Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Demons in the Mist (October 9th update)
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 4889099" data-attributes="member: 2205"><p>This is the beginning of what is---arguably---one of the most successful campaigns I've ever run, and certainly the most successful play-by post game I've ever been involved with.</p><p></p><p>Because the game was done via play by post (on another messageboard, not here) I also have a very good, and completely complete archive of everything that happened. This serialized story hour is that record; cut and pasted, and then edited and cleaned up. On occasion I will bulk up a scene or two, on other occasions I'll pare down a scene or two, and at all points I'll be rewriting, editing and modifying to improve clarity, pacing or anything else that will make this game log read better, including removing any "gamisms" from the discussion.</p><p></p><p>The setting was an idea stolen from Rel. Back when he first proposed his "islands in the Mist" setting idea, I took that basic concept, before either of us could even have much discussion about what that concept would mean, and got this game off the ground. Believe it or not, almost the entire game was made up, on the spot, by me, as we went. Because I had very little plan as we started, the game "borrows" liberally from every single swashbuckling movie I've ever seen, every pulp story I've ever read, a fair bit of <em>Airplane!</em>-esque ridiculous comedy and randy farce, 80s pop culture references, and anything else I could think of on the spot that I thought might possibly be entertaining.</p><p></p><p>The gist of the setting was that due to some kind of supernatural catastrophe, almost the entire world was covered with a poisonous layer of mist that harbored demons, and was in all respects inimicable to human(oid) life. Human(oid) civilization did continue, though, mostly at higher elevations. The area of the world in which this campaign takes place is one where huge, Dr. Challenger-esque tepuis and mountain peaks stick out from the Mist, creating habitable plateaus. Some of them are quite large, and I envision that the area in which this takes place has at least as much habitable space as, say, the Hawaiian Island chain. Some of the big tepuis, like Mnar and Vogorizov are each nearly as big as the Big Island, while many, many smaller islands make up the remainder of the map (see below.)</p><p></p><p>I also used D&D 3.5 as the rulebase, but with a twist. Perhaps it's because of the Mist catastrophe, but maybe it's something else, but there is no magic in the world. Nobody knows anything about magic, and if they did, they'd be burned at the stake as a witch by anyone. So, no class with a spellcasting progression of any kind was allowed. Also, there are no such thing as elves, dwarves, gnomes or halflings in this world.</p><p></p><p>I did, however, open up some other options. I specifically encouraged a few other alternate races and classes, and said that psionics could be a reasonable substitute for magic. That explains the rather eclectic (from a traditional D&D standpoint, anyway) collection of characters I got. I've summarized what they were mechanically, at chargen (2nd level): <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ricardo Murciélago, human swashbuckler</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lash, hobgoblin fighter/rogue </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Scritch, shifter ninja</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Shautha, half-orc barbarian </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Vuukran, hobgoblin soulknife</li> </ul><p>They were later joined by Nix, a human rogue, and then even later yet by Rix, a human alt.bard cribbed from the Dark Sun adaptation to 3.5 (that doesn't feature a spellcasting progression, naturally.)</p><p></p><p>Anyway, I hope you have fun reading the account of this band of fairly clueless, blundering ne'er-do-wells. Their penchant for charging headlong into trouble and leaving a disaster behind them reminded me vividly of Cugel the "Clever", and I punished the characters heavily for their foolhardiness. However, the <em>players</em> themselves and I were always vastly entertained by their antics and what happened because of them.</p><p></p><p>Because I'm essentially editing a play by post log, instead of writing this from scratch, I hope that it advances at a fairly steady pace. The biggest challenge I foresee is editing some of the... uh... well, let's just say that if I posted it as is, Eric's poor grandma would probably be in a near constant state of shock. I'll try to step delicately around Grandma, while still keeping true to the spirit of the game, which---as my players were quick to tell me when I suggested I might serialize this for ENWorld---might get challenging from time to time.