I have played in and run many games, and many types of games, over the years. From high fantasy to low, from games of nobles intriguing to pirates at sea, I have been on a star-ship crew and run with a coterie of vampires, vast epics and simple one shots, and everything in between. And drawing from all of those gaming experiences I feel that I can safely say that my favorite type of game is an Epic Good Guy game in a fantasy setting.
While I have had a lot of fun with most games I have played in and run, nothing seems to beat running an epic story with a diverse party of good guys—which is why I am enjoying my group’s current game so much. I am running a largely high fantasy game, set in our home brewed world, using D&D 3.x (plus our house rules).
The world we are playing in is one that several of my friends and I started working on more than two decades ago. It is a collaborative effort that several of us have continued to this day. (We still haven’t named it, we just call it the Composite World.)
The game so far has taken place on a continent named Oirth, in and around the Empire of Torell. The party has four members, three of whom are from Torell; the fourth is from far away. They are all some flavor of Good for their alignments and spend more time, in character, worrying about doing good than they worry about getting loot.
The nominal leader of the party is Van, a half-elf paladin/priest following the god of knowledge. This character is interesting to me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is both of his parents were half-elves. His father was born full human, but he drank from a magic pool that turned him into a half-elf. Also both his father and his mother were PCs in a previous campaign, and his father’s parents were PCs in a game before that!
Van’s “wife” is Xu, a warrior monk from a powerful and rich nation state known as Cho, which is far away from our empire. The word wife is in quotes because in the back story they developed, it was decided that Van and Xu traveled together in a great caravan and at one point came upon a village where, unknowingly, they met the requirements to be husband and wife by the village’s customs. So they had to agree that they were married (that is all that it took there, no ceremony needed). And since then, Van, being a religious and honest type has presented them as married, while Xu keeps denying it, providing some amusing comic relief.
Shrike is a human wizard/rogue, and was a friend of Van’s from their youth. Though he largely grew up on the streets, he hasn’t let that turn him from the path of good. It could be because his master, the wizard who taught him how to control his magic, was gentle but adamant about doing the right thing. And while he is definitely a good guy, he seems to be the most interested in worldly riches. And spell books, always spell books.
Our final party member is Raif the halfling bard/druid. He was raised in small village in Bain’s Hope Forest, a large forest in Torell, and he grew up interacting with the fey, elves, and the immortal human Bain, whom the forest is named for. This has made for a character who is largely innocent, devoutly good and, until he began adventuring with our party, very naive about “civilization”. He may have a touch of fey blood in his lineage, or maybe it’s a bit of dragon blood, but there is something a little otherworldly about him. And he travels with a big celestial dog named Loup. I should mention that Loup is a Very Good Dog, just ask Raif, or wait a few minutes and he will tell you.
The characters who already knew each other met Raif in the backstory we developed for the game. This happened when Raif ran into them while they were trying to deal with an evil sorcerer who was despoiling the forest Raif called home. After a spring, a summer and a fall of adventuring together to defeat this vile evil, they wintered in a village on the edge of the forest, which is where and when the game proper began.
The story started out simple enough, with a lieutenant of the empress’s own guard asking them to investigate a missing agent in a relatively nearby but hostile kingdom, Kand. They traveled to the nearest port city, Serrael, and took a sail to the capital of Kand, where they encountered the blatant bigotry of a very xenophobic nation. It quickly became apparent that they didn’t like this nation. While there they fought some giant spiders in a nearby forest, and in town they defeated a couple of evil fighters, one of which was being influenced by an evil intelligent sword.
The party was able to establish an underground branch of the empire’s church through some few faithful who lived there. They were attacked by the secret police, though they were not identified. Through some subterfuge and careful planning, they were able to rescue the agent, and his wife, and smuggle them out of the kingdom and back to home.
During their adventures in Kand, they recovered a very old set of full plate from their home empire, and decided that they should try to return it to the family, if any remained. They also formed a profitable mushroom import business (it was a cover that paid off handsomely). Also in Kand they began to get the first clues that the Servants of Sutek (an evil god) were active again.
On their way home they took care to drop the evil sword in the deep ocean. And upon their return from Kand they spent a week resting at a very nice upscale inn, on the empire’s coin. They took this down time to learn some spells, identify some magic items and to spend some gold.
As their rest week came to an end our intrepid adventures were approached by a high ranking member of the church, and asked to travel far to the north, across the sea to the land of Hest. They knew that Hest was a region that had supplied raiders and conquerors who had harried and fought the empire for centuries so they were cautious. But the bishop revealed that he had learned about a cache of books from many centuries ago that were reported to be extant somewhere in the vast lands of Hest and he wanted the characters to find and recover them if possible.
Of course the paladin Van, being clergy of the church, and a paladin, agreed immediately, and the rest of the party quickly joined in, perhaps due to the promise of glory and a respectable reward.
On their way to Hest they were able to find the family that the full plate armor belonged to and returned it to much fanfare and gratitude, and they also defeated a band of river pirates. It turns out that they really don’t like pirates.
They are currently in Hest, far from home and trying to deal with peoples who do not like them and whose languages they only barely understand. In the course of this quest, they have continued to encounter the priests and followers of Sutek, adding to the growing evidence that something dark is afoot. They have also helped marry a couple of young loves who were running away from their warlike families (the druid performed the ceremony). They have fought trolls, various outsiders, undead, and more. And they have had an interesting conversation with a fairy lord.
Our last game left them at the city of Hvammr, a city founded a little over a century ago, by a warlord sorcerer, who, according to legend, disappeared a decade or two after founding the city. The city was abandoned around the time the sorcerer disappeared but is a magnet for treasure hunters.
Since entering the city they have fought more Servants of Sutek and a party of treasure hunters who were not the friendliest. And they have met a young child-like being who they believe to be the spirit of the city.
And then half of my gaming group had to go to Origins Game Fair, so I didn’t get to game this past weekend. But we should be picking up the story this weekend and I am hoping to drop some more clues about what the Servants of Sutek are up to, if we get far enough.