drop of water in ocean vs drop of water in wildfire

Haven't posted in a while because I wanted to wait until I had the overlord thing 'in full swing'. Well - I wouldn't say it's in full swing, but it is starting (after some fits and starts, butting up against the edge of my disorganized & accident-prone nature). What's that about battle plans surviving first contact? Oh yeah, that they don't!

I was thinking I'd start it after I got a group of people playing at the table, but this has proved a stumbling point. The gamer club at the state university here is pretty 4e centric when it comes to RPGs, with a couple of Rifts enthusiasts(!). Three prospective players responded to a flier I put up, but they've all washed out. Hrumph.

Nevertheless, the coffee shop down the street makes a room available to reserve, for free(!) so my thinking is just to start an open with a couple of my friends and toss around a couple more fliers...

OSRIC supplement development is big news. E&S continues (glacially). Seems the S&W megadungeon is pretty back-burnered. Trying to set-up this overlord game has really made clear to me how thin I'm spreading myself - but once it finds its legs, I think it will largely 'run itself'.

But the thing I came here to get off my chest is this: play Tunnels & Trolls! It's a great great game that deserves more love! No - more [b]use[/b]!

OK.

Setting Info

< OLD LINK REMOVED >
A timeline
Some history-lite
Cursory geography
A crude map (WIP!)

Still in the 'setup' phase. Players are submitting ideas and information, so it is still a work in progress. I'm trying my damnest to keep kinda quiet about what this looks like under the hood, and it's difficult because there's really cool things happening in here. Emergent patterns and such. Once the first turn starts, I'll have to start posting the words of the town criers, border edicts and travellers' stories...

One thing is certain, which seems to be much a truism in human internet-based text gaming - the initial plan never survives!

<*> I thought I'd get a couple of people, maybe a slow trickle. Nope!
<*> I was gonna randomly assign players to NPCs I already had in place. It immediately became apparent that that would not be the case across-the-board.
I am not complaining about this - the stuff being submitted is making the setting so much more interesting - so many ideas I would have never come up with. And here's where the 'emergent behavior' thing got really freaky (as in cool). Different players unaware of each other coming up with character and 'kingdom' ideas independantly, that work together very well...different hooks that seem easily related to each-other...etc

One thing that has remained pretty consistent is a sort of 'omni-game' approach. Players are using different systems for game detail of their characters as they see fit. I'm sticking to 1e AD&D as a 'lingua franca', and using it for a lot of the implementation details on my side of things, but there's 2e-isms, some T&T-isms,
and some other stuff from I don't know where!

In real world, I went to the college youngins game club this evening for their first meeting of the semester, and met with three guys that responsed to the flier I put up in a few places last week (like outside the game club's meeting room on campus for one!). One of them was somewhat aware of internet OSR stuff, they all seemed at least somewhat interested (I kinda half-assed pitched Swords & Wizardry/OSRIC aka "Old D&D" - I've never been much of a salesman...but), we're supposed to get together next week to start. In Search of the Unknown.

Quasqueton aside, they're gonna be walking into an amazing environment. Thank you overlords! I can't wait to get the internet ball rolling, so that the players can see what's going on too.

Open Call for Overlords!

I've managed to get a few people interested in some at-table gaming, and they seem initially into Swords & Wizardry, which I'm sure will be cast through a Holmes Basic lens to some extent at first.
It is entirely possible that it will mutate into T&T or something else at some point.

So the starting point is on a large, isolated island with six 'kingdoms' separated by wilderness - this wilderness (of course) dotted with ancient ruins, bandits and other baddies, and such. I am hoping that I can talk some of you online persons to run NPCs in this environment (this has been refered to as Evil Overlord somewhere on the webnet - I have lost the bookmark - it's a good read though). The gist is that these online characters are higher-level characters instead of NPCs run by the GM - so the 'background' (of the tabletop game) is formed by agencies other than just the DM's addled pate.

If you're interested, email me at lexos.gdb@gmail.com. Your character and the disposition of your resources will be randomly generated. And thank you!

EDIT: Here's a link to the page that introduced this idea to me

And a 'testimonial' from someone who implemented it

PS: the "Evil" part of Evil Overlord is tongue-in-cheek - there's no evil requirement. (for the sqeamish - there's no evil prohibition either...)