I am setting up a Rolemaster Classic campaign to try GMing by IRC. I have a couple of players interested, but am hoping to find a few more. Some patience will probably be required as I haven't tried this before and it's a long time since I've GM'd any sort of game. I'm not looking for a huge time commitment--one two-to three hour session a week (probably on the weekend) at most. The game won't start for a few more weeks--I'm still getting my thoughts together. If anybody is interested in participating, please PM me for more details on cultures, character classes, campaign maps etc.
System: a heavily customized Rolemaster Classic for a world where magic is not rare but is comparatively weak and lacking in offensive punch.
Style: I always tended to run fairly open-ended campaigns where players choose goals and pursue them rather than one where I am always in control of the plotline?although there will be events of the day happening (some drawn from history), which players could participate in.
Setting: The campaign setting is quasi-historical, with the basic situation borrowed from real history but with names of places people and religions either invented or taken from Guy Gavriel Kay?s pseudo-historical novels (Sailing to Sarantium, The Lions of Al Rassan), though it doesn?t correspond to the timeframe or location of any of the novels. The action will (at least in the beginning) center in and near the city of Rhodias, the history of which and its current circumstances are described below:
Rhodias is an ancient city founded 1402 years ago, and its calendar begins at the date of its founding. A few centuries ago, Rhodias was a mighty city at the heart of a great empire that ruled almost the entire known world from the wild lands of the north to the scorching deserts of the south and from the great sea to the west to the Bassanid lands to the east.
But the empire fell apart and was repeatedly sacked by a variety of Inicii tribesmen, first in 1163, and then again in 1228. For a time, the Antae tribe held sway in the peninsula of Batiara and were able to maintain order of a sort, but after the warrior-King Hildric?s death, his sons fell into bickering and the warring between them laid waste to Batiara in the late 13th century. The great aqueducts that brought water to Rhodias were broken, the trade routes that fed it were disrupted, and most of its people fled to the countryside or parished. Vast areas of the city have been abandoned, the great monuments of its past crumbling into ruin.
About a century ago, the remnant of the Rhodian empire that still persisted in the east stepped into this chaos and established their rule over most of Batiara. These so-called Rhodians, most of whom speak Trakesian, not Rhodian at all, are ruled from a city known as New Rhodias or Sarantium. They have brought relative stability to Rhodias, holding the city against yet another Inicii invasion by a tribe called the Munqueses, although much of Batiara has been lost.
The new Rhodian Empire has been looking shaky in recent years. The fanatical followers of a heathen god of the stars called Ashar have swept through its eastern lands, capturing Ispahani and Soriyya. And there has been religious unrest among the followers of Holy Jad, the God of the sun, bringer of life, warmth and energy. The trouble came about because many of the followers of Jad in the East, perhaps due their long separation from the Patriarch of Rhodias, had fallen into heretical beliefs. Many of their priests had been teaching that Heladikos the fire-bringer, son of Jad, was purely an incarnation of Jad and had no human nature. In an attempt to compromise, the Patriarch of Sarantium, with the backing of the previous Emperor, wrote that while Heladikos had both a human and a divine nature, he had only one divine will. This did not sit well with many of the clergy in the west however. A few years ago, the Exarch of Quileia condemned the young Emperor Saranos as a heretic and claimed the imperial throne for himself. He was defeated in battle last year, and Saranos passed an edict of toleration for varying beliefs on the nature of Heladikos and forbidding further discussion.
Earlier this summer, the Patriarch of Rhodias died and a new one, Gabrino, was swiftly elected?unusually, the curia did not wait for formal approval of their choice from the Emperor. His first act was to call a conference of bishops, more than one hundred of whom have gathered in the Patriarchal Palace. Rumors are flying about the city as to what is being discussed and what conclusions are being drawn.
