Of Campaigns Past: Nova-Kintar

Good Evening, All:

My last post has had a great amount of response, and I'm very pleased to see the variety of comments I've gotten, as well as from whom. Thank you to everyone who responded. Rob Conley, who published the wonderful Supplement VI: The Majestic Wilderlands, suggested that I post a few details of past campaigns, in the hopes of helping me cull some of my previous work toward the creation of that elusive "perfect campaign milieu."

Nova-Kintar was my longest campaign, running over seven years and using the AD&D 2nd Edition rules (and the Skills & Powers optional books toward the end). The world map was based on a Vincenzo Coronelli replica globe turned upside down, under the premise that the Coronelli map was actually accurate for an alternate Earth with the north and south poles switched. The campaign primarily took place on the continent that was a combination of what would be Antarctica and Australia on Earth, which sat atop the North Pole of the world of Nova-Kintar. The continent's name was Tanalis, although that rarely came up, and a majority of the action took place in the Kingdom of Synovia, the great Walled City of Catabolas, and the wilderness around this region. This world supported a pantheon of Greyhawk-esque proportions, with well over forty deities listed in the core house rules document. The players mostly played themselves as characters mysteriously transported from Earth to Nova-Kintar. Over the course of the campaign, they obtained swords that together allowed time travel (technically travel between parallel dimensions that greatly resembled time travel to the uninitiated and unknowing.) They freed an insane mage from captivity and then had to hunt him down and slay him, built a city of their own, fought a war with the neighboring kingdom of Pasalovakia, and eventually worked directly for the gods to battle the influence of that destroyer of universes known as the Something. They did a lot of other things, as well, but these are the big world-changing events that I recall off hand. It was the ultimate success against the Something that really made me feel that the world was done, since I couldn't come up with anything to top that. Over fifty different players participated in the game over its seven year history, and I still look back on it with a lot of pride and happiness.

The latter years of the Nova-Kintar campaign took place on the earthly North American continent known as Cameria (hence the name of the main continent of the Hammersong's Legacy Campaign Setting.) In Nova-Kintar, the continent of Cameria was populated by cultures similar to those that contacted North America of our world in pre-Columbian times, including Aztec, Chinese, Egyptian, Native American and Norse cultures, as well as the Republic of Roanoke, where the lost colony of Roanoke ended up when they disappeared from our world. I had a lot of fun with that particular arrangement, and that sub-setting lent itself well to some interesting and non-standard cultural interactions. The Englishmen of the Republic of Roanoke had some interesting challenges with orcish "Vikings", four-armed Native American tribesmen, Aztec raiders and a brief brush with an Egyptian-style mummy and its servitors. I didn't get to pursue as much of the setting as I wanted before I found I needed to wrap up the campaign with the "Coming of the Something", but what I did get to explore was a lot of fun, and it taught me a lot about what I like and don't like as campaign content.

And thus ends a brief description of my first successful campaign world. What was your first successful campaign world like? What elements might it have shared with my Nova-Kintar?

Thanks,
Flynn