Concurrent Campaign 0: Ankisis Setting

If you play in a regular weekly campaign alongside three other campaigns, all of which occur as part of a collegiate club jokingly named after one of the required courses on campus- you are on your honor not to read the below article. That goes for all ~20 of you- especially if your group contains a drunk exotic bird, corpse with magic fingers, a warlock to a redacted deity, a crocodile cleric, and a shy half-orc barbarian.

A few years ago, I founded the Tabletop RPGs Club at my college. Over the course of these few years we've toyed with numerous different tabletop systems, created various small projects, and served as a hub for finding and playing tabletop games. For my last year, as a measure to not only distribute work but to experiment with something otherwise not possible, we have established a new event: a set of four campaigns run and occurring at the same time and within the same setting by four GMs.

This article series mainly will cover my personal campaign prep and content which I have prepared, but I also intend to try and cover some greater observations about running campaigns in this unorthodox matter as well as content prepared by my fellow GMs.

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The setting for this concurrent campaign was established partially as a joke, making fun of a set of required courses on campus which covers the classics as well as a few other select pieces of literature like The Tempest or Inferno. These works do however serve to inspire many elements or themes within the setting. Namely: the world is set in an ancient era akin to The Iliad, where the gods are still an active and real presence among mortal creatures. The setting isn't purely historically accurate or unique to one society however. In fact, most of what has been established has been simply using the aesthetics and themes commonly seen to a culture and constructing very different fantasy societies around that.

The main map covers:
- Herenthiage, inspired by ancient Carthage, the largest empire in the region and center of a politically-charged campaign- which holds implications for every region.
- Mania, an archipelago of city states akin to Greece, in which players engage in exploration and adventure on many varied and unique islands.
- a set of five islands inspired off Mesopotamia, in which players must navigate and deal with ruling factions while discovering deities and ancient technologies
- and my contribution: Ankisis, a kingdom of sands inspired by Egypt, which sees the player's deal with mysteries and horrors- both from long forgotten tombs and their fellow citizens

Although, through the desire of some players and other GMs, other vague cultures were established as existing off the main campaign map:
     - there exists a stretch of islands with Indonesian influences
     - a South American continent exists, supporting cultures with Aztec or Mayan influences
     - Herenthiage is at war with a Roman analogue somewhere along its far border
     - a few of the elements I've included in Ankisis have hinted at Arabic and Hebrew cultures

Essentially: the game world is laid out like some bastard version of a game of classical-era Civilization, which has been populated by misread summaries of myths associated with each culture.

My portion of the map was the kingdom of Ankisis, a kingdom largely consisting of small oasis towns and tombs hidden beneath the desert sands. The few large cities which exist- Caiurn, Sayid, and Qiza- exist along lush river deltas mainly as political targets for other campaigns, and far away from the humble desert outskirts. I have not developed them so that the GMs who use them might do so more freely, initially giving only placeholder names for them as "New York," "Chicago," and "D.C." What with limited prep time and all, I also figured leaving cities boring and drawing attention to the more interesting aspects of dying in desert tombs to be the better choice.

Part of this was done through a few mechanical adjustments. This concurrent campaign is run in Dungeons and Dragons 5E for the sake of inclusion and the wider player base. That said, I don't enjoy D&D 5E all that much, and included a few house rules to ease me into it.
- I don't bother with CR, whatsoever. Sufficient threats are telegraphed though, and I tend to always give a player being clever the benefit of the doubt.

- Players manage food & water while traveling the desert. Basically: depending on conditions and time frames, a call is made. If the players have appropriate consumables, they are consumed and play quickly moves on. If they don't, then they earn a strike. Each strike carries negative effects, and three strikes you die of starvation/dehydration.

- Players have to track carrying weight. Each has a number of inventory slots equal to their Strength scores, and most items take up one or more slots. Simply put, of course.

- No Resurrections, Wishes, etc.

So in plain and simple terms, in exchange for venturing into strange tombs and facing incredible risks compared to usual 5E, the players also stand to gain some of the best rewards. This design also has a narrative element underlying it however, as players may discover the true nature of Ankisis: that of a post-apocalyptic society.

According to conventional sources within the setting, ages ago the more mythical Ankisis was originally a lush green kingdom ruled by five gods (which here are sort of amalgamations of the usual Egyptian deities). It was through the unspeakable actions of one of its gods, that the entire land was cursed and became a desert; along with that god being expunged from their pantheon and becoming an eldritch abomination known as "He Who Slinks Behind Stars." This is only a partial truth however, as in reality it was the demigods of Ankisis warring against other pantheons which started the matter.

These demigods, serving as nobles and heroes in a fashion akin to the Greeks, petitioned HWSBS for a plague to destroy their enemies. It was thanks to the folly of one demigod that this plague was unleashed on Ankisis instead of it's enemies. Anyone contracting the plague slowly had their bodies reduced to sand; retaining their consciousness as their forms were scattered on the winds (an idea borrowed from the wonderful Dr. McNinja). In time all of these numerous corpses would form the deserts of Ankisis, swallowing up every city of what was once a metropolis and sealing them in as tombs. Isolated cities like Caiurn, Sayid, and Qiza which were protected by noble lines burning all outsiders were fine.

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How does any of that matter for play? It really doesn't, as background setting usually doesn't and why it's all only this little blurb. This all serves no purpose beyond setting up the area for desert travel and exploring contained dungeons, and laying out a theme of the strange and macabre; and that's enough. Players will violate the sanctity of the dead in a few ways, potentially unearth a heart-wrenching scene or two frozen in time, and not to mention contend with the plague themselves- as detailed in my next post.