The Lands Beyond Larm

The back cover of the first edition of the Labyrinth Lord retro-clone contains this passage:

Back to the Basics of Fantasy Role Playing. Enter a world filled with labyrinths, magic, and monsters! You can take the role of a cleric, dwarf, elf, fighter, halfling, magic-user, or thief on your quest for glory, treasure, and adventure! This is a complete role playing game. All you need are a few sheets of paper and some dice. Welcome back to the simpler old-school gaming experience. The Labyrinth Lord awaits your arrival. Can you survive the dangers of the labyrinth?

With that glorious introduction in mind, I have begun working on a fantasy hexcrawl experiment, using the generic "Known Lands" map contained at the end of the Labyrinth Lord game book. The idea is to use the published material as a starting point and move on from there. A quick look at the map shows that there is a perfectly placed frontier community named "Larm."

Not much is known about Larm, the authors of Labyrinth Lord tell us only this:

This is a smaller town, with a population of 1,000. They have a small militia of 100 individuals, but can recruit as many as 500 in a crisis. They have direct access to Dolmvay by the river, and they are primarily a farming community with some mining in the hills.

This might not seem like a lot of information, but it is more than enough to act as the beginning of a homebrew campaign exploring the Lands Beyond Larm!

Comments

Dungeon 24 Project

One room a day, every day, for one year, resulting in a 12-level mega dungeon complex. This is the Dungeon 24 Project. I want to keep the main page dedicated to world building about Larm. Going forward, the daily updates for the Dungeon 24 Project can be accessed through the "Dungeon 24" link at the top of the page. Dungeon 24 - Room 32/365 (Level 2, Room 1) Dungeon 24 - Room 31/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 30/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 29/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 28/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 27/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 26/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 25/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 24/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 23/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 22/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 21/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 20/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 19/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 18/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 17/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 16/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 15/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 14/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 13/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 12/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 11/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 10/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 9/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 8/365 Dungeon 24 - Room 7/365 Dung

Encounter - Desecration of the Barrow Tomb, Part 2

In this dungeon, the players will encounter both the surviving human bandits who broke in to raid the barrow tomb and the animalistic Morlocks that dwell in the adjoining subterranean passageways. The players will have the opportunity to explore the three tombs to get a sense of what's going on before they encounter the survivors. The encounter can be played out in two ways: 1) with the players realizing the danger and allowing the Morlock in Room 4 to retreat back into its lair; or 2) with the players pursuing the Morlock and its allies, with a final showdown in Room 6. Room #1 - The Tombs Descending down crudely fashioned stone steps made slippery from the leaves that have blown in through the open doorway, you enter a large room with stone tiled flooring and natural earthen walls. You are underground, in a place that outsiders were never meant to enter. The desecration and disrespect are apparent immediately. You see the remains of a campfire, filthy bedrolls, discarded fo

Larm: The Lay of the Land

From the previous post we know that the authors of Labyrinth Lord gave us very little to work with in the published description of our beloved Larm. We know that it is a farming and mining community. We know that it is a river community. And we know that it has a 100-man militia. This information is enough to get us started, for it implies certain things about our frontier community. First, being some 140 miles (14 hexes) from the grand city of Dolmvay, we know that Larm must be largely self-sufficient. To feed and support the 1,000 residents, Larm's farmers must be raising both crops and livestock. Looking at the general terrain, we see that Larm is located in hill country to the east, and river valley to the west. It is likely that Larm's farmers tend flocks of sheep and cattle, harvesting the wool and leather in addition to the meat of the animals. In addition, the access to the river suggests that Larm has no shortage of fishermen. Second, from the map we can see a

Shrine of St. Cuthbert

Search This Blog