Campaign & Character Creation
Campaign Setup
“Atropos roughly tore the thread of flourishing life.”
— Statius
This phase is almost entirely Storyteller work. Player input is limited to ranking concrete campaign seeds. Character creation comes later.
If you are a player reading ahead: you only need the constraints and the seeds you are asked to rank. Everything else on this page is for the person preparing the table.
Interest Signal
Section titled “Interest Signal”Players receive only a ranked list of campaign seeds and the system constraints. Nothing else written. If someone asks about a specific name, answer in two spoken sentences at most.
Constraints (state once)
No magic. Pre-industrial tools and knowledge only. Ordinary human beings.
The community is the real protagonist. If it is destroyed, the campaign ends.
Death is permanent.
What players do
Rank your top three seeds. Ask at most two spoken sentences about any name. Wait for the Storyteller to frame the community — then create characters.
The seeds below are examples only. Replace them freely. Players rank their top three.
A good seed uses a settlement-scale name — a tower, a valley, a harbour, a city a person could walk to — not a country or a vague label like “river country”.
Write three facts. Semi-historical adds a Break.
- Who — The people of this place, already hurt. At most four names. One thing already true that has not been answered (a hanging, a taking, a body unburied, a ship that will not sail).
- Pressure — What is already happening this season: raids, murder, pillage, famine, plague, refugees, hangings, forced marriage, torture, a host on the road. Present tense. People doing this to each other. Food, hay, and grain are what they starve for or steal — they are not the story.
- Pull — Two or three people and what they want this week. Not a predicted ending. Not “if they do this, then that.” The reader should want to play because these people will not share.
It is not a tactic menu. It is not a single lawsuit. It is not a pile of calamities with no one wanting anything. It is not a campaign ending written in advance. Do not list the community’s destruction as a choice on the card. Every seed is grim: death, raid, hunger, and survival are the weather, not a spice you add.
Players rank the card. They do not receive what named people will do if the table never sits. That next work belongs in your notes, at Strain now.
Campaign seeds
Section titled “Campaign seeds”Browse by setting type
Historical: locked place and year. Semi-historical: one clear break from a real situation. Invented: same weight as history, without dressing up misery for effect.
Mangerton, Liddesdale, 1323
- Who — Armstrongs in a stone tower on the Liddel, the English–Scottish border. Their men rode with Andrew Harclay. He is dead. Two widows of those men still live in the tower. The neighbour in the next tower holds their girl.
- Pressure — This month Harclay was hanged, drawn, and quartered as a traitor. Douglas’s riders are already driving off herds and burning the houses of men who will not ride with them. Anthony Lucy, who arrested Harclay, is coming to hang whoever still answers Harclay’s name. The neighbour has named a husband for the girl and will send her north if this tower does not give him riders.
- Pull — The Armstrong head wants the girl back before she is married off as a prize. Douglas wants this tower’s swords and will fire the tower if refused. Lucy wants the same men hanged or sworn to the king. The neighbour keeps the girl. The widows have no law left but this house.
Nyék in the Nyitra valley, 900
- Who — Nyék horse-people wintering in the Nyitra valley of Upper Hungary. Slavic villages that opened their gates still plough. Villages that did not are ash; the people who ran sleep in the woods. Huba of Nyék keeps a Bavarian woman in his son’s house: Judith, taken on a raid into Bavaria while King Arnulf was dying. She was married to the son by force. She will not leave him.
- Pressure — Bavarian lords are raising a host to take her back. They have written to Arnulf’s child-king and named the Magyars the new Avars. On the upper Danube the prayer is already “God deliver us from the arrows of the Hungarians.” Árpád expects Huba’s riders in spring. Judith’s brother rides with the host. Refugees from the burnt villages want her dead so the host has no cause.
- Pull — Huba’s son will not give her up. Judith will not go. Huba will hold the valley and bleed the host in the hills. A village headman who opened his gates will guide the Bavarians if the Nyék strip what is left of his people. The refugees will kill Judith if they can reach the house. The host wants her back and the valley burned.
Kaisereia, 1072
- Break — The 1067 sack left the city half empty. Here, one year after the emperor’s army was broken in the east, the remnant still holds the citadel.
- Who — Kaisereia under the mountain. Empty lanes from the sack. Greek households in the upper town. The Artsruni house still has grain behind a locked door. Basil’s hospital is full of the sick and of people who fled this year’s raids. Nikephoros commands the citadel. He has already sent a horse west.
