Retro-Dungeons and Dragons Campaigns
I was told today that my posts are on the slightly long side, so I’ll try to keep this one down to 500 words, how is that? The problem however is the fact that the following post will most likely lack any comprehensibly interesting elements to anyone who does not live in or around South Dakota and who did not, at one point in time or another, play in one of my Dungeons and Dragons campaign. So if you do not fit the criteria, well, you are excused from the rest of this text.
I’ve recently started working on my campaign again. With a year to prepare there’s a lot of material that can be written up and added. (I’m currently up to 40 pages, single-spaced typed Time Roman in Star Office). It also gives me time to think, where exactly do I want to take this campaign?
On one hand, I want to take this campaign back to the roots of my Dungeon Mastering career. This will most likely be the last campaign that I run with my first Dungeons and Dragons group, and all the members of the original group will be in town to participate-a freak chance that has taken two years to come about.
I started Dungeons and Dragons playing a multiple Dungeon Master campaign set in a world that expanded outward as the players explored. This campaign takes place in that world, drawing upon materials that I wrote five years ago but never got a chance to use.
My first solo campaign was ran in the forgotten realms, I’ve chosen not to return to that setting, although I strongly wish to run a forgotten realms campaign in the near future. This doesn’t mean I’m not going to drawing upon that campaign-indeed I fully intend to build this campaign up in the spirit of that campaign. I’ll write material on the spot, as the player’s advance, I’ll only detail the world and the things in the world, but dungeons and plot will be a blank slate open for them to develop as we go along.
This “call it as it comes” game style will require me to loosen the reins that I typically place upon my campaigns. After my first two campaigns that turned into power gaming plagues I severely limited the player’s income and rationed experience points in a very slow and calculated manner. In the end, I’ve come to the conclusion that such strict conservatism was not fun for the players so I’m revoking that policy and instead will be returning to my original policy.
In the end this campaign is what it is-a retro campaign, an attempt to relive the good times in one last far-flung blast. I can only hope that my players will enjoy it as much as I enjoy writing it.
But this isn’t entirely a retro campaign. I’m constantly attempting to innovate my campaigns, try new things, experiment. One thing I’d really like to see is my players break away from their comfortable realm of metagamming and push them to get more into their characters psyche, as such I’m contemplating instigating a “no talking out of character” rule in which all players must speak in the first person to describe everything they do and no rules will be mentioned in game play. They’d hate it, but I’d like to trial run it for a short period of time.
I was going to discuss my decision to avoid connecting EarthBuild (you may know it better as PoLLe) to my campaign settings. I personally feel that it was a flaw to introduce it into the Rinn-which I was explicitly attempting to avoid by designing the Rinn instead of PoLLe. However the fact that it turned into an EarthBuild, just as the Notarra also turned into an EarthBuild causes these settings to become one-shot glories that are only good for one campaign-in which they are typically destroyed. As such I’m reverting the Rinn and the Notarra AWAY from being EarthBuilds and returning them to being independent creations (or independent enough that a campaign in them is not dependent upon EarthBuilds since Som and Rachel will be in the next campaign).
I’ve exceeded my 500 words, now so I’ll probably never get around to extrapolating upon EarthBuilds and why they screw up my world creations and in what ways I’m avoiding recreating them in the next campaign. Maybe that will be tomorrow’s topic.
I’ve recently started working on my campaign again. With a year to prepare there’s a lot of material that can be written up and added. (I’m currently up to 40 pages, single-spaced typed Time Roman in Star Office). It also gives me time to think, where exactly do I want to take this campaign?
On one hand, I want to take this campaign back to the roots of my Dungeon Mastering career. This will most likely be the last campaign that I run with my first Dungeons and Dragons group, and all the members of the original group will be in town to participate-a freak chance that has taken two years to come about.
I started Dungeons and Dragons playing a multiple Dungeon Master campaign set in a world that expanded outward as the players explored. This campaign takes place in that world, drawing upon materials that I wrote five years ago but never got a chance to use.
My first solo campaign was ran in the forgotten realms, I’ve chosen not to return to that setting, although I strongly wish to run a forgotten realms campaign in the near future. This doesn’t mean I’m not going to drawing upon that campaign-indeed I fully intend to build this campaign up in the spirit of that campaign. I’ll write material on the spot, as the player’s advance, I’ll only detail the world and the things in the world, but dungeons and plot will be a blank slate open for them to develop as we go along.
This “call it as it comes” game style will require me to loosen the reins that I typically place upon my campaigns. After my first two campaigns that turned into power gaming plagues I severely limited the player’s income and rationed experience points in a very slow and calculated manner. In the end, I’ve come to the conclusion that such strict conservatism was not fun for the players so I’m revoking that policy and instead will be returning to my original policy.
In the end this campaign is what it is-a retro campaign, an attempt to relive the good times in one last far-flung blast. I can only hope that my players will enjoy it as much as I enjoy writing it.
But this isn’t entirely a retro campaign. I’m constantly attempting to innovate my campaigns, try new things, experiment. One thing I’d really like to see is my players break away from their comfortable realm of metagamming and push them to get more into their characters psyche, as such I’m contemplating instigating a “no talking out of character” rule in which all players must speak in the first person to describe everything they do and no rules will be mentioned in game play. They’d hate it, but I’d like to trial run it for a short period of time.
I was going to discuss my decision to avoid connecting EarthBuild (you may know it better as PoLLe) to my campaign settings. I personally feel that it was a flaw to introduce it into the Rinn-which I was explicitly attempting to avoid by designing the Rinn instead of PoLLe. However the fact that it turned into an EarthBuild, just as the Notarra also turned into an EarthBuild causes these settings to become one-shot glories that are only good for one campaign-in which they are typically destroyed. As such I’m reverting the Rinn and the Notarra AWAY from being EarthBuilds and returning them to being independent creations (or independent enough that a campaign in them is not dependent upon EarthBuilds since Som and Rachel will be in the next campaign).
I’ve exceeded my 500 words, now so I’ll probably never get around to extrapolating upon EarthBuilds and why they screw up my world creations and in what ways I’m avoiding recreating them in the next campaign. Maybe that will be tomorrow’s topic.