The Thieves’ World city
supplement from Chaosium was perhaps the first boxed campaign setting
I bought way back in my earliest days in the roleplaying game hobby.
The city of Sanctuary provided a wonderful yet deadly sandbox
environment characters could explore. I used it decades ago with
friends huddled over the fantastic city map, pulled it out again a
few years ago to run with a re-tooled D6 fantasy system, and
even turn to its massive random encounter tables today for occasional
medieval-urban solitaire gaming.
I came to hear about the Thieves’
World boxed set and the shared-world fiction on which it was
based in one of my earliest Friendly Local Game Store experiences.
I’d received the Basic Dungeons & Dragons boxed set
(Moldvay edition) as an Easter present from my parents; during the
course of that spring I absorbed the rules, taught some friends, and
ran several dungeon crawls into the Caves of Chaos for friends (and a
few into dungeons of my own design). After graduating from junior
high – and dreading adjusting to high school in the fall – I
determined to dive further into D&D that summer. To that
end I gathered my allowance and headed down to the nearby Friendly
Local Game Store not five minutes from my house, Branchville Hobby.
There I found the D&D Expert boxed set for $12 among the
small yet growing pile of roleplaying games in the varied store more
notable then for its HO-scale model railroad supplies and layout
(before sports equipment took over).
When I bought the game the clerk
slipped a magazine into the bag for free, probably getting rid of old
stock to the few gamers who frequented the store. In that copy of
Adventure Gaming magazine I found a review for an entire boxed
setting with stats for nearly every fantasy roleplaying game
available at the time (and even the science fiction game Traveller)
all based on two short story anthologies focused on one surly
medieval fantasy city.
At the time my literary tastes were
just developing, having focused on a rare few classics that fueled my
interest in science fiction and fantasy: tales of knights, Greek
mythology, The Hobbit, War of the Worlds, and similar
fare. I hadn’t yet immersed myself in fantasy and science fiction
literature, something I didn’t take seriously until my senior year
in high school, fueled by a steady stream of paperbacks from the encouraging local bookstore, Books on the Common. But, inspired by
the boxed set’s locations and characters, I dove into the first two
Thieves’ World anthologies, more for background to the game
than any true literary interest.
Based on the first two short story
anthologies in what would become a popular series set in a shared
universe, Thieves’ World brought the rowdy, medieval port
city of Sanctuary and its curious denizens to life. The boxed set
contained three booklets – a guide to the city for the players and
gamemaster, and a book of stats for the Personalities of Sanctuary
– and several map sheets, including a poster-sized map of the
entire city.
The supplement provided three main
troves of resources tied to the city of Sanctuary: maps, gamemaster
characters, and encounter tables. The maps – both on separate
sheets and interspersed within The Gamemaster’s Guide to
Sanctuary – covered several neighborhoods in greater detail
than the whole city map and provided interior diagrams for important
locations, including the infamous Vulgar Unicorn tavern. The poster
map served as the centerpiece for our gaming table, where players
could chart the location of their characters or plan future
movements. The Personalities of Sanctuary booklet offered
stats for notable inhabitants in various systems (albeit those
systems were predominant in the early 80s when it was published, and
aren’t always applicable to today’s systems). Articles in the
short player’s guide provided summaries of factions operating in
the city, pantheons for different cultures, insights into the city
bureaucracy, and a time-line of events covering the first two short
story anthologies.
The core of the setting, however, came
in the gamemaster guide. Aside from detailing a few individual
streets and businesses within each of the city’s distinctive
neighborhoods, the booklet focused on two sets of random tables, one
to generate different businesses to occupy various buildings
depending on the region, and another to create random encounters
drawn from numerous setting elements. These sprawling encounter
tables generated random street occurrences by neighborhood and time
of day, and included everything from mundane happenings to
extraordinary encounters with named Sanctuary personalities, powerful
sorcerers, and even deities. These not only provided colorful
encounters to liven up adventures, but also offered inspiration;
every encounter had the potential to turn into a short side-trip
episode of its own.
The boxed set quickly became a favorite
accessory to pull out at the gaming table, especially if I didn’t
have a scenario planned. Nothing filled up after-school hours like
running a few D&D characters through misadventures in
Sanctuary generated by the supplements many and vividly varied random
tables. I allowed the players’ heroes to pursue their own
objectives (looting the palace treasury, finding the secret lair of
sorcerer Enas Yorl, and, of course, carousing on the infamous Street
of Red Lanterns), all while harassing them with frequent street
encounters. Years later I ran several scenarios for friends using a
D6-based system I’d devised. As newcomers to Sanctuary, they each
had some past connection to the city and some ulterior motive during
their visit. The setting and materials withstood the test of time as
an engaging environment in which to adventure.
In all my years of gaming, of all the
numerous roleplaying games and supplements I’ve collected, read,
and played, the Thieves’ World boxed set remains one of the
most inspiring roleplaying game supplement I own.
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