kiznit
Explorer
So. We've finally made it through the Red Hand of Doom (a top-notch campaign adventure, highly recommended) and now we're trying to figure out what to play next.
Some background:
[sblock]A major change is that we are trying to implement a regular schedule. This is unbelievably awesome - Instead of trying to schedule every session to continue the campaign individually like we have been, we're going to start trying to have a regular, consistent gaming night and fit the gaming to the attendance. Friday nights at my brother's apartment are now officially game night!
Here were the options I put forth to the group:
They voted #1 - which is good, because it lends itself to a fluid PC line-up as we work out the kinks of the new schedule. I've cracked open my Wilderlands Box Setting and pulled my stack of NG modules off the shelf... Mmm, tasty! Barakus, Abysthor, Rappan Athuk, Crucible of Freya; I can see a lot of player deaths on the horizon.[/sblock]
Long and the short of it is that I'm going to be running a Wilderlands Campaign with various Necromancer Games Dungeons and Modules spread out across the land. Hopefully not too much world prep work for me, but lots of tasty High Fantasy Hexcrawling and Dungeoncrawling for my players.
What's fascinating is that I feel like this is something new to our D&D gaming experience - I've been calling it "Sandbox" style gaming because it's a hugely mapped out world with rumors, plot hooks, and encounters literally around every corner and it's 3-dimensional, some of those rumors leading to humongous dungeon complexes (Rappan Athuk I'm looking at you) and adventures; and yet there's no main storyline - no macguffin the PCs are chasing (yet), no one sinister overlord looking to take over the world (just those that have already taken over their corner of the Wilderlands), and so on.
There is no overarching plot-line to this campaign. The players are simply able to explore, adventure, get rich, and forge whatever mighty kingdoms they wish from the landscape, one hex at a time. Every game I've ever ran has had some great railroad - getting the players from one encounter to the next, leading up to some climactic battle - this is the first time EVER where I've just opened up the map and said, "Here are some rumors, here's what you know is nearby, where do you want to go?"
Does this sound exciting at all to you? The advantages are clear: less work for me, not worrying about storylines and tying things together, less emphasis on keeping players alive or not being able to play because people aren't able to show up, fluidity of plot and character arcs, and so on. The disadvantages? Players have to be pro-active. I'm hoping for a lot here, and I've worked hard to really encourage them and dangle a whole lot of carrots, but there's no one single menace that they have to face and get to the bottom of.
Figuring out where the various NG Dungeons, Cities, and Adventures take place in the Wilderlands has been harder than I thought it would be, but it's proceeding apace.
The fun part has been assembling all the juicy rumors. This gets to be a huge rumor list, teasing the players with all sorts of goods and goodies from all the Wilderlands stuff as well as the NG dungeons. We're playing Grim-and-Gritty, throwing out the CR rules, with magic items in short supply and magic itself being a rare thing, so I expect the driving force for at least the first number of levels will be finding items and weapons of power, as well as spellbooks.
In order to keep it interesting, here's how I plan on running it. I love to draw maps. Of course, all the maps have already been drawn for me by the wonderful Judge's Guild in convenient 5-mile hex increments. So I decided if there was one thing I was going to put a lot of effort into, it would be to make a tileable hex-crawling board.
It turned out to be fairly easy - I got a pack of that sticky-backed foamboard from Office Depot and just printed out a lot of hexes, then X-acto'd them out. It takes me about an hour to do 20 of 'em. Each tile is 5 hexes across, meaning each subhex is exactly one mile, which is good enough to place an encounter, an entire small village, or ruins or a dungeon entrance.
What do you think?
Some background:
[sblock]A major change is that we are trying to implement a regular schedule. This is unbelievably awesome - Instead of trying to schedule every session to continue the campaign individually like we have been, we're going to start trying to have a regular, consistent gaming night and fit the gaming to the attendance. Friday nights at my brother's apartment are now officially game night!
Here were the options I put forth to the group:
- Grim-and-gritty sandbox style dungeon-crawling a la Wilderlands and deadly Necromancer Games modules.
- Epic storyline-based 1st-through-20th (potentially) Paizo Pathfinder campaign
- D20 Modern/Near Future/Dark Matter campaign.
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying (Dark Cthulhu-esque low-magic gaming)
- 7th Sea (cinematic alternate 16th-Century Swashbuckling RPG)
They voted #1 - which is good, because it lends itself to a fluid PC line-up as we work out the kinks of the new schedule. I've cracked open my Wilderlands Box Setting and pulled my stack of NG modules off the shelf... Mmm, tasty! Barakus, Abysthor, Rappan Athuk, Crucible of Freya; I can see a lot of player deaths on the horizon.[/sblock]
Long and the short of it is that I'm going to be running a Wilderlands Campaign with various Necromancer Games Dungeons and Modules spread out across the land. Hopefully not too much world prep work for me, but lots of tasty High Fantasy Hexcrawling and Dungeoncrawling for my players.
What's fascinating is that I feel like this is something new to our D&D gaming experience - I've been calling it "Sandbox" style gaming because it's a hugely mapped out world with rumors, plot hooks, and encounters literally around every corner and it's 3-dimensional, some of those rumors leading to humongous dungeon complexes (Rappan Athuk I'm looking at you) and adventures; and yet there's no main storyline - no macguffin the PCs are chasing (yet), no one sinister overlord looking to take over the world (just those that have already taken over their corner of the Wilderlands), and so on.
There is no overarching plot-line to this campaign. The players are simply able to explore, adventure, get rich, and forge whatever mighty kingdoms they wish from the landscape, one hex at a time. Every game I've ever ran has had some great railroad - getting the players from one encounter to the next, leading up to some climactic battle - this is the first time EVER where I've just opened up the map and said, "Here are some rumors, here's what you know is nearby, where do you want to go?"
Does this sound exciting at all to you? The advantages are clear: less work for me, not worrying about storylines and tying things together, less emphasis on keeping players alive or not being able to play because people aren't able to show up, fluidity of plot and character arcs, and so on. The disadvantages? Players have to be pro-active. I'm hoping for a lot here, and I've worked hard to really encourage them and dangle a whole lot of carrots, but there's no one single menace that they have to face and get to the bottom of.
Figuring out where the various NG Dungeons, Cities, and Adventures take place in the Wilderlands has been harder than I thought it would be, but it's proceeding apace.
The fun part has been assembling all the juicy rumors. This gets to be a huge rumor list, teasing the players with all sorts of goods and goodies from all the Wilderlands stuff as well as the NG dungeons. We're playing Grim-and-Gritty, throwing out the CR rules, with magic items in short supply and magic itself being a rare thing, so I expect the driving force for at least the first number of levels will be finding items and weapons of power, as well as spellbooks.
In order to keep it interesting, here's how I plan on running it. I love to draw maps. Of course, all the maps have already been drawn for me by the wonderful Judge's Guild in convenient 5-mile hex increments. So I decided if there was one thing I was going to put a lot of effort into, it would be to make a tileable hex-crawling board.
It turned out to be fairly easy - I got a pack of that sticky-backed foamboard from Office Depot and just printed out a lot of hexes, then X-acto'd them out. It takes me about an hour to do 20 of 'em. Each tile is 5 hexes across, meaning each subhex is exactly one mile, which is good enough to place an encounter, an entire small village, or ruins or a dungeon entrance.
What do you think?
