A Foray into Five Leagues

In the core rulebook, the campaigning region of your world is chosen from 3 options – it can be borderlands (edge of civilization, often lawless and chaotic), hinterlands (a backwater where the strong arm of the kingdom tends not to show itself) or wilderness (out beyond the borders where outposts and colonies eke out an existence). I took the clue to be in the name, so I opted for Borderlands.

There are several other campaign expansion packs available from Nordic Weasel Games that add to the basic 3 options, such as swampland, deserts or dark winter woods, etc. Each one adds new encounters, trials and tribulations to test and vex your party.

Each campaign sub-region (or village in our particular case) is defined by a number of ‘threats’ – dangers that imperil each one and prevent the locals from living their lives in peace and harmony.

The number of each threat is determined randomly based on the region type – some are more prevalent in areas than others, but all campaigns end in one of two ways – warband death or area clearing. I’m hoping for the latter…

Again, no name tables included for the villages, but I have plenty of online help as well as some dedicated resource material to help me flesh out the villages when required. For now, they just have names.

The various threat levels can be further modified if you wish to apply a ‘theme’ to your campaign:

• Dark fantasy – where you have cultists up the wazoo (+1 Dark Secrets, -1 Outlaws)
• Game of crowns – aka, ‘winter is coming’ (+1 Border Tension, -1 Dark Secrets)
• A fistful of arrows – ala, magnificent seven (+1 Outlaws,-1 Dark Secrets)

It’s very easy to create your own theme if you want to, it’s just a matter of tweaking the numbers in a similar manner (+/- 1).

Anyway, here’s what I came up with to define my campaign area at the start of play:

The Campaign (playing at ‘Warband’ level)
The Borderlands – The edge of civilization. Often lawless and chaotic. Consisting of 3 villages – Oak Wall, Bearford and Raven’s Rest.

Village 1: Oak Wall
Threat                 Level
Outlaws                  4
Border Tension       5
Dark Secrets          6
 
Village 2: Bearford. Note – Old Rolmar and his ‘Pre-owned Swords’ wagon is currently in this village [This note is to remind me to track the travelling peddler throughout the campaign]
Threat                 Level
Outlaws                  4
Border Tension       4
Dark Secrets          2
 
Village 3: Raven’s Rest
Threat                 Level
Outlaws                  4
Border Tension       2
Dark Secrets          3
 
Campaign goals
The aim of the campaign is to reduce all Threats to 0 in every village. By then, I’ll have pacified the area and the campaign ends.