A Big Crazy Campaign

I'm sick of running short campaigns.

I want to run a campaign that lasts longer than six months. I want to run a campaign that goes from 1st level to 20th level. I want to run a campaign with more than one big villain, more than one big story, a campaign where the characters go from dirt-hugging nobodies to gods.

I'm not sure I'm going to have the chance to make that happen. I'm distractable; part of the reason I run short campaigns is that I like short campaigns, I like campaigns that can end when I get tired with them, let me start something new. I don't have a stable group, I'm not likely to get one, and even if I do there will be unavoidable breaks where we can't play.

I know it's possible to have a campaign pause and then pick up a couple months later, but am I going to want to do that? Or am I going to get some crazy new idea in the interim, and then get frustrated when I pick the old campaign back up, rather than being able to start on the new one?

Top Ten Campaigns

Going through my old notes got me into sort of a nostalgic mood, so I sat down and re-ranked my top ten campaigns. I've done it before, but I've played in a couple more games since then, and I had a sneaking suspicion a few things might have gotten moved around. Plus, I'm starting a new campaign through, and thought it'd be a good exercise, to re-evaluate my past gaming adventures.

Oh, and since I now have notes from all those old campaigns, I can now pin down with exactitude dates that were previously rough estimates.

The list, in its current form, stands as follows:

1. Is This Fair? Is It? Arcana Evolved (me) 2007
2. Space Tree GURPS 4th (quantumelfmage) 2007
3. Outlaws d20 Modern (me) 2003-2004
4. Star Wars Star Wars d20 (Artemis) 2005-2006
5. Desert Campaign D&D 3.5 (me) 2006
6. Drow/Evil Campaign D&D 3.5 (Karen) 2004
7. Evil God Dimension D&D 3.5 (quantumelfmage) 2004
8. Greek City States D&D 3.5 (saganatsu) 2007
9. Outlaws: Reloaded GURPS 3rd Revised (me) 2004
10. “UCF” Forum-brewed D&D 3.5 ("that guy") 2006

Two main things to keep in mind. One, this is not just my top ten campaigns, it's my complete gaming history. So the "UCF" is, without question, the worst game I've ever played in. Two, every other campaign on this list was, at some point, fun. The ones down at the bottom may have had fairly high pain/fun ratios, but they all had fairly high absolute levels of fun.

Organizing the campaigns like this gave rise to a couple of thoughts.

These were all really short. The longest, Outlaws and Is This Fair? were each about six months. Star Wars, Desert Campaign, Drow/Evil, Evil God Dimension, and Outlaws: Reloaded were each a couple of months. The others lasted four sessions or less. Is This Fair was planned as a six month campaign from the outset, one of the most successful technical aspects of that campaign was the neat execution of that timeframe. Drow/Evil and Outlaws also both had formal endings, but neither had the timing specifically planned ahead. The others just fell apart, mostly due to lack of player interest and/or GM frustration.

The other major factor was that, for the first part of my gaming career, my group had five members and four GMs. One guy tried it, but didn't like it; the rest of us all had games we wanted to run, so there was a lot of competition for game time. The reason Outlaws ended when it did was that Karen was ready to run her Underdark-based game with evil characters.

The top four campaigns are the ones that I consider really good. 5, 6, and even 7 were fun; after that the frustration index starts to really climb. But the top four were good. What's funny about that is that, at the time, Space Tree and Star Wars were sources of profound frustration.

Outlaws and Is This Fair too--both of them started to drift, in the third quarter; both of them were cut short to some degree to get into the end-game--but I was DMing. I knew exactly what and where the problems were, and it was in large part (though not, of course, entirely) within my power to correct them. Space Tree took ages to get going, character creation took weeks, and that, combined with the limited amount of time we had to play the game in, got me to thinking, "if I was running this game, we'd be playing right now." Whether that was actually true is immaterial; once we actually got the game going, I had a lot of fun.

Star Wars had a similar, though rather stupider, problem. It had been a while since I'd GMed, and I was starting to get tired of playing. So I was weird and distracted and generally a worse player than usual. Cleared up once I started running the Desert Campaign, for a different group, but I should have just gotten over it, because I had a lot of fun in the campaign once I started playing my character mostly sane.

Those games all had another major thing in common: crazy hi-jinks. I was happiest as a player when I was coming up with ridiculous lies, ramming judges at high speeds, and stealing carpet. I was happiest as a GM when the players were coming up with ridiculous lies, crashing weddings, and invading cities. The absolute best scenes, in all those campaigns, used the system to mediate some bizarre scheme that the players had come up with; the pure roleplaying encounters tended to run out of steam, the pure combats tended to be uninteresting, and the game was always more interesting when I was reacting to the players, rather than the other way around.

