Here’s the thing:

I need more pen and paper tabletop gaming in my life, even if we need to replace the pen and paper with  screens and keyboards, and tabletop with Skype.  I have a few people who have expressed interest, but I’d like to formalize it and extend it to semi-strangers on the internets.

I’ve decided to form a group around a campaign idea, and a time, so that anyone who would like to play can know ahead of time what they’re agreeing to.  Because we are adults, and we have time constraints and stuff happens.  But it’s good to have a plan.  If we get enough people, the campaign design will handle people dropping in and out, as you’ll all be part of a sort of squad tasked with doing things to save the Haven Alliance.

I’ve been GMing for nearly 30 years now, and I know D&D, particularly 3.5 pretty well.  That and it’s the model at least one of my players wants: kill things, get treasure, do some roleplaying.  Okay, so I prefer things to be in the reverse order, but I don’t believe their mutually exclusive.  And having done this for 30 years, I’m always looking for something new.

So Shattered Earth is a bit different.  The planet’s been destroyed, the final war, or Armageddon has happened, and it’s over.  Maybe you’ve been left behind, and maybe the gods didn’t make it either.  Maybe we’ll find out as we play.

Still, the gods are gone, and magic is a bit broken, and alignments are gone.  Things are going to be a bit murky here.  Orcs aren’t evil because their evil, in fact they may not be bad people at all.  The converse is also true.  There’s no morality to judge by, just survival of the intelligent races.  That’s one thing most people can agree on — if not all of them.

The world has been split into small islands, each with their own odd gravity, adapted from the SpellJammer rules (if you’re familiar with them— if not, it will become clear).  The Haven Alliance makes up four of these islands, close enough to work together, and far enough away from everything else that they’ve not met it.  Yet.

That will surely change.

So there’s exploration, and spaceships (of a sort), lost magic and knowledge to find — along with treasure.  There’s people competing for resources back home, and there are your own (and your guild’s) ambitions to further.  I think it’s a fertile ground for gaming.  There’s more on the Shattered Earth wiki, which is still taking shape.

We’re going to play on alternate weekends — exactly when will be up to the group that speaks up, but while Saturday afternoons (in EST) are the best for me, there’s some flexibility.  We’re going to use Skype — I’m JoeTortuga on Skype (as well as Twitter and Facebook).  We’ll use the free RPTools set for maps and battles when we get to those.

I’ll set up a Google group to discuss this in detail, but let me know if you’re interested and have the time to play.  I hope you can.

Update 10/29: A bit clearer info about how things will run.