Against the Wicked City: Collected Information

Since I started this blog, I've uploaded a lot of material about the setting and system of ATWC. Like, well over a book's worth. So much that it's starting to get a bit tricky to keep track of it all.

I'm thus going to use this page as a handy way to keep it all in one place. I'll update it as I add more.

General Setting Information and Game Rules

Weapons, Armour and Technology Rules
Spirits and Shamanism
Base Classes
The Wicked City
Denizens of the Wicked City (all playable classes)
The Rest of the World
Foes of the Wicked City (all playable classes)
Monsters From Central Asian Mythology
Introductory Adventures

20 comments:

  1. Hello, I'm Yuri, an italian OSR DM and player. Let me say that your blog is aewsome, man! I visited Uzbekistan in 2015 and I was thinking about running a campaign in a Central Asia inspired setting. I'll plunder shamelessly your ideas!

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    1. Glad to hear it - hope you find the blog useful! Good luck with the campaign!

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  2. I'm so glad to have stumbled onto this. Brilliant stuff!

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  3. I would love to have the opportunity to purchase this as a setting book.

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    1. I'd like to put it together, but it's tricky to find the time, and I have no art budget. I may eventually put it all together using out-of-copyright images such as Ottoman miniatures and Orientalist paintings.

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    2. I'm embarrassed that I didn't find your work until *after* I wrote rules and a setting for Central Asian steampunk, am preparing it for publication, and now finally someone told me that you might be interested by it. Would you be interested in reviewing?

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    3. Sure - I'll give it a go. Good luck with getting the game over the publication line!

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  4. Hi! My name’s Ada. I just started DMing recently (which I’ve wanted to do for like 25+ years), and I just wanted you to know that your blog has been a huge inspiration for my campaign.

    I’m running a hexcrawl loosely based on the Iron Gods Adventure Path (your condensation of which was very helpful, btw), because I love the idea of basically doing Expedition to the Barrier Peaks as an entire campaign, but for the non-spaceship parts of the setting, I’ve been drawing a bunch of flavor from your posts about the AtWC setting, and the tone of the campaign is very heavily influenced by your posts about Romantic Fantasy (it helps that my players are already more inclined to solve problems with talking than with stabbing).

    Anyway, just wanted you to know you’re not shouting into the void, and I really appreciate what you’re doing here. I hope you keep blogging about this stuff, and if you ever decide to publish an AtWC setting book or anything, I will absolutely buy it.

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    1. Thanks - glad you've found it helpful! I've not had as much time as I'd like for blogging recently, but I do hope to keep it up, and one day I may even get around to compiling all the ATWC stuff into a pay-what-you-want pdf on Drivethru.

      Good luck with the campaign! Hopefully your PCs can come to a better arrangement with Meyanda, Hellion, and the rest than the rather pitiful 'shoot them in the head' insisted upon by the original modules...

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    2. Way ahead of you - Meyanda’s goons captured them (as an alternative to a TPK), and they talked their way out of it by proposing a compromise wherein Meyanda would be able to transmit power to Scrapwall for a few days a week, and the plasma-venting failsafe would be engaged the rest of the time so Torch’s metalsmiths can get back to work.

      It’s not a long-term solution - the reactor is still destabilizing and will eventually explode unless the failsafe is engaged permanently - but they’re working on trying to find someone who might know how to stabilize it, so that both Meyanda and Torch get what they want.

      Interestingly, the idea of going to Scrapwall and killing Hellion (who I renamed to Abaddon, because it sounds cooler) doesn’t even seem to have occurred to them. Although that may have something to do with the fact that Meyanda consistently refers to him as a god, and they don’t have any particular reason to think that’s a fight they could actually win.

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    3. Nicely done! Now that's a decent solution to the problem. Now all they need to do is befriend someone in the League to make it permanent...

      I've found it very striking that published adventures so frequently take it for granted that the PCs will simply move from one location to the next murdering everyone who is vaguely antagonistic, but that as soon as you remove the assumption that things have to go down that way, the very idea starts to seem fantastical. Run opponents as people rather than murder-bots, and slaughter quickly becomes the exception rather than the rule.

      Over the years, the players in my current game have built deals, friendships, or alliances with a whole range of different factions: goblin tribes, supernatural creatures, subterranean fishmen, forest-dwelling outcasts, and so on. The idea that they were 'supposed' to just kill all these people because they were 'monsters' or 'enemies' would seem very strange to them, even on a purely pragmatic level. How dim would someone have to be not to be able to think of a more advantageous solution than 'kill them all'?

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  5. Hey, just wanted to say thank you so much for making this setting. I've been in a pretty dark place the last few months, dealing with a whole bevy of issues, and being able to get lost in such a coherent and wonderful setting has been a constant comfort when I really needed it. I love the whole setup, but especially your defining of it as a romantic adventure. Having a setting where baked into it is the chance of making real, tangible change is something I always try with my campaigns, and this entire blog has been tremendous. I've never run someone else's setting, but I'm hoping to run some folks through the Wicked City in not too long. Thank you so much, and I hope your games go well.

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    1. Thanks - glad you've enjoyed it! And, yes, the possibility of change is very important to the setting (and to me). The Wicked City isn't some eternal realm of darkness - it's a ramshackle dictatorship just waiting for your PCs to knock it all down. Pull down the cobwebs. Bring back the sun.

      Hope things get easier for you in the near future, and good luck with the game!

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  7. I just wanted so say that I absolutely love this setting you've created, and how the rules are easy to pick up. I'm looking forward to the next article you post, maybe a couple of tables for generating spirits, and the abilities they have, similar to the Hortlak article?

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  8. Thank you so much for all your work on this setting and this system, and thanks for putting all the info in one easy to access page. This is one of the few games that I have ever read and been excited to run
    (as opposed to reading and being excited to be a PC, lots of those). There is such a great wackiness, a sense of endless possibility, and yet also order and structure. Darkness of the setting balanced against the inherent and assumed heroism of the player characters.

    I'd really love to read anything more you have to add to it, and I'm looking forwards to running it some day, if I can find the time and willing participants.

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  9. I'm thankful for all the work you've done. The whole material regarding the Wicked City is delightful, and I have read it several times.

    I'm wondering where I can learn more about the folklores of Central Asia. Could you point out any material?

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  10. Do magic-users of the traditional OSR kind exist in this setting, or are they replaced entirely by the shamans?

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  11. I got turned on to your blog about the Wicked City due to a reddit post about people sharing their favorite town in an RPG. I have to say, these posts are amazing, detailed and well thought out. Thank you for writing!

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  12. Hi there. A few days ago I came across your blog through a forum link (It was a link to your articles about Romantic Fantasy) and after reading several articles on your AWTC setting, I have to say; you have a phenomenal authors voice. In particular, the article on the Fan Dancers and Murder Harlots actually got me rather misty eyed and emotionally invested in a way that I've seldom experienced. You've made something profound and fascinating.

    I've talked to a few of my players and I'm going to try and run an AWTC game of my own some day. I just wanted to say thank you for compiling all of your labor and sharing it for others to see. I haven't been this excited to DM in a while!

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