Finding old notes is Awesome

I just discovered that I have this huge mess o' roleplaying stuff on my hard drive. I went through a period where I thought I had to do massive write ups for campaigns, so I have all these (unfinished) documents detailing various aspects of campaigns that I never actually ran. And I still have all the material I prepared digitally, for the campaigns that I did actually end up running. So there's a rather larger number of documents in my "Old Roleplaying" folder than I expected to find when I opened it.

Some of it is pretentious and lame. Like how I went through a period--that only lasted for one campaign, thankfully--where I decided that the thing to do about the races was to give them all different names. Elves become akkan and so on. I don't know why I thought this was a good idea.

Some of it is . . . interesting. I'd forgotten that I'd once had the idea of running a campaign that revolved around empires run by characters with bloodlines. I got about halfway through the list, detailing the kinds of empires each had, or the role they played in other empires. I'm actually sort of intrigued by it, so much so that I might finish the rest of the entries, and touch up what's already there. I'll never get to run the campaign, but I find that campaign design can be a past time of its own.

Mostly it's just gotten me kind of nostalgic. I've got the notes for the first adventure I ever ran. The only one I ever made a flow chart for. It's 7 pages of notes, filled with science nonsense, acronyms I don't understand, and detailed encounter descriptions that, if memory serves, I completely ignored.

Back in the Gaming Groove

I've got a game again. Last Friday, I ran a short combat with three brand new (or close to it) gamers, to give them an idea of how Dungeons and Dragons works. Later this afternoon, we'll be doing character/party building, with hopefully a bit of scene setting to get everyone together.

This makes me happy.

And I was surprised just how much fun the extremely basic campaign I ran was. Two factors involved: I had new, easily excitable players, and I turned up the difficulty level. Instead of putting three first level PCs up against, say, two orcs, I threw a Worg at them. That turned out to be a little bit too tough, but this Worg happened to be a little on the low side of the hit point scale, so we got actual danger without total carnage.

Quotes V

"In the real world, superhero registration would be at least mandatory. However, let's be completely honest--not even the Ultimate universe goes far enough with how superheroes would be treated. These people would be dehumanized and used as weapons, period." Eric Teall

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Richard Feynman

"Orc is a recessive gene." Bamdy

"That means you're qualified to reach inside men's pants." Bamdy

"I'm illegitimate -- uh, illiterate." Tim

"Do they make saddles for cows?" Quantumelfmage

"I think we're just big dumb crazy squirrels that like to collect stuff." Paul Saffo

"Libertarianism is anarchy for rich people." Pete Sears

"A good story is like a garden carried in the pocket." African proverb

"Oh Martin, why'd you have to go and explode?" Artemis

"Next time a dorky guy hits on you at the bars, just look him over cursorily and say, "My analysis indicates that you are Genetotype 27R, Subset 79W, which unfortunately falls well outside my acceptable parameters." Not only does this let him down firmly but gently, it makes him feel better because he realizes you're much dorkier than he is." Scipio

"How many other people do you know who have a dollar bill signed by Dweezil Zappa?" Will Thornton

"Reminds me of an argument I got into with a pro-forced pregnancy dude who went on about the unique genetic identity of an embryo, and how that unique combination will never occur again and blah blah blah fetus magic." Vanessa

"I don't want to be dead. I want to be alive. Or a cowboy." Caboose

"Back off, man. I'm a scientist." Dr. Peter Venkman.

"You can lay back and enjoy the wall." Dustin

"It is okay to want to touch it, Superman. That is the natural response to a hat so sexy." Batman

"Ha, loser. A true tactician doesn't know WHAT the hell he's doing until he's halfway done with it." - Quint

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad-hoc plot device" - David Langford

"No movie shall triumph over Snakes on a Plane. Unless I happen to feel like making a movie called More Motherfucking Snakes on More Motherfucking Planes." Samuel L. Jackson

"You can't be both pro-life and anti-zombie." anonymous?

"The Fire King was intensely loyal to his friends. Growing up as basically an outcast wherever he went, he was not about to throw away friendships over something as minor as world domination." Rich Burlew

"Wild animals don't wear pants." David Landy

"You don't have relationships. I have relationships. You have 'hide in your room and swear at people.'" Qwerty

"Do you know how many times Elvis has come back from the dead? More than three, okay?" quantumelfmage

"To me, D&D is not about trying to recreate 12th century England. It's Conan meets Aragorn and Boba Fett to go kick Kulan Gath's boney behind." Hussar on EN World

"Maybe 'hooten blag' was just his accent." Oddysey

Adventures in Gnome Town

I hit a new GMing milestone the other day. It's not on the actual list, but I'd put it there if I was making one, because it's something that in six-plus years of game mastering I'd never actually managed: I ran a complete, one-session adventure, with a mostly satisfying conclusion. I've run single session deals before, but they all were either irredeemably stupid or ended when people had to go home, rather than having an actual conclusion.

