Campaign Summary: Al Qadim

• THE LONGSWORDS OF BASHAR (Al Qadim—1997-1998)

• DM's Campaign Comments
• Image, Satima (by Catherine Munro)
• Campaign: Quotes from the Campaign
• Campaign: The "Al Qadim" Campaign Timeline
• 1. Campaign: Player's Intro to the Campaign
• 2. Campaign: The Players' Cohort
• 3. Campaign: The Other Cohorts
• 4. Campaign: Intro to the World
• 5. Campaign: The Salt Bond
• 6. Campaign: Satima's Mentor
• 7. Campaign: Husam's Dream
• 8. Campaign: Husam's Letter to Bashar
• 9. Campaign: Serena's Letter to Bashar

THE SETTING: The Al Qadim campaign, city of Huzuz. This campaign has, so far, been completely run from the official modules and three AQ adventures printed in Dungeon magazine. I have, however, placed Al Qadim on Samru's moon, Moha, using the Chaosium Dreamlands maps from H.P. Lovecraft's stories. [A second-edition campaign with a few Skills & Powers trappings. I also changed the spell lists.]

THE CAMPAIGN: Every character was a janissary in the service of the Grand Caliph in Huzuz. They all belonged to the same cohort, raised together since childhood, and now sent out to keep the caliph's peace under the kindly guidance of Bashar, their janissary mentor (and the leader of several other cohorts).
The group started out primarily in the Muluk boxed set, with a brief excursion into Corsairs. For details on the adventure, please glance through adventure timeline. They dropped briefly into Legends of the Lamp, and I'm now moving them through the Cities of Bone and Ruined Kingdoms sets (which work together pretty smoothly). The group's central villain is the obese and evil Yodfah, who thus far has escaped them every time and continues to plot his vengeance—probably in league with the Brotherhood of the True Flame!

DM's MUSINGS: I chose to run Al Qadim after buying every module ever published (possible, because the setting is now out of print—I had to hunt a little, but I do now own it all) as a break from the intensive work I'd put into Cislunar. In addition, I chose to run it every Friday—well, almost every Friday—to keep weekends open for other games and events.
The game has run fairly smoothly—the Al Qadim campaign is one in which characters really need to be good-aligned (I don't play with alignments, but I did stress to everyone that they needed to develop characters who were loyal to the Caliph and the Law of the Loregiver) and will often succeed better through talk than combat. Fortunately, my group is familiar with that style of gaming from my other campaigns, where I often provide the possibility of a peaceful solution (the group has known to be caught offguard in situations where there IS no chance for peaceful resolution!). Running from modules makes it hard for me to tailor adventures specifically to individual characters—it happens once in a while, but overall this campaign is more of a dungeon-bonk than I usually run. I don't know if the players like that or not—they haven't complained, and I suppose that's a good sign.