Labyrinth Lord Red Tides: Preamble (1)

After an overly long hiatus, I managed to get some gaming in with my east coast friend. Previously he had run an awesome OSRIC campaign set in allansia and culminating with the ddefeat of the ice queen. Although we didn't really FINISH the campaign, it was obviously a mop up operation, and the characters were getting to such a level that we were highly resilient and deadly (levels around 7 with a few decent magic items). At this point Jason usually tires of running these characters in a game.

It's been far too long since I had a chance to GM myself (my local gaming group has rotated GMs through 2 other people, and the current campaign is long running (almost 2 years). Jason is running 2 weekly games out in Halifax, so I offered to GM the next campaign. I'd been interested in running some fantasy, and the Red Tides campaign setting was intriguing to me. I've mentioned it before (HERE) and was hoping to run it locally at some point. Our local campaign has been on a long tear though, so no dice there. Luckily my turns has come via telepresence.


Deciding I wanted to introduce concepts of the setting slowly, and create my own sandbox area first, I decided starting on an island or coast in a village would be a good start. With hours running out till the game started, I had a stroke of inspiration while looking at the map. The characters would be fleeing the Shogunate, a Japanese type kingdom that turned to the worship of Demons to save itself decades ago, and now thoroughly corrupted. While escaping they would be ship wrecked on the Isle of White Teeth (so named for the reefs that surround much of it). This would give some time to introduce them to new concepts before getting to the single port to escape the island..........or it could be the campaign will strictly be on the island. Time will tell.

Also fortunate in my choice is the island is only 50 miles by ~30 miles, so shouldn't be too onerous to chart into a hex map. Once I get a start on working up my sandbox I'll post up some entries on the process with the tag 'sandbox gaming'.



The small island with the beak at the top around 1o'clock is my maybe. Happily further game expansion can occur with nearby islands and the main land.

Isle of White Teeth has a single major port, and is suspected to harbour rebels of the Shogunate who yearn for the days before the Hell Kings were the official relegion. Lots of scope for strife.