Magnum Opus?

[Memnoch3434]

Since I am new here I am not sure if there is a forum for this but I thought this might be a fun discussion. What has been your greatest Campaign so far? As a player or a DM (or both).

Player: The general outline of the game was part of a 3 part campaign series. Each part was a prequel to the last. We called this game 12, and it involved us hunting down prisoner 12. It was a Homebrew d20 system where we used D&D feats and features to create characters that evolved in a "Fable" type fashion. Sadly it died off when we just stopped playing and the characters starting infighting over a particular artifact.

DM: I made a random superhero campaign introducing a new Supervillaness. Characters picked sides and we went from there. What made it interesting is I tempted the neutral soul sucking character (PC) to evil (with a 1 time 5 round use of Supermans soul, who was dead after being shot with a Kryptonite machine gun and kicked into a black hole.) The PC then got into a fight with Satan, got to -20 (because he was superman he did not die) and managed to take his soul. Thus what was my campaign of general superhero fun became a game about the coming of the Apocalypse (as in the villian), but with a religious biblical twist. The campaign ended when a character accidently threw the spear of destiny into the arc of the covanant. whoops.

 

[Haltherrion]

My co-ref loves the idea of turning someone to evil. Kudos for succeeding; he hasn't managed to do it yet

My favorite setting was an elaborate one where the surface of the world had been set into the heavens as shards and the PCs were a mix of half-angels, half-demons, saints and the like. We didn't finish it due to my relocation to another state but it was a lot of fun.

My favorite completed campaign was a level 1 to level 12 "save the world". It was AD&D2 IIRC. Players started on a floating island that was impoverished, isolated and poor. They found a portal that took them off their island, learned that their were two gods interdicted by the creator of the world for over-meddling in mortal affairs. The evil one of the pair was waking from the interdiction first. They had to find the good one and wake her before the evil one created mayhem. I co-ref'd that game and the back and forth of the two refs proved very fun. One ref would setup the next section and the next would flesh it out.

For instance, I setup the concept of a stair that needed to be ascended to get to the heavens. The other ref then picked it up and created something competely different than what I had in mind (a six mile high stair that went from the current mean level of the earth to the level of what used to be the surface- the gods were naughty and stripped the world into the heavens. That's how they got interdicted. )

 

[ThirdWizard]

It was a Planescape game based in Sigil with only two players. It started in '98 in 2nd edition and ran until '08 in 3.5. The PCs were a Fated from the Grey Wastes and a druid from the Beastlands, who then was replaced by a Signer wizard. They were all kinds of shades of gray, sometimes getting darker, but with evil adversaries always. They lived on the darker side of Sigil, black markets, assassinations, that kind of thing. Often they would have adventures on the planes, retrieving something or exploring or whatever.

Eventually they ran across a series of immensely large interconnected temples, one on each plane, each with a gate to four other temples in each of its corners. Deep in the temples, they could access an area with a doorway to a vast dark nothingness with a man in the center and doors all around leading to various temples they had "activated." As they traveled from temple to temple, most of which were controlled by powerful groups or creatures, they would activate the temples one by one in order to try and stop their nemisis from achieving his goals. They also found the creators of the temples, a long dead race with only three survivors other than their nemesis.

They led armies of raging barbarians of Ysgard against devils. They fought demon lieutenants in the very seats of their power. They acquired artifacts of immense power and danger. They were forced to work with vile creatures who could have kill them without hesitation, only to go back when they had gained more power and kill them in revenge. They gained holdings: a town of researchers in Mechanus and a mithril mine in the Plane of Air. They had a gargantuan bulette who lived at the bottom of a tower in Sigil which they "obtained" from an illithid brain dealer. They played Sigil politics against Rowan Darkwood himself and didn't end up dead. They parlayed with paladins who lived on the 7th layer of Mount Celestia. They went up against a warlord who had the power to fling the cubes of Acheron at each other. They saw the creation of the multiverse and the rise of the mortal races.

In the end, they defeated their nemesis, learned his secrets, and found the final temple: the Spire of the Outlands itself. They entered and climbed it and met with the chained god of the tier, the race who had created the temples to the god that they turned against. And the planes were changed forever.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

My current Shackled City campaign is definitely my Magnum Opus to date. We've been running for about 2 1/4 years (including a 7 month break due to the birth of one of my little ones ), are about 2/3rds of the way through and still going strong. I'm definitely not burnt out as a DM either, which is good.

I'm getting to the point now where some of the very early foreshadowing that went on is now starting to come to the fore again. Some of the things that happened early on in the campaign to the players will soon start to make a lot more sense as the big picture comes into view. I'm really looking forward to the players' reactions when some of the big reveal moments occur.

As a player my Magnum Opus probably would have been a homebrew game set in a Medieval Earth. I played a young and naive Knight Templar who was most definitely still wet behind the ears. The final battle of that campaign involved us travelling to a plane of hell for reasons that I can't quite recall. That was definitely a lot of fun and the DM certainly invested a lot of time into the campaign.

The other occurrance would have been an adventure run by a great DM that involved a marionette show that wasn't quite what it seemed. Unfortunately he only ran our group for a couple of sessions before he got too busy and had to give up the chair. If he had run a game for me for any great length of time I think that defintiely would have been my player Magnum Opus. He certainly knew how to run a good game.

Olaf the Stout