Five Leagues from the Borderlands

Not sure if I have mentioned it previously here on the blog, but I picked up the Five Leagues from the Borderlands rules set many moons ago. I read the rules through in readiness to run some solo adventuring, but I just never got around to it - Midgard and Song of Blades and Heroes took precedence for a while.

The reason I mention it now is that my kids bought me the expansion book for it for Christmas - the Five Leagues from the Borderlands Compendium - and that has spurred me into action...

Five Leagues from the Borderlands Compendium

This expansion book contains two PDF supplements that have been released previously; Paths in the Wilderness and The Ancient Land of Dust, as well as a slimmed down version of the rules for dungeon delving called Deep Below. I will look at incorporating this additional ruleset into some near-future gaming.

In preparation for a Five Leagues campaign that I will start once my Midgard : Britannia campaign has run its course (a little more on that tomorrow), I will begin by re-reading the original rules and rolling up a party to go adventuring. I will be using my go to fantasy realm of Doggerland as the background. I have used this background for a number of previous other games - a play-by-email strategy game, a dungeon crawling play by email game (I didn't get around to writing that one up on this blog), and an AD&D campaign based around the old Village of Hommlet and The Temple of Elemental Evil modules with lots of extras thrown into the mix.

This campaign will be based 15-20 years after the foiled attempt by the demoness of fungi to enter the antediluvian realm, when a few fresh threats emerge to haunt the lands several leagues to the south and east of Vannin where the AD&D campaign took place.

It will feature a whole new raft of beings and critters that either managed to make their way into Doggerland through the temporary rifts opened by the demoness and her followers, or were already present in the dark and gloomy places, undetected and unseen except by those that had the second sight. These beings are now emerging to reclaim what is rightfully theirs; beings that are only usually talked about in hushed voices around hearths in the safety of civilisation, or used to scare children into obedience.