Setting and Situation

This is what I have been thinking:

First - I like the setting I posted about back in January - Bayport (with all the trimmings - the ocean, the deep water port, the cliffs around the bay, caves, villages and hideouts, made for piracy - etc.), plus a Kingdom (more inland, hills, valleys, lakes, rivers and so on.) Both surrounded by wilderness, lawlessness and so on - both built in old places, so plenty of ruins and dungeons and old stuff to deal with.

For immediate story purposes, and for the setting of the things we've been playing - I've been thinking about this. It's oriented more toward the kingdom than Bayport. I think it goes something like this: there is a King, but the King himself has gone on a Richard the Lionheart type jaunt, to fight infidels or something, and gotten himself taken prisoner, with a huge ransom demand. He left his younger brother in charge (like old Richard), and just like Prince John, the brother is an incompetent would be usurper. He may he levying the kind of taxes to pay a king's ransom, but he's in no hurry to pay it. This has caused the predictable resistance - the barons and other potentates are angling for power - the peasants and townspeople are resisting, which leads to the Prince outlawing them, which leads to formerly honest men running amok in the woods. All this is causing the predictable breakdown of security law and order, and making the whole place dangerous indeed.

But that has been escalating recently, because our friends the Githyanki have set up some kind of a lair somewhere that they are using as a base for raiding in the area. And that has further broken down the security and law and order of the area - especially since the Githyanki aren't thinking of any of this as conquered territory - they aren't making any effort to keep others out. So the place is overrun with monsters of all kinds. I imagine that the edges of this kingdom would always be hazardous - a frontier - but the Githyanki's presence has changed the monster population from the old days of Orcs and hobgoblins and gnomes and such to Trolls and Giants and Yuan-ti and the like. At the same time - because Bayport and maybe the kingdom as well are significant trading points, there is an endless depth of wealth to be plundered, so the monsters keep coming - probably not looking for conquest - more looking for victims and plunder.

And - along with all this - comes the inevitable parade of adventurers. NPC parties looking for plunder of their own - as well as adventure, fame, jobs, maybe, in their case, political power. THis is on top of a culture that's already fairly edgy - even in good times, there is a lot going on - pirates, outlaws, raiding parties, exploration of old ruins, etc. All this stuff is just a bit more volatile now than it was a couple years ago (so to speak.)

As for playing it - I kind of imagine a few types of locations: 1) you would have fairly stable central places - Bayport, the big towns in this kingdom, where you likely wouldn't find monsters, but you could find quite a few NPC type villains (as well as monsters that can pass as NPCs - vampires, undead, etc.) - and probably the Githyanki and their ilk, though sneakily. 2) You would have towns, villages, roads that are close enough to civilization that monsters might be rare, though not unknown - society still functions, but it's been undermined... 3) areas that are almost completely overrun by monsters - including towns, castles, monasteries, mines, etc. that might have been abandoned, or might be operating under constant threat, etc. - as well as plain howling wilderness, dungeons, etc. This might not be all that far from the other places - might be underground....

What I think this can do it provide a framework for adventures, especially the kinds of somewhat improvised adventures we've been doing, though it would be easy enough to work in more structured things as well. I hope it's loose enough to allow more or less any kind of adventure to be worked up from it, while setting up a frame that can connect anything we come up with. Hopefully, we can come up with a number of different kinds of situations - and use this kind of an outline to connect them, to rationalize them. I think if we want to develop the role playing elements and story elements, I think it helps to have a kind of background to work off. Something like this - an absent king, a semi-legitimate usurper, a bunch of other power centers (other nobles, the church, the towns, outside adventurers, plus the monsters themselves), and the external threat of the monsters - seems to me to create a situation you can run almost infinite variation out of.