I'm gaming again! also, how to make a simpler campaign?

[zyzzyr]

Hi everyone,

I am starting up a new campaign and I'm really happy to say that I'm back!

I haven't played now in over a year and a bit. I had two groups -- one of which fell apart due to time issues, and the other which fell apart since the storyline was a little too complicated. Also, half the group moved across the country.

I've recently hooked up a Teamspeak server (www.goteamspeak.com) which allows us to communicate by voice, real-time, for free -- i.e. no long distance charges. We've decided to get the group back together and game over our computers.

So as DM, it's fallen to me to plan the new campaign. The last one was overly complex -- we played about once a month, and sometimes adventures would take almost a year to get through. Combat was unwieldy with 20 - 30 combatants. The world was also too big.

I'd like to plan a new campaign, in a smaller, simpler world. I'd like the adventures to fit within a single 3 - 4 hour session, from start to finish. I want the plot to be easy enough to follow, the villains to be easily identified, the battles to be small but interesting.

What I've been thinking about is to move the minutia into email. I'd like to start the adventure, on the mikes, once the adventurers are at the entrance to the dungeon (or area), and end the adventure once they get to the end (or bottom). Then in an email, I would follow up with what people wanted to do in town, etc. I would also take a few more liberties with travel -- in a typical gaming session I would roleplay travel, along with who you interact with, watch order, etc. but over the mikes I'd just make up what happened on my own (based on some die rolls) to keep only the interesting stuff.

Where I'm stuck is that I'll need a pile of short but interesting adventures. I can only come up with a few 5 - 8 room dungeons that are interesting to a motley group of 3 - 5 treasure seekers. Keeping in mind of course that we want to keep all adventures to 3 - 4 hours! I'm also a bit stretched to keep small but interesting battles, within small but interesting dungeons!

Finally, I am struggling a bit to come up with a small but interesting campaign world for the adventures to take place in! I don't want to do anything quite so simplistic as an island nation since I do want some inter-nation intrigue and mystery -- I was thnking 8 - 10 countries would be ideal.

Any help on these are appreciated, and it's great to be back!

Zyzzyr

 

[Terwox]

It almost sounds like you're just looking for a typical dungeon crawl module -- or maybe even something funny like the World Largest Dungeon, although it's a hundred dollar buy-in for that.

Alternatively, you could just use Jamis Buck's dungeon generator, get some ideas for a dungeon and why the PCs would want to go there, change the create layout and dungeon theme a bit, and have a little random exercise, dumping in whatever traps/etc you want. Might also be easy, if you're on teamspeak, to connect with microsoft onenote or ... netspeak? something that lets you share a whiteboard to draw little diagrams on.

 

[zyzzyr]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

A dungeon crawl is exactly what I'm trying to avoid, actually. What I'm trying to do is build a bunch of 12 rooms or less areas, each of them interesting and strongly story-based, and each with very interesting or unique features. One question would be, for example: why would small dungeons exist? One case would be something like a small, old temple, or perhaps a mid-level sorcerer's abode. But how to integrate this with orcs and goblins and so on? Perhaps shrines instead of temples, animal lairs instead of dwarven ruins?

As to connectivity, I was going to use OpenRPG but it was a little too steep a learning curve, so instead I thought I would set up a table, use miniatures, then use a webcam to take a picture of mini location.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I think it could be good to link the various episodes together in some way?

Have a story connecting the various dungeons that the PCs can uncover as they go along. Keeps things episodic, but builds a larger backstory.

A good schtick for the dungeons could be that they're all from a particular time period. Allows for leeway for the types of locations - pretty much the ones you've suggested - but has a common theme.

As an intial hook for the players, they could be the remains of a rich and now lost civilisation. Either they could be up for randomly looting one they've heard about or they could be searching for something specific. Have someone hire them to do this?

To make for some interesting challenges, rival treasure hunters - I think a goblinoid tribe would fit. They're also looking for stuff in some of the same locations the PCs are. Makes for some interesting 3 way fights between the PCs, dungeon occupants and the goblinoids... Course they're really working for someone else, etc, etc.

Not sure about a setting. Kalamar is a fair sized continent rather than a whole world. There's quite a bit of intrigue, but it'd be quite easy just to focus on a small part of it. Homebrewing might be easier?

 

[Stormborn]

How about each of the small dungeons is in actuallity an abandoned shrine to a god of an ancient pantheon. Those gods are no longer worshipped, but the PCs have been hired to reclaim the inner idol from each for some collector. The idols in each shrine has been attracting various creatures associated with or antitheitcal to the god. Thus a Shrine to the Goddess of Nature is filled with Shambling Mounds and other plant creatures while the Shrine to the God of Light has been taken over by shades and undead who were drawn their by their hatred for the god. The Shrine of the God of Theives may now serve as a HQ for a local gang of bandits who have no idea that there are hidden rooms.

This would allow you to introduce different themes to each location and different challanges. They could each be fairly small, widelly seperated over the lands where the old pantheon was worshipped, and that would give the PCs reason to travel to each location.

An alterantive possibility is have the PCs be Monster Hunters for hire, going to the dens of different monsters to either collect samples for study or just to collect the reward.

 

[zyzzyr]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the awesome ideas. It's spawning a whole bunch of associated ideas. I think I can pull this off.

As for world, I am going to use the "Morrowind" province from the Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind video game. Small province with only 6 or so countries, removed from anything too large so as to avoid any complications. There are Daedra (demon) and Dwemer (Dwarf) ruins scattered all over the world, so lots of stuff to explore in a dungeon-crawling fashion. I can turn the Daedra ruins to be specific to each Daedra, and same with the Dwemer ruins.

The idea I had for campaign world was: least work possible. Morrowind has tons of stuff already written, all the cities and villages laid out, locations of shrines, ruins, an interesting backstory, and best of all, I can take screenshots from the game and send them to the players to show them what the town looks like rather than just trying to describe it!

Thanks -- I think I might go with a "spell component hunting" group that needs to get unique components, and of course there are rival groups!

Thanks a ton!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I did something similar a few years back online (although TeamSpeak would be vastly better than Java chat rooms, which is what I used).

For me, I mostly concentrated on having a very small and discrete area for the campaigns. The most successful was based in the Five Shires of Mystara, and I found the narrow focus allowed for a lot of short adventures that still hung together well. (Another was set in a rural area of Karameikos to the east, with a different set of characters.) One week was trying to find a rare book that was supposed to be delivered to a dealer, another was spent trying to find out who was killing livestock at a country fair, etc. Thus we had variety in playstyles but there was a strong thread running through the adventures.

The small nature of the region also meant it was easy to create well fleshed-out NPCs on the fly -- that barmaid I created one week at the spur of the moment ended up appearing nearly every week, since they were regularly swinging by the same inn, etc.

 

[philreed]

Sounds like you need a subscription to Dungeon!

http://www.paizo.com/dungeon


And you may want to try my rumors PDFs. Inexpensive and packed with adventure ideas. In fact, this one is currently on sale for less than $1.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=3087