- Pressure — Enemy riders take what is left in the fields and strip the dead outside the walls. Grain inside will not last the winter. The emperor who might have marched has been blinded in the capital. An envoy offers this: hand over the citadel, keep the city’s name, live as subjects. Last week’s dead from the hospital still lie inside; no one will bury them outside. If the locked grain stays shut, the hospital will empty into the streets.
- Pull — Nikephoros will sell the citadel and leave with whoever can ride. The Artsruni will feed their own and hold the south wall. The people in the hospital will force that door if they are left to starve. The envoy wants the citadel without a siege. A Frank still in the garrison will open a gate for whoever pays.
Straumfjörðr, Vinland, five winters held
- Break — In the sagas the Vinland landing is a short camp. Here they have held five winters.
- Who — Greenlanders at Straumfjörðr in Vinland. Thorfinn, Gudrid, their son Snorri, born here. The ship is not fit to cross home. Fever has already taken people in one house. They used to trade milk and cloth with the people who were on this coast first. Two summers ago a Greenlander killed one of them. It was paid in cloth. It is not finished. A Greenlander has taken a woman from them.
- Pressure — Two winters of failed hunts. The cows are almost gone. There is not enough iron to repair the ship. The people of this coast have stopped the trade and have been seen with war-arrows. Snorri has never seen Greenland. They cannot leave. If they take food by force they will be hunted. If they do not, they starve before spring.
- Pull — Thorfinn’s men will take food from the shore by force. Gudrid will offer a marriage or a fostered child because the boy cannot survive a crossing. The people of the coast want blood for the killing and the woman back. The sick house will be left behind if the others run.
Aspalath, after the night the knife missed
- Who — A ducal harbour. A knife meant for Duke Marino killed his wife Isotta and his brother Lazzaro. Marino lives and cannot ride. The hired company that sleeps inside the walls has not been paid. Pelesa’s consul and Calvaro’s man both rent houses here.
- Pressure — Isotta is unburied. The duke’s household takes people from the poor streets at night; some come back beaten, some do not come back. No one agrees who paid for the knife. The company is splitting — pay, a new master, or the oath they swore to the dead brother. Pelesa can land, buy a friend, or take the harbour. Calvaro can make the duke sign, buy the company, or take the city through it.
- Pull — Orsa, Isotta’s sister, wants the death named as murder and the night-takings stopped; she wants the names of who paid. The household wants a confession from the streets. The company will sell itself or keep the house they were sworn. Pelesa’s man wants this harbour open to Pelesa. Calvaro’s man wants the opposite: the duke signed, the company his, Pelesa shut out.
Lychnis, in the pestilence
- Who — A fishing town on a lake. Plague is in the streets. Two towns up the shore are already empty: the Saryn host took who they wanted and burned the rest. The people who ran are here, sick and starving. The monastery on the island has the last grain and still takes the fevered.
- Pressure — The plague is not slowing. Velesin already decides who gets monastery grain. He wants the boats hauled up and the island shut, so the host cannot follow and the refugees cannot eat. The host is three days off. Families still carry their dead to the churchyard. The refugees say the host takes the living for the march.
- Pull — Velesin will shut the island and leave the refugees on the shore. The old families will keep burying and will not put their sick in the boats. The monks will keep taking anyone fevered. The refugees will take a boat at night. The host wants grain, people, and a town that cannot run.
Worldbuilding Practices
Section titled “Worldbuilding Practices”Do these in order. Prep situations — unstable circumstances, people with goals, places under pressure — not a fixed sequence of scenes. The story is what happens when the table acts. You may know more than you show; you do not open with a lore dump.
The worked thread below follows Aspalath, after the night the knife missed. Change the seed; keep the method.
Worldbuilding walkthrough
Nine steps. Enough material for weight and choice. Not a novel the players must recite.
Lock the spectrum — tightly historical, semi-historical, or fully invented — and keep it for the whole campaign.
How does this people stay alive from season to season? Work, food, shelter, who settles quarrels. Where characters “should” be when they are not on a job.
Name the concrete things whose failure ends this community as a community. Stores, rights, places, tools, bonds — countable and at risk.
One present-tense strain sentence per item. What is wrong this season. Who is pressing. What they will do this moon if nobody stops them. Several sentences. They may contradict. This is next work, not the campaign’s ending, and it does not sit on the seed card players rank.
