I had planned on bringing you several characters this week to highlight my level 0 rules for 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons, but as I was working on the characters, I realized that I was probably too conservative in my initial drafts, which you were able to see last week. The characters I were creating felt too large for that type of play, and so I have decided to revisit them at a later date. This week, I’m bringing you a different slightly different piece than you’re used to seeing from me, one that I hope to revisit again –
Location, location, location. Just as it’s important in real estate, so too is it important in your games. Where the action takes place is just as important sometimes as the action itself, and an appropriately exciting or mysterious location can take an encounter or an entire game and elevate it to a different level of play. Today we’re going to test your… Locational Awareness.
This first installment is technically cheating a little bit, but since I’m writing the column, I get to make the rules. So there. This idea that I’m going to introduce you to is actually one that I’ve been toying around with for a while as the center point of a fantasy setting, so let’s keep this between you and me…
Wait, my editor is telling* me something.
Uh huh. Uh huh. So… they can all read this? *sigh* Alright. Carry on. But I’m watching you. Yeah you. The one in the back.
*(Editor’s Note: Ben, that wasn’t me speaking. You might want to see a doctor, the voices are back)
Alesia is the largest and most heavily populated continent on the planet. And while no one would classify it as a super-continent, the sheer number of distinct biomes that make up the land mass is nothing short of staggering. High peaked mountains, rolling hills, sweeping grasslands, forests, and low-land marshes and swamps. Nearly every climate is represented in some fashion.
Most experts agree that this is because of the Wellspring. This is the common name for the focal point of the various lines of magical energy fields that criss-cross the world. This convergence of energies has been a holy site, a place of arcane significance, and most recently the seat of power of the Alesian Empire.
The Wellspring is the most researched and studied phenomenon in the realm and at the same time it is the least understood. Scholars spend their entire careers to simply add a few words into the collective knowledge of the Wellspring and why it works the way it does.
What they do know is that the Wellspring gives great influence to those people that are able to tap into and use its power. Not everyone is capable of this – using the power of The Wellspring takes an incredible amount of willpower and discipline, but those that are capable have become the most powerful and influential leaders in the realm.
The common belief is that the land itself provides backing to a ruler that can use the power of the Wellspring. No one is really sure how, and the effect is subtle, but powerful indeed. The ruler sees his own desires and wants reflected back at him through the land, amplified by the convergence of magical energies. A just and noble rule can bring peace and stability to his dominion. A security minded ruler will find his borders strengthened and his population more compliant to his decrees. A tyrant on the other hand will find his people effectively cowed and subservient. This was made apparent during the thousand-year long reign of the Second Alesian Empire which saw unparalleled reach and prosperity even into the borderlands. Monster attacks were subdued and prosperity within the Empire’s borders was common.
However, the realm quickly saw the opposite as well when the man known to history only as the Tyrant Emperor ripped the throne away from his brother and brought the centuries of peaceful rule to an end, taking the power of the land for himself and fortifying his own base of power. He was even able to use the power of Wellspring to extend his life far beyond anything natural. He was finally ousted by a small coalition and slain, his body spirited away, but not before using the power of the Wellspring to keep his servants under his heel and rule unopposed for several centuries.
The Wellspring is less of a location and more of a campaign backdrop. While the PCs will very likely find themselves at The Wellspring a few times, the location itself is less important as is the effects it will have on the rest of the campaign. The PCs could just as easily never visit the actual location once in the campaign and still feel the effects of it permeating the game world. Regardless, it’s a very important piece of the backdrop. A new ruler or organization taking ownership of this area is a truly momentous thing for the land and can represent a dramatic shift in how the rules of the land itself work (kind of like the column). This should be reflected in the campaign.
It however, can serve as an effective location beyond as a backdrop for the Emperor du jour in your campaign. What is The Wellspring? What powers does it contain? As a conflux of countless streams of magical energy, what might happen if one were to enter? Is it actually the gate to another dimension (or several)?
Finally, the Wellspring itself can be the MacGuffin. Perhaps the BBEG of the campaign has a desire to see the world unmade, and the best way to do that is to unleash magical Armageddon by destroying The Wellspring. He might attack several of the more powerful magical locations within the realm, weakening the overall power of The Wellspring until it can be unraveled.
Ben Erickson
