different in one way or another from the average Magic-User or Cleric. As far as monsters, a player character in this campaign might believe that they exist, but they are definitely something out of the ordinary. If they do exist

Ability Scores are by point allotment.

The campaign should ideally involve a combination of puzzle-solving, hack and slash, and role playing, with a definite emphasis on role playing. The least important aspect of the three would probably be puzzle-solving.

Player characters, to begin with, must be Israelite. It is important to the story I want to pursue. If a player decides to join at some later point in the campaign, I might consider allowing a Greek, Egyptian, Nubian, Canaanite, or some other ethnic group character. I want to make it clear, however, that this isn't really such a huge limitation. In this world, there are many tribes of Israel with many different characteristics. I can explain all of this in greater detail, if you so desire.

Your last question, regarding female player characters, is to be honest, quite difficult. On the one hand, there is a fairly strong tradition in the history of Israel of strong female personages. On the other hand, it is undoubtedly a very patriarchal society. I've put a lot of thought into it, and I've come to the decision that I would allow a female player character - but in order to do so, the player would have to come up with a plausible reason for the existence of such a character. I will do my best to work with anyone who wants to do that. I will say that if I only have three players in the group, the most I could possibly accept would be one female player character - there has to be at least some males in the party for the campaign to be believable.

Anyway, all that aside, I realize I am new to this community and you have really no reason to believe that I can run such an ambitious campaign properly. Make no mistake - I view it as an ambitious campaign. Most people who have had to listen to the first and second readings at a catholic mass will tell you that the Old Testament is boring. I don't think that though. I really think that something can be made of it, and I hope that some of you here will be willing to give it a shot.

[Jenara]

Hi again, MASSPBMB still exists, Kafen (Known as Adderworks over there) has many games going!

I would suggest you post over at www.kingdomofmass.com, and advertise there too...

[JadedDM]

I pretty much have the same origin story. Nobody wanted to DM, so I did...and now I've been doing it ever since.

You mentioned a story that you want to pursue. I'm curious then, will players have much in the way of free choice or will the story always take priority above all else?

I'm not interested in playing a woman myself, but the reason I brought it up is that the active population here is more female than male. In my own games, women make up 3/4 and 3/5 of my groups. So denying female PCs might make it much more difficult to find players here.

One more thing; how easy or hard do you go on your players? On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is directly intervening to prevent anything bad from happening to PCs (like death) and 10 is deliberately trying to kill the PCs at every turn a la Tomb of Horrors.

[betaraybill]

Jenara - thanks for the advice. I'll certainly head over there when I get a chance.

Jaded - Your name suits you.

I didn't mean to suggest that Player Characters would have no agency - but in order for a viable campaign to happen, the DM has to have some sort of story in mind.

I don't want to give away information about what might or might not happen in this particular campaign, so let's take a more generic approach. Say a dungeon master is running a campaign based upon Arthurian myth. Now, the DM has contrived to allow the player characters to have some knowledge regarding Morgan le Fay's plans to supplant King Arthur's throne with her own son, Mordred. The choice presented to the player characters in such an instance would be whether they wish to inform King Arthur of the plot or help le Fay in her schemes; not whether they want to try and recover the lost orb of phantasmagoria from the hidden pixie kingdom (heretofore unmentioned in the campaign). Of course the player characters could at least in theory decide that they want to do such a thing; at that point, it is up to the DM to decide whether or not he wants to allow the players to discover the way to the hidden pixie kingdom (which is, after all, hidden). If he decides not to, I certainly wouldn't accuse him of rail-roading his players - he had to draw the line somewhere.

Anyway, the point is it's not my goal to run a rail-road style campaign. In the aforementioned example, in order for the plot hook to function in the desired capacity, all of the player characters would have to have some interest in who sits on the throne of Camelot. In other words, if they just don't care at all, then it's going to be an ineffectual campaign. That is how I envision having my player characters as Israelites to function - to give them some kind of investment in what happens in the Kingdom of Israel.

As far as being "Hard" on the players - I think I'm a little on the hard side (perhaps a 7). I don't like my players to have the idea that they can get away with anything. Poking the grizzly bear will result in mauling; peeing on the king's shoes might get you beheaded. At the same time, as a DM I don't explicitly want my player characters to die (especially if the player is really interested in their character). After all, dying is usually not fun, and most people come to the game with the idea of having fun. So, I try to strike a balance. I would say, it's unusual for me to get through a goodly length campaign with 4 or so player characters without one of them dying.

Thank you for the tip about gender ratios. I'll probably have to put some more thought into it.

[JadedDM]

Jaded - Your name suits you.

Indeed. I apologize for the third degree, but I wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into. I've had experiences in the past with railroading and the DM coddling the players.

In any case, I've heard enough. Alright, I'm in. I'm no historical or theological scholar, mind you, but I have studied a little of both before.

[Breila]

Hello Bill,

in real life, I'm one of those who do the first and second readings in mass, so I know the scriptures quite well (I tend to read the chapters the readings are taken from, to get the bigger picture). I was intrigued by the setting from the beginning, but had to think a bit because I didn't know if I would have the time for another game.

Could you perhaps tell us where the group will be at the beginning? I'm not sure what kind of character would be appropriate except a warrior, and I've always found simple fighters a little boring . For myself, I wouldn't mind playing a male characters, I've played a minotaur once who unfortunately fell victim to a TPK.

Breila

[betaraybill]

OK - it seems as if there is sufficient interest in the game to make a request for a board. Jaded, I presume you can do that? Or I'll send a PM to Jenara. I'll be back in a little bit to make some more posts regarding possible characters.

Horizon - I'm glad you're interested in playing.

[JadedDM]

No, that is beyond the power of a global moderator; but Jenara can make the forum, and she probably will be back here pretty soon.