B is for Borders

I missed the April A-Z Blog Challenge this year, so I'm doing my own...in June. This year, I will be posting one post per day discussing my AD&D campaign, for the curious. Since 2020, this is the ONLY campaign I run. Enjoy!

B is for Borders...the borders of (my game) reality.

Probably I should have led with this...but then, "borders" doesn't begin with the letter "A," does it? Thing is, I have mentioned my campaign in passing (several times) over the last five years, so most people know that the setting for my world is the Pacific Northwest of our real world.

That's a very specific portion of our reality. Let me tell you how I got there.

A loooong ways back...long before I even started playing AD&D again...I decided that I was ready to run a serious campaign. What I like to call a perpetual campaign; that is: a campaign that is always "on," whether I have the luxury of playing in it or not, something that I pour all my world building creativity into when I can. And after reading many posts by the sharpest DMing mind on the internet, I figured that the smartest thing...the damn easiest thing...that I could do, would be to set the game in our Real World. Not only does our real world have all the benefits of actual geography, climate, history, etc. it's already mapped out (thanks Google Earth!) and all I have to do is overlay it with my own version of "reality."

This is not the most original idea in the world: plenty of people have used "the real world" as the basis of their fantasy world. Gygax's Oerth is a stretched version of North America. Martin's Westeross is just a greatly enlarged UK. Warhammer's Aulde World is just Europe by way of Tolkien. Etc. Even Mystara is pretty obviously a Pangea-like version of Earth. However, I knew I didn't want to do the entirety of our planet...way, waaay too much work. I just needed a small portion to use as my setting.

I chose South America.

To be fair, this was my first attempt at doing a "serious campaign" (well doing the "serious work" of an actual campaign)...it's only natural I'd make the mistake of biting off a LOT more than I could chew. And not just in terms of size (South America is huge!)...but in terms of history and culture and knowledge of fauna and flora and whatnot? I was just way over my skis. Dumb.

So after futzing around with that for a couple-few years (seriously...I first considered South America as a potential world setting in 2015 while still living in Paraguay and returned to the idea in 2019 when I was first deciding I needed a more "advanced" game), I finally gave up and did the "normal thing" of sketching out a vanilla "fantasy land" in which to set adventures, complete with dumb, pseudo-fantasy stuff like Lizard Cults and Purple Sorcerers. The usual, in other words...but that was back when I was still in the dumb-dumb phase of wavering between B/X and OD&D.

I would stick with dumb-dumb "nowhere land," until after I started playing 1E again (in 2020).

Then, sometime around the Spring of 2021, I was eating BBQ with my brother at the best place in the area for such things (Gabriel's Fire in Mountlake Terrace), and I saw a poster on the wall of the bathroom: an absolutely beautiful map of Northwest Washington State entitled The Evergreen Playground, published by the Kroll Map Company in 1994 (you can still buy a copy of this poster today). Beneath its title, it carries the following words:

Neither Europe nor Asia nor South America has a prospect in which sea and woods and snow mountains are so united in a landscape.

And just like that, my search for the perfect campaign world was over. It had been under my nose for decades, but I had simply failed to see it. 

Since then (March '21) I've been using Washington State and the surrounding area for ALL my gaming. My range has expanded considerably; it was (originally) focused on the area just east of the Cascades...Cle Elum and Ellensburg were the largest settlements I was interested in detailing, and other places (Seattle, Spokane) were "far off places," rife with rumor and legend. Now, though, my world has grown to encompass the entire state, plus Idaho, Oregon, northern California, western Montana, and (southern) British Columbia. Basically, the entire disputed (in the 1800s) territory west of the Louisiana Purchase, north of (formerly) Spanish Mexico, and south of (formerly) Russian Alaska.

I once thought such a region...roughly five-ish states in size...was "too small." That, like George Martin, I'd have to stretch and expand the area by double or treble, simply to give enough "space" to fit in everything I'd need or want in a D&D campaign: Huge mountain ranges. Vast plains. Unknowable forests, etc. 

As with "South America," I was being ridiculous. Actually, I was simply thinking like a 21st century human...a person who lives in a world of cars and automobiles, who can cross an entire state in a matter of hours, and who can fly to the other side of the world in less than a day. At that time (just four years ago! Four!) I hadn't put in much time reading up on the Lewis & Clark Expedition. I hadn't delved deeply into the adventure fiction of Lamb and Burroughs and Haggard. I didn't understand how a wilderness devoid of four lane highways and suspension bridges and airports is so treacherous that only the foolish, reckless, or heroic would dare to traverse it with little more than the supplies they could carry. 

Take away the Industrial Revolution and the railroads and there is a LOT of wilderness in my home state.

So much so that, for D&D purposes, I can't see myself ever exhausting the region. Not in my lifetime, anyway. I am currently writing this series of posts, providing an overview of my campaign setting and, while just barely scratching the surface, probably still represents ten times as much "travelogue" as I've ever written down about campaign.

Because, for the most part, I don't write it down. Most of it, I keep in my head. I have some scattered notes...mostly about populations. But it's just so much background text...so much background lore that I just keep in my noggin for when I write adventures and adventure scenarios. Which is the only thing that my players see, anyway...the only thing they care about. They don't give a rip about "lore." 

Where's the dungeon? Where's the treasure? How do we get it? That's what the players care about.

But for ME, the Dungeon Master, the world...my world...IS the thing I care about. It's the thing that gives me "juice." It's what provides me with context for creating adventures. And having this lovely, lovely patch of planet earth, chock full of mountains and forests and deserts and ocean, provides the perfect plate on which to lavish an exquisite dish to serve my players. I can put Pax Tharkas (from DL2) in the shade of the Cascades, because I know where the gold is/was mined from the mountains. I can stash the lich's stronghold at the best spot on the Fraser river, because I know where it becomes impossible to move upstream by boat. I can seed towns and settlements throughout the region and determine population density because I can research where and why actual communities congregated, and make pronouncements about their local produce and industry.

The Pac Northwest has a lot going for it...and a lot going on. It also...today, in the 21st century...has huge sections of unexplored wilderness perfect for lairs and monsters and places that a D&D party would want to explore. 

I love it. 

As for what lies outside the borders of my world? Nothing...nothing at all. "Death" is what I imagine, but more likely just miles and miles of inhospitable, impenetrable, landscapes. Radioactive wastelands. Frozen tundra. Barren Deserts. Unending oceans. It doesn't much matter. No one knows...certainly not the NPCs my players encounter. Because I don't know; nor do I care. Because there's plenty going on right here, thank you very much. It's already packed with adventure.

My world has borders. It's a game. The map is the board. Play occurs on the board, not off.