D&D 5E Are you doing something different with 5E?

[Mercurius]

A new edition is a good opportunity to start something new - whether an entirely new world, and new campaign, a different kind of campaign, etc. So as the thread title says, the question is: Are you doing something different with 5E? Or is it business as usual? Or somewhere in-between? Tell us about it.

I'll start. I ran an on-again, off-again campaign for 4E over the last few years, which has dwindled over the last couple years as I returned to school for an MA. But the good news (on multiple levels) is that I'm finishing up my degree and hope to start a new campaign come January, so I'm in the early stages of planning.

I'm using the same setting as the last campaign, but with some moderate changes. I'm focusing more on a smaller region - the Fringe Lands, which is kind of a hybrid of something like the Dale Lands of the Forgotten Realms (but wilder), a touch of Hyboria, a dash of Middle-earth, sprinklings of Earthdawn, and tonal qualities of the American frontier. Oh yeah, and plenty of my own seasonings thrown in. I'm still playing with campaign ideas, but as I said elsewhere I'm thinking of integrating elements of the Walking Dead. I might have the PCs start off on a relatively run-of-the-mill adventure, as young "off-the-farm" types looking to make names for themselves, and then returning home after their first learn-the-new-rules adventure (a couple levels later) to find their home town on lock-down due to mobs of zombies. I'm still playing with how I want to do it, but the idea would be to build to a point where the land is over-run by different kinds of undead, and it is up to the PCs to figure out why, and stop it. So it is Walking Dead, but on a smaller scale and solvable. I'm thinking it would be more of a mini-campaign--levels 3-8ish or so--before moving on to something else.

The main thing, though, is that I want to integrate elements of both sandbox and story arc. The game would play like a sandbox in that the PCs would have to figure out what was happening and decide where to go, but there'd be an in-depth metaplot that was playing out (undead incursion) which they have to deal with.

What about you?

 

[DMZ2112]

The group for whom I've been running Lost Mine of Phandelver at my FLGS has turned out to be perfect, mostly consisting of players new to D&D or returning after 20+ years hiatus. I was originally planning on launching a new homebrew setting for them, in my usual idiom, but something about the composition of the group made me consider that an official D&D setting might be more up their alley.

So for the first time since middle school I'm planning a campaign set in a published setting -- in this case, Dragonlance. I'm pleased with how easily the D&D5 rules map to the setting conceits and I'm looking forward to seeing how my players engage the fiction.

 

[gideonpepys]

I have always used D&D - even 4th edition - to play story-based campaigns with complex narratives. I decided to take a break from all that and have used 5e to play an old-school megadungeon, where the goal is for the PCs to survive to a point where it is worth actually naming their characters.

To make this feasible - as 5e leveling is incredibly fast from 1st to 3rd, I started the players at 0-level with hardly any equipment. They spend XP in batches to earn their first-level features. Only the 4 core races and classes are allowed (to begin with), though feats are permitted so we're not totally old school.

In their first session the players wet themselves when they encountered a mountain lion. Unhappy with the danger level they went off and gathered more characters: from 4 to 7 players by session two, with 8 players for the last few sessions.

There were no character deaths for three weeks, then two were killed by a giant scorpion (underestimating the danger of its poison). The following week, around six to eight PCs were slain in a series of pitched battles with a host of humanoids*, with a few days' downtime in between allowing the players to recruit and the humanoids to regroup.

Despite my alarm at the carnage, many of the players declared these sessions to be their best ever and I have a new-found respect for the late lamented Gary Gygax (whose style of play I had until now never fully understood).

[*We are using Monte Cook's Dragon's Delve from dungeonaday. The low-level mooks there are a mix of goblinoids, orcs, kobolds and degenerate humans collectively known as the Bestial Host.]

 

[Henrix]

I've started a new campaign with, basically, a group I have played with, but not GMed.

I'm letting them do more or less what they want in a sandboxy way, but mostly it'll be roleplaying and interacting with the rest of society. (Not the first time, but in a while.)

I decided early on to introduce external traits usable to get inspiration, á la FATE. The whole campaign has a Hardboiled trait, so anyone can try getting that feeling to get inspiration, just as if it were a personality trait, and different locales and situations will get the occasional trait as well. (First time in D&D.)

It's set in Greyhawk (From the Ashes), and will have bits of The Age of Worms AP. (But with smaller dungeons and less railroad.)
My plan is to thrash it all to a sort of Walking Dead world, inspired by when I tried to run AoW in 3e.
I love thrashing worlds, but this'll be the first time I go in for it wholeheartedly.
But it'll depend on what the players want to do, I might relent and not turn Greyhawk city into a ghost (wight) town.

 

[Nebulous]

Hmm. I'm running through Lost Mine with a couple of experienced players. We love it so far, and i think it is an underrated module and actually far better than Horde of the Dragon Queen (although far less epic in scope, so i guess it depends on what you're looking for).

What am I doing different? Nothing really. I'm just enjoying the nuances of 5th edition so far, and glad that it caters to my preferred playstyle, that of low magic where i control the distribution, and players do not expect a shopping list of stuff by level. If you want that, just play a video game, it handles that style of play better (YMMV).

I'm also enjoying rules tinkering as it seems 5th edition is designed to really uphold that kind of stuff. I'm already pulling ideas from 13th Age and Dungeon Crawl Classics and find that they can be very easily ported over to create a unique game in my own little world.

 

[Piratecat]

I've converted over my current campaign, which is the opposite of a "points of light" game: the group started out in the finest empire in the world, it's all gone to hell, and it's probably all their fault. 5e fits the setting better than 4e did.

Were I to start a new campaign, I'd consider running an expedition of fae, sent into the mortal world for the first time. Fairy politics, human politics, ancient ruins, and deception everywhere.

 

[Grimstaff]

I started Pathfinder's AP "Rise of the Runelords" for what was supposed to be a 2-3 hour test drive of the new system. We ended up going for nearly eight hours and the players unanimously declared they wanted to stick with 5e for the time being. They were having such a good time, they only realize toward the end if the session that they had neglected to loot any bodies or search for treasure!

 

[Nebulous]

I started Pathfinder's AP "Rise of the Runelords" for what was supposed to be a 2-3 hour test drive of the new system. We ended up going for nearly eight hours and the players unanimously declared they wanted to stick with 5e for the time being. They were having such a good time, they only realize toward the end if the session that they had neglected to loot any bodies or search for treasure!

I've had 2 players say it is their favorite edition of D&D. They've played 2, 3 and 4. Now 5th.

 

[Blue]

Unfortunately 5e is Johnny-come-lately. The last two campaigns I ran totaled 12 years in 3.0 & 3.5, and I was looking for a lighter game to play next. But the playtests weren't doing it for me and I came across the wonderful 13th Age. So I'm running that with a bit of a Victorian/Steampunk twist in a sandbox that's fleshing out where the campaign should go.

5e looks great and I'd happily join a game, but it came out a year too late for me to run anytime soon.

 

[Nebulous]

Unfortunately 5e is Johnny-come-lately. The last two campaigns I ran totaled 12 years in 3.0 & 3.5, and I was looking for a lighter game to play next. But the playtests weren't doing it for me and I came across the wonderful 13th Age. So I'm running that with a bit of a Victorian/Steampunk twist in a sandbox that's fleshing out where the campaign should go.

5e looks great and I'd happily join a game, but it came out a year too late for me to run anytime soon.

I have the 13th Age stuff and I'm pilfering it for ideas, because it DOES have some good ones. Ultimately though the powers system feels too similar to 4e for my tastes, but it's still chock full of great ideas.