Each time a campaign ends, I try to learn from it. This one is very different from my other post-mortems, because it’s a deeply personal one to me, where I get to analyze my failures as a writer, game designer, and DM. It may not be especially valuable to you if you’re wanting to run an official mega-campaign, but maybe you can glean something from how I designed it, what worked, what went wrong.
About My Design History
Like many DMs I have long dreamed of publishing my adventures. I tried to self-publish my first RPG when I was still in middle school, fresh off my experience with Palladium’s TMNT and Other Strangeness. I made a game, drew the illustrations, made a dozen copies, and put it in a three-ring binder. The local game store of course wouldn’t put it on their shelf.
Fast-forward about fifteen years later, and I got my first professional module published. It was a 3.x edition adventure for levels 1-11ish, by a reputable 3PP (“The Coils of Set” if you’d like to look it up. The PDFs are still on DriveThru).
Anyway, after that adventure got pretty good reviews and I got to interact with gamers across the world about their campaigns, I set to work on writing a huge campaign, inspired by the region I live in, a realistic karst typography cave network with a layered history and epic story: “Against the Black City.”
I got about 75% finished with it when WotC announced 4e. 3PPs put a hold on all publication of 3.5 products. I had to shelve the project for a time. When Pathfinder was announced, I could start the minor revisions to update it to the new system and try to find a new publisher.
But then real life happened. I got married. Then I had medical issues. Then I got divorced and my wife deleted my files. All that work was gone.
I tried to piece it together over the years, running bits and pieces of the campaign across 3.x, Pathfinder, 4e, Dungeon World, 5e. But then something unexpected happened: I found a backup of the lost files.
My publishing contacts nowadays are affiliated with the OSR, so I thought converting the adventure to an OSR system would take less work and be truer to the original experience. It was time to get to work, updating the text, stats, maps, etc. And then to find a group to play it.
The Basic Plot - A Tale as Old as … Well, My Life
I drew a lot from my life experience. The backstory included two dwarven brothers who disappointed their father in different ways. The eldest son left the dwarven kingdom to find glory in battle and returned home changed, addicted to a dark power while the younger son stayed behind and tried to keep everything together, but was ineffectual and weak. The weakness meant that the dwarven kingdom was atrophied. (I'll let you make any inferences you want about my family dynamics, but I can say that I'm the weaker brother.
)
In the earlier playtests, the younger son (Harrumah) relied on the cheap labor of orcs to bolster the dying numbers of the dwarves, but this always ended up a problem where every group (rightly) wanted to free the orcs and kill off the “good” dwarves. It probably took me 10 years to realize that you can’t make slave labor something the good guys practice. I cut this and made it so that the dwarves had eventually died off, with the exception of Harrumah, who still lives in an almost rock elemental form, extending his life.
The Adventure Itself
The Fallen Thane Ashen (the older brother) lived in his corrupted state and founded the city of Maelgrym with his loyalist dwarves, who didn’t want to live in the weakened leadership of Harrumah. The surface world, just starting to get repopulated with humans, knows nothing of the family dynamics under their feet. Ashen begins testing his weapons of war on the surface, preparing to attack the weakened kingdom of his brother (not knowing the last of them died off decades ago). This gets the surface world involved to descend into the forgotten dead city of Harrumah’s dwarves and eventually discovering Maelgrym and Ashen.
Lessons Learned
No Mystery Is Worth Motivation
I tried to hide Ashen and the Grym dwarves in many versions of this campaign, but I’ve found that it’s good to introduce the conflict early to hook the party and make them realize what’s going on. No “big reveal” is worth keeping the players in the dark. In fact, I found ways for Ashen to harass the party (from a safe distance, of course) just so he can be an ever-present villain.
Taking Advantage of Cheap Labor Is Something No Good Culture Would Do
This is a “duh” point, but it took me nearly a decade to understand why my players wouldn’t side with Harrumah.
Dead Cultures Are Great Sources of World Building and Information
Having plaques and statues in the dead dwarven city (Zwaarhold) was a great way to pepper the setting with information about the historic conflict and give the party information about what to expect. It could be easily avoided by groups who just want to get to the action.
What’s Next?
I do have a 5e adventure at a publisher, but I can’t really talk about it right now. It’s not this one, though. I still have aspirations of cleaning up this mega-adventure. I’m currently running bits of it with my wife and a few of her friends (first time gamers) we met at a bar a couple months ago. They’re getting ready to make their first descent into Zwaardhold this weekend. I’ll see how it holds up and if I can apply anything I’ve learned from the many other times I’ve run this campaign (and all the others I’ve been writing about on these boards.)
Hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my homebrew campaign. I’m happy to share any information with you or take any advice.
About My Design History
Like many DMs I have long dreamed of publishing my adventures. I tried to self-publish my first RPG when I was still in middle school, fresh off my experience with Palladium’s TMNT and Other Strangeness. I made a game, drew the illustrations, made a dozen copies, and put it in a three-ring binder. The local game store of course wouldn’t put it on their shelf.
Fast-forward about fifteen years later, and I got my first professional module published. It was a 3.x edition adventure for levels 1-11ish, by a reputable 3PP (“The Coils of Set” if you’d like to look it up. The PDFs are still on DriveThru).
Anyway, after that adventure got pretty good reviews and I got to interact with gamers across the world about their campaigns, I set to work on writing a huge campaign, inspired by the region I live in, a realistic karst typography cave network with a layered history and epic story: “Against the Black City.”
I got about 75% finished with it when WotC announced 4e. 3PPs put a hold on all publication of 3.5 products. I had to shelve the project for a time. When Pathfinder was announced, I could start the minor revisions to update it to the new system and try to find a new publisher.
But then real life happened. I got married. Then I had medical issues. Then I got divorced and my wife deleted my files. All that work was gone.
I tried to piece it together over the years, running bits and pieces of the campaign across 3.x, Pathfinder, 4e, Dungeon World, 5e. But then something unexpected happened: I found a backup of the lost files.
My publishing contacts nowadays are affiliated with the OSR, so I thought converting the adventure to an OSR system would take less work and be truer to the original experience. It was time to get to work, updating the text, stats, maps, etc. And then to find a group to play it.
The Basic Plot - A Tale as Old as … Well, My Life
I drew a lot from my life experience. The backstory included two dwarven brothers who disappointed their father in different ways. The eldest son left the dwarven kingdom to find glory in battle and returned home changed, addicted to a dark power while the younger son stayed behind and tried to keep everything together, but was ineffectual and weak. The weakness meant that the dwarven kingdom was atrophied. (I'll let you make any inferences you want about my family dynamics, but I can say that I'm the weaker brother.
)In the earlier playtests, the younger son (Harrumah) relied on the cheap labor of orcs to bolster the dying numbers of the dwarves, but this always ended up a problem where every group (rightly) wanted to free the orcs and kill off the “good” dwarves. It probably took me 10 years to realize that you can’t make slave labor something the good guys practice. I cut this and made it so that the dwarves had eventually died off, with the exception of Harrumah, who still lives in an almost rock elemental form, extending his life.
The Adventure Itself
The Fallen Thane Ashen (the older brother) lived in his corrupted state and founded the city of Maelgrym with his loyalist dwarves, who didn’t want to live in the weakened leadership of Harrumah. The surface world, just starting to get repopulated with humans, knows nothing of the family dynamics under their feet. Ashen begins testing his weapons of war on the surface, preparing to attack the weakened kingdom of his brother (not knowing the last of them died off decades ago). This gets the surface world involved to descend into the forgotten dead city of Harrumah’s dwarves and eventually discovering Maelgrym and Ashen.
Lessons Learned
No Mystery Is Worth Motivation
I tried to hide Ashen and the Grym dwarves in many versions of this campaign, but I’ve found that it’s good to introduce the conflict early to hook the party and make them realize what’s going on. No “big reveal” is worth keeping the players in the dark. In fact, I found ways for Ashen to harass the party (from a safe distance, of course) just so he can be an ever-present villain.
Taking Advantage of Cheap Labor Is Something No Good Culture Would Do
This is a “duh” point, but it took me nearly a decade to understand why my players wouldn’t side with Harrumah.
Dead Cultures Are Great Sources of World Building and Information
Having plaques and statues in the dead dwarven city (Zwaarhold) was a great way to pepper the setting with information about the historic conflict and give the party information about what to expect. It could be easily avoided by groups who just want to get to the action.
What’s Next?
I do have a 5e adventure at a publisher, but I can’t really talk about it right now. It’s not this one, though. I still have aspirations of cleaning up this mega-adventure. I’m currently running bits of it with my wife and a few of her friends (first time gamers) we met at a bar a couple months ago. They’re getting ready to make their first descent into Zwaardhold this weekend. I’ll see how it holds up and if I can apply anything I’ve learned from the many other times I’ve run this campaign (and all the others I’ve been writing about on these boards.)
Hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my homebrew campaign. I’m happy to share any information with you or take any advice.
