| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Faraer |
Posted - 16 Aug 2005 : 23:32:51
"Plan before you play" (Dragon #63):quote:
If a DM lacks the time or the confidence to work out a detailed social situation, or wishes to utilize commercial modules when placing them in his existing world would disrupt affairs greatly, the “Anchorome campaign” is a solution.
This campaign, named for a legendary island far over the sea to the west, further from the mainland than most sailors ever dare to go, is simplicity itself. The party is provided with — hired, conscripted, ordered, or bequeathed — a ship. This vessel (if properly maintained) is adequate for them to live on, and to carry a respectable amount of trade cargo. Due to the menace of pirates or warships, or because of a storm, or because rumors of treasure are eagerly followed by the party, the ship is sent off the normal trade routes into the unknown.
Play can include a single voyage, like that of C. S. Lewis’s Dawn Treader, or (like the owners of a Traveller free trader) the party can carry on voyages for many years, concerned with trade, continually provisioning and maintaining the ship, avoiding seizure and shipwreck, and so on.
Forgotten Realms Adventures p. 77:quote:
The city is named for the legendary seafaring explorer Balduran, who long ago sailed past Evermeet in search of the rich, fabled isles of Anchorome (pronounced "Ang-kor-OH-may"). Balduran returned with tales of strange, vast lands across the seas.
Ed Greenwood from the Forgotten Times #1 interview (1999):quote:
Or why not pile aboard a leaky boat and do the Anchorome campaign thing, from my early Realms days? Either seek to find, explore, and win some loot from a new continent, or be forced into an epic voyage by storms that drive the ship (leaking and with breaking masts, etc.) from uncharted island to uncharted island, each one holding an adventure (ruins, active inhabitants, etc.)?
The Hooded One on these boards:quote:
Anchorome began with PC adventurers aboard a ship, driven they-knew-not-where by a furious storm. De-masted and a-drift, they wind up beached on an unknown island... with ruins (a 'dungeon') on it. In order to have time to cut down trees and rig a new mast, chink the leaks in the hull and refloat the ship, etc., they must fight the monsters inhabiting the isle (in one case, a lich in his tower). Then they set sail - - straight into ANOTHER storm that drives them onto another island (lather, rinse, repeat).
(The loss of Ed's Anchorome is just one reason why Maztica was a bad idea.) |
| 2 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Gray Richardson |
Posted - 17 Aug 2005 : 06:09:45
An Anchorome campaign sounds like a blast! It's a style of campaign that is set firmly in the strong fantasy tradition blazed by such works as Homer's Odyssey and the tales of Sinbad... Tales I know mostly from Ray Harryhausen films I remember so fondly from my childhood. 
Come to think of it, given my enjoyment of the recently released Stormwrack, it might be a good time to have my players thrown off course on an ocean voyage (by bad weather or a dragon turtle attack or the like) and travel from island to island trying to repair the ship and gather food and supplies, evading harpies and deranged sorceresses, finding ancient temples, fighting off cyclopes and skeletons and other strange denizens of these forgotten isles.
Although, given my current campaign is set in Westgate, it might be that the Pirate Isles would make a more appropriate setting for such a diversion in the campaign.  |
| Mournblade |
Posted - 17 Aug 2005 : 00:02:28
WOW thanks for the documentation too!
I am going to have to search back and find these issues when I get back home from Arizona. Thank god I have 5 days before work starts!!!
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