Between the Serpents of Smoke & Steel - The Undying City

 

Background

The Undying City wasn't always called that, of course. It was renamed after the fall of the empire as a move of political propaganda, as the city was one of the last to actually fall.

Back in the days of the Empire the city was on both sides of the river, however war, raids and other devastation has made the rulers of the city pull back and concentrate things only on the southern bank. 

The other side of the river is now a vast field of ruins, often crawling with scavengers from the poor side of town, as well as barbarians, travelers and various nasty things that go bump in the dark. 

General Description

A view from the north side of the river into the Merchants' Quarters

Buildings are mostly made from adobe and mud if poorer, or bricks and stone in the wealthier parts of town. The entire city is surrounded by very tall and sturdy brick walls, doted with towers at regular intervals. There are two main gates that enter and exit the city, along with the so called Eternal Bridge that offers connection into the ruins of the old city. 

All but the poorest of slums are at least whitewashed, with richer buildings being covered in ornate patterns painted on their facades. Most people who can afford to have gardens or greenery around their house or on their roofs, which help with the hot sun of the dry season. 

In all areas except the Noble District and around the Great Temple, things are very cramped. The city maintains a population about 3 to 5 times its actual capacity. 

Key Areas or Locations

1 - Riverside or Poortown

A vast slum of tenements, cramped houses and shanties makes up this part of the Undying city. The majority of the population of the Undying City live here in misery and squalor - the few who get enough money to leave usually move into the merchant quarters, or buy out and fortify some of the old larger houses that still stand in what used to be the more prosperous part of Riverside. 

With all of that said, the people living here are still citizens of the city and as such at least have the benefit of being on the inside of the great city walls, as well as having access to clean water wells - a benefit people living in the slums reserved for outsiders rarely get.

2 - Merchants' Quarters

Most of the traders, merchants and free artisans of the city live in the two districts surrounding the grand central market plaza. The area is a curious sight, a mixture of modest one story buildings sitting next to opulent complexes with multiple houses belonging to rich members of the Golden Fraternity. 

If you want to purchase anything beyond simple food or livestock, the Merchents' Quarter is where most of the markets that offer such things are located.

3 - Central Market Plaza

The heart of the Undying City is taken up by the vast Central Market plaza, which is where most of the weekly markets are held. The poor citizens rarely go there to shop, at most just selling their wares in the smaller stalls. The plaza is also where the larger roads in the city converge. Because it is located right next to the internal gates that lead into the Noble and Great Temple districts, violence anywhere around the Plaza is ruthlessly punished and suppressed. 

4 - Noble District

The nobility of the Undying City spend their days in a walled off part of the city living in decadence, leisure and pursuits of fighting and occultism. The entire district houses vast mansion complexes, each of them walled off and surrounded by lush gardens. The entire district is itself walled off from the common parts of the city, the nobles preferring to not see the squalor and overcrowding in places like Riverside. 

Anyone who is deemed to look too poor or like they don't belong will never be allowed through the gates of the Noble District, and carrying a weapon without the explicit permission of a noble is not allowed. Weapons are confiscated at the gate, and anyone found sneaking a weapon will be promptly attacked and put to death by the various bodyguards and mercenaries that work for the nobility. 

This doesn't mean that fights and violence are rare in the Noble District, mind you. It's just that the nobles are very specific about who gets to do it. 

5 - Great Temple District

This walled off district houses the true power in the Undying City - the sorcerer-priests of the Great Temple. Very few are permitted entry into the district, the internal gate leading to it being even more heavily guarded than the gates to enter into the city itself. 

The Undying City has firmly pledged itself with the forces of Law, coming under the protection and patronage of the Lord of Order known simply as The Pale Stillness of Justice. Statues of this benefactor can be found everywhere around the city, and offering of worship, sacrifices and devotion to them is mandatory. The old gods of the Empire are still worshipped, of course, but their religious organizations have dwindled in relevance. 

