At Last Something Definitive

I had a second, serious talk with the guys who are going to play in the upcoming campaign, in which I showed them the possibilities in detail. They asked me to use a ruleset available in italian, and since they don't want to go with the race-as-class paradigm, and I don't want to spend too much time re-writing the character creation rules, we're going to play with AD&D 2e. (I'm aware that the Advanced Edition Companion is also available in italian, but second edition was the game I started playing Dungeons & Dragons with, and I never ran a real campaign out of it.)

Since they asked for simple fantasy, I'm going to use a modified version of my Yaqqothl Sandbox, toning the science fiction side down a bit. I still haven't decided anything about the setting, but I don't want to spend too much time on it, so I will instead rely on the following assumptions:

• A great and vast empire existed until four hundred years ago or so: it was called the Talìrsian Empire, and its emperors were masters in magic;
• After the fall of the Talìrsian Empire, the vast majority of magic was lost, and only a dozen spells are available nowadays to Magic-users;
• After the fall of the Talìrsian Empire, a new religion arose from the ashes of the old cults: The Blue Oyster Cult, also known as The Church of the Star Lord (just to leave some room for future science fantasy, you know.) Some of its priests are said to be able to perform miracles;
• Demi-humans don't care for human vicissitude, and tend to stay neutral;
• Most cities are ruled by powerful sorcerers, who keep the population safe.

I'm not going to work on plots or sub-plots of any kind: although I only have two players, things are very likely to grow and since we have no plans for regular gaming, I have to be ready to play many episodic games. Plots will just show up as the campaign proceeds.

Also, thanks to everyone who replied my last post! I've lots of very bad fantasy movies in the download queue right now, and the next few days will be dedicated to watching them while eating pizza and drinking beer. Sweet times to come!