Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Against the Black City (Homebrew Campaign) Post-Mortem
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Retreater" data-source="post: 8542277" data-attributes="member: 42040"><p>Each time a campaign ends, I try to learn from it. This one is very different from my other post-mortems, because it’s a deeply personal one to me, where I get to analyze my failures as a writer, game designer, and DM. It may not be especially valuable to you if you’re wanting to run an official mega-campaign, but maybe you can glean something from how I designed it, what worked, what went wrong. </p><p></p><p><strong>About My Design History</strong></p><p>Like many DMs I have long dreamed of publishing my adventures. I tried to self-publish my first RPG when I was still in middle school, fresh off my experience with Palladium’s TMNT and Other Strangeness. I made a game, drew the illustrations, made a dozen copies, and put it in a three-ring binder. The local game store of course wouldn’t put it on their shelf.</p><p>Fast-forward about fifteen years later, and I got my first professional module published. It was a 3.x edition adventure for levels 1-11ish, by a reputable 3PP (“The Coils of Set” if you’d like to look it up. The PDFs are still on DriveThru). </p><p>Anyway, after that adventure got pretty good reviews and I got to interact with gamers across the world about their campaigns, I set to work on writing a huge campaign, inspired by the region I live in, a realistic karst typography cave network with a layered history and epic story: “Against the Black City.” </p><p>I got about 75% finished with it when WotC announced 4e. 3PPs put a hold on all publication of 3.5 products. I had to shelve the project for a time. When Pathfinder was announced, I could start the minor revisions to update it to the new system and try to find a new publisher.</p><p>But then real life happened. I got married. Then I had medical issues. Then I got divorced and my wife deleted my files. All that work was gone.</p><p>I tried to piece it together over the years, running bits and pieces of the campaign across 3.x, Pathfinder, 4e, Dungeon World, 5e. But then something unexpected happened: I found a backup of the lost files. </p><p>My publishing contacts nowadays are affiliated with the OSR, so I thought converting the adventure to an OSR system would take less work and be truer to the original experience. It was time to get to work, updating the text, stats, maps, etc. And then to find a group to play it.</p><p></p><p><strong>The Basic Plot - A Tale as Old as … Well, My Life</strong></p><p>I drew a lot from my life experience. The backstory included two dwarven brothers who disappointed their father in different ways. The eldest son left the dwarven kingdom to find glory in battle and returned home changed, addicted to a dark power while the younger son stayed behind and tried to keep everything together, but was ineffectual and weak. The weakness meant that the dwarven kingdom was atrophied. (I'll let you make any inferences you want about my family dynamics, but I can say that I'm the weaker brother. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> )</p><p>In the earlier playtests, the younger son (Harrumah) relied on the cheap labor of orcs to bolster the dying numbers of the dwarves, but this always ended up a problem where every group (rightly) wanted to free the orcs and kill off the “good” dwarves. It probably took me 10 years to realize that you can’t make slave labor something the good guys practice. I cut this and made it so that the dwarves had eventually died off, with the exception of Harrumah, who still lives in an almost rock elemental form, extending his life.</p><p></p><p><strong>The Adventure Itself</strong></p><p>The Fallen Thane Ashen (the older brother) lived in his corrupted state and founded the city of Maelgrym with his loyalist dwarves, who didn’t want to live in the weakened leadership of Harrumah. The surface world, just starting to get repopulated with humans, knows nothing of the family dynamics under their feet. Ashen begins testing his weapons of war on the surface, preparing to attack the weakened kingdom of his brother (not knowing the last of them died off decades ago). This gets the surface world involved to descend into the forgotten dead city of Harrumah’s dwarves and eventually discovering Maelgrym and Ashen.</p><p></p><p><strong>Lessons Learned</strong></p><p><em>No Mystery Is Worth Motivation</em></p><p>I tried to hide Ashen and the Grym dwarves in many versions of this campaign, but I’ve found that it’s good to introduce the conflict early to hook the party and make them realize what’s going on. No “big reveal” is worth keeping the players in the dark. In fact, I found ways for Ashen to harass the party (from a safe distance, of course) just so he can be an ever-present villain. </p><p></p><p><em>Taking Advantage of Cheap Labor Is Something No Good Culture Would Do</em></p><p>This is a “duh” point, but it took me nearly a decade to understand why my players wouldn’t side with Harrumah.</p><p></p><p><em>Dead Cultures Are Great Sources of World Building and Information</em></p><p>Having plaques and statues in the dead dwarven city (Zwaarhold) was a great way to pepper the setting with information about the historic conflict and give the party information about what to expect. It could be easily avoided by groups who just want to get to the action.</p><p></p><p><strong>What’s Next?</strong></p><p>I do have a 5e adventure at a publisher, but I can’t really talk about it right now. It’s not this one, though. I still have aspirations of cleaning up this mega-adventure. I’m currently running bits of it with my wife and a few of her friends (first time gamers) we met at a bar a couple months ago. They’re getting ready to make their first descent into Zwaardhold this weekend. I’ll see how it holds up and if I can apply anything I’ve learned from the many other times I’ve run this campaign (and all the others I’ve been writing about on these boards.)