
It’s been quite a while since I’ve done anything with my Seekers of Lore campaign. I want to fix that.
It even aligns with this year’s theme of ‘Year of the Lost’. The entire campaign is based around looking for things lost in the distant past.
Or not so distant. The Age of Upheaval ended recently, and in the chaos even time was shuffled. An empire’s loss eons ago happened last year.
If that can happen to history, imagine what happened to geography. Or where your car keys could have ended up.
Seekers of Lore is a West Marches-style campaign set not too long after the Age of Upheaval. The world has been changed, and much as been lost. Or misplaced. ‘Misplaced’ might be the better word, really.
PCs in this campaign seek out the lost (misplaced) things. As is common in West Marches games, ‘civilization’ is simple, well-ordered, safe… and boring. The seekers of lore go into the untamed wilderness to find what was misplaced, and bring it back to civilization.
Player options at the start of the game are limited compared to most. If I were to run this in Pathfinder, players would be constrained to a subset of the Core Rulebook. Not even the whole rulebook, probably just humans and some of the base classes. Only some of the domains and arcane schools would be available, and an abbreviated spell list.
As lost things are recovered, more options come available. When a lost temple is reclaimed, the deity and their domains and spells come online for clerics. A spellbook can contain spells not seen in human memory, but now can be cast again. Maybe! The spells could belong to a school of magic that needs to be relearned before the spells can be understood.
On the other hand… I am finding that D&D-style games, including Pathfinder, are not necessarily the best fit for Seekers of Lore. But more on that, later.