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
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
"Out of the Frying Pan"- Book IV - Into the Fire [STORY HOUR COMPLETED - 12/25/06]
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="el-remmen" data-source="post: 3245947" data-attributes="member: 11"><p><span style="font-size: 9px"><a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=3245934#post3245934" target="_blank">Click Here</a> to jump right to the last installment</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 22px"><strong>And so it ends…</strong></span></p><p></p><p>The “Out of the Frying Pan” Aquerra Campaign began in February of 2001. It was the attempt to replay the beginning of the same exact campaign and premise with a different group of recruited players that just never panned out – and then go on from there. And go on we did…</p><p></p><p> This time I recruited from old friends who were now available to play, friends of friends, and from both the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forumdisplay.php?f=49" target="_blank"><em>Gamers Seeking Gamers</em></a> forum here on the boards and the good old-fashioned sign in the local gaming store (though not quite “local” – the Compleat Strategist is in mid-town Manhattan, we play out in Brooklyn).</p><p></p><p>I began to write the story hour immediately after the first session, but it not only took me a while to find a pace and voice I was comfortable with in writing the thing, but I think the pacing and voice changed over the course of the five intervening years – whether it be the gruesome gore scenes of the zombie hordes in the Necropolis of Doom!!! Or, the long intricate debates the party often goes into whenever a course of action was not clear (which was often).</p><p></p><p>The campaign was just one month short of reaching five years of real time, and I just completed the story hour I began just about two months short of six years ago.</p><p></p><p>It took a lot of friggin’ effort, and there was a point where I went from just being a half-dozen sessions behind from the present, to being nearly 20 sessions behind (or more, have kind of forgotten). There was once a gap of about three months where I did not write at all, and then a late night watching of Fellowship of the Ring had me cranking out installments at 3 o’clock in the morning.</p><p></p><p>Did I mention it took a lot of friggin’ effort? Even now that I am done I am not sure how many pages the whole thing is. I still have not combined all the installments of the last “book”, however, I do know that the first three books combined are over 1000 pages (that is nearly five and half <em>hundred thousand</em> words!) </p><p></p><p>But it was so worth it! I (and my players) have a document of an awesome campaign - The longest I have ever run in Aquerra, and while it was being played the story hour actually helped create a better game – as I could use it as a means to remember old plot hooks and refer back to how I described things and had villains behave so there would be consistency.</p><p></p><p>Plus, it is hell of a whole lot of fun to go back and read portions of it. Sometimes I would go back to look up some detail and catch myself re-reading whole sections! And often the re-reading meant re-editing – which there was a lot of. I was constantly re-tweaking older installments and keep a compiled word doc where I have slowly posted each edited and annotated “book” as I got around to correcting them. And as it is, those documents are still being tweaked all the time, as I go back and find even more things that need correcting – mostly just typos or awkward grammar – but that doesn’t mean I have never gone back to correct mistakes in timelines, or the revelation of information that had not actually been revealed yet, and the like…</p><p></p><p>Finally, it was worth it just because it was such a great exercise in writing, and there were days I literally forced myself to write just one sentence more in hopes of getting over writing inertia, and often that worked – but other times it would languish at one sentence (or, if I was prolific, a paragraph a day) – but heck, at least I was writing every day.</p><p></p><p>I want to thank everyone who played in the “Out of the Frying Pan” campaign for creating and playing such great characters to write about. I want to give a special individual thanks to those players who kept a combat/occurrence log (Helene) and a quote log (EricM/Ciaran), and for those players who kept up with the former log, trading off to keep it going until someone else would volunteer to do it full-time – so eventually everyone did their part to help keep the records.</p><p></p><p>I also want to thank the early story hour writers who inspired me to start this thing (there were only like 3 or 4 ahead of me, but without them I would never have thought to start it). In fact, I think I am the first of that crop to still be written at this date to actually “finish”. </p><p></p><p>Finally, I want to thank all the people who have popped in and read this monster, whether it those who have been around since Day One (any of you still around?), those who popped in near the middle, went back and then caught up again, those of you who have only recently joined in, and those lurked the whole time and never commented once – though I want to thank everyone for their comments and questions as well.</p><p></p><p>There is still much work to be done. I need to finish editing Book Three, and I need to compile and edit Book Four. There are still two “reunion sessions” that were played six (and eight) months after the final session detailed here, that I may or may not write up. I have not decided. I really like the way this ends, and it might be best to keep it there. Not that the two reunion sessions were bad, they were a lot of fun, but just combat heavy and did not forward the plot so much, except by means of news the characters brought back with them from their individual trips. We’ll see…</p><p></p><p>I am greatly looking forward to my next Aquerra campaign, and as of this writing, I am planning of writing a story hour for that game as well. However, I will be starting grad school at the same time as that game is starting up, so we’ll see how much time I really have… But I really want to, as this next game is going to be more like typical Aquerra games than “Out of the Frying Pan” happened to be (more world-spanning), and will be taking place (at least at first) in one of my favorite places in Aquerra, the Magocracy of Thricia.