The PCs have come to the Free City-State of Casiorn in Northern Magnamund for a variety of reasons.

Two of our noble PCs resided within the city already.
Hoda, the Vassan mercenary, had resided there for a long time serving as a caravan guard, bodyguard, or any other job the mercenary guild of Casiorn and its Guildmaster, Kapla, was contracted by the rich and powerful to do.

Father Galen, Vassan Oathsinger and Cleric-Priest of Aon, served the church as an associate minister within the city's largest church, on the staff of the His Excellancy the Bishop of Casiorn Caman Emphore.

Cadien Rothem, youngest son of a minor Durenese shipping merchant noble, was dispatched by his father to locate a family friend in Casiorn whom hadn't been heard from in a long time, one Marcova Delain, member of the Casiorn Mages' Guild. In truth, this was an attempt by Lord Rothem to get his youngest to spread his wings a bit, see more of the world, and perhaps curtail his womanizing in their home city of Port Bax. Knowing his son's impetuousness, Rothem sent one of his younger retainers, Godwin Haraldsen along with Cadian. To make sure his son came back in one piece.
The pair made their way to Casiorn.

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When the campaign started out, I decided not to launch an overarching plot for a bit and simply to let the PCs wander a bit.

We started out with 4 players. Their characters were:
-Hoda Na-hooldra, a female Vassan (human) Fighter//Scout
-Godwin Haraldsen, a male Lastlander (human) Fighter//Rogue
-Galen Wolfharen, a male Vassan (human) Bard//Cleric
-Cadian Rothem, a Lastlander (human) Rogue//Swashbuckler

The human race has different ethnicities as do the other races. I.E. unlike many campaign settings, the non human races of country/region A will be different from the non human races of country/region B.

Two of the PCs are Vassans (think Arabian ala Egypt). Vassans are from the northern continent of Magnamund on the eastern coast. Vassans are mostly concentrated in the Vassagonian Empire, a sprawling desert nation ruled by a dictator from its ancient capital of Barakeesh. The empire is old, having been forged from different nomadic tribes into a single body politic. The city of Barakeesh also serves as the the center of the Vassan faith, the Dragon Temple. The Empire has a taste for conquest and frequently threatens its Vassan and non-Vassan neighbors. It can back these threats up as it has a sizable army and navy.
Hoda and Galen hail from smaller Vassan nations to the south of the Empire. Galen has a Vassan name but choose to cast it off once he left the Vassan lands and became a priest of the True Faith of Aon. Galen was an odd duck as he started as a bard in the Bardic Academy and graduated but then found religion..but not the religion of his parents and family in the Dragon Temple. He left and entered the seminary of the Aonese faith. The Church of Aon is much like the medieval Catholic Church, very powerful and influential. It currently is the largest religion in Magnamund.
Hoda kept her faith in the Dragon Temple but choose to go into a calling that women were not normally called to do in Vassan communities: that of a warrior. After some deep emotional problems within her family she took flight from her home and sought refuge in the north.

The other two PCs, Godwin and Cadian, hail from a far northern nation called Durenor. Durenor is one of the Lastlander nations. These humans are called Lastlanders because they were the last great human migration in the north. The Lastlanders are nordic in appearance and have a very Rohan-like culture. Durenor is a traditional monarchy ala many D&D kingdoms.

One would think this group being brought together would be difficult...
There is a city that lies at the crossroads of the Vassan lands to the east, the Lastlands to the north, and the Stornlands to the west. The Free City-State of Casiorn. An economic power, the many peoples and goods of northern Magnamund mingle freely there.
It was here our noble PCs met.

More on that later.

A note on clerics:
In this campaign, clerics in the D&D sense, are specialty priests of their religion. In the largest Church, the Church of Aon, clerics are handpicked from the rank-and-file members of the priesthood to be given training in spellcasting, taught the secret of undead turning, and recieve combat and arms training. So, all clerics are priests but not all priests are clerics. They are rare amongst the priests and Church leadership, thus they are looked up to and respected. Clerics are given special missions/assignments and normally aren't assigned to a specific church with a normal priests' duties.

A note on bards:
Historically bards are wandering minstrels and storytellers. In D&D, the name bard has a different connotation as an adventuring class. I've renamed the bard class to Oathsinger. Oathsingers are your typical spellcasting, adventuring, magic-within-a-song D&D-style bards. The title bard once again just applies to roving minstrels. The Oathsingers of Magnamund are a fraternity of information gathers and brokers. They are primarily schooled in the eastern Vassan country of Dessi in the capital city of Elzian. A great Oathsinger academy educates those who meet their strict criteria and share their worldview. Information is to be collected and collated, catalogued and made available. Oathsingers swear oaths to each other, to the mission, and to the Brotherhood above all else.

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Rules n' stuff:
I'm using D&D 3.5 in a more low magic vein. Some base classes from the PHB are not allowed but some from expansion books are.
Feats I've allowed to be drawn from a number of sources as are spells.
No necromancy spells or item creation feats except Brew Potion and Scribe Scroll. Magic items cannot be purchased except in rare circumstances and the methods of their creation lost to the ages.

Races: human, half elf (also called Shianti blooded), dwarf (3 subraces), and halfling.
Gnomes and half orcs don't exist. Elves (or the Shianti in Elven) left Magnamund a long time ago but the descendants of their pairings with humans live on in half elves.

Alignment: I'm using alignment as more of a guideline for RPing than something on which rules are hung. So, alignment based spells, such as Detect Evil/Protection From Evil/Magic Circle, etc are gone.

Planar spells: Magnamund and the world it inhabits (Aon) do have planes but they are extremely difficult to get to from Magnamund and vice versa. Hence, spells and effects that focus on plane shifting, anything relying on astral and ethereal interactions are also not in play.


I am using some variant rules from Unearthed Arcana:
Action Points
Flaws
Gestalt Classes

I use gestalt primarily because I tend to make combats hard and we have only three players currently. Gestalt gives them a little bump in power. Currently, I'm allowing them to gestalt two classes together. If they'd like a PrC, they only advance in the PrC in a nongestalted manner. They can freely multiclass back and forth from their gestalted base class combo to the PrC.

That's about it for campaign specific rules.

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Howdy. I wanted to test out Enworld's blogging capability. Since I already have a personal blog on my own site, I figured I would make a campaign blog here.

I'm currently running a D&D 3.5 edition game in Magnamund. Magnamund is a fantasy world created by Joe Dever for his series of "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure"-style gamebooks called The Adventures of Lone Wolf.

The gamebooks are from the 80's; there were 12 released in the US and more released in the UK, almost all the original books are out of print. They were such a huge hit though that Mr Dever gave his permission to the folks at a website called Project Aon to post the books in their entirety online for free. What a guy, eh? You can go and play through most of the series including the European-release only ones right on that site at no charge.

The gamebooks are currently being reprinted with expanded material written by Mr Dever by
Mongoose Publishing.

A couple years ago, Mongoose also released an OGL Lone Wolf rpg. They made some questionable choices with the system and left a lot of world setting material out of the gazetteer section so it's not very good. Couple this with the fact that Mongoose gave it almost no support with follow-on titles that it crashed and burned.

Magnamund, the world in which Lone Wolf had his adventures, is a very rich fantasy settings. It's both high and low magic, depending on what part of the setting you look at. It doesn't have the sheer volume of dangerous creatures core D&D has, which I like. Magnamund has a rich history as well.

To mesh a bit better with a D&D-style campaign I made some changes to its history so the Magnamund the PCs are playing in isn't exactly the Magnamund of the Lone Wolf series but it is close.

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