I've had several people suggest that I ought to do up a Story Hour of my D&D 3.5 campaign, and until recently I didn't think it was really doable. For one thing, my players' characters are as high as 16th-level right now (with one just on the cusp of hitting 17th), and I haven't kept scrupulous notes about the details of how each adventure went. Some of the best Story Hours I've read involve the DMs taping their game sessions so they can go back and accurately recount the actual dialogue, who attacked which monster in what manner, and so on. I've done none of that, and my memory isn't good enough to dredge up the events of campaign sessions from some six years back or more. So really, it would be pointless for me to try to go back and recapture all of that data - it's gone, and gone for good.
Furthermore, while it's gotten to the point recently that I've been writing my own adventures for the campaign, when we first started out I relied heavily on published adventures, some from standalone products but the majority of them from the pages of Dungeon magazine. I wouldn't want to spoil those adventures for anyone who would be later running a PC through that adventure; that would just be mean.
However, it recently occurred to me that all of the above really only means that there's no good way for me to create a standard Story Hour, one that tries to depict the events that occurred in each adventure in the campaign. It doesn't mean that I couldn't create a different type of Story Hour, one that was more behind-the-scenes and explored not so much what went on in each adventure but rather how and why we played the way we did. I think it might be interesting to see how our campaign has changed over the years, as it evolved from a simple hack-and-slash dungeon crawl to pass the game on to the next generation, and slowly became more focused on character development and ongoing storylines rather than just being a collection of (mostly) published adventures. (It will be interesting to me to look back on all of this, in any case; hopefully it will be of some interest to those of you who decide to give it a quick perusal.)
So, since the first half of our campaign consisted almost entirely of published adventures and I won't be able to recall the specifics of what happened in each adventure, I'll just give a basic overview of the adventure itself, point out some highlights and any changes I made (and why), and give the status of the PCs at the end of the adventure. Later - and in the few instances earlier on where I made up the adventure myself specifically for the campaign - I can turn this more into a "traditional" Story Hour, where I recount the specifics of the adventure in a fictional account. (Be warned, though: the first time I'll write up a "traditional" Story Hour session won't be until our 21st adventure.)
So, to begin: it was around 2006 or so when my co-worker Dan and I were discussing, at work, the fact that we had both played AD&D when we were kids. He had last played AD&D 1st Edition, whereas I had continued on with AD&D 2nd Edition, converted to 3.0 and 3.5, and had been running a campaign for my two sons, Stuart and Logan, that had been put on indefinite hiatus when Stuart went off to college. Dan had two sons as well: Jacob, then 8, and Joey, then a mere 2 years old. Dan was the one who came up with the idea that I should run a D&D campaign to get his oldest son involved in the game. I thought it was a great idea (in truth, I was jonesing for some D&D action since the campaign I'd been running was put on hold; we still got in an occasional session when Stuart returned home from college during vacations, but our gaming sessions were few and far between), and when I mentioned it to Logan he was in as well (he was jonesing as bad as I was; we had previously toyed with the idea of some one-on-one sessions, but the idea wasn't particularly appealing to either of us). So one Saturday afternoon Logan and I drove over to Dan's house and they rolled up some 3.5 characters.
We showed Jacob his character options, and he, being a typical 8-year-old boy, went for a half-orc barbarian whom he named Slayer. Admittedly, it was a bit of a cliché, but he was eager as all get-out and I approved heartily at his enthusiasm. Dan opted for a human cleric of Kord and chose Strength and Luck as his two domains, realizing that every party needs some healing and that way his PC could ensure that Jacob's PC kept healthy and in the fight, which I thought was a commendable attitude. He named his PC Cal Trop. Okay, then, I could see this wasn't going to be a very serious campaign, but that was fine. Logan took the opportunity of a new 1st-level character to try an experiment he'd been wanting to perform: was it possible, he wondered, through rigorous feat and spell selection, to run an arcane spellcaster as a front-line fighter? He chose human for the extra feat so he could have Toughness to go with his Martial Weapon Proficiency; made sure he could cast both mage armor and shield since he wouldn't be wearing armor (and thus became a sorcerer rather than a wizard so he could cast more spells per day); and even went with a toad familiar because he desperately needed those extra 3 hit points (and this after he put his highest ability score into Constitution for the bonus hp). He named his PC Gareth, and when he couldn't come up with a good name for his toad I suggested Joanna (can anybody guess why?); he accepted the logic and we had our three PCs.
(Incidentally, the PCs' stats were generated by rolling 4d6 six times, dropping the lowest die in each case, and assigning the six values into whichever stat the player wanted. I wanted Jacob to have the ability to run any character class he wanted to be, and I didn't want the decision paralysis that point buy might bring to an 8-year-old playing D&D for the first time in his life.)
Dan brought out a dice bag full of some old, unpainted lead minis he had from his earlier gaming days, and he and Jacob each chose one for their PC. Logan used the plastic barbarian mini from our old HeroQuest board game, the gateway drug I had used to ease my boys into D&D back when they were 10 and 8. I presented Jacob with a new set of dice in a plastic case (a tradition I was just then starting for when I introduced new players to the game), explained the differences between them and when each one was used, and we were ready for some gaming.
Incidentally, since this whole campaign was basically just going to be an introduction to D&D for Jacob, I didn't feel it necessary to try to make a unique game world. The 3.5 Greyhawk default world would work just fine for my purposes, so that Jacob wouldn't have to worry about anything that wasn't already there in the Player's Handbook - no new deities to worry about, for example; we'd just use Boccob, Kord, Moradin, and the standard pantheon. Furthermore, I resolved that this would be a "core only" game using only the three rulebooks. Again, this was for simplicity's sake - no need to overwhelm the poor kid with all of the complexities that a D&D game could eventually incorporate.
