The World of Kroll

[cplmac]

Azebo is primarily a large farming community in the Kingdom of Endebar. For as long as anyone can remember, there has been peace and prosperity for the citizens of Azebo. Unfortunately, this has not been true as of lately. Circumstnaces have been growing progressively worse that now the entire town citizenry are in serious trouble.

It all started a little more than a year ago. At first, the bandits were only hitting the farms that bordered the forest. They wouldn't take just money, but food and other supplies also. Eventually, those farms didn't have much left to take, so in an effort to show their superiority, the bandits set the crops of one of the farms on fire. While the community rallied together to fight the fire and saved the farm house and barn, the bandits hit some of the farms that were a little farther from the forest. Over time, this progressed to the point where the bandits had all the farms paying them for "protection". A few farmers decided to try and resist, but they then awoke that night to their crops being set ablaze. At the same time, they were hitting the merchants that would come to Azebo to sell their merchandise and aquire other items to take back to their own shops in other towns and cities.

As time went on, the farmers had to start charging more for their items because of the high price of paying for the "protection". Eventually, the bandits started shaking down the town merchants for protection too. Now everyone was being affected and this grew to the point where it caused far reaching problems for Azebo. The crop yields grew smaller, merchant prices rose and all to soon, everyone was just barely able to provide for their family after paying the protection fee. Finally the day came that there was no food to sell to the merchants to take back to their stores in the capital city of Luzien. Without the income from this, the people of Azebo got to the point where they were unable to pay their taxes to the kingdom.

One day a large group of fighters, led by a knight, arrived and arrested both the mayor and treasurer. Before they left, the knight pulled a dagger from its sheaf and stuck a piece of parchment to the door of the Town Hall. To the people who were watching he said, "If I were you folks, I would do as this says. You will not like the consequences if I have to return here." He then mounted his heavy war horse and gave the command to leave. Nobody dared to say a word as they watched the two captives be taken away in what looked to be an iron barred cell built onto a flat wagon.

Once the sound of the horse's hooves could no longer be heard, Drexel, the town's farrier, approached the door and took the piece of parchment off. Amar, owner of the General Store, and Milo, proprietor of the Inn of the Wispering Wind, go up too and read the note.
By decree of his Royal Highness, King Edmond, the farming district that includes the town of Azebo has been granted the ability to pay the sum of 10,000 gp to account for back taxes owed and taxes to be assessed for the next 6 months, which includes the current month. Payment will be collected on the last day of the sixth month. The remaining town leaders can determine how to divide up how much each family owes. If only partial payment is made, then the senior most person of each family not paid in full shall be arrested and jailed along with the mayor and treasurer. This will continue every month thereafter until all families are paid current or everyone is in jail.
It is signed with King Edmond's signature and has the seal of Endebar stamped on it.

The three men then entered the Town Hall and found the scribe sitting at her desk trembling. After making sure that she is alright, the four of them agree to have everyone gathered together for an emergency town meeting. Once everyone has arrived, they are all agreed that the only option is to be able to have the whole 10,000 gp by the deadline. This way there will be no more arrests and the mayor and treasurer will be released. Obviously, for this to happen, the bandits had to be stopped. It was decided that in two days the group that would seek to stop the bandits should present themselves at midday in the Town Hall. Amar and Milo agreed to help Cere, the scribe, keep the town operating until the mayor, Karl, and the treasurer, Johnathon, are released.

It is now two days later and your group stands outside of Town Hall. Having never done anything like this before, you all wonder what lies ahead. Will you be able to find all of the bandits and stop them? Will there be enough money found to be able to pay the taxes? And can this all be done in the time between now and when the payment is due?

[cplmac]

We will be using 2E to play this campaign world. Characters can be any of the races and classes listed in the Player's Handbook. That book and the Dungeon Master's Guide will be the starting reference materials. Other books may be added as they are reviewed and found useful.

I will have the player come up with a background for their character. Obviously, one choice could be from a farming family. Other possibilities are from other aspect of the town. Here is a list of what else there is at Azebo besides farms:
General Store - owned by Amar
Inn of the Whispering Wind - owned by Milo
Stable - owned by Drexel
Town Hall - Karl is the mayor, Johnathon is the treasurer, and Cere is the scribe
Church - the first player to chose cleric as the class for their character will get to choose the diety for the church.
Carpenter/Handyman
Metalsmith
Seamtress

Located about a half days walk from the town is a magic school. If someone is going to play a mage, their character will have studied here to become able to be a starting mage. They will have studied enough to be able to become a level 1 mage. This is a place where they can research new spells.

