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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hirou" data-source="post: 7271081" data-attributes="member: 6776023">My 50 cents: promise of playing Zeitgeist was enough to bring back my gaming group after 18 months of hiatus. In total, we've been playing it for the last 3 years, I think, and managed to conquer the third of the whole AP (we're kinda slow, that's not the problem of the campaign <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ). Fair warning, I haven't played WotBS, but I've bought and read it through, using it semi-canonically as Zeitgeist' world history (about 2000 years prior to Zeitgeist campaign, on another continent). Comparing the two, I'd say that WotBS is a bit more on the side of "traditional epic fantasy with a variety of guest attractions". You command an army, you battle inside the mile-long flying leviathan, you invade the inner mind realm of sleeping dragon, you traverse a literal firestorm to explore a cursed castle etc. Each adventure individually has some very fine scenes and solid plot, and overarching story is complicated and intriguing (especially if you can find a page-long summary from RangerWickett somewhere in these forums...)... but not as much as Zeitgeist. As a sidenote, do read the introductory short-story about assassination of Drakus Coaltongue, it's a fine piece of its own, I think it's in free campaign guide.Zeitgeist is simply the best D&D campaign I've ever read. It presents a vivid and lively world with very diverse cast of nations and locations, even though lots of places still remain free to DM's fantasy (in my campaign the default answer to "WTF is this" is "it's some unique magic from Yerasol/Malice lands/Northern reaches"). The campaign story can be either surprisingly deep and philosophical (and somewhat reflective of events of WotBS, I'm looking at you, trilith-Gimid-Nicodemus) or akin to a script to blockbuster action movie, depending on your playing group, but either way it's cohesive and, IMHO, a tad better crafted than WotBS. 4e does have its fair share of problems, I must admit. If you end up running the campaign, do pay attention to firearms rules of the campaign, especially grenades, and think in advance how they would interact with multi-target powers, for example. ZG sidesteps the grind of exp/loot with story-driven level progression and magic item/favor requisition system, which is basically unmasked "player wishlists", a necessary evil of the system. Once again, be wary that favor/Prestige/requisition system can be easily broken with Diplomacy optimization, but it's largely dependent on your players and their goodwill to the system/DM, and not on the AP itself. Last point, use the compiled version of the AP (Act 1-2-3 trilogy) instead of individual adventures, because compilation introduces some minor, but very welcome erratas (like remembering that there are kobolds in Ber; joke's on me, I did forget it completely at first reading as well).</blockquote>

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