The
City of Ten Thousand Daggers setting originally started out as a way for me to scratch my fantasy itch and create some exclusive content for my Patreon followers. Then I went and wrote an
RPG zine about it, and now I want to play a game set in the city. Luckily, I have a game system I need to playtest and the pandemic has forced the people I most want to play with (who of course mostly live hundreds of miles away) to get used to gaming via voice or video chat. I'm hoping to start a C10KD game in early 2021, so I'm going to use WorldEmber 2020 as my motivation to write up a bunch of stuff that I'll need to know in order to run the game.
I'm still very iffy on the exact articles I'll be writing: I have solid "just need to put it on paper" ideas for some things, vague notions for other things, and some articles stubs that will fill in a few of the gaps. However, I do have a good idea of the
types of things I need to write to jump start an RPG campaign set in the City of Ten Thousand Daggers. So those are the things I'm going to pledge (to myself, Eris, the World Anvil Community, and possibly Elvis) to write in the month of December.
Factions!
In my mind, the whole point of running a city campaign is to throw the characters into the political meatgrinder that should be alive and well in any decent-sized fantasy city. Even if the characters aren't interested in clawing their way to power through one of the city's factions, they're still likely to pick up enemies and allies who pull them into the intrigue. To make that happen, I need a starting roster of both the powerful factions who have their hands in everything and a few smaller factions who players can potentially join or run afoul of. There are a few broad categories of factions that will probably show up:
- Gangs and Criminal Organizations: Thieves' World and Lankhmar are two of the main inspirations for the setting, so there's an unspoken promise in the elevator pitch that the PCs will spend some time exploring the city's underworld.
- Coffee Clubs (Probably need a cooler name): Private Coffee Houses are a variation on the Gentlemen's Clubs of Victorian England, and some of them provide cover for all kinds of nefarious activity.
- Gladiatorial Factions: I've already established that there are four factions who fight for glory in the Grand Arena, so I should probably give them some flavor.
- Merchant Companies & Guilds: Khezvaros is a major trading city, so economic entities hold a lot of power.
- Political Factions: This will hopefully present themselves when I come up with a general idea of how the city government works and what role the empire plays in it.
- Secret Societies, Cults, Holy Orders, Wizardly Associations, Martial Orders, etc.: Other than an order of demon hunters, an apocalypse cult, and some filthy dragon-worshiping hippies , I don't have a lot of definite ideas here, but there should be all kinds of weird groups with weirder goals and rituals to really dial up the Appendix N weirdness that I want to see in the world.
For factions that fit a particular format/type--with formal or informal rules and expectations regarding their activities, organization, etc.--I'll probably set up a "Faction Type" page with short descriptions and stubs for several and then full articles for a few of the most prominent/gameable of each type. The more detailed groups (and some of the less detailed ones) should also spawn some NPC movers and shakers who can serve as employers, allies, patrons (both in the traditional and Dungeon Crawl Classics sense), and enemies
Critters!
From the start, I've thought of Khezvaros as the perfect place for moonlight battles against the forces of evil. Vampires would be an obvious choice, but they come with a lot of baggage so I went with demons instead. Taking a Buffy the Vampire Slayer approach to demons allows for infinite variety, but for now I just need a finite list of the more common hellspawn. In addition, as evidenced by the
Eyeders that infest the city, there's no shortage of
Chimerists playing god with animal bits, so I should probably come up with a few stable domestic species, some horror stories, and a few ideas that I can throw at the players as needed. Finally, there's a whole lot of stuff going on underneath Khezvaros (an ancient buried city, an entrance to the land of the dead, smugglers tunnels, sewers, probably some crypts and natural caverns, and who knows what else?) and there's probably a lot of weird critters hiding down there just waiting to be discovered.
Communities
The city is divided into wards
on the map, but beyond what's obvious from the name there's not a lot of specific flavor to most of them. As part of the pre-WorldEmber reorganization (coming soon!), I'm going to set up pages for each ward that will include things like prominent businesses, important people, landmarks, and so on. Most of them will also include information about interesting/infamous areas of the ward. A few of these neighborhoods will be more fully detailed so that one of them can be the PC party's starting point for the game. These will include colorful minor characters, small-time rivalries, weird rumors, and other "local color." Ideally, the PCs will feel a connection with their neighborhood, which will allow it to be a source for both adventures and stakes.
Adventure Seeds!
To avoid the "random strangers meet in a bar," I'm starting this game with a hook, which is basically a "you know (at least of) one another and join up to do a job" set-up. The players have banded together to explore some mystery, pull off a heist or con, get revenge on a common enemy, or whatever. Ideally the hook will be player-generated during the zero session, but I need some standbys just in case. In addition, I'll need some adventure ideas I can use until to the game builds enough momentum to generate its own, as well as some rumors and background events to make the city feel more alive. Faction wars, crime, murders, mysterious newcomers, civil unrest, that kind of thing.
Nuts & Bolts
Finally, I'll probably need to write up some of the "crunchy bits" (points of contact between the rules and the setting). Things like spells/magic traditions, common weapons (especially non-traditional ones), setting context for skills and powers, etc.
With any luck, the things I write during WorldEmber will give me a strong starting point for running a campaign set in the world of Ten Thousand Daggers. Hopefully by the end of January, I'll have players rolling some (probably virtual) dice.
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