writes:Quite a while ago, I wrote about my desire to start up a 28mm fantasy campaign. I thought I'd give you an update.
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"28mm fantasy figures"
I was looking for a campaign that would inspire me to get some use out of some 28mm figures that were sitting on the shelf, and to slowly grow forces from skirmish-level to army-level.
I ultimately chose to go with the Warrior Heroes series of rulesets. These were originally from Two Hour Wargames, but some are now published by Rebel Minis. The three sets in the series allow you to progress from small battles to large, and include compatible campaign rules. In Warrior Heroes: Legends, your character leads a small party of adventurers. In Warrior Heroes: Warbands, you progress to leading a unit of soldiers. And in Rally Round the King, you lead entire armies.
Legends provides a pre-designed fantasy setting, but I'm customizing it to use those figures I want to get off the shelf and onto the gaming table.
The first step in the process is to create a campaign map gridded off into what the rules call 'provinces'. For some reason, the rulebook shows a large-scale map gridded off into hexes, but uses a square grid (sometimes offset) for the provinces map, including rules for straight and diagonal movement. I'm going to simplify all that and just use hexagonal provinces.
I already had a list of prospective countries from my previous article, so the next step was to draw the map. I used Hexographer, a role-playing-game map creator – it has a steep learning curve, but does the job. (It has since been replaced by a new product, Worldographer, which I hope to review for you soon.)
So here's the first draft of the campaign map:
This is Estaria – that's the provisional name for this place, world, continent, island, whatever it is.
Celondi, down on the bottom left, is the homeland of the Amazons who will be 'my' player force. I've only mapped to the north of them; I can add the southern lands later.
The Duchy of Westos (sounds too much like Westoros, I need to change the name!) is a colony from the expansionist Principate (Men), and is in the top left.
Mysteria is the provisional name for a Gothic Horror place, lots of vampires and pumpkinmen.
The Tower of Arlig represents newly arrived piratical Orcs, an escalating menace.
The Grasslands of Ellis are ruled by tribal centaurs.
The Simian Empire is on the bottom right, and is a coalition of different ape-like races. Their country extends off-map to the south.
(I seem to have forgotten the Beastmen! Oh well, they can hide out in the Fell Lands…)
In a future article, I'll show you how I customized some encounter tables for the campaign.