While the Nobles would never allow for it to be publicly stated, everyone in the Undying City knows that the High Priest of the Pale Stillness is the true ultimate ruler of the Undying City, along with his lesser temple priests. The sorcerer-priests are easily recognized by the pale alabaster masks they wear whenever outside of the Great Temple District - a practice of veiling and masking that has been common among the religious castes even back in the heyday of the Empire. 

Attached to the south-eastern part of the city is a walled off district that can only be entered through the Great Temple district itself. Nobody has any real knowledge or idea of what is housed there, as so few have even seen it. 

6 - Visitor's Quarters/Slums

Just outside the gates of the city are vast sprawling slums filled with hovels, tent cities and the occasional fortified and walled tavern or inn. This is where Outsiders, people who have not been granted citizenship, are allowed to stay. Anyone who travels to the city along the road and not the river must stay in one of the two Visitor's Quarters during the night. During the day people are allowed to enter the city to do trade or to travel through of course. 

In general the north-eastern Visitor's Quarters is much safer and less slum-like, as it is located near the Merchants' Quarters and thus often caravan people, mercenary companies and others tend to stay there instead. 

7 - Old Bridge and Tower Ruins

This used to be the second bridge that spanned the Serpent of Smoke river in order to connect the two parts of the old city. On the sizable island in the middle of the river was located a guard tower which would defend against attacks by ship, along with buildings that housed bureaucrats that kept track of the ship traffic. 

About 20 years ago or so the tower was abandoned and the bridge was demolished, leaving only one single entrance into the Old City. This was done on the command of the Priesthood, with the safety of the city being cited as the reason behind the act. 

More recently, people from Riverside report that sometimes in the night they can see lights from the buildings on the island, however nobody has dared really do much about it. 

8 - The Eternal Bridge

The second of the old bridges that connected the two parts of the city, it was renamed the Eternal Bridge by the priesthood after it withstood a ferocious attack by northern barbarians and their strange beasts. It is now the only way to cross into the Old City (except of course by boat). There are guard towers located on both ends of it, and anyone going into the Old City must be catalogued by the guards there. The main traffic into that dangerous area consists of Scavengers and adventurers, both of which must pay a toll of 10% of any treasure or money they find in their expeditions, before they are allowed back into the city.

While it's absolutely possible to simply cross the river via boat, doing so is dangerous for two reasons. Firstly, boats like that often get attacked by bandits or other scavengers as soon as they reach the other shore. Secondly, crossing into the Old City through any other means besides the Eternal Bridge is technically a criminal act. 

9 - The Old City Ruins

A vast sprawl of ruins from what used to be the old city, along with the various smaller towns and villages that were close to it. A lot of treasures, rare materials and other things are still left there, as going into the ruins is dangerous. They are full of bandits, barbarians, as well as other more inhuman things like dangerous animals, monsters and even demonic forces, keeping an eye on this established stronghold of Law. 

The majority of the citizenry of the Undying City simply refuse to even look at the ruins, let alone go anywhere near them. The only ones to go there are people exiled for various crimes (a punishment often equal to a death sentence), adventurers willing to make their fortunes, and the Scavengers. 

The Scavengers tend to be poor members of the citizenry who make short ventures into the ruins and back. They often are looking for old treasures or valuables left behind, along with precious resources they can sell to the merchants. It is a desperate career with a very short life expectancy, however plenty of the richer people in the Merchants' Quarters actually made their fortune by leading Scavenger bands, and plenty of them still do. 

This is also where most of the initial dungeons and other locales will be. None of them are easy to reach - the closer and safer ruins have long ago been stripped of any value by the Scavenger bands, but deeper into the ruins there is plenty of forgotten things just waiting to be claimed! 

Between the Serpents of Smoke & Steel - Setting Primer

Here is a very rough primer on the setting for my campaign, Between the Serpents of Smoke & Steel (either BSSS or just Smoke and Steel for short from now on). This is mostly for the benefits of my players, but hey - why not get a blog post out of it while I'm at it?

