To Wander Accurst

There is a place I want to tell you about.

“To wander accurst, among haunted ruins like crumbling teeth. Wherein doth forbidden prophecy and madness reign! Wherein do naive fools seek fortunes be-hexed, and powers malevolent from thrice-damned tomes! All drawn into that ravenous maw – the once terrible and cruel city of Thrull.”

The very idea of Thrull – a great ruined city, laying like a spider in an ancient web of sinister power across a broken and abandoned land – came to me during a period of fantasy world-building for a campaign that would only partially see the light of day.

I confess that my influences are perhaps broad and weird. In some ways Thrull draws inspiration from both the haunted lands of Tolkien's Eregion, and the cyclopean ruins of forgotten civilizations from the pulpy pages of Swords & Sorcery. Mix in the depravity of Moorcock's doomed Melnibonéans, and spice with a dose of the bload-soaked nihilism from Bioshock's Rapture. There is also a strong vein of ideas from the British Old School: particularly Dragon Warriors with it's potent blend of the darker, medieval-inspired fantasies of my birth land, and Fighting Fantasy for it's gritty anti-heroic adventurers relying on wits and luck to line their pockets with looted gold. Ultimately, Thrull is a place trapped in it's own doom – the jagged wreckage of a thoroughly wicked realm that persists as a beacon to those curious enough, ambitious enough, or just desperate enough to risk it all.

So what is it to be?

Frankly, this project has been nagging me to tackle it for a while now. I have been greatly inspired by the DIY ethos of the OSR and adjacent communities. In particular zines like Black Pudding, Knock! magazine, and the depth-crawls of Emmy Allen; specifically the Gardens of Ynn, and the Stygian Library. I ran the latter as a drop-in during an Old School Essentials campaign that used Michael Curtis' Stonehell mega-dungeon and the wonderful D30 Sandbox Companion from New Big Dragon Games. In short I am intrigued by the possibilities of the kind of play that emerges from low-prep procedural generation. Randomness that produces a narrative framework for referee and players to weave into engaging and memorable game sessions – win, lose, or draw!

To bring the exploration of Thrull and the surrounding Thrullmarch to the table, I will use these techniques to provide the referee with a toolkit to generate interesting circumstances from a minimal set of dice rolls. My goal is to create a work that is immediately usable, right there at the table, on the fly, and to support any minimal preparation the referee wishes to do beforehand. As I greatly doubt this will lead to me fame and fortune, I will likely release this under a permissive Creative Commons license that keeps the door open for a Pay What You Want model, and maybe even a nice physical book in time if there is sufficient interest. Or I might just throw it all into a few photocopied zines.

Most of all, I want to get these ideas of my head, try them at the table, learn adapt and share what I think works well with you.

I hope you like it.