RPG CAMPAIGN TOUR CHALLENGE 2026 Day 5-Can you tell us about the campaign's history?

 In the real world and within the universe.

This is a place that really exists. At least up to the present day, it has the exact same history as the real place. Inhabited by indigenous Americans, then Europeans as they traveled north up the coast in the early 1800's. The major industry was redwood logging for a long period of time.

Bigfoot has been part of the mythology of the area for some time. One of the most famous pieces of Bigfoot evidence was a film shot in this area back in the 1960's. When the redwoods stood in for the forest moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi, they had to be careful that Chewbacca actor Peter Mayhew was not mistaken for a Bigfoot by passersby.

At some point during the collapse, as the country fractured, indigenous peoples began fortifying their reservations and territories against usurpation by outside forces.

After the collapse, the Sasquatch have come out of the woodwork, taking in refugees from ruined cities into their forest home. They guided humans and established a prosperous community that I have currently named Squatch-ville.

Some people bristled at the idea of being ruled over by Sasquatch and headed out on their own. After some false starts (the less said about McKinleyville the better), they arrived in Ureka. The city had been given over to mutated rats since the the collapse, but this splinter group carved out a territory along the coast, pushing the ratfolk to the outer reaches of the old city.

For much of this time, the people of Cow Town kept to themselves, continuing the farming traditions of the community. Before the collapse, they were dairy farmers. After the collapse, the tanker trucks stopped coming to be filled with milk, so the people diversified. They tilled fertile soil to grow a variety of crops that allowed them to survive and even thrive on their own. But within the last generation or so, the health of the soil collapsed. Also, the people began falling ill. The current theory is that they acquired materials from the abandoned nuclear power plant from a scavenger, and the radioactive and irradiated materials found their way into nearly everything. (I really like this, but I'm in the process of considering other options.)

RPG CAMPAIGN TOUR CHALLENGE 2026 Day 4-Is there a Map?

Give us a visual! Show us a map of your setting! Don't have one? WHY NOT?!?

At the moment, I am relying on a real map of the area that I derived from https://maps.army that they were even kind enough to overlay 5 kilometer hexes on. The next step is to fictionalize it just a bit, with markers for locations in the campaign and to mess with place names to make them sound a bit more post-apocalyptic.

 

RPG CAMPAIGN TOUR CHALLENGE 2026 Day 3-Where the heck are we?

 What is the campaign's location and where is that location in related to other important places.

The location is Humboldt and Del Nort (deliberate misspelling, because that's how locals pronounce it) counties once the United States (and presumably the entire world) has collapsed. It's about a 6-hour drive north from San Francisco up the California coast in the modern day, but after the collapse, I expect the journey to take much longer should anyone care to attempt it.

Whenever anyone asks me where I'm from, I tell them "Whatever you think Northern California is, it's north of that."

RPG CAMPAIGN TOUR CHALLENGE 2026 Day 2-About your Tour Guide

 Introduce us to a character who can serve as our guide through your campaign and its setting.

 This is a very cool idea, but one I have not prepared for and would also require significant time to work up. I might revisit this concept later, especially since this project is pushing me to devise things for my setting that I haven't previously considered.

RPG CAMPAIGN TOUR CHALLENGE 2026 Day 1-Campaign Introduction and Overview

 What is your campaign called, what system does it use, and what is it all about?

I haven't given the campaign itself a name. It's an exercise in using the setting building tools from Ashes Without Number to waste out my hometown and the surrounding environs. While not explicitly set in the Fallout universe, it does borrow the vibe. There was a colossal war that nobody won and everyone lost.

The story so far is the story of this small corner of the world and how the people there have survived and how they get along.

Since this is intended to be something of a sandbox, a trait of all of the Without Number games, the story of the campaign is going to be how a party of survivors engages with this setting.