General Inspiration 

The sales pitch is - Ancient Mesopotamia as written by Robert E. Howard. Though with less racism, hopefully.

So while set in what should be a Bronze Age society, there is still plenty of iron and even steel (I mean it is in the name of the campaign after all), along with borrowing very loosely from the actual historical realities of Sumer, Babylon and Assyria. The Mesopotamian aspect is going to be mostly just an aesthetic coat over fairly typical S&S nonsense. 

The setting is very human-centric. There are no elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes or other such standard fare. Most people you will run into are either humans, or something else, but difficult to identify and put into a neat box. 

Background

The Fertile Lands is the most used name for the territory in the immediate vicinity of the Twin Serpents rivers. The Lands were ruled for several centuries by an empire - not a particularly large one, but a local power in it's own right. However the old empire is no more. About 100 years ago it fell and broke apart under the pressure of the various barbarian groups that had been steadily pushing into its territory for a few decades. That combined with internal problems and pressure resulted in its ultimate rupture and dissolution into a variety of petty kingdoms, city-states, even semi-nomadic groups like the Chariot People. 

The fall of the empire also heralded a more metaphysical shift (or perhaps the shift was what ultimately cased the downfall. It's never easy to say with these kinds of things) in the landscape. The forces of Law, represented by the legalistic, bureaucratic and conservative empire, grew weaker, and an incursion of the forces of Chaos soon followed. Some of those were through mortal agents like the northern barbarian folk, some were a bit more alien, like the enormous chaos worm that devoured an entire city from underneath, leaving a massive gaping wound in the landscape from which hordes of demonic beings spread across the Fertile Lands. 

Violence and death had become very common place around the Twin Serpents. And while the otherworldly vanguard of Chaos was pushed back, Law is still weak. This is where the campaign begins - The city-states, kingdoms, tribes and others all feeling the pressure of this conflict impressed upon their once relatively peaceful lands. Sides are picked, one way or the other, with consequences that mortal minds can only barely comprehend. 

People of the Fertile Lands

Being the territory of a former Empire the Fertile Lands has a fairly wide variety in human appearances. However some trends are still noticed - most people tend to have dark hair, ranging from dark brown to glossy black, skin ranging from dark olive to very deep brown, and eyes ranging in all human ranges, and some not found in Earthly humans, such as red, orange, yellow and so on. 

Material Culture

Being, as stated earlier, a riff on Mesopotamia written by Robert E. Howard the material culture of the Fertile Lands broadly maps to a confused mix of various ancient Mesopotamian cultures, except with way more iron and steel than existed on Earth in that time period. 

Think this kind of stuff, but with way more iron and steel mixed in there.

There are certain things one might expect in a typical D&D fare that are not present - there are no double handed swords, no European Renaissance style plate armor, no lanterns, and so on. Chain armor exists, but is quite rare. Most heavy armor tends to be made of iron or steel scales. 

Due to the dangers from wild animals, bandits, warlords, nomads, demons and other things lurking in the wilds, most humans have retreated to the safety of heavily fortified cities. Most farming is done either close to the city itself, or in the few remaining smaller towns and fortified villages. What is left of the empire's population has become highly urbanized by necessity. 

Culture and Religion

Generally quite rigid, though less so since the fall of the empire. The nobility and priesthood are often one and the same in most cities, though not always. Slavery is common, but also not as widespread as it was during the height of the empire - a lot of slaves got themselves freed during the turmoil and are, understandably, very unwilling to go back to servitude. 

The gods of the cities are distant, if not dead. Magic often comes from either people like sorcerers, or people who gain their magic through pacts with powerful entities like the kings of the Elementals, the Lords of Chaos and Law, or other entities of that caliber. A lot of the common people still maintain the old rituals, mostly out of habit, but it seems the god rarely do much to answer them. 

