What's the tone of your campaign?

[barsoomcore]

Barsoom: Extremely complex intrigue, truly freaky bad guys and no happy endings. Destroy-the-world sorcerers in a world almost devoid of magic. Dinosaurs, pirates, ninjas, werewolves (sorta) and big honkin' vampires.

Stewardesses: Kick-butt chicks kick butts and take names, looking good all the way. And being incredibly snarky to each other in the process. Way fun.

Dead Man's Chest: Stout English Privateers rush across the Carribean to prevent a Mayan apocalypse from coming true. Madness, swashbuckling and hearts of oak.

 

[spectre72]

medium magic, high fantasy game with a splash of reality

Well the only campaign I am currently running is a PBEM game set in Kalamar (modified by me to include more items from other sources).

Many people have asked me why I chose this realm, and my response would be that I did not want the baggage that comes along with the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. Also, most players are not familiar with Kalamar so I can customize it as I wish without complaints from anyone.

I have found that the tone in a PBEM is much different than a face to face game since character (and player) interaction happens exclusively by e-mail.

This has caused a shift from my usual style, but the players are not complaining.

The result is a medium magic, high fantasy game with a splash of reality set in a PG-13 (R rated events happen, but in a fade to black sort of way ) environment.

So far we have 3 characters in relationships with NPC's, and 2 of these have resulted in marriages in game (including a crossbow marriage).

Magic is not readily available from shops, but much exists to be found as the characters explore the realm.

Combat has happened quite a bit, but we have weeks where characters interacted with each other and the people in the town where they were adventuring.

Also of note is that combat is deadly, and since I have been playing since 1st edition I have no problem killing a PC or two when it furthers the plot.

The Group has been playing in an area of Kalamar where there is alot of open frontier (according to my maps anyways), and opportunities for adventure have been abundant.

As the characters progress they will find more magic that has been "Lost" for generations, and these discoveries will lead them to discover what happened to the level of magic in my version of Kalamar.

I also have quite a bit of seafaring planned for the group, and am just embarking on "The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh" and related adventures.

Source books for the campaign include the core rule books, Legends and Lore Series from FFG (Seafarers Guide, Path of Magic, Traps and Treachery, Wildscape, …etc.), and quite a few Necromancer Games adventures.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Age of Frost: Grim, harsh, primitive in most places. Cthulianesque-themes starting to become more common. Lots of travel and exploration, mostly themed around the recovery of ancient lore or items of power in the hopes of ushering a new age of peace and prosperity if the Apocolypse doesn't destroy the Cosmos first.

Age of Glory: Grim, harsh, mutli-world empires battling on a planar-sea in ships of hardened glass, ceramic or crystal. Lots of politics and warfare, mostly themed around Illuminanti/Conspiracy theories involving fascist psionic cultures governed by thought police, deities that gain power from mortals like divine parasites, and alien races influencing affairs from the deepest of shadows.

 

[Torque]

My game includes a pretty wide mix of styles. The general play style is pretty straightforward exploration and monster-killing, but life in is pretty precarious, and the players are starting to uncover hints of a darker threat. However, there are plenty of moments of levity, both with the player interactions and sometimes with the world (a recent adventure involved saving a village of gnomish were-penguins from their possessed former leader, Lord Wahoo, fiendish dire were-penguin, and his horde of penguin ghouls with their wing/wing/peck attacks). As the campaign progresses, they will be encountering sanity-threatening cthulhu-esque threats, dealing with the conflict between magic and industrial technology, and engaging in aerial swashbuckling, so I plan to keep the style fairly diverse.

 

[DarkMaster]

Well, given that the time frame I was referring to was around 1988-1992, I'd say I was still ahead of the curve!

-The Gneech, old geezer

Weren't vampire and Werewolf cool at the begining of the 80', the problem with getting old is that you realise that nothing is new anymore, it's just recycled.

 

[Sir Elton]

Weren't vampire and Werewolf cool at the begining of the 80', the problem with getting old is that you realise that nothing is new anymore, it's just recycled.

Is no body willing to break new ground anymore in their campaigns?

 

[Pants]

Is no body willing to break new ground anymore in their campaigns?

Vampire NINJAS and Werewolf Dino-Pirates! New ground has just been broken

 

[Doctor Futurity]

In D&D I have two home campaign worlds (Realms of Chirak and Keepers of Lingusia) and run three periodic campaigns in published worlds (Diamond Throne, Ravenloft, and Scarred Lands). I have a different sense of "theme" for each, but I also vary the focus of each specific individual campaign within the larger scope. Exploration and discovery is a heavy part of my games, as is cultural exchange (lots of nonwestern civilzations). My recent campaign's special themes are:

Chirak I: The Avatar Campaign: epic, mythic quest for the discovery of secret cosmic truths. Very personal journey for venerable, high level PCs in a long-running group. Theme: personal discovery, mythology in the making. Essentially, Mercea Elliade and Graves' The White Goddess meet Ray Harryhausen. Meet the gods! Rating: pretty PG, occasionally R.

Chirak II: The Dragos-Correnstal War: young PCs embroiled in the politics of war, with machiavellian intrigue, backstabbing, and good old fashioned siegecraft. Theme: A dash of Lord of the Rings with a steaming shovel-load of the Crusades thrown in for good measure--essentially, fantasy in the modern novel sense (young people who grow and mature in to their roles as epic characters); rating: R (violent, but clean; no raping and pillaging on camera!)

Chirak III: The Sabiri Quest: hardened mercenaries and explorers engaged in plots and missions within the nomad kingdoms of the Sabiri. Theme: Heavy Metal meets Fire & Ice and REH. Rating: NC-17 Lots of graphic content, nudity, raping and pillaging (a mature group!)

 

[simmo]

For the Love of Tomeri: planar campaign with long-term story arcs that tie in to PCs personnal backgrounds and goals. Lots of talking to try to figure out what is going on with bursts of activity to achieve a specific goals as well as the occasional bomb-shell revelations. This all happens against a back-drop of a home-world in turmoil from invading illithids and groups fighting for control of the free-lands. Not forgetting the modrons marching around the Outer Planes earlier than expected.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

I currently have 2 IRC campaigns:

1) d20 Modern: Morrow Project. Tone: Serious, military style campaign with some light-hearted moments, but serious because of the deadly consequences of screwing up. Quick, gritty, grim. But FUN!

2) D&D3.5E Dungeoneering: Basically, we're running through old TSR modules converted (basically) to 3.5e. Tone: Slapstick humor in an unholy marriage with kick-in-the-door, take-their-treasure, rinse, lather, repeat. It's a great stress reliever. Where else can you strap a wood box to your head, light the rolling bear trap from Secret of the Slavers Stockade on fire and send it down the hall screaming, "Help, Smokey! Help! Quick! Put me out with your shovel!" as a means of distracting the guards so your adventure mates can slip further into the Citadel of EEEeeeevil! Many, many moments of laughing until wine came out my nose.