Warlord Campaign Book Design Diary: The Last Good Guys in the World
In the summer of 2002, I had decided to put my freelance pursuits aside for a while to finish a novel. Then at GenCon, John Zinser pulled me and a couple of other writers aside to pitch us a new project, the Warlord RPG. His vision was exciting even in those early stages. I had been a Warlord player since its debut, so needless to say, I was easily coaxed into putting my novel aside to work on this project. Being the lead writer on a book like was a daunting task. It was huge. Not only did I have to create a huge chunk of text, I had to coordinate the efforts of five other writers, AND coordinate with the lead writers on three other books. All this along with helping to crystallize the Warlord universe. Many areas of the world had been very sketchy, particularly the details surrounding the Medusan Lords. The thing that most impressed me about John's vision of this product was that the PCs were the last good guys in the world. All the heroes, all the just leaders, were dead, killed in the Assassins Strike. The PCs must know they are doomed, because evil is all around them. The Bad Guys have won. They run the show, and its only going to get worse if the Medusan Lords have their way. But the heroes must go on, because it is all they CAN do. This was a powerful idea, and I tried to use it to shape everything we did.

Over the next several months, building on John's vision and Ree's background material, we hammered out the details of the Warlord storyline and the plot of the Medusan Lords and their backgrounds. The detailing of the Medusan Lords was the most rewarding part of this project. It was an honor to take such prominent characters and give them life and purpose. It became apparent early on that Warlord was not just D&D, it was D&D on steroids. So the Medusan Lords are not just villains, they are villains on steroids. After nearly five months of hard work, we arrived at something that was pretty darn cool. And it is huge. The pricetag of this book and the staggering amount of adventure material inside makes it hands-down the biggest bargain in the roleplaying game industry. Ever. Anywhere. Twenty-five full-length adventures, culminating in one of the coolest story climaxes ever seen in an RPG.

I know you will enjoy experiencing the Warlord campaign as much as we did writing it. Malrog rules! And Warlord rocks!