With law being now fragmented and highly decentralized, those who are daring and willing to risk their life for it can go out and make a name for themselves, where otherwise the system would have shoved them back into their spot. Petty warlords, tyrants, cult leaders, "benevolent" dictators and others spring up everywhere on a daily basis. Maybe with some luck and coin, your character might also be one of them. 

One of the biggest mortal forces to occupy the power vacuum left by the break up of the empire has been The Golden Fraternity. A combination of descendants (and in some cases, actual members using life-extending magics) of the old noble caste of the empire, now turned into ruthless merchant-lords. They control virtually all major traffic up and down the Twin Serpents rivers and they can be found almost everywhere, save for the smallest and most wretched villages. 

The next post is going to give a bit more detail on the Undying City, the starting location for the campaign. 

And to close this off, some more visual inspiration! 

Art credits go to whoever drew all of this amazing stuff. Unfortunately I found most of it through Pinterest, so no way in hell I could figure out the artist for most of these. 

How I got into the OSR

Let's get this out of the way - This is going to be a deeply self-indulgent post. I am writing this thing mostly since I've had to explain it in a few places just to help clear the perspective I am coming from during a discussion regarding older D&D/OSR/Whatever we're calling this right now, so hey, why not just write it up here and then I can link people to it.

Right then. On with the show! 

Some Background

I am Bulgarian, and I was born in Bulgaria. As such I had zero exposure to older editions of D&D (I mean anything from before 3E really) as a child. My first real proper exposure to Dungeons and Dragons was actually through video games - Baldur's Gate 2 along with Icewind Dale 1 and 2. I also spent so much of my youth playing Fallout 1 and 2, Arcanum, Diablo, and other classics of the CRPG and Action RPG genres. 

Ok, so then what? Well, after a while, in my early teens, I found out through some of the video game magazines that I read (and I read ALL of them for a span of about 5-6 years. Every single issue of every single one that was published every month.) about tabletop RPGs, and was intrigued.

Except even then...I was in Bulgaria, remember? There was no D&D. Or any other RPG you could find. Instead I managed to find some pirated scans online here and there, and also got in touch with the, then still existing, broader RPG community in Bulgaria through the now dead rpg.bg forums (rest in piece, you beautiful mess!). I did buy a copy of Endival, the first ever Bulgarian RPG, and I read through it though I could not really grasp much of the rules at the time (mostly, on reflection, because they are not good or well written.)

Soon enough I did find a group to play with in my home town, and so my first ever TTRPG experience was playing in a homebrewed system and setting. In fact it took me years to even play D&D for the first time, and that was 3rd Edition. I bounced off it hard - there were too many rules, too many lists upon lists of stuff and it was all different from the AD&D 2e I had been exposed to through video games. 

I spent the next 17+ years playing all kinds of RPGs instead. I even found work in the industry, working as an illustrator and later art director on various Glorantha-related projects. 

Some more Background

While I had become a steady enjoyer of tabletop RPGs, I also didn't get to play them as often as I'd like. I have also spent several years playing in completely freeform roleplay over MSN Messenger, and later on a slightly more structured (slightly) forum game set in the same setting. I also kept playing more video games.

Over the years I got interested in the roguelike genre. I played NetHack, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, bit of Angband (but not that much to really get into that branch of the genre), some DoomRL, some Brogue (but not enough sadly), and others. And that got me thinking...why is it that nobody is playing this kind of stuff on the tabletop? I mean I knew a lot of this whole "crawling through a big fuck off dungeon and dealing with resources" style of gaming existed, but the general consensus among the aforementioned Bulgarian RPG community was that this style of play was wrong, not fun and not something anyone did nowadays, so why even bother with it? But I just...knew. I knew there had to be some way to make it fun, because fuck it - it was fun as a video game right? Surely someone out there had figured out how to make this work better at the tabletop! (Foreshadowing!)

Ok, now for the whole OSR bit

I had heard vague murmurings about the OSR over the years. Even if I continued to have zero interest in D&D, and definitely wasn't part of the OSR scene yet, I was still heavily involved in tabletop RPGs so I of course heard of it. Lamentations of the Flame Princess was a hot thing going on, I know people were doing stuff relating to old D&D. 

