What flavor does your campaign have?

[hong]

Do you find that Robert E. Howard mixes well with Tolkien? I enjoy them both, but I don't see them mixing well.

"Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Numenor and the gleaming cities, and in the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars -- Arthedain, Rhudaur, Cardolan, Rhovanion, Lothlorien with its pointy-eared women and towers of elf-haunted mystery, Dol Amroth with its chivalry, Dunland that bordered on the pastoral lands of Eriador, Mordor with its rather intemperate weather, Rohan whose riders wore leather and burlap and lice. But the proudest kingdom was Gondor, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Bilbo of the Shire, the hobbit, black-haired, furtive-eyed, pipe in hand, a gentleman, a burglar, with diminutive stature and light-fingered ways, to tread the neverending roads of the Earth under his hairy feet."

 

[Oracular Vision]

Well, I thought it would be fun to use the fan-made spelljammer rules (the new module wasn't out then) to take my party on a quest to save the known worlds from the planet-killing monster sent by Gruumash to aid the orcs in their wars against the elves...So, I took Hepmonaland from Greyhawk, and popluated the whole island (later, I found that someone had made a half-hearted version of this, but it was inferior to even my player notes), had them run through the Sunless Citadel, and Three Days to Kill, and a few other modules to get the 3rd edition bugs out, out into space where they went to the Rock of Bral and bought things and learned of the danger, and then they went off to use a Tinker Gnome device along with a piece of the heart of Gruumash to warp to...The Living Jungle! Boy did they have the wrong equipment, too hot to wear much armor, and its a magic-poor place so I made all magic less powerful, and they had to find fetishes to use magic, and the clerics could not get in touch with their gods, and have to beg the elemental gods for a domain, and there are dinosaurs (not the anemic ones in the PHB, my own conversions using the excellent "Creating a Monster" article in I think it was Dragon), and so on, and if they ever find the second piece, they will end up in Athas, the Dark Sun setting, during the quest for the Heartwood Spear there, so it will be an even bigger culture shock, and after that they should end up on the Massive Spelljammer itself, which should take them to 20th level...

Its been very interesting, to say the least. I think the 3rd edition rules work pretty well up to about 7th or 8th level, then things start to break...but you can fix them as they come up, so they are up to 10th level. I average a player death usually my son, every other game. Fewer in the Living Jungle, I expect more in Athas...

 

[Alcamtar]

"Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Numenor and the gleaming cities, and in the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars -- Arthedain, Rhudaur, Cardolan, Rhovanion, Lothlorien with its pointy-eared women and towers of elf-haunted mystery, Dol Amroth with its chivalry, Dunland that bordered on the pastoral lands of Eriador, Mordor with its rather intemperate weather, Rohan whose riders wore leather and burlap and lice. But the proudest kingdom was Gondor, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Bilbo of the Shire, the hobbit, black-haired, furtive-eyed, pipe in hand, a gentleman, a burglar, with diminutive stature and light-fingered ways, to tread the neverending roads of the Earth under his hairy feet."

LOL!! THAT is priceless!

 

[Gez]

D&D presents a hodge-podge of unrelated ideas from many different sources. The character races -- and the staple cannon fodder, orcs -- come from Tolkien's Middle Earth. The magic system (prepared spells), some of the spells (Color Spray), and the spell naming conventions (e.g. Tenser's Floating Disk) come from Jack Vance's Dying Earth. Monsters come from all sorts of sources, as do individual spells. The basic adventure, the dungeon crawl, is a mix of Tolkien's Mines of Moria and the ruins that litter Vance's Dying Earth and Robert E. Howard's Hyboria.

D&D clearly inherits ideas from many sources. Does your campaign embrace this "unique blend of flavors", or does your campaign aim for a Tolkien-esque flavor, a Conan-esque flavor, or even First-Edition flavor?

How could you forgot the alignment from Moorcock and the unrelated wilderness adventures and character classes from Leiber (The Grey Mouser is how I have always explained thieves, and now rogues, being able to use magic items -- of course he was closer to a multiclassed character...).

 

[Schmoe]

At its basic level, my campaign is grim, grimy, and cruel. The base struggles of living are evident at every turn. Juxtaposed against that, there is true wonder in the world, if one simply knows to look in the right places. Beneath it all is a Cthulhu-esque undertone providing darkness, and the threat of madness and destruction.

The grim&gritty aspect provides a base-line against which all else is measured. The dark undertones provide the threats against which heroes are measured. The wonder provides a reason for the heroes to prevail.

 

[Plane Sailing]

My campaign is influenced by LeGuin's Earthsea books, by Howards Hyboria, by Lovecraftian Cthulhu-ness and Hong-Kong action movies.

Seriously.

Why not come and read about it in my storyhour(s) - links in the .sig...

 

[Rune]

the trick to making it work is that it is also realistic. I aim for a high level verisimilitude within the confines of the setting. I am asking for my players to suspend a great deal of disbelief and they simply couldn't do it if I didn't have a strong grounding in reality.

So, even with random shifting seasons and periods when everything is in black and white, even when the actions of the PCs and NPCs randomly change the face of the world, and even when the divine casters can't be sure which personality of their deity that they are praying to, my players can believe in it.

It's tricky, but it's necessary.

Hell, I'm planning on running a game of Kalamar set in The Dream during the summer. If that's not a great mix of verisimilitude and surrealism, I don't know what is (and it might also show all of you naysayers that Kalamar is interesting and a lot can be done with it! ).

I also tend to slip in elements of horror, even when I'm not running a horror game.

And that's pretty much it. I'm running an occassional game of Call of Cthulhu which is, understandably, much more horror and less surreal, but it's still got its surreal elements.

I am thinking of trying something new this summer. I'm planning on running a play-by-email game set in The Dream that is not horror, but rather, swashbuckling adventure. I hope I can do it!

 

[Information]

Now come on, I would expect a Barry Manilow soundtrack at least.

Manilow is an Uber-Deity in my campaign. He fathered the deities in a primordial realm known as the Copacobana.

 

[arcseed]

While I have my players way over their heads dealing with things that are way too powerful for them to handle, somehow I manage to avoid dark and grim. I'm not quite sure how I do it, or if I'm really happy with it that way, but that's how it came out, and my players evidently see it too, considering the shirt they gave me for Christmas. (Warning: Dungeon Master whimsical when bored)

I think it's probably that I give them the dark feeling when they're dealing with the dead gods, but when they're adventuring around contemporary stuff I give the campaign a lot more lighthearted feel.

Probably a big contributor to that is their mutually profitable relationship with an ancient green dragon, whose help they needed to destroy an artifact, and who they've done a couple jobs for. They've started thinking of him as a friend. He's at least acted nicer than their other patron, the Duke.

And when that comes around to bite them in the ass, the feel might change a bit.

Probably the biggest influence on my campaign is Patricia C. Wrede's Lyra books, which, now that I think of it, have that same feel-- they're lightheared romantic comedies in a somewhat dark world.

Oh, and I ripped off the Tombs of Atuan for the first of the dead Gods' temples. And really, the whole 'dead gods' plot is an outgrowth of wanting to use that dungeon...

 

[ConcreteBuddha]

"What flavor does your campaign have?"


All of the good and neutral gods are either dead or imprisoned and the evil gods are using the material plane as their battlefield for a war of supremacy.
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Mwhahahaha...