Starting with Earth and Campaign Thoughts

Warning: a lot of  prose ahead,and not so much eye-candy

"Start with Earth" is a Ken Hite game-design mantra.

And it makes sense really, because its easier to get players to have a connection with the setting they are familiar with - places, history, people, are instantly meaningful without requiring reading fluff or novels or what have you (like, say, Forgotten Realms).  So, you start with what they know, and then add the fantastic elements.

Now, as a solo gamer, I don't have this problem of a lack of familiarity - I make up everything and I'm the only one who has to buy into it. 

Except, it takes a lot to build an entire world. Case in point, Venus. 

I mean, sure, Venus is an actual planet, but actual Venus and Victorian Science Fiction (VSF) Venus are two vastly different things.

And what I've been finding is, I'm having trouble reconciling my desire for different kinds of games with the need to develop histories not only of the native populations, but also the history of Earthlings on Venus. Space: 1889 has done this for gamers, and I like it, but it doesn't really line up with my conception of what I want at this point. Not least of which is how Earthlings get there. 

Of course, I can change the bits that don't suit me, but each change brings about more questions that I feel compelled to answer. It's more than just filing off serial numbers - and i get to a point where I am basically starting from scratch.

So, I went digging through various forums online for ideas (primarily about Venus, but  also about VSF settings generally) and it hit me:

Antarctica

Antarctica is extremely interesting for a whole variety of reasons, not least of which is that it remains basically unknown until 1897. Its existence had been posited,but no one had even seen it until then. So, IRL, at the time my intended campaign is set, the 1880s-ish, it's still an unknown, as subject to the imagination as Venus or Mars. 

Why not then shed the shackles of creating an entire world, and simply modify this one? That is, start with Earth?

So indeed that is my plan. 

My apologies to those who were looking forward to a campaign on Venus. That said, it will look exactly the same. [Also, I reserve the right to do a Space: 1889 game, as written in the future]

East Antarctica (I just learned there is an East and West Antarctica) will feature a sunken "lost world". 

Lost world gaming was some of my very first wargaming.  

I had found Adventures in Jimland (as I had no suitable figures at the time, i made my own cardstock top-down counters - I still have them) online and was immediately taken by the diary-style game write-ups. Lost worlds are also the basis for some of my favorite adventure fiction (King Solomon's Mines, The Lost World, Journey to the Center of the Earth, etc).

So, I am partial to the concept. 

Because of its location, Antarctica is not easily exploited (in real-life or in my planned gaming). In game terms, that means the European build up has been slow- indeed other then some forts, that's about it. It's still an age of exploration  and thus hunters and scientists and cartographers may make trips into the wilds as often as military patrols. 

And, getting to the valley(a deceiving name for something so massive) can be an adventure in itself.

Huge Tracts of Land

Now, Antarctica is HUGE. I mean really huge. 

It's the 5th largest continent. It's twice the size of Australia. You can fit the entire USA in there and still have extra room. This will be relevant in a minute.

Although I don't intend for a map campaign, with maybe the exception of some mapping expeditions, I wanted a map so I would at least have a consistent relative sense of where things are. 

I found a half dozen suitable drawings of Antarctica (While a plain line drawing would seem ideal, I needed them to have some landmarks on them so I could place my lost valley where I wanted it - like I wanted the South Pole to remain an icy location, and not in the valley, and the Transantarctic Mountains to be left alone sine they will probably be the Mountains of Madness, etc.)

I imported one of them into Google Draw and made a an outline of the valley. It looked nice but I had no idea of the scale. So I found a map with a scale included and made some hexes in the appropriate size and tried again. 

Wow.

The valley was way bigger than I wanted - you could fit several European states within and still have room for unclaimed areas. Now, while I don't intend to have the Europeans fight each other initially, I'd like the option of them at least finding each other eventually!

So, I shrank things down .

Here, with labels for the factions, some inland seas and some mountains (which I may move around a bit more) is what I am calling call the Minimum Viable Product:

Each hex is approximately 250 miles across point to point. The hexes allow me to map in more detail if I choose to, say five 50-mile hexes per 250-mile hex, ten 5-mile hexes per 50-mile hex, and five 1-mile hexes per - mile hex.

However,  I think on the whole it looks nicer without the hexes. Nothing to write home about mind you, but I can tell where the factions are likely to be encountered, which helps support narrative consistency.

The yellow squares are European forts/base camps. I tried to set it up so each European faction would face a more than one native contingent, and the battles would differ from each other by the makeup of the various forces. There's also plenty of room for future powers to join if I should choose to paint them (Germans and Italians are possible given the extra figures I have),

The Russians, who have an abundance of cavalry, will initially encounter Solis Nox (the medieval figures) , who also have an abundance of cavalry. Later, Res Publica will enter the picture when they are done - and they are largely melee focused.

The British will encounter Solis Nox and Tanitia. As with the Russians, they too will eventually encounter Res Publica eventually. The British are a fairly balanced force. Solis Nox, I have mentioned already,  Tanitia is primarily melee with little to no range support, but they do have casters and that terrifying Abyssal Beast.

The French will encounter the Bokrug Confederacy (lizards) and Tanitia. The French are entirely foot infantry at this point, while the Confederacy offers a solid mix of units, including a magic-wielding shaman and dinosaurs.

The Country

It is probably clear (although it wasn't to me until recently) that what I'm designing is a setting, not properly a campaign, despite having called it "the Venus campaign" for ages now, or, of late, "the Antarctica campaign" (at least in my head if not on screen).

Like Wells's "the country", it is a place to fight in and over. It is a campaign only in as much as all of the games that will take place in the setting contribute to some overall understanding of the lost world.

It is more like Greyhawk than, say, the 1916 Strafexpedition.

It is an imagi-nation, in some ways, a true Fantasy setting in others.

In any case, there is no objective, there is no winning, only a land to explore and a history to write.