As usual, I fell behind in keeping with posting here. Our Shadowdark game continues (Friday nights) but has changed direction slightly. If I get around to it, I’ll post session summaries for our most recent campaign reset. This post is about our new Savage Worlds for Pathfinder (aka Savage Pathfinder) campaign set in the city of Korvosa. Although our first adventure does leverage the Curse of the Crimson Throne initial adventure, we are not playing that adventure path. We’ve spent about a year playing Savage Pathfinder at this point and finished a prior campaign based on Ire of the Storm so we’ve got a good bit of play under our belt. I’m sure we still get things “wrong” with this version of Savage Worlds but, to be honest, that isn’t all that important to me as long as we’re all having fun and everything is handled fairly.
Below the break is the blurb for this campaign based on input from the players and then a bit of information about the player characters. Each player was asked to provide three keywords for something that want in the campaign. These words were the following (collapsing similar ones into just one): Automatons, Chicacabra, Humor, Intrigue (Political), Mad Science, Mistaken Identity, Mystery, Robin Hoodesque, Secret Society, Supernatural/Haunting, Thievery, Vampires, Humor, Mistaken Identity. (Chicacabra is an inside joke from the prior campaign and we always have humor…I don’t think any gaming group can avoid it.) When asked for the style, the response was for something episodic, kind of like a television series, as opposed to a long campaign arc.
The Korvosa campaign is an urban campaign. It will take place largely (if not entirely) within this somewhat dreary and gloomy city where it is nearly always overcast if not rainy. The style of this campaign will be episodic with most adventures consisting of largely self-contained “story arcs” that can be enjoyed independently of the overall campaign. There will, of course, be recurring NPCs, locations, and themes. Many will include various groups or factions and their politics, intrigue, and schemes (e.g., secret societies, Machiavellian nobles, and/or eccentric and amoral intellectuals and their creations). Over the course of the campaign, some consistent threads may eventually weave a broader, emerging story regarding these groups.
Many of these episodic arcs will involve “odd” situations where the player characters are attempting to uncover a mystery, investigating some haunting, or dealing with some supernatural creature that is plaguing the common folk, rich merchant, or desperate noble be it a vampire, ghost, bizarre or unique creature, or more mundane criminal or noble. All in a city where house drakes battling imps in the sky above is a fairly common sight. Combat will not always be an optimal or even a possible solution. Killing a noble or even a hardened criminal won’t only be frowned upon by the legal authorities, it could lead to the arrest and punishment of the responsible characters…assuming the authorities become aware of the killing.
Not every arc will have a mystery at its center. Some will be a more traditional style of adventure be it tracking down a thief to retrieve stolen goods, delving into the Vaults to recover a valuable artifact, or aiding the Church of Pharasma to break a siege of the Grand Cathedral by an uprising of undead in the Gray District. In fact, our first episode will mostly be a more traditional adventure involving a vile, petty criminal by the name of Gaedren Lamm. An individual who has, at some point, wronged each of the player characters in one fashion or another.
The player characters include Aimar Khamm (played by Adam), Darcy Wells (played by Rachel), Flomac aka Mac (played by John), Isabella (played by Jen), and Kornan Quicksky aka Pop (played by RJ). Here’s a bit more info:
- Aimar is a dwarven cleric of Asmodeus who ultimately wants to rise to a position where he can wield (and skirt) the law like the elites of Korvosa. Aimar was apprenticed to a merchant and craftsman and has acquired his own aesthetic.
- Darcy is a half-elven rogue with a strong sense of curiosity and justice. She finds that Korvosan law often does not serve justice and so needs to work around it. She found a mentor (or did he find her) who has helped her learn the skills necessary for taking justice into her own hands.
- Mac is a gnome summoner and his eidolon is Stan. Although Mac works as a cleaner and general help at an “inn” in Old Korvosa, he investigates odd happenings and crimes spurred by an attack by a mysterious being that left his mother dead and his father in a coma. Regardless, Mac and Stan try to make the best of any bad situation, but will never forget or forgive those who have wronged them.
- Isabella is a human bard and the daughter of a rich Chelish merchant. She is now estranged from her family (particularly her father) after associating with a troupe of Varisian entertainers, even traveling across Varisia with them for a time before returning to Korvosa.
- Pop is a halfling sorcerer who is a bit troubled, talking to himself while staring into liquid…although this is only half the truth. After his parents were arrested and executed for smuggling and an associated murder, Pop took to sailing. Knocked overboard and drowning, he was saved by a spirit of the sea, a mercurial and troubled princeling of the water elementals. Tarquin now communicates with Pop via various liquids and sometimes provides him with information that others cannot access.
So those are the player characters and the style of campaign. A recap of our first few sessions is up next.
