Worlds Enough

Universes are quite small things. Titchy, really.  Not that they necessarily seem so, of course, when viewed from the inside; their inhabitants tend to speak of vistas and infinities.  Yet from the appropriate wider perspective they are really, really small.

Milton knew this. In Paradise Lost, Satan, whom Blake identified as Milton’s hero, following his defeat in the battle with heaven, goes through many challenges, traversing the storms and seas of mighty chaos, passing hints of other worlds, before landing on a small, glowing sphere.  He enters within, to find inside our whole Universe.   Milton’s Universe, with all its stars and planets, the great spaces within which Earth abides.

(As an aside, Milton rather dodged the question of whether the Earth sat at the centre of that Universe; it was too controversial a subject in his time).

When compared with the grandeur and complexity of Milton’s cosmos, a single Universe can appear a little insignificant.  Of course, it is his argument that that insignificance is misleading: even the attitude and actions of single person matters.  But that sense of a grand design remains throughout his epic.

Milton wasn’t the only one to use this image.  The mystic, Julian of Norwich – who also wrote And all shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be exceeding well – found the universe in a hazelnut.

Hamlet suggests something similar in his madness:  I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

Milton, however, also tells of places outside the universe; in some fashion, he prefigures the multiverse.

As above, so below.  We argue that you can consider at least some of the multiple settings of roleplaying games in the same way, and that this is particularly true of the big daddy of them all, D&D.  From the original Blackmoor setting, to the sprawling Greyhawk universe, and Forgotten Realms, to the more  explicitly self-contained worlds such as Eberron.  Each a Miltonic Universe.

But these published worlds barely scratch the surface.  Many, many further worlds have been created by individual referees, building multiple scenarios and even whole universes, to entertain their players.

Small worlds contain multitudes.

First Two Adventures now Live

The first two adventures in the campaign are:

• The Adventure of the Dragon's Scale
• The Goblin Heist

These are now live!  

These two adventures, taken together, introduce the merchant Bolsano and his group, and provide an introduction, of sorts, to Orn.

For ease of reading, these two adventures are each organised into three linked pages.  As Orn grows, they may, however, be amalgamated.

There will probably be errors, typos and so forth in these posts, which I would be pleased to hear about, so that I can correct them.

How It Came About

WELCOME!

The first design for the game goes back to the second half of 2019, as an attempt to  reflect an idea suggested by the late Ken Brown, back in the 1970s.

During the Covid years, however, it seemed a good idea to play the game online, using Zoom, as a way of staying in touch with people, and to give some relief from the challenges of lockdown.  The first game, after character development and a session 0, began on the 19th June, 2020.  I anticipated it would last a year, given the material I had developed.

It finally reached its conclusion in April 2025, after over 150 game sessions.   

This site will include all of the material from that game, with adjustments made to reflect what we learned by playing the scenario.  In other words, treating that long campaign as the first playtest.  

At the time of this post, the campaign is being played through a second time, by a different DM.  It appears that some of the results have proven to be very different...

The game material will be introduced roughly every fortnight or so, in the order it is encountered in the campaign.  This - it is hoped - will give the sense of slow discovery and revelation intended by the scenario.  At the same time, some of the material encountered early on will be re-evaluated in the light of new findings.

At its heart, Orn is an irredeemably amateur enterprise (as, arguably, all the best games are).  No money is made from this offering. 

Also, as I cannot draw or paint for toffee, this is a surprisingly image-light D&D scenario when compared with the pictorially rich, professionally-published modules.  If the latter is the sort of thing you like, my deepest apologies.

The game is based on the current version(s) of D&D, but also includes some material from earlier versions (going back as far as the Original D&D beige books from the 1970s, and to AD&D), as well as several homebrew additions.

I hope you enjoy it.