Lordes: Dark Arthurian...ODND?

A look at the development of the latest project from Castle Grief

A good while back - I got the itch.

Not the digital selling platform that I use for my PDFs, although that was around the same time.

No, this itch was to go back to the roots of the game I loved so much and immerse myself in what all was there, to understand a little better where the rest came from, and what might still be salvaged from those eldritch booklets and their listed “recommended equipment.”

My first read through was less of a challenge than I expected - after all, had I not flirted with clones and hacks and homages already? And still…

There were these gaps, at first, that I couldn’t make head nor tail of, and in my many re-reads, it became obvious that it was there in that beginning bit of recommended equipment:

Dungeons and Dragons - check. (You have it! as the booklet says)
Dice - check. But wait, what’s this? 4 to 20 pairs of six sided dice??? That seems like an awful lot until…

Chainmail miniature rules, latest edition. Right there in the same breath as telling you that you need the rulebooks and dice.

At the time, I knew what Chainmail was, but had never played nor read it - not even a cursory glance.

Over the next stretch of time, I spent countless hours on the Original D&D Discussion board (what a goldmine) and pestering those knowledgeable (and patient) enough to assist me in my quest: to understand and be able to utilize the original rules in tandem with Chainmail.

This wasn’t out of a desire to play “the right way” necessarily - I just wanted to see what it would feel like…and my love for the humble d6 could be completely elevated in a game that could be played using nothing other than this.

Chainmail was like a bolt of lightning from the heavens.

It wasn’t simply that it was hyper-granular, or that it allowed for dungeons to be cleared out with retainers in record time using the Troop combat rules, nor that the man-to-man table allowed for weapon choice to matter in a game where all weapons only do a d6 damage (one “hit” - about as much on average as a “Hit Die”)…

It wasn’t even that fighters were now the stuff of legend, like Lancelot or Conan, able to eviscerate units of lesser fighting men with fistfuls of dice launched in a single melee round! (Ok, it was a lot of that, too)

There were these other amazing subsystems that made me realize there really isn’t much new under the sun here, either: spell complexity rules and roll-to-cast for magic users, allowing them to cast higher level spells than normal, but possibly failing.

Counterspells, with difficulty sliding based on the opposing magic users level.

Parrying rules.

The list went on, and I was in love.

My first several forays into it were done using solo play, but then I began to test with friends at the table using miniatures and realized how much I had missed.

Either way, during this time, I was immensely assisted and edified by the works of one Alchemic Raker, whose “The Old Lords of Wonder and Ruin” and “Hellmarch” are a re-organizing (without changing or “hacking” or “cloning”) of Chainmail, with Hellmarch being a sort of Chainmail “lite” for those wanting a little less of a mental workout.

I was using these rules to play an often solo sometimes group game in a world I called Lordes. I had previously played and run a campaign set in the same world called Avreaux, a country on the continent to the east of Lordes.

In time, the setting had grown into a love-letter to the Arthurian - an imagining of a Southern England that never was, with nearly every major sort of “happening” both mythic and historical all occurring at the same time, resulting in just the kind of faction mayhem I love in a campaign.

As I developed it, and decided it was something I ultimately wanted to release to the public, the usual paralysis of “what system” came over me. And although many of my supporters and pals suggested I use my own system, and I began (and got 50 pages into!) that way. Every step of the way, it started to feel less and less of what I wanted it to feel like, and more and more like I was shoehorning my own system into the one I knew it was built to be used with.

I made the hard decision to scrap most of what I’d written, and go back to my original intention, even if that ultimately makes the release suffer in reach.

After all, just as the setting was my love letter to the Arthurian, the way I was playing was a love letter to those early days of the game that for me are only mythology, shrouded in the mists of speculation, pleasant nostalgia for what may never have been, and that feeling I’d not had since I was a lad cracking open the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons books for the first time.

I’ll return to Kal-Arath soon (lord knows I can’t stay away from those sunbaked steppes long, and I have many plans and ideas for what comes next, along with a half dozen other projects), but for now, I’m set on the eventual release of Lordes as a three booklet project that will encompass how I play ODND and Chainmail, the realm, the factions, and the intended scope of the Great Lordes Campaign.

The result is a sort of bastard homunculus of ODND plus wargame, a dash of Pendragon’s personality system, and my own additions in the form of everything from new jousting rules, classes and abilities, and a lot of other stuff, and of course, lots and lots of tables - but all in a format that will allow folks to use what they want to or bolt on as they see fit, much as it seemed the original game intended its own supplements to be used.

Until then, here’s a peek at the first draft of the introduction, and some of the artwork from my development sketchbook:

The personality system has been heavily streamlined and reworked…

The year is 683.

In the kingdoms that make up Southron Lordes, there is a great deal of turmoil, as the Sacella, cut off from its mother church in far-off Vitelia, has declared a new Pendraeg from their order’s holy seat in the city of Camlynn.

