The Zioth campaign world came into existence some time in 1994, a few months after I first got a hold of the Second Edition Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. It began as a mathematical exercise. I named five moons, gave them lunar cycles, and tried to figure out how often they would all be new at once. Having forgotten how to calculate the lowest common multiple, it took me a long time, but I eventually worked out that a moonless night would occur only once in 1020 years. That got me thinking. What if a world was “destroyed and rebuilt” every 1020 years? The five moons, I named Halkakplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigThe Five Moons

Five moons rise and set in the sky of Aerv, never crossing paths. At the end of the world, they will all wane together, and diminish to nothing for the Zioth.

Quite a lot of mythology centers around the moons. Zahirans' theology revolves around the Moon Children. The Moon Wanderers in the Shirahjat Cohilition migrate with the rising and setting of the moons in ways that only they fully understand., Tiropplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigThe Five Moons

Five moons rise and set in the sky of Aerv, never crossing paths. At the end of the world, they will all wane together, and diminish to nothing for the Zioth.

Quite a lot of mythology centers around the moons. Zahirans' theology revolves around the Moon Children. The Moon Wanderers in the Shirahjat Cohilition migrate with the rising and setting of the moons in ways that only they fully understand., Otplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigThe Five Moons

Five moons rise and set in the sky of Aerv, never crossing paths. At the end of the world, they will all wane together, and diminish to nothing for the Zioth.

Quite a lot of mythology centers around the moons. Zahirans' theology revolves around the Moon Children. The Moon Wanderers in the Shirahjat Cohilition migrate with the rising and setting of the moons in ways that only they fully understand., Ilsapeich and Zabrigarplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigThe Five Moons

Five moons rise and set in the sky of Aerv, never crossing paths. At the end of the world, they will all wane together, and diminish to nothing for the Zioth.

Quite a lot of mythology centers around the moons. Zahirans' theology revolves around the Moon Children. The Moon Wanderers in the Shirahjat Cohilition migrate with the rising and setting of the moons in ways that only they fully understand.. A little rearranging of their initials got me the acronym Zioth, which I decided would be the name of that moonless night.

At that point, I had only a very basic concept. I had no maps, history, culture, religion or politics. I wasn't really interested in all that just yet, so I started up, and let it take me where it would.

I made the world up as I went along in the first campaign, a one-on-one game run on my BBS, using online chat. The game only lasted a year, and despite the ridiculousness, it gave me a feel for where I was going with the Zioth campaigns. Most importantly, I learned what I wanted to avoid in future games. The first game was exceedingly high-magic, and had no real sense behind it. In its current incarnations, the Coming of the Zioth campaign is exceedingly low-magic, and is grounded firmly in logic and history. Every aspect of the world except for the moons has changed since that first game.

The second attempt at a Zioth campaign was also run on my BBS, but this time over a message board. The game was slow, the players were unresponsive, and the whole game basically flopped. It was an overall useless experience.

The third game has been running since May 5, 1996. It began on the international FidoNet BBS network AD&D echo, and after a couple years, we switched to email. This game, although slow, has some great charactersplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigPlayer Characters

Index

Current PCs

Former PCs, and has been a lot of fun. Once every month or so, I write up a long message called a turn, that describes, in prose form, what's been happening since the last turn, incorporating DM narrative with player submissions. The sequence of turns is a smoothly flowing story, which I recommend you read. Both the turns and some additional game information can be found in the navigation barplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigZioth Campaign

* Introduction * The Story So Far * Rules and Player Options * Game World * People * Religions * Creatures * Joining the Game to the left.

I have also run a couple other games, one on the Internet in the summer of '98, and one tabletop game in the summer of '99. Neither was very long-lived, due either to players not showing up or my own loss of interest.

The game is constantly growing and changing, but the most important growth has been the increased importance of role-playing. Each incarnation of the Zioth world is more detailed and interesting, and supports more complex and interesting characters than any before it. The current game leads the rest, changing where necessary to make the game ever more detailed and interesting for future players. Creative role-playing and world-creation are the primary reasons I am still running Zioth games.