Does everything you present in a campaign actually have to be the current adventure or side quest?

Does it need an answer?

Recently I was reading Creepy... and some of the storyhours I keep up with, as well as several old Forgotten Realms "Ask the designers..." threads over at Candlekeep.

One of the things that struck me was "unsolved mysteries."

Many game systems, especially contemporary ones, try to make the rules clear, and cover a wide variety of possibilities

That understanding and awareness of the rules can often take away from the mystique, otherness, and tension a campaign setting/rpg world can provide.

Dropping strange, unexplained, weird, creepy and odd occurences into the lives of the characters can enhance the players' interest in the world, driving them to investigate and seek answers, but also to be wary.

More importantly, it keeps the players from getting blasé about encounters, and allows the Gamemaster to be creative and add color to his world.

On that note, I think for my next campaign I am going to drop at least one strange, disturbing, or simply unexplained event/occurence per session.

I will keep track of them, and if the PCs show interest, I will develop them in some way. Some may remain unexplainable, but may lead PCs in certain directions, while others may lead to confrontations or encounters of a more meaty nature.

Even if the PCs don't show interest, if I find the imagery particularly appealing, I may bring it back occasionally to tempt or frighten the PCs.

Even the Gamemaster, who plays the whole world, has to have things in the world that even he doesn't know the answer to.

The_Warlock

It doesn't matter what side of the D&D front line you are on or defending...

If you want a group/team resolution system that is desgned for a system that uses the fabulous 20-sided die...

Check out Stalker0's Obsidian System.

The_Warlock

Hmmm, Blogging. Never really cared for it. Generally didn't find it useful for me, unless I had a specific task to do, like playtesting or something, and then I used a forum dedicated to the playtesters, or what not.

I suppose I'll give this a try though...(kick) (kick). This is new, shiny, the tires have no wear.

Ok...where to begin...or should I say...re-begin...

I am not fond of 4E. I use that term because it's somewhere between distaste and apathy. I can't say I hate it, that would ascribe too much emotion. But I do hate, with the fiery passion of a poorly Star Trekkified Ricardo Montalban, the campaign world and cosmological changes that have followed in it's wake.

Now, let's backtrack...I favor The Forgotten Realms as my fantasy campaign setting of choice. I fell in love with it with the first Grey Box. And I just concluded a 13 year campaign, which culminated in heroic victory for the PCs in February of this year.

But my relationship with the campaign setting has been one of ever increasing dislike over those years. Not becasue of my campaign, but because of the directions and lack of utility of the product I hoped would support it.

There were of course some gems, but both TSR and WotC took the setting in directions that became less and less useful to a non-organized play GM.

This is primarily because of the dreaded metaplot, and novelized canon. Was I somehow forced to use material? No, that's silly. But I found less and less utility, because both companies advanced the campaign plot in directions that made it more and more work to use the material with plotlines that had evolved in my campaign.

Well, that, and some of it was just uninspired rehashing of world content to put more rules I didn't need into the game system.

So, bleah.

I actually gave up on new FR materials before 4E and the "Gamma Realms" reboot was announced...that data point just confirmed that that was a direction I was not interested in.

Thus, I've decided to go back in time. (Cue Huey Lewis & The News)

Remember that 13 year long campaign I mentioned? Well, the enemy was a foul god from beyond the world that was actually just a nightmare of a more distant and ancient god that had been put to sleep on a far distant world.

At the end of it all, the PCs discovered that all they had fought through was actually a nightmare that every person in the world had succumbed to. With the defeat of the entity, they awoke to find themselves strange shadows of the people they had imagined to be, and chose to leave the world behind for the Realm of Dreams.

Doing so, they set to rights the world and undid the terrible dreams become real power of the ancient deity.

Leaving it 1357, The Year of the Prince.

Where do I go from here? Well, I'm working on cleaning up the system I will use mechanically for future campaigns, which will likely be shorter overall.

But, am I throwing out all the history of the prior 13 years of real time played?

No, actually...

As I ignore the metaplot, and novelized materials, and excessive RSE's (Realms Shaking Events, for the untutored) which I don't like and start from a clean slate, people of my future campaigns, PC & NPC, will have vague recollections of the terrible nightmare. There will be some impact, prophetic and otherwise, on the game world regarding what sages will begin referring to as "The UnDreamt War".

Someone said recently that setting reboots are good. I'm beginning to agree.

Change is good. It's all about making it the kind of change that works for you.

This works for me.

The_Warlock