In this article series, I want to talk about Ajil and the steps I went through to set it up.
After reading through the article I copied and pasted each related webpage into a word document and deleted out parts that I knew I wouldn't use like the parts about letting the players schedule themselves. I don't have a large group of people I know who want to play D&D, I know 4 people right now who want to play so we get together when we are all available, and if you only know a small number of players you might want to do the same. I'm personally not a big fan of large groups of people when it comes to gaming.
What was next? A brief mention of background information. I didn't stick to exactly what Ben wrote. On the continent the players started on there was a major war going on with the Qaqim to the east, who were mostly desert dwellers, who made pacts with a djinn dynasty and a family of fire giants to destroy the western kingdom of Naddural where the players were starting. This content was small. To the north was the mountain dwarves, and even further north were the frost giants.The Naddural had allied with the Dwarves and the Frost Giants, but even with all of this, they were losing the war so the Frost Giants were heading back to the frozen north, and some of the Dwarves and most humans were trying to head south to the port city of Whitefall.
To the far west, past the kingdom Naddural was Inderdas, a great forest with trees that were thousands of years old. Although there were no elves as a playable race (except for one player) they did exist in the forest and they generally made anyone who entered it disappear without a trace. The forest was thought to be haunted and rarely did folks go into it. Its not that the elves were evil, they just didn't want humans coming around and destroying their homes and trees, or anything else for that matter. Elves were just rumored to exist or old wives tales told to scare children so they wouldn't go play in the forest.
Here is a picture I did of Ajil with Hex paper and color pens:
Also, this setting was low magic, so there were no mages, sorcerers,wizards, or Druids of any kind as a playable class. However, one player had such a good story for playing a druidic elf that I allowed it, unbeknownst to the other players.
The first part of this story was that the citizens of Naddural were trying to go south (including one of the clans of the Dwarves) to the coastal city of Whitefall. The goal here was just trying to get aboard a ship and then leave for a mysterious south western continent.
Once there, the players would dock in a small port town called Weston that had only been built in the last ten years. Here they would learn a bit about this small outpost and there would be a few situations just outside of town that needed dealt with. This would also lead to the players eventually exploring more and more of the surrounding environs.
Why the story and not just start in Weston? Good question, and one that I will answer like this: I wanted some story. I'm big on story and backgrounds, and the players had fleshed out their character stories rather well. During the course of their adventuring they would discover entities and items that would help them drive back the Qaqim if they had ever decided to return to Naddural.
Part 2 Coming soon!
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