https://michaelwickerson.itch.io/world-of-duchame
WORLD OF DUCHAME
========================
Copyright (c) 1988, 2026 Michael Wickerson. All rights reserved.
The World of Duchame - the Marches, the world map, the gazetteer and every
place in it, the hand-drawn floor plans, the factions, the pantheon, the relic
dossiers and all names, characters, text and artwork - is the original creative
work of Michael Wickerson, first authored in 1988. This software is an
adaptation of that work. Proprietary; no licence is granted by possession of a
copy. See LICENSE.
A browser RPG built from a real 1988 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons binder.
In 1988 a teenager drew a world on paper: sixty eight settlements, every one
with a ruling house, a garrison strength, an alignment and a hand inked floor
plan or a lettered map sheet. Rooms numbered by hand. Difficulty ratings in
the margin. Two typed Hierarchy pages laying out the full chain of command on
both sides of a war. It sat in a binder for nearly forty years.
This is that binder, played. Not a game inspired by it. The maps are
transcriptions, the garrisons are the recorded numbers, the difficulty order
of the campaign is the binder's own ratings, and where the pencil could not be
read the code says so in a comment instead of guessing.
It runs in a browser. No install, no account, no server.
THE CAMPAIGN
========================
Sixty eight chapters, walked in the binder's own order of difficulty, from
Airport on the edge of the Marches to the crater at Duchame.
* Every chapter is a real place with a real ruling house. Cities, open
country and delvings, several of them stacked levels deep.
* Thirty three of the sixty eight leaders will TALK instead of fighting.
Each asks a real question whose answer is somewhere in the world. Getting
past a good ruler without killing them is the hardest ending in most
chapters and it is always the best one.
* Twenty five of those leaders are crowns of the Good, and whether they are
alive at the end decides the war. A king who is alive answers a summons.
A king you killed sends nobody.
* Duchame itself is ten floors: the castle from the author's own plan, and
nine descents under it. The Dark Lord does not sit on a throne at the end
of a corridor. He walks the deepest level like the Minotaur, and he leaves
a trail of his own kills that gets fresher as you close on him.
* An almanac runs the whole time. Every crossing between two holds takes a
real number of days, measured off the world map, so the campaign has a
date: it opens on the first day of spring in year one, in the rain, under
a new moon, and it ends in the third year. Weather and season affect what
you can see and how far you can shoot.
* Every chapter opens with a flight over the place itself, before you take
a step: the real map from the air, its name, who holds it, and a ledger of
the road you came by, what waits there, the land, the weather and who was
born there. Nothing moves until you press a key. Its music is written for
the people who hold it and the side they are on. Ride home and your own
Keep has an opening of its own: torches lit up the avenue, your banner
breaking out at the masthead, the doves going up, the bells.
* The ways in and out of every chapter are portals built in the manner of
the place, a gatehouse, a harbour arch, an elven ogive, a dwarven door,
standing stones, and each plaque names where it leads. The crossing map
between chapters draws its line along the roads, rivers and seas.
* Weather is felt underfoot. Wind leans on you, snow drags, a storm halves
your pace and a winter blizzard nearly stops you, though never quite.
Snow whitens the land and still water freezes to ice.
* Your lord dresses the part: slashed sleeves, gold work, a baldric, a
medallion, a swinging purse, two-coloured hose and a feathered cap.
* Every hold's lord looks like what the binder says they are: crowned,
circleted, hatted or horned by office, in the colours and metal of their
house and the body of their own people, with the weapon, ring or staff
the binder gives them, and a sigil of their side turning under them.
* The lords carry what the binder gives them, and you can win it: a lizard
king's ring of waterbreathing, a troll lord's great axe, a troll chief's
staff of healing, and a barbarian's marching boots that shorten every road.
* Sickness is abroad: rat fever, grave rot, marsh ague and the plague, each
caught from what carries it and cured by a priest, a high Cleric, a potion
or the staff. The markets are stocked with fish, fowl, fruit, vegetables
and spices, and the great bazaars keep elephants, peacocks and parrots.
* The towns work: looms, spinning wheels and dye tubs, painters' easels
and racks of pictures, printing presses and type cases, sculptors'
blocks, busts and tapestries. Finest of all are the foundries, Good and
Ill alike: cupolas, blast furnaces and bronze furnaces, sand and lost wax
moulds, and above all bells, with weights and measures, maces, engine
shot and fine gold and silver work.
* Every Good city has its punks, who once in a while daub the crown or
smash a stall until the watch comes running.
* The Good kings and queens of Men will play you at chess.
* A hold's lord can be taken alive and held in your Keep for ransom. While
he sits in your cells, or after you have killed him, a stand-in holds his
hall. Set him free and he is back in it. Every Ill lord you break, killed,
held or ransomed, weighs for the Good in the war.
* Your Keep's garrison fights three to one when a warband comes, and you
watch them do it from the walls.
* It closes with the War of Duchame: the two hosts meet on the battlefield's
own ground and the battle you watch is made entirely out of how you
played. Frontage is surviving strength, the standards carried at the
front of the Good line are the crowns still alive, and they fall with
their bearers. Behind the losing side its works are mined, battered and
brought down stone by stone, and the winners climb the rubble.
* And there is a road running the other way. Four relics were taken out of
the Dark Lord's hand long ago. You can put them back.
THE BOOKS
========================
The novels/ folder holds the complete Choose Your Own Adventure series: one
short book for every chapter of the campaign, sixty eight in all, and around
five hundred and fifty thousand words.
The riddle in each book is the real one. Section 20 asks the question that
chapter's guardian actually asks in the game, with that guardian's actual
options. Solve the book and you can walk into the software and talk your way
past the same person.
Book 1, Airport, is the hand authored expanded edition at twenty five
thousand words and ninety five sections.
HOW TO RUN IT
========================
Open index.html in a browser, or serve the folder over any static host. No
build step, no database, no server-side code. The included netlify.toml
publishes the project root directly.
Everything in this game - every sound effect, the full soundtrack, every 3D
model - is generated procedurally at runtime from code. There are no external
audio files and no external 3D asset files bundled with this project, so
there is nothing here reproduced from any existing recording, song, or
copyrighted 3D asset. The only third party code is three.js, in vendor/.
(C) 2026 Michael Wickerson. All rights reserved.
PROPRIETARY. This software and the entire World of Duchame setting are the
exclusive property of Michael Wickerson. Use is permitted only by Michael
Wickerson and Wickerson Studios. Nobody else may use, run, copy, modify,
distribute, host or sell this software or any part of it without a licence
purchased from and granted in writing by Michael Wickerson. This is not open
source. See LICENSE for the full terms, including which third-party
components (three.js, web fonts) keep their own separate licences.