Name only the people you need to make those strains playable, and how they are tied. Blood and household first — sister, servant of twelve years, children on a named street. Those ties do not reverse. Office, pay, and foreign gold may. A few individuals, not a cast list for a novel.
Do not pre-solve the social map for the players. Who is trusted, who leads, who is owed — that is best discovered in play through action, rumour, and consequence. You may hold the blood map in private notes. You do not open with a lecture on who sits where.
Three or four visible marks of recent history — things anyone can point at without a speech. Secrets are facts, not a reveal scene.
At least three lives already in motion. Each is a situation: a want, a next action, more than one way in. Threads may contradict. Alliances reverse. Participation is the table’s. A thread in motion is not a Foundation Myth; a Myth is a thread that already ended.
Agnese has written the names of who was taken and who might have paid for the knife — a Solari cousin who left before dawn, a Company man missing from the gate, a Pelesan book Luca has not opened, a purse Matteo passed. She will post the list if another person disappears.
The company is unpaid and splitting. Some captains will take Pelesan gold for a landing. Some will take Calvaro’s for a signed duke. Jakov has taken neither: Lazzaro stood godfather to his daughter, who sleeps in that house.
Orsa will not let Lovro bury Isotta until the death is named as murder. Luca can land, buy a friend, or take the harbour. Matteo can make the duke sign, buy the company, or take the city through it. They are not allies. None of these is a required path. Each moves if the table never touches it.
Set starting Fortunes (Vitality, Cohesion, Surplus, Standing, Tradition) as soft 0–3 from the facts above. Store them when the campaign record is created. Early play may correct them. If you start in play, you may also store 0–3 Foundation Myths that pass the test below, and you name hierarchy axes (rungs empty at setup).
Myths, if in play. A Foundation Myth is a resolved Pivotal Echo, not a founding legend and not the present strain. It passes only if a named person did a named deed, the community joined it, the work ended, someone alive can tag a kind of roll because that memory still governs it, the effect is narrow, and someone alive still hates the deed or still pays for it. Civic slogans fail. The night the knife missed is strain, not a Myth.
Isotta’s Book. Isotta Solari’s dowry included a Pelesan register: Aspalath boat-families listed as owing rower-service on Pelesan galleys, leftover of a war her grandfather lost. The marriage-peace with Pelesa required the book returned. She had it burned in the cathedral yard. The families written in it stood with her and would not let Lovro’s predecessor take the pages to the vestry “for keeping.” House Calvo had used those same names to claim Pelesan convoy-protection on their oil; they wanted the book in a chest, not in the fire. The pages are ash. Pelesa treats the burning as theft of a public instrument and has not sent a peace-envoy since. Aspalath treats the names as free of galley-service. Tag a roll when the work is a list, a register, or a foreign claim on a name. Free extra Exertion (pool untouched). Disadvantage on the other side when they enforce a written foreign claim inside Aspalath.
Lazzaro’s Charter. Twelve years ago Pelesan marines tried the hill gate while their galleys held the harbour. The Free Company, whom Lazzaro had hired and could no longer pay in coin, held the gate. Lazzaro promised them the old Orsani warehouse inside the walls as a barracks in place of the season’s pay. Marino’s father signed rather than lose the gate. The assault ended that week; the house was handed over; Pelesa withdrew. Burghers who still hold the old roll call that house a foreign garrison. The Company still sleeps there. Tag a roll when the work is whether the Company has a right to stand in the city, or to be paid in lodging versus coin. Advantage for Company members on Arms inside the walls. Forced extra Exertion for an Orvanti household roll that tries to expel or disarm them.
Factions are people-groups, filed in categories. Pick a category (Noble Houses of Aspalath, Foreign Influence, Estate Loyalty) and the hall lights people in those groups in each faction’s colour. The legend lists the faction names, not every group at once. Tags are a different kind of mark — knowledge, an object, a goal — that anyone at the table can invent and assign (the Storyteller approves a player’s tag). They are not factions. A tag that sits on one person is only worth keeping if that mark matters. Pass: Night list (several people). Unburied (a shared goal). Inner-stair keys (one object that matters).
What the Players Receive
Section titled “What the Players Receive”- The ranked list of campaign seeds (examples or your own)
- The three system constraints stated once
Nothing else.
When seeds are chosen and the community frame exists, proceed to Character Creation.
Related: Introduction (grim reality vs fun), Dice Mechanics, Echoes, Hierarchies.