The first thing that actually got me interested in all this mess was Dungeon Crawl Classics. My LGS had gotten some of their Free RPG Day books, so I decided to grab one just to check it out. I was confused, but charmed and intrigued. A lot of the stuff in that was a bit eyebrow raising, kind of gimmicky (and let's be honest here, as much as I love DCC...it's mostly a gimmick. But a gimmick can carry a lot too). 

But I was hooked! In 2018 I went to my first GenCon and one of the things I got was the full DCC rules, along with some adventures I was recommended. That got me properly excited, and from there on I started to pay more attention to the OSR sphere. That, you might also realize, is also about the time the whole Zak shitstorm finally hit the proverbial fan. It did not deter me though, as I had mercifully had very little direct exposure to the specimen himself (I had spent my G+ days at the Glorantha community, so close yet so far away from the big hot period for the OSR on that platform), so for me it just made me go "Yeah, that checks out."

Once I actually started to read up on what the OSR was aiming for and what people were doing with it - then I really got hooked! All that roguelike stuff I had thought would be cool to do? People were doing it. Fuck, people had been doing it since the very beginning of the tabletop RPG hobby! I felt almost vindicated, to be honest. I mean here I was...not even reinventing the wheel, but pondering how wheels might be a nice thing to have! 

As OSE had already dropped at that point, and a friend of mine who is also a fan of DCC has the Classic tome, I decided to check it out. I was interested in getting a B/X clone to have, and while I was not going to go for LotFP, I wasn't sure which one to pick. I mean if there is one thing the OSR loves, it's its B/X retroclones! 

I ended up settling on OSE just because I really enjoy how useable at the table the books are, and in fact ran and then played in a game with my partners and a few friends, and then started a weekly OSE open table campaign which ran for 4 months and gave me a lot of good insights into how to GM for this style and what I liked and didn't like about it! (You can read more about it if you check out the Greylands tag on this blog!)

While all of this was happening, I spent the last 4 years devouring as much stuff as I could - zines, blogposts, books...anything that explained the principles and practice behind the OSR, the theories and also the history. I tend to dive like that into hobbies - for me it is never enough to simply "do the thing". I want to know how, when and why others also do the thing! 

And so...here I am. Posting on my OSR-focused blog, spending most of my online time thinking about OSR shit, planning and prepping for an OD&D based campaign (more of that hopefully soon on here!), and OSR books and zines having firmly overtaken my gaming bookshelves in terms of quantity and sheer volume!

Why did you tell me all of this?

As stated above, I find it fascinating why people actually do the things they do. This extends to playing tabletop RPGs too. I find the reason behind why someone is into the OSR to be just as fascinating as the OSR itself. Is it nostalgia? For some - yes. Is it a rejection of the RPG mainstream? Definitely from what I've observed. Is it simply thinking at this is just a nice way to play? Absolutely! 

I also find that my perspective, being an absolute outsider and thus having no inherit predisposition towards it, kind of gives me a different (if not any more or less special) view on the OSR and old D&D.

 And if you take anything out of this post, then take this - Write one of these about yourself! Tell me and everyone else why is it that you play the games you play and how you play them! Outline your perspective and background, and this way maybe, hopefully, people will have a better understanding of you and of where you're coming from! 

Magical Corruption

Since Between the Serpents of Smoke & Steel will be using Wonder & Wickedness for its magic system I had to address the question of Catastrophes. Now, I do think the Catastrophes in the book are cool, but they are uh...a bit dramatic, let's say? And while my plan initially was to just leave them like that and see where things go, I got cold feet and instead decided to scale things back down.

So instead of Catastrophes, I decided to go for the DCC approach and have Corruption. This way there are still consequences to unrestrained magic use, but they are mostly tied to the sorcerer performing the magic, rather than everyone else. Below is an excerpt from my Player's Handbook document for that campaign, specifically on how to handle Corruption, reposted here for potential and dubious use to other people.