It was a bit humorous, revolving around the rescue of the son of the Mayor of Gnome Town (who was definitely a gnome) but we managed to avoid sending it completely off the rails.

Other items of note: It was almost completely improvised, and everything that wasn't improvised on the spot was less than two hours old. It was one player's first ever game, and although he spent the beginning of it slightly confused, by the conclusion he'd gotten the hang of it and happily wreaking havoc after the Mayor of Gnome Town let slip that the only way to become mayor was to defeat him in single combat.

I had fun. As far as I can tell, the players did, too, and I hope I'm not wrong in that impression. Now I know that with a little enthusiasm and an hour of prep-time I can turn five otherwise normal hours into some quick, dirty, and fun D&D. And that's not a bad thing to be able to do.

Stunt-tastic!

Funny. I've been looking through Iron Heroes again, in anticipation of running an actual one session scenario using it, and I've been rediscovering the best part of the book. I can't believe that I'd forgotten about stunts.

I guess I was just too busy being blown away by tokens, and having interesting choices in combat just on the PC level. Now you tell me this game has a stunt system, too? And not just any stunt system--a stunt system with some real tactical decision making, so I've got some rails. I've got some guidelines for what's too over the top, and angles for story/wacky antics players and more combat/math focused players to engage with it.

This is how my group plays. "Can I swing off the chandelier?" is a pretty standard question for the GM to hear. I've asked similar myself, when I'm on that side of the screen.

Now I know this isn't news. The stunt system, and the closely related challenge system, was kind of the point of the book. (Or a big part of it.) But somehow, I missed it.

Almost makes me want to

"Bog Standard" D&D

Can I run a campaign with the races more or less as they are described in the Player's Handbook?

By which I mean two things. "Is it possible for me?" but also "Is it a good idea?"

Because I have never done this. Even when I was running the (at least initially) core only, fight the crazy wizard in his tower, desert-y campaign, I fiddled with the races. I fiddled with a lot of stuff: it was in the desert, rather than the woodsily pastoral pseudo-European setting that the game kind of expects as default. But the races, I didn't mess with mechanically, but I did make a number of adjustments or total rewrites to the flavor that was in the book.

Honestly, it was kind of confusing. And not entirely necessary.

In a broader sense, I'm wondering if it's possible for me to run a campaign that more or less makes use of the core setting, as presented implicitly in the core rule books. Greyhawk, I guess.

I might, I think, replace the gods with a traditional mythological pantheon (Norse or Greek, most likely) on account of it being more immediately evocative. And maybe even pull some of the cultural trimmings from that mythology.

Leaving that possibility aside, though, I'm thinking, why not try to actually use what's in the book? Run a semi-standard, pseudo-European, elves like trees and dwarves like rocks basic D&D fantasy campaign. Rather than whatever strangitude I normally gravitate towards.

Because this will be for all, or mostly all, new players. And I'm not sure that saying, hey, the book says all this, but ignore it, because that's not how I'm doing it, is exactly the greatest way to get started. Could be confusing.

And what's in the book, it's got to be there for a reason, right? It can't be half bad. There's the sheer novelty of it. Less useless work for me to get stuck with. And it's really not that huge of a restriction to be under, because the information is, after all, awfully skeletal.

Sort of Kind of Mostly Back

Novel's done. Finished. First draft, anyway.

Currently the big project is getting a group together for January. Still don't know how I'm going to go about teaching four new people to play D&D. Don't know how well that's going to work out, what the best way to do it is, any of it.

Currently I'm thinking, run a quick one or two session deal, pre-made adventure, something along the lines of The Burning Plague. Or write something like that, but I'm leaning towards just going with that, because that's the first adventure I ever played. Besides the rescuing unicorns from goblins junk, but that was just a two hour thing and really doesn't count. So there's sentimental value in that adventure, and of course that needs to be passed on, no matter how ridiculous it happens to be, what with it's plot that the players can't have.

And then after that, run an actual campaign, with new characters. Probably in the initial intro adventure, hand out pre-made characters, because it's a lot easier to teach the game than it is to teach character creation. (In my experience.) Then have people make characters, once they've got some idea of the mechanics of the game.

Writers Strike Video

Noticed that the Daily Show is in reruns? Wondering why the writers are striking? In a nutshell:

Who Does She Think She Is?

