Samru was my RPG world, one that has evolved continuously from its first incarnation in the early 1980s to its latest, in 2004.
In its first incarnation, while I lived in Italy, it was very roughed out; I had Saldon and Candor, and little else. The adventures were pretty basic AD&D but helped me create the world maps and general feel for the setting.
Then I moved to Santa Barbara for college and ran a Candor-based campaign, The Heroes of Tharsis, from 1986-1988. That was where Samru really began to take its lasting shape, both in the form of better-drawn maps and a stable and evolving mythology, to which the characters continued to contribute throughout the decade to follow.
After graduation, I spent a year working in the "real world" and running a Spelljammer campaign that started in Samru but then hurtled into its celestial sphere and beyond: The Razor's Edge, from 1989-1990.
A few years later, while I was in graduate school in Los Angeles, I began a second Candor-based campaign, with players I met via The Belching Dragon BBS, that ran for several years: The Shattering Wars, from 1991 to 1993.
Then, with many of my old college friends moved to the LA area, I began a Cislunar campaign that ended running for many years. The first campaign was The Light or the Fire: Theophany, from 1994-1996.
After player and character tensions grew too much for that campaign, I wrapped it up and ran a lighter Al-Qadim campaign set on Samru's moon, Moha, again; we didn't run it to completion, but it was amusing while it lasted: The Longswords of Bashar, 1997-1998.
Finally, I ended the Cislunar campaign with a war that led to the death of the gods — The Light or the Fire: Reflections, from 1998 through 2003.
In 2000, simultaneously with the Cislunar campaign, I decided to run a 1-year "new century" play-by-email game set in the city of Saldon, also on Samru. It stretched out to 2 years and was a load of fun — a murder mystery filled with horrible dark secrets and revelations, back-stabbing, betrayal, and the eventual capture of the bad guy(s). Well, almost all of the bad guys; at least one PC baddie, Cecilio, sneaked away to backstab another day. I have the site that contained some basic campaign here, but not all of the posts: Saldon PBEM: The Center Cannot Hold (2000-2002).
Finally, to finish of The Light and the Fire: Reflections, I ran Samru's Armageddon, mostly by email due to various logistical difficulties, through 2003.
In 2004, I began a Victorian-style fantasy steampunk game — In Her Majesty's Secret Service, Samru 1889 — set almost two thousand years after the Cislunar campaign. Although amusing, it was short-lived. Players were scattered across three counties, tending to families and careers, and several moved away.
Samru isn't run anymore, although elements of it appear regularly in my fiction.
