There’s a strange alchemy to gaming, and especially to lived-in RPG settings. From Greyhawk to the universe of The Expanse (which began as an RPG campaign) settings which have been inhabited by gaming groups, filled with the quirks and twists and perfectly odd elements introduced by the folks who have gamed there, are fascinating in part because they’ve been infused with that alchemy through play.
From the moment I started writing about Godsbarrow, it has been important to me that I eventually run (and maybe, someday, play) games in this setting. RPG settings come into their own, taking on weight beyond words on a page and becoming more deeply connected to the roleplaying hobby, when they’re developed through play.
Godsbarrow came out of my head, and that ongoing process of creation is a source of joy for me. But Godsbarrow feels more real, more tightly connected to the shared joy of this hobby, because my setting has seen actual play. Many, many thanks to the folks who have played games in and explored Godsbarrow, designed elements of this setting, and infused it with their creativity, quirks, and experiences!
Godsbarrow campaigns and players
The first – June 2022
This Dungeon World campaign started on June 7, 2022, and was set on the island of Bal Acar (north of the Gilded Lands and northeast of the Unlucky Isles). Greg Mumford played the Witchblade Dabr de Aaust and Rustin Simons played Auderna, witch of the Bleating Horde. We used The Perilous Wilds to handle exploration.
The second – November 2022
My kiddo and I started up a one-on-one Godsbarrow game on November 25, 2022, using Old School Essentials. Lark Ralya played the goblin beast master Hapishnei Tuθineσ, and delved into the dungeon from The Hole in the Oak. I situated the module in the eastern Ockwood, near Larθ.
The third – August 2024
This one’s a bit different as it was conceived from the start as a world-hopping campaign, the Basement Game, but the campaign began in Godsbarrow with me GMing our first adventure. Our first session of this AD&D 1e game was on August 21, 2024. Mike played Nakajima Rei, a human bushi/ninja; Renee Knipe played the deep gnome assassin Quildank; John Powell played Gambo, a half-elf druid; and Reagan Taplin played Kaito, a hengeyokai (carp) shukenja and then switched to ϴu, a Brundiri cleric of the Mast and Sail. Pete Curry had to miss the first two sessions, but played the human ranger Mordecai starting in session three. I set the module “The Citadel by the Sea” (from Dragon Magazine #78) on Brundir’s southern coast just southwest of Laris, in the Unlucky Isles.
First-ever session in Godsbarrow
The first session of the first Godsbarrow campaign was on June 7, 2022 — character creation a some collaborative worldbuilding for a Dungeon World game with me in the GM’s chair and two of my best friends, Rustin Simons and Greg Mumford, as players. Our first session of in-character play was on July 5, 2022, with Dabr de Aaust (Greg) and Auderna (Rustin) embarking from Drem Kallow to the Market in the Woods.
We wanted to play a hexcrawl, so before the first session I created the largely unexplored island of Bal Acar (situated north of Kadavis, east of the Arkestran Dominion, and northeast of the Unlucky Isles) for us to collaboratively develop through play.
Greg and Rustin created the Keepers of the Thousandfold Chains, a coven of witches who both bind and exploit the Bleating Horde, an infinite evil — a deity whose every aspect contains part of the whole. The coven tasked them with exploring Bal Acar to seek the truth behind prophetic dreams and the irrational, unnatural scratchings of sages which spoke of that strange place.
The second Godsbarrow campaign
On November 25, 2022, my kiddo, Lark, and I started up a solo Godsbarrow campaign using Old School Essentials. I’m beyond excited to get to run some old-school D&D (OSE is B/X reorganized and tidied up a bit), in Godsbarrow, for Lark!
Session one was character creation, and Lark rolled up Hapishnei Tuθineσ, a goblin beast master who lives in Brundir’s deadly, haunted Ockwood. Hapishnei is the first Godsbarrow goblin; from a worldbuilding perspective, that’s going to be fascinating.
We’re starting with the OSE adventure The Hole in the Oak, and I can’t wait to see where this campaign goes.
The Basement Game
My Seattle group kicked off an AD&D campaign we call the Basement Game on August 21, 2024, with a party of third-level characters playing the module Citadel by the Sea (Dragon #78). Since this campaign has an honest to goodness origin story I figured I’d record it for posterity.
The idea for the game came from a freewheeling conversation on Slack. The AD&D White Plume Mountain game we’d been playing was on hold, so I suggested a casual AD&D game to replace it. We started talking about D&D setting nostalgia, and Renee suggested we forego all other games and just run AD&D from now on, exploring a bucket list of settings from Dark Sun to Bloodstone Pass. I brought up the idea of round-robin GMs, keeping the same PCs from GM to GM and setting to setting, and said, “this is Cheetos and soda in the basement 1970s-1980s stuff, handwaving how the characters get between settings and not sweating the small stuff.” Reagan suggested that the PCs possess an artifact that can’t be destroyed or given away (it always returns, fairy tale-style) which, unbeknownst to them, facilitates random teleportation to other worlds. Boom: the Basement Game was born.
There was a sense of building energy and excitement about the whole casual, grab-ass affair, so we struck while the iron was hot. Elapsed time from the shared germ of an idea on August 9, 2024, to our first session: thirteen days.