Hawkmoor Campaign - Prelude to an OD&D-Swords & Wizardry Campaign

 A while back I wrote an article discussing my journey into original Dungeons & Dragons (check it out here) and how my kids and I were going to craft a setting and campaign using OD&D/Swords & Wizardry with a lot of random tools. Naturally, life keeps interfering with progress but we've gotten the beginning steps done and have launched our campaign. This article will act as a prelude to the campaign discussing mapping, random elements & -tools, rules (and house rules), and what my aim even is with this foray into OD&D. My goal is to then write the occasional campaign update posts to chronicle the campaign for my own records and hopefully to entertain and inspire others.

Before I go too much further, I will once again emphasize that this is a home "family" campaign where the main players are my three kids (ages 15, 12, and 5) with the occasional key NPC cameo by my wife. If history is anything to go off of, it'll include shenanigans, devious plots, riveting combat, and untimely deaths...and that's just coming from the 5-year-old. But of course, we are talking about a campaign centered around very young players and not adults (with their baggage). So keep that in mind. Over the years I have found that running games for kids is as great (if not better at times) than running games for adults. Kids tend to lean heavier into the adventure aspects of RPGs and leave the adult frameworks (and themes) out of it.

With that preamble out of the way, let's dive into Hawkmoor. It began with a map...

Above is my hand-drawn map of the Duchy of Hawkmoor, which I then scanned into my PC and labeled using Affinity. There are certainly better maps out there, but for my table it's perfectly adequate. the simple black & white line art style of the map also lends itself well to easily print out. By having a very high-resolution copy on my PC, I can zoom into an area and just print that out for the players, thus not overwhelming them with the larger scale of the duchy. I decided to use Judges Guild style numbered hex paper to better record things in my notes. As a note, I am using 5-mile hexes as is recommended in OD&D. 

Keeping the campaign, at least initially, contained to this one region helps to manage player expectations. There is more than enough room to roam here to keep any group occupied for years of play. I deliberately wanted to keep the scale more regional, as I feel that the spirit and scope of OD&D was the local/regional level of campaigning and to not be dragged into a "world saving" epic. This "spirit of OD&D" is very important to me, and I tried to convey it with the map. That spirit being one of exploring the unknown and the dangerous, with a variety of landscapes to contend with. You might notice that sections of the northeast are not labeled. That is intentionally, as they haven't really been explored much in recent times.

"Recent times" leads into the next aspect following the map: history and setting flavor. I didn't want to go too in-depth, but wanted an element of frontier and lands being a bit unstable. Those are the elements that I believe lead to the need for adventurers to appear on the landscape. The duchy was, until 6 years prior, a part of the imperial province of Gertania. The Empire of Argax then splintered after a 12 year provincial rebellion due to the tyranny of Emperor Jylaxios. This once proud empire is nothing but a city-state remnant of its past glory and is mired in a civil war. Fleeing the chaos of the south, the adventurers are on a ship just about to dock in the fortified town of Evan's Hold on the shores of Eagle Bay. It is the year 1025 AC (Argaxian Cycle).

Duke Jeric of Hawkmoor is needing to rebuild and expand his dominion, if he is to vie for control of Gertania. Foolhardy adventurers are a means to an end for the duke, as they can explore the region more thoroughly and drive out monsters and agents of chaos without him needing to invest in it himself. he has made clear that the establishment of new baronies is in the cards for those he deems worthy (whatever that might mean).

As a final note on the setting, it is rather obvious that "Hawkmoor" and "Argax" are nods to the co-creators of D&D and their own campaign worlds. I am eternally grateful for what they did.

When it comes to running the campaign, I am using online resources such as Donjon and Watabou to generate settlements, dungeons, and other random elements, as well as some of the great resources from Dyson Logos. Furthermore, I have prepopulated the map with dungeons and adventure sights that I have collected over the many years of old-school D&D. Some of them are old TSR modules (e.g., The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth or Keep on the Borderlands) and some more modern OSR products (e.g., Barrowmaze or The Incandescent Grottos).

The remainder will be randomly determined using tables found in Knave 2e, Sandbox Generator, Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets, D&D Monster & Treasure Assortment, and AD&D The Rogues Gallery. Then there are the oracles and prompts I pull from the Appendices of Wight-Box, the Tome of Adventure Design, and the amazing Deck of Signs and oracle dice I have from Tales of Argosa. Finally, if I need a dungeon on the fly, I have a bunch of dungeon geomorphs and Axebane's Deck of Many Dungeons. Those are a lot of tools I can draw from either in quick-prep before a session or very ad hoc during play. I also utilize the great random encounter tables found in the Book of Options and City Encounters books for Swords & Wizardry.

That now leads me to my final point: rules system. As previously mentioned, we will be using the OD&D retroclone, Swords & Wizardry. Matt Finch's great game gives me the basis for everything I need and where I can seamlessly add any house rules I want. And you can bet I am using house rules. Many of these additions are from OD&D itself that didn't get included in S&W for whatever reason (e.g., evasion, outdoor movement charts). I added my own interpretations of some Chainmail rules for combat (e.g., weapon class), tweaked the combat sequence a smidge, expanded the equipment lists and incorporated the slot-based encumbrance system from OSE. These house rules are minor, but they simply round out the game a bit for my tastes and GM style.

We now have our working basis from which the campaign launches and grows over the sessions. My next post in this series will chronicle the beginning steps of the campaign and I hope to shed further light on how I use the various tools I am using.