</p><p></p><p>Map</p><p></p><p>[sblock]<img src="http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f158/jdyal/map-1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />[/sblock]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Desdichado, post: 4889099, member: 2205"] This is the beginning of what is---arguably---one of the most successful campaigns I've ever run, and certainly the most successful play-by post game I've ever been involved with. Because the game was done via play by post (on another messageboard, not here) I also have a very good, and completely complete archive of everything that happened. This serialized story hour is that record; cut and pasted, and then edited and cleaned up. On occasion I will bulk up a scene or two, on other occasions I'll pare down a scene or two, and at all points I'll be rewriting, editing and modifying to improve clarity, pacing or anything else that will make this game log read better, including removing any "gamisms" from the discussion. The setting was an idea stolen from Rel. Back when he first proposed his "islands in the Mist" setting idea, I took that basic concept, before either of us could even have much discussion about what that concept would mean, and got this game off the ground. Believe it or not, almost the entire game was made up, on the spot, by me, as we went. Because I had very little plan as we started, the game "borrows" liberally from every single swashbuckling movie I've ever seen, every pulp story I've ever read, a fair bit of [I]Airplane![/I]-esque ridiculous comedy and randy farce, 80s pop culture references, and anything else I could think of on the spot that I thought might possibly be entertaining. The gist of the setting was that due to some kind of supernatural catastrophe, almost the entire world was covered with a poisonous layer of mist that harbored demons, and was in all respects inimicable to human(oid) life. Human(oid) civilization did continue, though, mostly at higher elevations. The area of the world in which this campaign takes place is one where huge, Dr. Challenger-esque tepuis and mountain peaks stick out from the Mist, creating habitable plateaus. Some of them are quite large, and I envision that the area in which this takes place has at least as much habitable space as, say, the Hawaiian Island chain. Some of the big tepuis, like Mnar and Vogorizov are each nearly as big as the Big Island, while many, many smaller islands make up the remainder of the map (see below.) I also used D&D 3.5 as the rulebase, but with a twist. Perhaps it's because of the Mist catastrophe, but maybe it's something else, but there is no magic in the world. Nobody knows anything about magic, and if they did, they'd be burned at the stake as a witch by anyone. So, no class with a spellcasting progression of any kind was allowed. Also, there are no such thing as elves, dwarves, gnomes or halflings in this world. I did, however, open up some other options. I specifically encouraged a few other alternate races and classes, and said that psionics could be a reasonable substitute for magic. That explains the rather eclectic (from a traditional D&D standpoint, anyway) collection of characters I got. I've summarized what they were mechanically, at chargen (2nd level):[list] [*]Ricardo Murciélago, human swashbuckler [*]Lash, hobgoblin fighter/rogue [*]Scritch, shifter ninja [*]Shautha, half-orc barbarian [*]Vuukran, hobgoblin soulknife [/list] They were later joined by Nix, a human rogue, and then even later yet by Rix, a human alt.bard cribbed from the Dark Sun adaptation to 3.5 (that doesn't feature a spellcasting progression, naturally.) Anyway, I hope you have fun reading the account of this band of fairly clueless, blundering ne'er-do-wells. Their penchant for charging headlong into trouble and leaving a disaster behind them reminded me vividly of Cugel the "Clever", and I punished the characters heavily for their foolhardiness. However, the [I]players[/I] themselves and I were always vastly entertained by their antics and what happened because of them. Because I'm essentially editing a play by post log, instead of writing this from scratch, I hope that it advances at a fairly steady pace. The biggest challenge I foresee is editing some of the... uh... well, let's just say that if I posted it as is, Eric's poor grandma would probably be in a near constant state of shock. I'll try to step delicately around Grandma, while still keeping true to the spirit of the game, which---as my players were quick to tell me when I suggested I might serialize this for ENWorld---might get challenging from time to time. Map [sblock][img]http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f158/jdyal/map-1.jpg[/img][/sblock] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Demons in the Mist (October 9th update)
Top