Mercs: The Black Guard Company
The first Play by Email ("PBEM") campaign that I created and ran was "Mercs." In 1996 the tabletop game I had been running four the past three years in college was shifting from a primarily AD&D Forgotten Realms campaign to a White Wolf World of Darkness Storyteller campaign, and we also were meeting less often. Those truly epic tabletop AD&D campaigns had included James B ('Helix'), Brian H. ('Hathron'), Chad ('Antontio'), and Stephen ('Marik') amongst others who never joined the PBEM games. (The adventures of that party, the Oathbound, will be told elsewhere on this blog).
The world wide web and email were just becoming common in the academic world and I had dipped my toe into play by email games as a player - unsuccessfully, I clashed right away with the DM. I realized from that, however, that PBEM could provide the sort of gaming experience I've always craved: a living, breathing, involved world that felt like being inside a fantasy novel that the players and I were cooperatively writing.
I also wanted to be able to revisit old adventures and enjoy them again, and the PBEM format made it possible to preserve sessions to and reread them. Collecting the turn summaries into "chapters" created a constantly expanding fantasy novel, or more accurately, a novel series and I saw this potential right from the beginning.
The question was, how to start the campaign? One of my platers, James B, expressed interest in doing more with his character Helix, one of the oldest characters in my Columbus, Ohio campaigns. Helix had recruited a merc companies several times for large scale battles in our campaigns. (fought using Battlesystem 2nd ed rules). I decide to just continue that, Helix was hired by one of the other characters from the campaign to raise a company and attack an evil temple.
I enjoy campaigns based around mercenary companies, inspired originally by my love of the Thieves' World fantasy series, and its resident mercenary company, the Sacred Band of Stepsons. I created my own mercenary band, the Bondswords (described in an online article here, I'll be posting more about them in this blog later) but aside from the company occassionally acting as NPCs or sponsoring avarious adventuring bands I had never really explored the inner workings of a company in game play. This would be the chance to do that.
For this game, the the players would be the officers of a newly formed mercenary company. James B. named them the Black Company. I believe that he was inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company, about a company of English longbowmen in the 100 Year's War. He wasn't inspired by Glen Cook's The Black Company, which neither he nor I had read then. If I had known it existed I would have had him change the name. :) Later, after I discovered several players had joined thinking it was an inspiration, I did have the name change in-game to The Black Guard. I've since read Cook's novels and I'm a bit shocked at how similar the first three are in many ways to the game.
Sadly, my play by email games all slowly petered out by 2017 or so. The Black Guard had begun a new adventure following the defense of Nagarr but never really got started with it. I miss the game, and I miss all of the players. We played this game for almost 20 years, I think it was time well spent.
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| One of my players used to maintain a webpage dedicated to the game, this was the cover image he chose. It is still viewable on Wayback archive here. |
Below I've posted links to the pdf compilations of the Black Guard's adventures. The pdfs vary in size from fifty-five to several hundred pages. The first four have been mostly edited, with bookmarks and images and other sidebars added to make it easier to follow the story. Please note, these do not read quite like a novel, I tried to maintain consistency in tense and voice, but there are some rapid shifts in point of view and not every conversation between players was recorded. But the essence of the tales are here. I do plan to edited the unedited chapters over the next few weeks.
Volume I: The North
Chapter One: Journey to Hill’s Edge and Assault on the Fist of The Future
[played between 1/27/1996 and 6/16/1997]
Realms Dates: 1 Elient (September) to 30 Elient (September), 1367 DR, 587 CY 5049 OC
Chapter Two: Flying Ships and Scornubel
[played between 6/16/1997 and 11/4/1997]
Realms Dates: 1 Marpenoth (October) to 29 Marpenoth (October), 1367 DR, 587 CY 5049 OC
n.b. A note on the dates above. 'DR' stands for 'Dale Reckoning' and is the most common calendar or the Forgotten Realms. All of my D&D campaigns are played within the 1e/2e D&D multiverse, so I also noted the 'CY' ('Common Year') calendar of Greyhawk and the 'OC' ('Olven Calendar') of Spelljammer.
Disclaimer: This blog recounts the fictional events of a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Views expressed by characters within the blog are those of the characters, not the players, dungeon master, nor the blog's author. All other views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.
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