Here are some specifics that I have decided upon for the game.
1. Anyone wanting to have their character be a Paladin has to be accepted by the head of the church. The player has to be aware that their character will have to conform the beliefs that the player of the first cleric character sets forth for the church. As paladins eventually gain the ability to use priest spells, they follow the same rules that will be stated later for clerics spell ability.

2. Wizard characters have to choose between being a specialist or a mage (someone that can use any type of spell). I like to allow for when a wizard reaches the 5th level, they no longer have to rememorize first level spells. At 6th level this applies to second level spells and continues with each new level of experience. If a wizard is hit by an attack in battle while casting a spell, they are interupted and not able to cast the spell. They also are unable to cast a spell on their next turn, due to recovering from the damage that they sustained. Another thing that I do is the components needed to cast a spell are not consumed with the casting of the spell, but the wizard does need to have the components needed.

3. Clerics don't have to rememorize spells since they are "granted" to them by their diety. They do however have to initially learn any given spell. If the cleric does something that is against the beliefs of its' diety, then the ability to cast spells is lost until they atone for the misdeed.
Also, since a cleric is supplied by the church, they can not let anyone else use any of the funds supplied by their church for anything that doesn't help the group as a whole. Lastly, we will not be dealing with spheres of influence for the priest spells.

4. I would caution players of rouge class characters to be careful of what they do to members of the party group. I will have no problem with letting the rest of the party deal with a rogue that steals from other party members as they see fit.

5. We will not be using psionics. Creatures encountered that have that ability listed in the Monstrous Compendium will also not have that ability. I have never been that wild about it and there are times when it just doesn't work well anyway.

6. I don't want everyone to be overly worried about alignment. Although each character will need to have one selected, this is more to show what type of mind set that they typically follow. If the character is played more like a particular alignment than the one that was selected, it will be changed to better reflect what that character does.

7. Likewise with proficiencies and skills. If there is a particular skill or proficiency that someone wants their character to have, there needs to be a logical link to it in their character's background.

8. For single class characters, the Experience Level charts for that class will be how characters increase in level. Now if someone has a multiclass character, we will not be splitting the amount of experience gained between two or more numbers. Characters will have only one Experience Point total. So if that number is 32,000 the character could be a 6th level fighter and a 5th level mage. This way everyone levels up at a more even pace.

9. Prices will basically be as shown on the equipment lists on pages 66 through 69 in the Player's Handbook. If an item is not listed, it will decided at the time it is asked about. The only item that I will definately state is not available is the arquebus.

10. When it comes to figuring out a combat round, here is how we will figure time.
When each PC and NPC present does an action, that is considered a turn, such as it is your turn to attack. Once each PC and NPC takes their turn, that will be considered as a round. Now some classes get more than one turn per round when they reach higher levels. In such a case, some characters may get more than one turn during a round.

11. To create your character, use 3 d6's to generate six scores. You can assign any score to any particular Ability, but each number can only be used once, hence the need roll the dice six times. I am hopefull that I will not be told that everyone has characters with all six scores being 16 and above. If everyone agrees, we could use the first meeting to have everyone draw up their character's stastitics. The background can be already drawn up ahead of time, so that I will know what class each character will be.
To equip your character, we will use the following amounts of currency:
Warriors--- 200 gp
Wiizards--- 50 gp
Rogues---- 120 gp
Priests----- 180 gp (any amount not used is returned to the church)
Nobody will be starting with any magical items. Remember, the characters are starting their adventuring careers from the begining here.

If there is something that you are not sure of that is not listed here, feel free to send me a PM (private message) on the site here. Also, the world is still currently being made so when it is ready to start, I will list it as an edit to this post as well as a separate post at the time at the end of the posts on this thread. There is a thread on the Dungeons and Dragons part of the Fantasy forum. Progress will be posted there, but it will be general info and not the nitty gritty of the world. Have to wait for the campaign to run to find that out.