Now I just needed to pick out a first adventure, and we'd be all set.
Furthermore, while it's gotten to the point recently that I've been writing my own adventures for the campaign, when we first started out I relied heavily on published adventures, some from standalone products but the majority of them from the pages of Dungeon magazine. I wouldn't want to spoil those adventures for anyone who would be later running a PC through that adventure; that would just be mean.
However, it recently occurred to me that all of the above really only means that there's no good way for me to create a standard Story Hour, one that tries to depict the events that occurred in each adventure in the campaign. It doesn't mean that I couldn't create a different type of Story Hour, one that was more behind-the-scenes and explored not so much what went on in each adventure but rather how and why we played the way we did. I think it might be interesting to see how our campaign has changed over the years, as it evolved from a simple hack-and-slash dungeon crawl to pass the game on to the next generation, and slowly became more focused on character development and ongoing storylines rather than just being a collection of (mostly) published adventures. (It will be interesting to me to look back on all of this, in any case; hopefully it will be of some interest to those of you who decide to give it a quick perusal.)
So, since the first half of our campaign consisted almost entirely of published adventures and I won't be able to recall the specifics of what happened in each adventure, I'll just give a basic overview of the adventure itself, point out some highlights and any changes I made (and why), and give the status of the PCs at the end of the adventure. Later - and in the few instances earlier on where I made up the adventure myself specifically for the campaign - I can turn this more into a "traditional" Story Hour, where I recount the specifics of the adventure in a fictional account. (Be warned, though: the first time I'll write up a "traditional" Story Hour session won't be until our 21st adventure.)
So, to begin: it was around 2006 or so when my co-worker Dan and I were discussing, at work, the fact that we had both played AD&D when we were kids. He had last played AD&D 1st Edition, whereas I had continued on with AD&D 2nd Edition, converted to 3.0 and 3.5, and had been running a campaign for my two sons, Stuart and Logan, that had been put on indefinite hiatus when Stuart went off to college. Dan had two sons as well: Jacob, then 8, and Joey, then a mere 2 years old. Dan was the one who came up with the idea that I should run a D&D campaign to get his oldest son involved in the game. I thought it was a great idea (in truth, I was jonesing for some D&D action since the campaign I'd been running was put on hold; we still got in an occasional session when Stuart returned home from college during vacations, but our gaming sessions were few and far between), and when I mentioned it to Logan he was in as well (he was jonesing as bad as I was; we had previously toyed with the idea of some one-on-one sessions, but the idea wasn't particularly appealing to either of us). So one Saturday afternoon Logan and I drove over to Dan's house and they rolled up some 3.5 characters.
We showed Jacob his character options, and he, being a typical 8-year-old boy, went for a half-orc barbarian whom he named Slayer. Admittedly, it was a bit of a cliché, but he was eager as all get-out and I approved heartily at his enthusiasm. Dan opted for a human cleric of Kord and chose Strength and Luck as his two domains, realizing that every party needs some healing and that way his PC could ensure that Jacob's PC kept healthy and in the fight, which I thought was a commendable attitude. He named his PC Cal Trop. Okay, then, I could see this wasn't going to be a very serious campaign, but that was fine. Logan took the opportunity of a new 1st-level character to try an experiment he'd been wanting to perform: was it possible, he wondered, through rigorous feat and spell selection, to run an arcane spellcaster as a front-line fighter? He chose human for the extra feat so he could have Toughness to go with his Martial Weapon Proficiency; made sure he could cast both mage armor and shield since he wouldn't be wearing armor (and thus became a sorcerer rather than a wizard so he could cast more spells per day); and even went with a toad familiar because he desperately needed those extra 3 hit points (and this after he put his highest ability score into Constitution for the bonus hp). He named his PC Gareth, and when he couldn't come up with a good name for his toad I suggested Joanna (can anybody guess why?); he accepted the logic and we had our three PCs.
(Incidentally, the PCs' stats were generated by rolling 4d6 six times, dropping the lowest die in each case, and assigning the six values into whichever stat the player wanted. I wanted Jacob to have the ability to run any character class he wanted to be, and I didn't want the decision paralysis that point buy might bring to an 8-year-old playing D&D for the first time in his life.)
Dan brought out a dice bag full of some old, unpainted lead minis he had from his earlier gaming days, and he and Jacob each chose one for their PC. Logan used the plastic barbarian mini from our old HeroQuest board game, the gateway drug I had used to ease my boys into D&D back when they were 10 and 8. I presented Jacob with a new set of dice in a plastic case (a tradition I was just then starting for when I introduced new players to the game), explained the differences between them and when each one was used, and we were ready for some gaming.
Incidentally, since this whole campaign was basically just going to be an introduction to D&D for Jacob, I didn't feel it necessary to try to make a unique game world. The 3.5 Greyhawk default world would work just fine for my purposes, so that Jacob wouldn't have to worry about anything that wasn't already there in the Player's Handbook - no new deities to worry about, for example; we'd just use Boccob, Kord, Moradin, and the standard pantheon. Furthermore, I resolved that this would be a "core only" game using only the three rulebooks. Again, this was for simplicity's sake - no need to overwhelm the poor kid with all of the complexities that a D&D game could eventually incorporate.
Now I just needed to pick out a first adventure, and we'd be all set.
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