</p><p></p><p>Hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my homebrew campaign. I’m happy to share any information with you or take any advice.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Retreater, post: 8542277, member: 42040"] Each time a campaign ends, I try to learn from it. This one is very different from my other post-mortems, because it’s a deeply personal one to me, where I get to analyze my failures as a writer, game designer, and DM. It may not be especially valuable to you if you’re wanting to run an official mega-campaign, but maybe you can glean something from how I designed it, what worked, what went wrong. [B]About My Design History[/B] Like many DMs I have long dreamed of publishing my adventures. I tried to self-publish my first RPG when I was still in middle school, fresh off my experience with Palladium’s TMNT and Other Strangeness. I made a game, drew the illustrations, made a dozen copies, and put it in a three-ring binder. The local game store of course wouldn’t put it on their shelf. Fast-forward about fifteen years later, and I got my first professional module published. It was a 3.x edition adventure for levels 1-11ish, by a reputable 3PP (“The Coils of Set” if you’d like to look it up. The PDFs are still on DriveThru). Anyway, after that adventure got pretty good reviews and I got to interact with gamers across the world about their campaigns, I set to work on writing a huge campaign, inspired by the region I live in, a realistic karst typography cave network with a layered history and epic story: “Against the Black City.” I got about 75% finished with it when WotC announced 4e. 3PPs put a hold on all publication of 3.5 products. I had to shelve the project for a time. When Pathfinder was announced, I could start the minor revisions to update it to the new system and try to find a new publisher. But then real life happened. I got married. Then I had medical issues. Then I got divorced and my wife deleted my files. All that work was gone. I tried to piece it together over the years, running bits and pieces of the campaign across 3.x, Pathfinder, 4e, Dungeon World, 5e. But then something unexpected happened: I found a backup of the lost files. My publishing contacts nowadays are affiliated with the OSR, so I thought converting the adventure to an OSR system would take less work and be truer to the original experience. It was time to get to work, updating the text, stats, maps, etc. And then to find a group to play it. [B]The Basic Plot - A Tale as Old as … Well, My Life[/B] I drew a lot from my life experience. The backstory included two dwarven brothers who disappointed their father in different ways. The eldest son left the dwarven kingdom to find glory in battle and returned home changed, addicted to a dark power while the younger son stayed behind and tried to keep everything together, but was ineffectual and weak. The weakness meant that the dwarven kingdom was atrophied. (I'll let you make any inferences you want about my family dynamics, but I can say that I'm the weaker brother. ;) ) In the earlier playtests, the younger son (Harrumah) relied on the cheap labor of orcs to bolster the dying numbers of the dwarves, but this always ended up a problem where every group (rightly) wanted to free the orcs and kill off the “good” dwarves. It probably took me 10 years to realize that you can’t make slave labor something the good guys practice. I cut this and made it so that the dwarves had eventually died off, with the exception of Harrumah, who still lives in an almost rock elemental form, extending his life. [B]The Adventure Itself[/B] The Fallen Thane Ashen (the older brother) lived in his corrupted state and founded the city of Maelgrym with his loyalist dwarves, who didn’t want to live in the weakened leadership of Harrumah. The surface world, just starting to get repopulated with humans, knows nothing of the family dynamics under their feet. Ashen begins testing his weapons of war on the surface, preparing to attack the weakened kingdom of his brother (not knowing the last of them died off decades ago). This gets the surface world involved to descend into the forgotten dead city of Harrumah’s dwarves and eventually discovering Maelgrym and Ashen. [B]Lessons Learned[/B] [I]No Mystery Is Worth Motivation[/I] I tried to hide Ashen and the Grym dwarves in many versions of this campaign, but I’ve found that it’s good to introduce the conflict early to hook the party and make them realize what’s going on. No “big reveal” is worth keeping the players in the dark. In fact, I found ways for Ashen to harass the party (from a safe distance, of course) just so he can be an ever-present villain. [I]Taking Advantage of Cheap Labor Is Something No Good Culture Would Do[/I] This is a “duh” point, but it took me nearly a decade to understand why my players wouldn’t side with Harrumah. [I]Dead Cultures Are Great Sources of World Building and Information[/I] Having plaques and statues in the dead dwarven city (Zwaarhold) was a great way to pepper the setting with information about the historic conflict and give the party information about what to expect. It could be easily avoided by groups who just want to get to the action. [B]What’s Next?[/B] I do have a 5e adventure at a publisher, but I can’t really talk about it right now. It’s not this one, though. I still have aspirations of cleaning up this mega-adventure. I’m currently running bits of it with my wife and a few of her friends (first time gamers) we met at a bar a couple months ago. They’re getting ready to make their first descent into Zwaardhold this weekend. I’ll see how it holds up and if I can apply anything I’ve learned from the many other times I’ve run this campaign (and all the others I’ve been writing about on these boards.) Hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my homebrew campaign. I’m happy to share any information with you or take any advice. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Against the Black City (Homebrew Campaign) Post-Mortem
Top