 

What is this Spellbook?

Spellbooks are not always actual books. Or at least, they shouldn't be. Sometimes they are other things. Roll a d10 and see what is the actual object that hosts the spell.

 

1. A small piece of velum, with the spell scribbled in tiny font.

2. A clay tablet that’s always slightly wet. Be careful not to smudge the spell!

3. A piece of starched fabric, stretched tight over a barbed frame.

4. A series of golden, interconnected disks.

5. A codex bound in strange leather. Roll 1d6 to determine what kind of leather: 1. Albino Cow 2. Rhino hide 3. Pig 4. Human 5. Lizard 6. Impossible to determine

6. A delicate papyrus scroll. Very fragile

7. A heavy tome with a bronze lock. The lock has no key, can only be lock picked and can not be opened by magic.

8. A piece of dried skin, the spell being a series of intricate tattoos that were once on someone’s shoulder blade.

9. A ball of thorny vines that twist into the runes of the spell. 

      10.A heavy felt apron, the spell being embroidered onto the fabric itself.

  

D&D and RPGs - So Close, yet So Far Away

 I am writing this down in this blog mostly so I wouldn't have to keep repeating myself in Discord every time the topic comes up.

The main point I have is this - Dungeons and Dragons, in its current iteration is not part of the RPG hobby. 

Yeh that sounds like a bit of a hot take, but let's break it down.

A lot of the marketing that Wizards of the Coast have used since D&D Next was first announced (which eventually became 5E) and what is being done with One D&D right now has lead to that separation. Now, most of that also comes from the broader play culture surrounding it - the streamers, youtubers, opinion pieces, subreddits what have yous. 

D&D is D&D. It is not an RPG, it is simply its own hobby that you can be into and more importantly - consume. Always consume. Because to acknowledge that D&D is simply an RPG means to tell people "You know, if you don't want to  play this, or pay for the books or consume - you could just do something else." And why would you, if you were in WotC's shoes or the "influencers" that have hitched their wagons to D&D, want to do that? 

I mean WotC did do that during the 3E era - it's what got us the OGL and ended up spawning not just the OSR but also stuff like Pathfinder.  This kind of closed off marketing and approach is hardly new - it's what Apple does, it's what Games Workshop do with 40k if you want another example in gaming.

It is removing the actual hobby aspect of the hobby, and simply replacing it with an external authority and consumerism. After all, if you're a hobbyist you might have to write your own scenarios and campaigns, or talk to other hobbyists and see what they've made and steal their shit. Ya know, you'd have to put in the work and effort and have little incentive to actually pay more money to WotC. 

But if Wizards are the final authority on the game, if your "hobby" is simply buying D&D merch and books and running them as written? Then they have you.

And this is what I mean when I say that D&D is not really part of the RPG Hobby. It has deliberately been walled off out of the hobby, made into its own private playground where you don't have to actually put up the swings yourself, the authoritative Wizards will just do that for you. 

Unlocking Classes

 Here's my very messy process on how I handled unlocking new classes in my Greylands game. I've talked about it with other people on the OSR Discord server and there's a few others who also do similar things in their games, though their actual process seems to be slightly different than what I settled on. 

Why bother unlocking classes?

In my specific case, I decided to go down this route after sitting down to do my initial class list for what I was going to have in my campaign. After doing that, I quickly realized that those were probably a bit too many. I know anyone coming from 5E or Pathfinder or any similar game would probably laugh at that notion, but for me the list felt bloated, so I started to trim some classes off.

However, I still wanted those classes to be around. One of the removed classes was the Hill Cantons War Bear, and there was no way in hell I was not shoving war bears into this campaign one way or another! So I made them a possible class that can be unlocked through the course of play. 

Another reason is that letting the players unlock access to new classes through their actions in the campaign just brings a sense of progression not tied to individual character levels or items. They, as a group, have now changed both the campaign and their own options as players through interaction with the game's fiction. 

