I've been remiss in recounting our ongoing campaign. Below I will attempt to catch up to where we are today without writing a novel.

To those who thought a campaign such as ours would be interesting - you don't know the half of it! To those of you who thought - like me - that after a few sessions we'd be re-rolling PCs at a fevered pitch ... amazingly, no one has died. That is not to say we haven't had more than our fair share of close calls. In fact Every. Single. Session. But, I digress. I will summarize our adventures below, by session, as best my memory can recall.

Session #2: The adventure/campaign officially begins with our tribe of Half-Picts, the Giant Otter Clan, in the midst of a week long tribal celebration of spring. The celebration is marked by three religious trials the outcome of each is superstitiously believed to affect the long term prosperity (or lack thereof) of the tribe. Our PCs participated in a series of annual coming of age trials for young members of the clan which consists of tests of strength, agility, and weapons play before culminating in a special hunt. Special hunting parties were formed each intent on felling a creature deemed by the clan elders to be the most fearsome and worthy of sacrifice to their god Dobhran, the Great Otter.

Our PCs entered various competitions and fared extremely well with Jornak (the berserker) winning three of four competitions of strength and Verica (ranger) and her mentally challenged twin brother Calgaros (huntsmen) winning three competitions of speed and agility between them. The elderly mage, Mako, won his own tribal songs competition (yes, he got up in front of our group and chanted a quite long and impressive war chant). The group was honored by the elder warriors for their strong showing in the games. All that was left was to hunt down an animal worthy of Dobhran for the final feast day.

Our group headed into the wilderness surrounding our coastal village in search of a great white male ram. Ever

My group is starting a new campaign this Friday (we ran character creation and setup the storyline with a mini adventure on day 1). We decided to try a different approach than has been customary in past campaigns. Rather than rolling up an individual character and then building whatever back story was desirable to the player we opted to pick a region, choose a race, tribe, etc. and weave a storyline that supported this accepted premise: we were going to be barbarians from the same tribe, albeit filling different character classes. The general idea was that the coming of age ceremony and subsequent tribal celebration would launch us on our grand campaign. The celebration is its own adventure but our GM crafted it in such a way that if we do survive its intial perils we will be presented with an opportunity, perhaps a cultural imperative, to continue our adventures, thus launching our grand campaign.

​As we all know, even celebrations can be dangerous in Hyperborea. We had two party members go down in the intro adventure but, with some lucky rolls and timely healing, they survived - barely!

​We chose to be Half-Picts (well, all but one of us) living along the Savage Boreal Coast. Our tribe, the Giant Otter Clan (yes, we rolled for that, LOL) is celebrating the onset of "Spring" and the annual coming of age for young members of the clan entering into adulthood. While we (Great Otter Clan) are wary of all nearby clans, including those devils called the true Picts of New Pictland who launch periodic raids on their half-blood mainland cousins and the Otters, we hold special enmity toward the Shark Clan who have dominated most of the nearby clans, decimating their numbers, and who constantly harry their only regional rival - our own Great Otter Clan.

​We are comprised of a berserker, a barbarian, a huntsman, a ranger, twin sisters who each practice their own unique brand of shamanism, and an aged magician whose backstory explains how decades ago he was able as an

That's a great idea! I am busy populating Hyperborea with a few new areas taken from the work of Robert E. Howard as well as my own imagination. I think my group is looking forward to playing the adventures I create - supposing of course their current characters survive the predicament they are currently in...

It worked out well for them, Grimmshade. It also made for a convenient bridge between "in between adventures", that is, those adventures where on some nights I can't get the whole group together to continue the current campaign but can get a few players to gather round the table who desperately need some RPG fun. I'll let them roll some characters and run them through a city adventure right from the lair or Heroes Hall as I like to call it.

My son plays a straight thief and is about to hit level 2.

Very useful resource - thank you!

Started a new AS&SH campaign last week with two players new to the AS&SH system. I ran Rats in the Walls. There were only three players but one is an experienced gamer, really experienced, and he agreed to play two characters until we can get another player on board. We kept it simple and played the main classes: fighter, cleric, thief, and magician.

I am new to GMing with this system so I decided to run the adventure as close to the vest as possible. In the first session I chose not to veer away from the main story line much because I knew there would be a good deal of rules scanning as everyone got used to the game mechanics and gaming together. However, by the time they hit the basement we were already on auto-pilot and the players were involved in several touch and go encounters. Real edge-of-your-seat gameplay. Two characters teetered on the brink of death before some quick thinking from our magician saved the day.

We (hopefully) finish the encounter tonight - and I've a surprise for the players. If they survive - and there is no guarantee they will - I plan on tweaking the rat borne disease check to send them on a quest to save one of the party from madness. I've already begun weaving the PC life stories into the upcoming homebrew quest.

The RPG newbie loved the game so much he begged the rest of us to promise that we would play as often as possible and we're delivering! Can't wait for tonight!