I haven't started actively running this campaign yet, so I don't know if I'm going to go with what the book describes as a "crisis" campaign model (closer to some seasons of The Walking Dead, where survivors struggle to build a community) or "exploration" (closer to the Fallout games, with survivors wandering the wastes and engaging with what they find). But this is going to be a reflection of the setting, whichever model I use.

A Challenge Is Issued!

That eternal question of "What do I run?" seems to be developing an answer.

 Thinking of how to speed up and streamline the adventure/scenario-generation process, I'm drawn to Ashes Without Number. The way it lays out the prospective campaign structure and provides adventure design tools feel like something that can generate something gameable fairly quickly. So I've been trying to put a bit more effort into fleshing out that setting and making it even more robust.

I realized that my home base needed more fleshing out. There's a temptation to treat the home location as rather generic to make it easier for the players to relate to. But I rolled Enclave tags for it just like the other Enclaves, and it would give the location a nice bit of flavor.

Those tags are Splinter Group and Evangelist. For a long time, I wasn't sure where they splintered from, but I think I've got it figured out. Part of that was the desire to keep it generic, but once I fought down that impulse, I took a look at the candidates.

Because the area is so rural and out of the way, there are only 2 other Enclaves for them to splinter from, Ferndale and Squatch-ville. While there is the possibility of them splintering from a more remote faction, let's take a look at the local situation first.

Ferndale feels somewhat obvious as the radioactive environment is likely to result in an exodus, but the description of the Splinter Group tag describes a level of animosity involved in the splinter and I can't see the people of Ferndale treated with anything but a sad empathy. They have made the decision to be resigned to their doom.

But Squatch-ville has more potential for internal splintering. We've already established that there's a noble class of Sasquatch ruling over the human settlers and that there are problems under the surface that are being ignored. If those problems have been brewing long enough, there could be groups splintering for periods of time.

This does mean that the people living in Eureka may or may not be related to the pre-apocalypse inhabitants of Eureka, which does make things interesting. Since part of the old city is designated as a Ruin, my thought is that the entire city had previously fallen to ruin (or at least occupation by ratfolk) and the arriving splinter proceeded to establish themselves there.

Though now I feel like I need to know more of Squatch-ville's deal. The people of Eureka didn't splinter recently (there's a separate Enclave tag for that), so whatever problems they have have been brewing for a long time, at least a generation. That might also offer clues as to what the Evangelist tag is about.

As part of my efforts to flesh out the setting, I will be attempting to participate in Barking Alien's Campaign Tour Challenge.  I know my history with completing these blogging challenges is not great, but it seems like a good challenge at a fortuitous time.

What Is a Good Adventure?

After my grumbling last week about the quality of published adventures, maybe I should do some commentary on what makes a good published adventure that I would consider running.

The first thing I look at is the ability for the scenario to take different shapes. This doesn't have to be major. If there's a cool optional asset or disadvantage or choice to make, that's going to be a plus in my book. A simple railroad is not going to cut it for me.

On the other end of this, there's the "mini-sandbox." A lot of OSR adventures tend to be this. There's no strict order to the encounters, and there's no real assumption regarding how you engage with any of the encounters.

And let's not forget that there's a lot of room in between all of this. A dungeon might have a story and a final boss to defeat and also include lots of side rooms and details that the party can explore.

The other thing I look for are mandatory die rolls. Does the adventure list a die roll to access a necessary part of the plot? This is just lazy design. I suspect it largely comes from the idea that "making a die roll" and "doing something" are inherently the same thing. If someone doesn't make a Search check, are they really searching? That sort of thing.

But what happens if the party fails that roll? The GM has to fudge something to keep the scenario on track and those are rarely satisfying.

Both of these things are elements that tell me that an adventure is good or bad. But there is one other thing that will keep me from running an adventure, regardless of quality: Managing NPC agendas. This is just something that I don't believe I can do effectively. 

I also dislike lying to players, even through a mouthpiece NPC. A hidden villain, or other NPC with a major secret, that the PCS are interacting with through the course of the adventure is a non-starter for me.

I would like to improve that, but it's something that's going to have to come with time and effort.