The Open Range

Photo by Lorien, from Flickr

My friend Jeramy and I have been working off and on for about a year to build a new D&D campaign setting.  It started when we were watching Tombstone and The Quick and The Dead one day and trying to think about how we could fit D&D characters in that world of high noon duels, wide-open country, and general lawlessness. It reminded me strongly of the world Stephen King created with The Gunslinger, the world of young Roland and Arthur Eld before him.  I had a this vivid image of a knight in full armor with a lance at one end of a dusty street, and a duster-clad wizard at the other end; the two duked it out in front of a town of wide-eyed witnesses, and I knew we had to bring that place to life.



Exploring the World


We decided to call it Open Range because it brought to mind themes like exploration, discovery, and the frontier.  The setting would have pockets of civilization, and immense tracts of open land for players to discover adventure in.  First though, we had to explain where these adventurers came from, and why they risked life and limb traveling through unexplored, desolate, often-hostile lands.

Two iconic images stood out in my mind when we brainstormed about the setting:  the lone gunslinger, and the frontier town.  The gunslinger stood for battle, bloodshed, a personal code, wanderlust, and adventure.  The town represented opportunity, mystery, a sense of place and history, and society.  We needed a world where these two things were not just accepted, but necessary.


We called the town where most adventures would begin "Inkwood"; the buildings were made of wood that turned so pitch-black in the sun it looked like it was painted with ink.  It would be run by outlaws, devious and greedy but just smart enough to know you attracted more flies with honey than vinegar.  Good folk would live here too, but they would be either too scared to stand up for themselves or buried on a hill just outside of town.  It would be waystation that led deeper into the unexplored territories, a place where you could buy a sturdy pair of boots and have them stolen while you were sleeping one off at the saloon.  Inkwood would be the bright start, and inglorious end, to many adventurer's careers.

Black and White


While Inkwood may seem perfect for the morally gray (and the Unaligned), the world it's in is also filled with harshly vengeful Good, and terrifyingly cunning Evil.  The Forces Above and the Forces Below have been fighting for control of reality almost since the birth of their creators, and this world is their battleground.  A desert could have been created by the destruction of a demonic army by a celestial spell so potent, it scoured all life from that portion of the world.  A pair of strangers dueling in the street may actually be the proxies for powerful archons and pit fiends for control of the town's souls.

Players may want their characters to sit on the sidelines in this conflict and eventually retire to a nice ranch somewhere quiet, but as they grow in power it becomes more and more difficult to stay out of the war, and the people they trust the most likely turn out to be puppets for higher powers.  The question then becomes do they accept their sacred calling, or choose to damn politics of the soul entirely and let fate sort it all out.

Here There Be Dragons


The other thing we wanted to have in Open Range was dragons; lots and lots of dragons.  Dragons in this world grow in power not just by aging, but also through feeding on sentient beings.  In the not-so-distant past, dragons invaded the world from some other place and nearly drove the civilized races to extinction.  The survivors finally abandoned their home in massive fleets of ships and fled to another wild, untamed continent.  Colonies were built along the coast, and soon they became cities, but they were still a shadow of the civilization that was abandoned.  While some hope to raise an army and reclaim their homeland, most have turned their eyes toward the horizon and begun spreading out into the darkness, hoping to build new roads, new cities, and a new life.

But the dragons are not finished; while their hunger was sated for a time, it is very likely they could soon appear on the horizon, winged embodiments of death and destruction, returning to finish their meal.  Because of that, people that still have money and power are searching for a way to defeat them, a weapon or spell or artifact from the heavenly wars that could mean their salvation.  Others send teams of mercenaries back across the waves to reclaim parts of the Old Country from the scaly usurpers, and retrieve caches or treasures that were left behind in the exodus to the New World and could help them prepare for the coming war.

Into the Sunset


I'll write more about the Open Range as it comes along; hopefully we'll even begin a campaign there in the near future.  So strap on your weapons, look to the horizon, and let's find out what's on the other side.