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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Water Bob" data-source="post: 5667006" data-attributes="member: 92305">CLAN AND KINOne of the few things a Cimmerian holds sacred is his personal honor and his clan. Given that, you'll want to create a clan and some NPCs that your Cimmerian players will interact with. Many of the NPCs will probably be members of your PCs' families.I used the village of Seven Stones Ridge, detailed in the Mongoose supplement, CITIES OF HYBORIA, as the clanholme in my game. Although I am creating a sandbox, mostly from scratch, I like to use good ideas that limits prep-work from any source I can find. I mix-n-match all sorts of stuff. As long as it is interesting to the players, it's fair game.Once I'd picked the PC's "base of operations", I set about creating interesting NPCs to populate the world and interact with the PCs. Since most of the people in a clan are family, I created an entire family (and eventually a rich history) for the characters the players will run.In my game, I started with the PC's father (making the PC's brothers--a good reason to be together for adventures). This is Finn Elder, the blacksmith and chieftain of the Blue Fox clan.Finn's father is Old Fionn, who founded Seven Stones Ridge. Finn's mother, Maeoral, is dead. In fact, many of the women in the Duncohr family (Cimmerians don't use surnames that often, but have them, in my game) are not now among the living. This is something I've turned into a mystery for the PCs.Finn has four brothers. Eanbodha (or, just simply, "Ean") is the clan's warchief. Dael is a smith, operating the clan forge along with Finn. Cael is Dael's twin, and the PCs do not know that he exists when the campaign starts. Cael got caught up in something and has been outcast, his name never mentioned among the clansmen. Eregerth is also not known to the PCs at the start of the game as he is one of the Cimmerians struck with wanderlust. He left the clan a decade ago, when the PCs were about 5 years of age. They barely remember him. I wanted to make sure I left myself some interesting characters that I could bring into the game at a later time as needed.Finn's wife, Lyme, is dead. She died giving birth to one of the PC's.The PCs were raised by Brenna, who is Dael's daughter. She's a mother figure to the PCs eventhough she's only a few years older than they are. Maybe this relationship will change as the campaign progresses.There is an Aesir living among the clansmen. His name is Hrathnar. The clan trades with an Aesir village on the far side of the Eiglophian mountains for ore used in the forge. The Blue Fox clansmen are not miners. They're traders, hunter/gatherers, and sometimes raiders. Hrathnar has lived among the clansmen for a couple decades now and is married to Brenna. They have a little girl named Freya.All the PCs start the game at 11 years old as 1st level Barbarians. I'll explain how they're related to each other in another post. My plan is to play out the PC's entire lives. I'll play a section, then skip some time--maybe years--and catch up with the PCs later for another adventure, then skip some more time, and so on, until, by the game's end, we'll have played the entire lives of these people.Another NPC living in Seven Stones Ridge is Drachena. She's the PC's older sister. Finn adopted her as his first child before he had children of his own. She becomes the primary training NPC when the PCs start warrior training as the game progresses.I needed some NPCs around the same age as the PCs, so I created Brial and Dahkus. These guys are instigators and don't like the PCs that much. I like the idea of having trouble with "someone on your side", not unlike the way Marines will fight amongst themselves in bar fights and for women, but then give their lives for each other in battle. That aspect I'm putting into the game using these two characters.Branoc is an NPC and the oldest brother of the PCs. He's my main voice among the players. I use Branoc as needed to direct the PCs and offer DM advice "in-game". Although I've given him some flaws (he's slow to make decisions, for example--need some flaws to make him "real"), I've set Branoc up to be almost a model Cimmerian--something that the PCs can look up to.I need some girly interest, too, for the players. You never know where that sort of thing is going to go. For this, I created Girdra, the trader's daughter, and her friend, Chani. Girdra is the most beautiful girl around the PC's age in the entire clan. Chani is full of character: she's got a lop-sided eye, and she won't talk about how it got that way. Because of her deformity, her hearing and sense of smell are heightened. And, the girl loves to run around naked, with just a dirk strapped to her thigh. As the game as progressed, Branoc is now set to marry Girdra, though Girdra is secretly in love with one of the PCs. We'll see how that works out.Another notable NPC in the game is Rutcrana. She's one of the clan elders. She's a Cimmerian Oracle. Some say that she's over 100 years old. Decades ago, when Old Fionn still worked the forge, she showed up in the village simply saying that she was the voice of fate. She persuaded Fionn to let her stay, and she's been among the clansmen ever since--though many don't trust her. She's hunchbacked, blind, and smells of unnatural things. People in the village will go to her for omens and predictions, but only when absolutely necessary. And, all in the clan make sure that their beds face away from Rutcrana's hut, no matter the relation or distance between their home and the oracle's abode.See, the idea here is to create some interesting personalities to populate your world with. Set up mysteries without answering them, allowing yourself room to grow into those tales later in the campaign. I always try to see what catches the players' fancy and then develop that intrigue more. There's lots of threads in the game for the players to run across. I just wait to see which one is found to be interesting, then start getting creative with the idea.If you've run a sandbox game before, I'm sure I'm not telling you anything that you already don't know. For these PCs, I've got much more in-depth material contained in the Development Thread. If you're interested, or want to mine it, check there.</blockquote>

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