Arcane Practitioners of the Sunset Isles

This month's RPG Blog Carnival, hosted by Forsaken Garden, takes Haves and Have Nots as a subject. This actually aligns with some of my setting thinking for the Sunset Isles, which I envisage as an intensely class-based society - almost, but not quite, a caste system. Manorialism and seigneurage - the systems which create what is described as ‘feudalism’ - are order of the day. The setup owes a certain amount to Skerples on the Three Estates, though my treatment differs from his.

For the purpose of this writeup, I'm largely concerned with human society. It's an unapologetically humanocentric setting. I've not decided yet whether to run this setting using race-as-class, and I'm not even entirely sure which demihumans are even present. But for the sake of discussion, and where relevant, this assumes the classic seven B/X classes.

Likewise, the Faith isn't yet fully defined. It's probably polytheistic with an emphasis on orthopraxy over orthodoxy. See Practical Polytheism for some thoughts on what that means. It's not trying to root out schisms and burn heretics, though, which is a little boring. There again, the god of thunder hurling actual bolts of lightning might make up for that, and it opens the door to all sorts of cults¹.

There's a lot to unpack here, so I'm going to focus on magic. There are three real routes to arcane magic in the Sunset Isles. Through the Faith, through apprenticeship, or through witchcraft. But first, let's briefly discuss divine magic.

Thinking Ahead to 2025

Taking a leaf from Messages from the Far Havens, I thought I'd talk a little about the games I'd like to run in 2025. Partly to pin down some ideas, partly in hopes that by telling the blogosphere I might discover some accountability.

• Some kind of Old-School Essentials campaign seems pretty much inevitable. I have ideas coming out of my ears for one. Really just need to get a reliable table together - my attempts at regular gaming this year have been cursed by availability. Partly my own, to be fair. The idea of getting an open table going for a bit of dungeon crawling, wilderness exploration, and maybe eventually domain play is seductive... but one must learn to crawl before climbing a mountain.
• My wife is keen for me to run Scurry for her and some friends. This one just needs putting in the calendar, to be honest.
• I'd meant to run some Dungeon Crawl Classics one-shots this year. Seems unlikely to happen now, but the system is good fun and well suited to a beer-and-pretzels type game. Not that any game I run is likely to feature beer, and pretzels aren't my snack of choice. But you take the point I'm sure.
• The early mediaeval setting of BEOWULF: Age of Heroes really pushes my buttons, as does the amount of work that's gone into it. This one could well be a monthly(ish) game, and the design as a duet game helps with the whole scheduling issue.
• The simplicity of the Year Zero Engine is really appealing. Forbidden Lands has a reputation for being brutal, and the assumption of the system seems to be campaign play. But with a little thought perhaps a short campaign might work... and not depress everyone too much.
• Will this be the year I start my 5th Edition Grand Realms Campaign? Probably not. This might be my white whale.
• More board games with my wife. We have more than enough of them. 

What's actually going to happen? Who knows. But 2024 has been a bad year for me for gaming. Hopefully 2025 will be a better one.