I think some of the Hillary-hatred arises simply because she's a woman -- and because that vulgar word, the one that rhymes with rich, is always available to describe a woman who gets a little too powerful, or acts like too much of a smarty-pants, or exudes a bit too much authority. That word isn't just a put-down, it's also a pointed question: Just who the hell does she think she is?

Goal For Running Combat

Based on comments on my last post on sequels, I've added another goal to my next campaign.

If it's heavy on the story side, tie the violence into the story. And even if it's not heavy on the story side--if it's more in the vein of those exploration campaigns I've been considering--tie the violence into that.

Not just in the "you must win to advance" sense. Have something story-related, or exploration related, happening during the fight. People switching sides, learning new and exciting things about antagonists, the characters are trying to execute some plan they've made. So there's a tactical level and a roleplaying, what would my character do level going on at the same time.

For exploration campaigns--I've never run anything like this, so my examples can't be pulled from my experience, as those are above. But the things you fight, and where you fight them, would reveal things about the location--you run into an owlbear, and that means there are owlbears in the area. Or you run into an owlbear, and you've never run into an owlbear in the area before, and you have fairly good reason to think that there are no owlbears in the area, that tells you something strange is going on.

More Thoughts on a Sequel

Make it epic. I've never done epic. Post-twenty, or close to it. That's where my thinking is right now. I may change my mind (and probably will) but it would definitely be different. I have never done epic before, or anything remotely close to it. Highest level I have ever run for is 10.

Though there are reasons why I have never run epic, and why it still might be a bad idea. Epic is hard; there's more to keep track of, more powers to take into account, more stats to keep track of. Combats last longer, and are more complicated.

Of course, I don't plan, at this point, to be running a combat heavy game. There will be some combat--this is Dungeons and Dragons we're talking about, but like the first one, I expect that a great deal of what the players accomplish in this campaign will be accomplished without much combat.

Sequel!

I'm thinking about running a sequel campaign. A couple of the players from the Is This Fair? . . . thing . . . want me to, and I think it could be kind of interesting. So I'm currently trying to figure out how to do that, in between the Massive Amounts of Stuff! that I have to do.

I ran another sequel campaign, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. And it was bad. Incredibly, indescribably, horrifyingly bad. But probably for reasons unrelated to its sequel-ness. I hope.

Mostly it was just kind of incoherent. I did a lot of prep for it, but didn't end up actually using any of it in the game. And there were incomprehensible scavenger hunts, revolving around ducks. Bad, bad, bad.

But this sequel, while I'm wary of muddling up the general awesomeness that was the original campaign, I think could work. Maybe, possibly. Currently pondering ways to increase the chances of that happening. The big one so far? Make it distinct. Set it years later, make significant changes to the characters (but keep as many of those old characters as possible) and make the action center on something very different from the original one.

Also: come up with a better name for the dang thing.

Lessons From The Internet

I'd rather be attacked competently than defended badly. There's nothing more painful than someone who agrees with you, but has no idea what they're talking about.

No, not even that.

Probably Not Too Hard

But still awesome.

Not In My Pie

Very little blogging of late. Been busy. NaNoWrimo, etc.

In other news: Some random dead guy just took over my novel.

Huh.

Serial Distractibility

Just as I decide to do NaNoWriMo, I start spinning out another campaign setting, this time a desert ruins exploration deal, in the style of the West Marches. I probably won't get far enough to actually be able to run it, but it'll keep me from using my downtime to work out bits and pieces of the novel.

Which I'm currently worried is not stupid enough to make a really good NaNoWriMo entry.

And this is in addition to planning campaigns way off in the mists of time, for next summer. Which are at least guaranteed to get run, unless I come up with some really cool idea two weeks before kick-off time and decide to go with it instead.

In other news: Roy is screwed. Check out that second sentence.

Regrettably Inspiring Title

Now I really want to write a novel (or something) called Saturday's Warrior. This is unfortunate.

It puts me in mind of a character. There is a person named Saturday, and this person has a warrior. Something of that nature. Not even the least bit related to what the title actually refers to.

Sort of like what happened when I heard Keep on the Borderlands for the first time.

Maybe I should write a novel containing the ideas that the title inspires, but call it something else. Give it a different title from the one I'm holding in my head.

Stuff I Found in Drafts

There are no stupid questions. Only questions that tend not to edification.

"Snakes are basically the funniest animals ever. Except maybe weasels. But weasels are basically just snakes with fur."

"I'd say he's about a 4.5, on a scale of 1 to Hitler."

Realism is over-rated.

Today, I wondered if I could kill myself with Metamucil.

Kung Pao Squid

Whack-a-Mole is a universal principle.