This new hopeful claimant of the high throne, vacant these last many years, is Garwen Pendraeg, who the clerics and abbots of the Sacella say has blood that runs in unbroken channel back to Artor Graal-breaker himself. Many of the current self-styled kings and other rulers of the various realms are not so quick to agree.

A war is brewing that promises to shatter the kingdoms even further, long before it can ever hope to unify them.

Worse, word from Carillion and villages on the west coast report that Fomor and Danaan, ancient enemies who have long warred bitterly over their own island of Eilaea, have sworn new bonds of truce, and sail allied fleets in the waters west of Lordes. Hair spiked high with the blood of their foes, and possessed of the dreaded “riastrad” or warp-spasm that turns them into warriors possessed of inhuman strength and ferocity, they prepare themselves for battle.

North of the forbidding Clydwynath Mountains, the paegan peoples of Riath and Cruagh continue to harry and trouble the border kingdoms, as has always been the case. Barbarian reavers, cattle thieves, murderers and warlords…if you believe the Sacella or the border wardens of Vale.

Knights of diverse orders ride under tattered banners in neverending campaigns to drive the northerners out and keep the passes secure, but strange news comes to them, even from the wild peoples of the harsh northlands - a fiery comet blazes in the northern sky, believed by the holy men of the Cruagh to signal the end of the world.

The comet is accompanied by raiding in far northeast from unknown lands beyond the Smoking Isles. Giant brutes who worship cruel gods of darkness and murder, a punishment on the whole island from paegan god and new one.

Southeast, across the grey and cold waters of the channel, the great cathedrals and castles of Avreaux rise into the mist-shrouded night. The blood of thousands upon thousands soaks the beaches and battlefields there, in a haunted land of endless warfare. Though the truce between Lordes and Avreaux holds, the ire of Avreaux’s pale and decadent Lordes continues to burn hotly toward each other.

Thousands of knights, fighting men, and other opportunists still flood eastward to fight their battles and seek fortune and fame. Many who return are no longer the same, haunted by the horrors of the battlefield, as well as what they have seen in the deep, dark woods of doomed Avreaux.

The Sacella has a powerful and growing influence over the people of the broken realm, even though their former superiors label them absconded, heretics, and they wield an awful power in the form of the Order of Knights Penitent. Those forsworn few who survived the Great War, oaths to the table and Artor Graal-seeker broken and scorned, still serve their penance far beyond the grave through the grim powers of the Sacella. Warriors of renown and their retinues of fighting men still flock to the Old Table’s ancient banners to do battle against paegan, foreigner, or any other who question the ascendancy of the Sacella in Lordes.

Though many paegans were driven north beyond the mountains with the coming of the new religion, there are numerous holdouts and enclaves of the old ways in the realm. Wooden and stone henges still drip with blood, hidden fortresses of knights sworn to the lords and kings of Annwn and ancestral spirits of tree, rock and water, and powerful lords conceal their allegiances, which have remained true since the land was young.

These condemn the new religion and its dying god as simple theft and perversion of their own tales, and the tension between them and the Sacella grows.

Pogroms are issued, and holy campaigns embarked upon to remove more paegans from Lordes, but entire regions, such as Lamorath and Elmanesse remain deeply rooted in the traditions, and resist what they see as the tyranny of a foreign and unwelcome god and his servants.

Knightly Orders and Priories hold a great deal of power in Lordes as well - some storied brotherhoods formed in ancient wars, others newly fashioned upstarts, more brigand than gallant, but in an uncertain time, there is no shortage of men who join for the promise of security, pay, glory or purpose.

The Sacella watches these closely, sometimes even subverting or subjugating them from within, or making declarations of heretical practice or brigandry and calling for inquest if one becomes too proud or powerful.

In the bygone days, many of these Orders required a clear proof of lineage to one of the so-called Great Families, but these days, most will accept folk from all walks of life, so long as the rules of the Order are adhered to rigorously.

For all, however, there is one threat beyond faction, religion, political alliance, or the loyalty coin can purchase:

Near the end of the Great War, it is said that the mad advisor to Artor, whom they called often “Blackbird” or by diverse other names, engaged in a great battle with Morrigau, Artor’s half-sister and powerful sorceress.

During this battle, both called upon forces that rent the veil between hell and earth, between the nightmare world of the Dark Kings of Annwn and Lordes.

From this gateway poured forth the Malice, a curse and a plague on all. Creatures of fearsome power and awful dread stalked their way into forlorn woods and ruined towers.

The dead returned from their slumber to do battle with the living in rusted chain and grave garment.

Some say the Sacella are trying to discover a way to close this invisible wound in the world, but none know the truth of the matter save for their secret orders, if truth there is to any of it.

All watch and wait with great interest in the developments occurring at Camlynn, and look to their own warchiefs, holy men, lords, knights superior, or grandmasters to see which side they will declare for, or if, like carrion, they will remain in reserve and feast on the carcass of a slaughtered kingdom.

This is Lordes, 683.

Who will you be?

How will you be remembered?

- Keep your blades sharp.

CG