Class unlock procedure

• Players become aware of a distinct group or faction that I inform them might be unlocked as a playable class.
• They have a positive initial interaction with the group which sets the stage for further relations.
• The players complete 3 distinct actions that help solidify their standing with the group. These vary from group to group and in how difficult or easy they may be.
• Once all 3 actions have been performed that particular class is now unlocked and any future characters may be members of it.

The steps in the procedure don't quite have to happen in order, but I came up with this whole system more or less on the fly and initially they needed 4 distinct actions in order to unlock a class, but those felt too many and kind of cumbersome so I paired it down to 3.

Let's see how this actually worked in the campaign. I'll use as an example the two classes that the group managed to unlock.

Unlocking the Cleric:

1. The party found that the former temple to the Sun Lord in Greytown was little more than 4 ruined walls and no roof. (Party becomes aware of the group, or in this case lack of it)

2. The Acolyte in the party started to gather the locals and any adventurers willing to listen as he tells them tales of the Sun Lord. (A positive interaction regarding the faction/class, and also the first action to unlock the class - restore the interest in having an actual temple with clerics in it in town.)

3. The party gathers and donates 1000 GP in order to have the temple restored and rebuilt. The process takes 1d4 weeks to complete. (Second action to unlock the class - get the actual temple fixed up so that Clerics would even have anywhere to stay.)

4. The party pays to send a messenger out to inform the nearest church to the lack of priesthood and have them send over people. As the nearest town is barely an oversized village and is also 4 days away, it takes 1d4 weeks for anyone to actually arrive in Greytown. (Third action to unlock the class - get some actual clerics!) 

5. The Clerics arrive and start up regular services in the restored Sun Lord temple, unlocking the class for any future characters. 

Fairly straightforward stuff this. I also generally made a point to inform players for what would be the next step in unlocking a class, if the step was obvious enough. 

Let's look at another example, unlocking the War Bear:

1. The party, as they explore the Greylands, runs into a clearing in the nearby forest. The clearing is full of bears armed with polearms, spears and pikes, walking around on two legs and chatting with each other. In the middle there is a large wooden statue of a bear with a crown of leaves, and treasure piled at it's feet. The party is polite and shows interest in what is going on. (The party becomes aware of the faction or class and has a positive interaction with it, also fulfilling the first step towards unlocking the class.)

2. The bears tell the party that their Master will be showing up soon, and the characters should come meet him and bring a tribute to him. The characters agree, and after they find a suitably impressive piece of treasure they bring it to the clearing, where they meet Medved. They are reverent and polite and offer him tribute. (Second action - they show loyalty to the bears and their leader. As a consequences they can now hire 1st level War Bears as retainers, in addition to the human ones they could find back in town).

3.After further visits and talks with Medved and his bears they learn about the strange activities in the forest by odd looking (and clearly evil) elves. Since the war bears are not exactly subtle or sneaky, the party is asked to provide some intel and information on what is going on, which they do after managing to capture an elven prisoner and bring him in for interrogation. (Third and last action - do a service to the War Bears and gain their trust.)

4. Some War Bears decide to settle in Greytown and take on adventuring as an activity, impressed by the deeds of the characters, unlocking the class for any new characters made in the future.

Another opposite example would be the Goblins that reside underneath the ruins of the manor of the local boyar. They were, in fact, going to be a potential unlockable class, however the party not only didn't have a friendly interaction with them, they in fact would use excessive violence (hurling flaming oil all over the place, taking prisoners and then murdering them after they have surrendered, etc) which immediately closed off any possibility of the goblins becoming playable. 

All in all, for something I cobbled together while playing, I'd say it works well enough. My plan for a future campaign is to actually make class selection very restrictive and limited, so I don't know when I'll use it again, but I suppose this could work for getting access to new types of hirelings, or just a new race for characters, if you use separate race and class in your game.