A Christmas Carol - Sort Of

[Halaster Blackcloak]

Or perhaps a Christmas story would be more accurate. Let me back up here first and establish a shit load of background.

First, the background for the game. Back in the early 90s we wrapped up an insanely high level Forgotten Realms campaign. I and the players decided to start a new campaign in a new world, the characters starting at much lower levels. I believe we started at 3rd level or so. I set it in Dragonlance and intended on using the modules but couldn't stomach the "soap opera" style of Dragonlance. The game got scrapped and re-started several times. One time all the players wanted to be Knights of Solamnia, but after one game realized it was not fun having a party of 5 or 6 similar fighter types. Eventually, I grabbed the Taladas Box Setting and tweaked the history of the world to match what I thought would work best. It turned out to be my best written, most enjoyable, longest lasting campaign ever. Even when some players moved away, three of us kept it going, then just two of us until that player moved out of state. Even so, I loved everything about the campaign so I kept writing material. I started writing the 45th consecutive adventure when the last player had to move out of state. So I kept it going anyway, just writing it as a normal adventure module as usual, but knowing we'd have no players.

Second, this was planned as a Christmas adventure (taking place during the "Christmas" season in-game and played during actual Christmas time in the real world). Well, I got a bunch of material written that first Xmas, then put it away for awhile. Next year Christmas time rolled around and I looked at it again and said: "I gotta finish this!". So I wrote more, but there's only so much writing I can do over the holidays, with everything else I have going on. As the years went by, it became a part of my Christmas nostalgia. I'd get into that relaxed writing state each December and write more of the adventure, adding to it each year. Last year I finished photoshopping a map for the adventure (a map of Mimir's Well, based on the Norse oracle and inspired by the oracle in the Golden Voyage of Sinbad and Mimir's portrayal in Marvel Comics). This year I finished writing the last of the 12 room descriptions for that map. Like marinating a fruit cake every week, I "marinate" the adventure every year. It takes place on a continent known as Nördheim, a frozen continent of Vikings and rune masters and frost giants and white dragons. In this adventure, the party (now in the upper teen levels on average) are taking on a druid who wandered into the Para-Elemental Plane of Ice, subverted by Cryonax, and is now opening a gate to the Para-Elemental Plane of Ice, which is causing severe weather (bitter cold, blizzards, etc).

It's grown to 12 pages now, plus some auxiliary pages. I won't finish it this year, but depending how next year goes, it may get wrapped up then or the following year. Frankly, I hope it takes longer. I've really fallen in love with this story, and it's such a nostalgia to sit down every Christmas season and dive back into it. Like meeting family and old friends after a long time apart. It would be the ultimate cool thing to unite a few of the better players at some point in time to play this. Wow!