One Thousand and One Nights and One Night
a role-playing game campaign design ’zine
In Honor of D20 4th Ed.
Howdy, folks. I’m back this month
with a new two–part D20
Campaign that I want to run, based
on the Iron Kingdoms (Privateer
Press) and cop shows. All in time
for the recent announcement of a
new Dungeons and Dragons 4th
Edition (WotC)! I look forward to
finding what’s happening at this
point on 4th Ed. in the near future.
But since I’m still using the D20
SRD online (www.d20srd.com), I hope they
continue updating that. Enjoy!
Quote of the Month
“You know your D&D campaign has gone over
the top when you find an artifact called ‘The
Rest of Vecna’.” – seen on a .sig file
Secret Societies
Putting secret societies in games is pretty neat.
They provide excellent allies and enemies for
the PCs and can really add a special touch to
the game, especially when one session they are
friends because of a mutual goal, but the next
they are enemies. One such society from our
world was the Carbonari (Italian for “charcoal
burners”). They were a group of secret societies
that formed in Italy during the 1800s. Set up in
small cells, along the lines of Freemasonry, they
worked towards a unified Italy without any
external (French or Austrian) influence. They
first showed up during the Age of Napoleon and
resisted the French-backed King of Naples.
After the Napoleonic wars, they organized
revolutions in 1820 and 1831. They disliked the
Church and many of their members were
imprisoned. There were two types of members,
the apprentice and the master (which could be
gained after six months as an apprentice or
being a Freemason from the start). Rituals
centered around charcoal making. Placing this
group in a fantasy or modern game is easily
done. Just outline some of their goals and
methods, and maybe an NPC or two.
Content © Wooden Leg Named Smith Productions 2007
Website: 1001nightsand1night.110mb.com
Vol.: 1, Issue: 14, October 1, 2007
New Design: D20 Campaign The
Thin Corvis Line, Part 1 of 2
So I haven’t tripped the D20–mode lately and
figure I should return to it. This got me
reminiscing about my first campaign with my
group, the Corvis Monkey Troupe. I had just
joined the group and we were playing a D&D
3.x (WotC) Iron Kingdoms
(Privateer Press) game, set in
Corvis (hence the name of our
game group). MW was running
the Witchfire Trilogy: The
Longest Night, Shadow of the
Exile, and Legion of Lost Souls
(Privateer Press) and I joined
when the PCs were traveling to
Corvis after the starting adventure Thieves in
the Forest (Penumbra). I was captured by the
Harpy from TitF and rescued by the other PCs.
Our party consisted of PP as John the mage, BC
as Turjon the ranger, LB as Arrow the half–elf
ranger, and I was playing Madryn, the blue–
skinned amnesiac elf fighter who originally
started out as a machinist/techno but morphed
into a really bad multi-class mish–mash.
We fought undead, chased after Alexia and
tried (and failed) to find the magic sword
Witchfire. We traveled to a hidden shrine of a
forbidden god, drank Krim–
juice and fought strange
creatures, again in pursuit of
Alexia (who, again, eluded us).
When the city was taken over
by the evil deposed king Vinter
Raelthorne IV, we dodged the
Corvis Watch and aided the
still loyal Cygnar–Army–in–
hiding as we raced to save the day. It was a
great campaign, so much so that we re-visited
the Iron Kingdoms later in a GURPS (Steve
Jackson Games) game where we ran guns into
Khador, performed necromancy to try to solve a
foul crime and murdered a noble, all as secret
service agents of Cygnar (but that’s a story for
another time).
(continued on Page 2, First Column)
published in association with the Corvis Babbage Cliological Society
’zine art is either open source or through fair use of copyrighted works
One Thousand and One Nights and One Night Page 2
a role-playing game campaign design ’zine Vol.: 1, Issue: 14, October 1, 2007
New Design: D20 Campaign, Part 1 Privateer Press hasn’t put out the promised
Corvis sourcebook, but it provides me with
plenty of gaps to fill. Some of the good and bad
of 2 (cont.) guys from the Witchfire Trilogy, like Captain
In addition, lately I have been watching a lot of Helstrom, Father Dumas, Vahn Oberen and
cop shows, mostly the summer re-runs. My gf Alexia, can show up in cameos as necessary and
and I like them quite a bit - we watch Criminal I can re-use some of the encounter areas from
Minds (Touchstone), Numb3rs (CBS), CSI: LV the modules, like the sewers, too.
and NYC (Bruckheimer), Law and Order (Wolf
Films), NCIS (CBS), not to mention the movies
and older TV shows, like Prime Suspect
News about the Watch
Since Corvis has a population of about
(Granada) and the Rockford Files (Cherokee)
100,000, I figure the Watch has about 1200
(now on DVD!). I’d been thinking it would be
staff (1 for every 80 or so citizens). The city is
cool to do some sort of cop show
divided into 24 watch districts, so the small
campaign at some point in the
district the PCs are on duty has the Market
future. Then something in a few
Street Station (Iridia #47) and a complement
of the recent issues of Iridia zine
about 40–50 staff (Iridia #46). The watch
(www.iridiazine.net) got my
station is in a tough area of Corvis, in between a
attention. Issue #46 outlined a
slightly richer area and a much poorer area,
small City Watch, with 41 watch
leading to a lot of cross-over crime. The PCs
personnel, divided into 8
will all be in the same patrol squad.
squads of 4 watchmen with 9
officers and NCOs, and gave some info on the
Watch and how it worked. Issue #47 included a
map of a typical watch station.

Combine Ingredients in a Bowl

So mixing TV cop shows, Iridia Zine articles
plus my nostalgic Iron Kingdoms game and a
recent re-read of GURPS SWAT (Steve Jackson
Games) together, I came up with
the following campaign idea: a
city campaign set in Corvis with
the PCs as members of the City
Watch. The action will take place
before, during and after the story In Corvis, the City Watch are the police and
outlined in the Witchfire Trilogy firefighters, like the Vigiles Urbani in ancient
(Privateer Press), creating sort of Rome. They patrol on foot, day and night,
a troupe-style, serial/TV show usually in shifts of 6 to 8 hours. They keep the
type of play with PCs moving in and out of play peace by breaking up any disturbance, like bar
over the course of the campaign. brawls, and investigate most crimes. Making do
on a shoestring budget, compared to the Cygnar
So, how to do this, hmmm? We got the setting,
Army, the Watch actually is a pretty good value.
Corvis, and we know what’s going on around
They are moderately well trained (militia
that time period. The map of Corvis (available
equivalent in most cases) and have a modest
online) is general enough so that I can shoe–
armory. The officers want to be relevant and so
horn whatever I want into the city as necessary.
they take itself very seriously (sometimes too
This is a sore point with our group, since
much) but they are mostly a good bunch.
(continued on Second Column)

Content © Wooden Leg Named Smith Productions 2007 published in association with the Corvis Babbage Cliological Society
Website: 1001nightsand1night.110mb.com ’zine art is either open source or through fair use of copyrighted works