Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="L R Ballard" data-source="post: 6994877" data-attributes="member: 40307">My group started in the 1980s with homebrew locations drawn on graph paper. A friend of mine and I shared DM duties through junior high and high school. After running The Throne of Bloodstone, I bought the 2e Waterdeep supplement (FR1). The first generation of characters consisted mostly of thieves living in Waterdeep and traveling to the Moonshae Isles (FR2) and the Savage Frontier (FR5). Some of this group travelled occasionally to Thay (FR6).Other characters then migrated to, or started in, Waterdeep (FR1). I ran the Desert of Desolation as though it were the Anauroch and then Bloodstone (H4) again. After another successful Bloodstone campaign, some of the most powerful characters either moved to the Bloodstone Pass (FR9) or ascended.Modules appealed to me because they needed less preparation than good homebrew stuff—at least for me. My friend still ran a lot of homebrew stuff, though he used the Realms as a jumping-off point; we plane hopped. Sometimes it flopped; sometimes it worked. Inspired by Stephen King, he did a lot of dark, morbid stories.I DMed the Avatar Trilogy (FRE 1–3) with a party based in Waterdeep. One of the characters hailed from Cormyr. Another served in the Flaming Fist mercenary company. Another came from Damara. Another ran away from Evereska. The campaign became high level, and we went on Bloodstone again.My friend then ran a campaign based in Shadowdale. Some of the action began in Chult. Nemeses came mainly from Zhentil Keep or from other planes. By that time, the group used the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, which brought the Realms to life. We laminated the world map from that box set and hung it in the game room. That group became high level but never went on a campaign-ending adventure, as far as I know.I ran Hordes of Dragonspear (FRQ 2), which went well. I tried to run the first Horde module, and it flopped. I ran a Spelljammer session that began in Faerûn. That story lasted one session, largely because of my lack of vision—hadn’t seen any Hubble photos yet. Off to college.My cousin enjoyed my DMing of Under Illefarn (N5), set in Daggerford.The old group reunited for 3e with parties in Cormyr and Shadowdale. I ran Into the Dragon’s Layer for the Cormyr group and Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor for the Shadowdale group. Those modules went well, though the former required some souping up.As 3.5e sourcebooks and supplements proliferated, it got too hard for me to run sessions and work on my doctorate at the same time. Private lives took different directions: everyone implicitly agreed, more or less, that, for our group, that was the end.</blockquote>

Verification