</p><p></p><p>Thanks again to everyone… See ya in the funny papers! <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="el-remmen, post: 3245947, member: 11"] [size="1"][url=http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=3245934#post3245934]Click Here[/url] to jump right to the last installment[/size] [size=6][B]And so it ends…[/B][/size] The “Out of the Frying Pan” Aquerra Campaign began in February of 2001. It was the attempt to replay the beginning of the same exact campaign and premise with a different group of recruited players that just never panned out – and then go on from there. And go on we did… This time I recruited from old friends who were now available to play, friends of friends, and from both the [url=http://www.enworld.org/forumdisplay.php?f=49][I]Gamers Seeking Gamers[/I][/url] forum here on the boards and the good old-fashioned sign in the local gaming store (though not quite “local” – the Compleat Strategist is in mid-town Manhattan, we play out in Brooklyn). I began to write the story hour immediately after the first session, but it not only took me a while to find a pace and voice I was comfortable with in writing the thing, but I think the pacing and voice changed over the course of the five intervening years – whether it be the gruesome gore scenes of the zombie hordes in the Necropolis of Doom!!! Or, the long intricate debates the party often goes into whenever a course of action was not clear (which was often). The campaign was just one month short of reaching five years of real time, and I just completed the story hour I began just about two months short of six years ago. It took a lot of friggin’ effort, and there was a point where I went from just being a half-dozen sessions behind from the present, to being nearly 20 sessions behind (or more, have kind of forgotten). There was once a gap of about three months where I did not write at all, and then a late night watching of Fellowship of the Ring had me cranking out installments at 3 o’clock in the morning. Did I mention it took a lot of friggin’ effort? Even now that I am done I am not sure how many pages the whole thing is. I still have not combined all the installments of the last “book”, however, I do know that the first three books combined are over 1000 pages (that is nearly five and half [I]hundred thousand[/I] words!) But it was so worth it! I (and my players) have a document of an awesome campaign - The longest I have ever run in Aquerra, and while it was being played the story hour actually helped create a better game – as I could use it as a means to remember old plot hooks and refer back to how I described things and had villains behave so there would be consistency. Plus, it is hell of a whole lot of fun to go back and read portions of it. Sometimes I would go back to look up some detail and catch myself re-reading whole sections! And often the re-reading meant re-editing – which there was a lot of. I was constantly re-tweaking older installments and keep a compiled word doc where I have slowly posted each edited and annotated “book” as I got around to correcting them. And as it is, those documents are still being tweaked all the time, as I go back and find even more things that need correcting – mostly just typos or awkward grammar – but that doesn’t mean I have never gone back to correct mistakes in timelines, or the revelation of information that had not actually been revealed yet, and the like… Finally, it was worth it just because it was such a great exercise in writing, and there were days I literally forced myself to write just one sentence more in hopes of getting over writing inertia, and often that worked – but other times it would languish at one sentence (or, if I was prolific, a paragraph a day) – but heck, at least I was writing every day. I want to thank everyone who played in the “Out of the Frying Pan” campaign for creating and playing such great characters to write about. I want to give a special individual thanks to those players who kept a combat/occurrence log (Helene) and a quote log (EricM/Ciaran), and for those players who kept up with the former log, trading off to keep it going until someone else would volunteer to do it full-time – so eventually everyone did their part to help keep the records. I also want to thank the early story hour writers who inspired me to start this thing (there were only like 3 or 4 ahead of me, but without them I would never have thought to start it). In fact, I think I am the first of that crop to still be written at this date to actually “finish”. Finally, I want to thank all the people who have popped in and read this monster, whether it those who have been around since Day One (any of you still around?), those who popped in near the middle, went back and then caught up again, those of you who have only recently joined in, and those lurked the whole time and never commented once – though I want to thank everyone for their comments and questions as well. There is still much work to be done. I need to finish editing Book Three, and I need to compile and edit Book Four. There are still two “reunion sessions” that were played six (and eight) months after the final session detailed here, that I may or may not write up. I have not decided. I really like the way this ends, and it might be best to keep it there. Not that the two reunion sessions were bad, they were a lot of fun, but just combat heavy and did not forward the plot so much, except by means of news the characters brought back with them from their individual trips. We’ll see… I am greatly looking forward to my next Aquerra campaign, and as of this writing, I am planning of writing a story hour for that game as well. However, I will be starting grad school at the same time as that game is starting up, so we’ll see how much time I really have… But I really want to, as this next game is going to be more like typical Aquerra games than “Out of the Frying Pan” happened to be (more world-spanning), and will be taking place (at least at first) in one of my favorite places in Aquerra, the Magocracy of Thricia. Thanks again to everyone… See ya in the funny papers! :) [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
"Out of the Frying Pan"- Book IV - Into the Fire [STORY HOUR COMPLETED - 12/25/06]
Top