Ever play a single race campaign?

[Eremite]

My first real 3E campaign was an all-wild elf campaign set in FR and borrowing a lot of plot elements from the Night Below boxed set.

It was set in the Forest of Amtar in the south of Faerun where the campaign began much like the Conan the Barbarian movie began with the party as gladiatorial slaves of the half-drow of the nation of Dambrath. Cliched? Yes. Fun? You bet. Did the players enjoy it? Absolutely.

Following their escape, there was a natural hook for the party being the desire to return home. That consumed quite a few sessions and saw them gain a few levels. Upon returning home, elements of the Night Below plot were revealed: duergar and drow, subsequently discovered to be in the service of the aboleth, had captured many wild elves and the party needed to get back their family and friends.

Anyway, the party successfully freed their fellows and then smashed the power of the aboleth by destroying the psionic soul engine and by crushing the aboleth's army sent to destroy the deep gnome city.

The common race and origin made the hooks fairly compelling because they were fighting for their family and their home. Good fun.

 

[the Jester]

Yeah, I did an all-dwarf game for a while in 2e... it was really fun. My current mid-level group is a halfling group, though (out of about nine pcs) 1-2 are usually non-halfling (including the clan's 'dog,' Federico, a kobold sorcerer/bard/jester, and the adopted human the halflings rescued as a child who acts to defend his lil pals from big folk, etc).

 

[DragonSword]

I've been thinking about an all-dwarf campaign for a while, possibly as an interlude in my groups "long-running" campaigns for either an all-nighter or a couple of sessions. I can't see a single race campaign staying interesting for more than 10-15 hours of gaming without my players getting bored silly.

 

[Slomoot]

I would only recommend the "one race only" game for a group of really good role-players. I tried years ago to do the "all dwarf campaign." Problem was that all the dwarves ended up being the same:

Player 1: Aaarrr I'm a grumpy dwarf
Player 2: ack! I'm the greedy dwarf

etc. etc. etc.

Needless to say that was the last time I ever do that again... :\

 

[Gez]

Not a campaign, but I DMed twice an all-kobold scenario.

Also, I play in two all-human campaigns.

 

[Maldur]

I played in a all dwarf one shot.
Great fun esp since we were all "old retired" dwarfs.

"Let me get my armour from the museum, and we are ready to go"
"Does anyone know, what grandkid I loaned my mace?"

 

[DragonSword]

Seems to be dwarves-only so far in this thread. Anybody have any experiences of Elf-only etc campaigns. What about humans-only fantasy?

I guess the problem with single race campaign is that its easy to play up the racial stereotypes that are so obvious in fantasy. I'm not saying these are bad, but it gets really boring when those are the only characters in a game. I'm currently playing a really cool, kick-ass, and very stereotypical, Dwarf cleric (complete with obligatory warhammer!). He's great fun to play (he's earnt a new nickname among our party - the Liquidizer - for his ability to squish goblins) but is a little one-dimensional.

He's great fun to play when there are other characters with very different personalities, but a party full of liquidizers - well, once you get over the goblin squishing fun - there's not much left to keep the game interesting.

 

[DragonSword]

Sorry, that reply took so long to type, that I missed Gez's post above.

Gez - How do the all-human campaigns work. Is it just that all the PCs are human, or are there no other races at all, period? I'm guessing so, so what other interesting NPCs has your DM come up with the replace the multitude of monsters and races that are unavailable to you?

 

[Gez]

All PCs are humans. There are other races, but they are rare. Except for sword-fodder, like goblins and bakemono...

We did meet an elf, a half-elf, and a gnome, and that's about all the non-human NPCs for now.

 

[Li Shenron]

Not a whole campaign, but a three-adventure strip with all Drow characters (I think about 5 levels from start to end). Didn't work very well but only because half were neutral and half were evil, and the players of evil PC were playing badly (you know, the most typical mistakes one can do when playing an evil PC).

One thing we noticed was that the characters didn't seem to differentiate very much, and I think this was due to the fact that everyone had in mind quite a strong stereotype for Drow. IMHO, human characters always seem to be completely different, while non-human characters feel more uniform even when they ARE different...

Then of course I've played also in all-human groups, only that this was never planned, it just happens sometimes that everyone chooses Human.