Welcome to The Land
The Land started back in the late 70's as a Chivalry and Sorcery campaign between myself, my brother Alex (patron of the Alexan nation) and a few of our school friends. It evolved through various other role-playing systems as a background for adventures. It is now the setting for our Fantasy Trip role-play games.
The Land is also used for a PBM Umpire tabletop wargame campaign. Each player controls a nation along with it's cities, provinces and armies. The wargame campaign ran from 1994 until recently, with monthly turns, wars, alliances, battles, plagues and assassinations. Cities were founded, be-seiged and pillaged, provinces were occupied, rebelled and re-occupied. Players left the game and new players took over their nations, old players came back. The campaign is on hiatus at the moment, but it may come back or start up again some day.
The level of culture and technology is much closer to Ancients or Biblical than Medieval. Many of the nations have historical roots. Some nations are still in the Stone Age. Bronze is common, iron is rare and steel is a dwarfish secret. Most horses are the size of ponies or smaller and some still have toes, Chariots are popular among the civilised nobility, riding cavalry are a barbarian novelty. Gonnepowder is an alchemical by-product of fresh dragon dung (as if it wasn't dangerous enough already!)
Some of the adventure locations are taken from published modules adapted to The Land. For example, Badabascar was a Judges Guild AD&D adventure, Darok and Dihad are published TFT settings, Tulan came from a Midkemia module, Baracus was a Dragon magazine adventure. The Toltac Empire is a combination of David Eddings, the Aztec's and a mythical America campaign setting from the Fantasy Trip. Other influences include Poul Anderson, Robert Howard, Fritz Leiber, Terry Pratchet, Tolkien (of course) and Jack Vance.
My view of "The Land" is that it is an extra dimensional sanctuary for displaced peoples. Boundaries are unmapped, explorers who travel too far may fall over the edge or reappear somewhere else. Most of the races in The Land have a tradition of exile from some other world, often as a result of natural disaster or of terrible war and invasion. Memories of the other worlds are dreamlike, it was in another place, a long time ago.
The city builders count their calender from the devastating floods that drove them from their homes. The Trolls and Gargoyles look to the moon and remember a war that burnt their world to a cinder. There are Jewish communities that recall Babylon but use nazi as a curse word. Neanderthals stride the northern tundra and Sasquatch haunts the forest. In the wilder reaches of The Land Saurian's still endanger other species. Unfortunately none of this has stopped them carrying on the same old mistakes. Which is why we have a campaign.
Welcome to our world, have fun.
Chris Nicole
The Fantasy Trip, In The Labyrinth, Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizard are copyright ©1980 by Metagaming, Game Design by Steve Jackson.
This page is owned and managed by Chris Nicole,
Page created; Tuesday, 4 December 2001 , last updated; Thursday, 27 May 2004.