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<blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 7949302" data-attributes="member: 21169"><p>The notion that a campaign consists of related adventures and features the same PCs can be found as far back as Moldvay Basic D&D (1981):</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Several related adventures (one adventure leading to another, often with the same player characters) is called a campaign.</p><p></p><p>The article Five Keys to DMing Success by Mike Beeman in Dragon #80 (1983) thinks that adventures in a good campaign ought to be tightly connected to one another, more like Lord of the Rings than Conan.</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Every good campaign has five basic elements: continuity, character, competence, creativity</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">and cooperation...</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">Continuity in a campaign is a very complex thing. It is that in a campaign which makes it more than just a series of dungeons, and that which ties all of the dungeons together into a cohesive whole... The trick here is to make the characters' lives much more than an episodic smattering of unrelated activities, like some TV adventure series. You need to give them the continuity and uniformity of a good novel's protagonists…</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">The most important thing to do is to plan in sets of actions rather than dungeon-by-dungeon. Have your dungeons linked together, either directly or indirectly. An excellent example of this is the Against the Giants/Descent into the Depths series of AD&D modules from TSR, Inc. Each dungeon logically follows its predecessor; the transitions are smooth and the challenges widely varied. Many of TSR’s AD&D modules have been published as sets, and this is not a bad example to follow.</p><p></p><p>This letter from Dragon #100 (1985) considers campaigns to have a progression and an end point:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">One of the most important steps in the creation of my present campaign was the switch to AD&D gaming in one $50 swoop. The game was somewhat overwhelming in its scope, but we played it exactly as published for some time. As we progressed through our campaign, we began to notice flaws in the game and started to create ways to change the game to our own ends. The eventual outcome was our current campaign. The campaign will end soon, and the game will change further.</p><p></p><p>These examples demonstrate that the current conception of "campaign" was around in the early-to-mid 80s, though the Gygaxian conception was more prevalent.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Doug McCrae, post: 7949302, member: 21169"] The notion that a campaign consists of related adventures and features the same PCs can be found as far back as Moldvay Basic D&D (1981): [INDENT]Several related adventures (one adventure leading to another, often with the same player characters) is called a campaign.[/INDENT] The article Five Keys to DMing Success by Mike Beeman in Dragon #80 (1983) thinks that adventures in a good campaign ought to be tightly connected to one another, more like Lord of the Rings than Conan. [INDENT]Every good campaign has five basic elements: continuity, character, competence, creativity[/INDENT] [INDENT]and cooperation...[/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT]Continuity in a campaign is a very complex thing. It is that in a campaign which makes it more than just a series of dungeons, and that which ties all of the dungeons together into a cohesive whole... The trick here is to make the characters' lives much more than an episodic smattering of unrelated activities, like some TV adventure series. You need to give them the continuity and uniformity of a good novel's protagonists…[/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT]The most important thing to do is to plan in sets of actions rather than dungeon-by-dungeon. Have your dungeons linked together, either directly or indirectly. An excellent example of this is the Against the Giants/Descent into the Depths series of AD&D modules from TSR, Inc. Each dungeon logically follows its predecessor; the transitions are smooth and the challenges widely varied. Many of TSR’s AD&D modules have been published as sets, and this is not a bad example to follow.[/INDENT] This letter from Dragon #100 (1985) considers campaigns to have a progression and an end point: [INDENT]One of the most important steps in the creation of my present campaign was the switch to AD&D gaming in one $50 swoop. The game was somewhat overwhelming in its scope, but we played it exactly as published for some time. As we progressed through our campaign, we began to notice flaws in the game and started to create ways to change the game to our own ends. The eventual outcome was our current campaign. The campaign will end soon, and the game will change further.[/INDENT] These examples demonstrate that the current conception of "campaign" was around in the early-to-mid 80s, though the Gygaxian conception was more prevalent. [/QUOTE]
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