Top 3 Campaigns I Have Played In

Over at 5 Stone Games the post today was, What are the Three Best Campaigns You've Played In?  I thought it was a great question and I loved his answers.  Here are my top three.

3. Arthurian Mixed with the Crusades
This is a campaign I ran.  It lasted for three years.  We took a couple of break here and there, but it was a steady group.  This campaign did have an end game.  This was a heroic campaign with no mages.  There was magic, lots of it, but it was possessed by creatures or things.  No one was shooting fireballs out of their ass and lightning bolts from their nipples.  None of that.  No clerics wiping the asses of bleeding adventurers.  This was hardcore, metal on metal.  Bash the son of bitch in front of you until he stops moving.  There was a lot of political maneuvering, ancient evils (none of them had tentacles), ambitious creatures of power with armies and a small boy who was hung for trying to steal a saint's finger bone to take home to his sick mother.  And in the end, that boy, a boy who was killed two sessions into a 3-year campaign became the most important event.

2. Torrin the Red Hand/Slice Handler
I'm cheating, so what?  I'm putting these together because my good friend Dwayne, ran both of these.
  Slice Handler was a product of Unearth Arcana when it was first released.   He murderized people with his daggers.  He was the first and only character where I rolled an 18/00 strength.  Then he had a 17 dexterity.  We were using the 4d6 roll so having a bunch of high stats was easy.  While Slice was a machine gun Dwayne got his jollies by teasing Slice with bird women, those damn saving throws I could never make and having Slice go on a quest to put together a sword with 12 shards that took a long time only to have Orcus show up, take it from me and just for the shits and giggles, leave behind a bunch a undead to eat my head.  It took me months to search and combine the sword to only have it for 2.341 seconds.  Bastard.  But it was a TON of a fun.  It was probably one of the more comical campaigns I'd played in.

In contrast Torrin the Red Hand was a GURPS character that played in Dwayne's strange and wonderful world made up with demons and armies of undead.  Torrin was in the last stronghold to the goddess Mitria.  It was transported to this land and along the way we ( +Rob Conley played a priest of Mitria).  We not only had to battle to survive, but learn the dynamics of the world.  There were many incorrect assumptions made based on tropes of the game that was a blast to explore and a fantastic way to keep experienced gamers on their toes.

3. The Dragon Rises

Ah, my favorite campaign where I played a mercenary captain called Draco-Lindus.  His name was created way before it became significant.  This campaign played over years.  This is my benchmark of an epic campaign.  It had three stages of development.  The final stage was forging a realm among others realms.  And then the hard part.  Ruling.  Rob Conley GMed this one like a fricking master.  He demonstrated that being a very powerful person could just as easily be handicapped by their power as well as dominating others.  Accompanied by Dwanye's William Endril, we changed the landscape of his campaign world that still effects anyone who adventures in his Majestic Wilderlands. 

Kick Off to a New Campaign and the Difference of Character Concept and Character Play and This Has Become My Longest Title Ever.

It started.  Last night around 6:30.  Fantasy Grounds did not crash and the only technical glitch was some echoing in Rob's mic. 

So there we lay in the virtual world, me as Rolondo the bard, Rob as Agnar the illusionist and Dwayne as Brother Dani (pronounced deny) the cleric started in the campaign face down in the dirt from a sleep spell.  Rusty as the chaotic evil GM made sure to describe that their were flies in our mouths.  A caravan was hit hard by bandits.  We were fortunate to be in the fringe when we went down and escaped the spear in the chest while you sleep maneuver. 

Before I go further this is where I discovered the concept of my character was not going to fit in with the others as well or still unsure how Rolondo would fit in.  Sure I can play my guy as planned, but it would take a lot longer to get things done.  The first few sessions in figuring out how these characters are going to mesh together.  Or even if they will.  I want to enjoy what the GM is developing and find a cooperative relationship with the other players, but still be an individual. 

Other people have different ways to play, but I prefer to have a cooperative group.  That's not to mean I don't like tricking or sticking it to another player once in a while.  But for the most part I want the party to be a team that works together. 

This is were when a character is first developed it can be a rough sketch or have a forty page background.  Either way its hard to know how to play your character until you see what the others developed.  In old AD&D terms, you can't be playing a paladin type if you have two others playing assassin and evil cleric type characters.  Either they change or you change or maybe the GM has developed a situation where the players will need to cooperative even though they are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Anyway, right now I think we are all figuring out our characters and how they fit in this new world.  Right now we only know how bad the road dirt tastes and the Village of Lessof.  Back to the game...

Brother Dani wanted to bury the dead, but we had no shovels, but that didn't stop him.  I wasn't about to ruin my mandolin playing hands by digging them into the hard dirt and stone, but I wasn't against the idea.  Plus during this conversation I found a little my quirk my character has, he corrects their word usage.  In a nice way.  They kept calling the animals who eat the bodies carrion.  It was corrected.  Anyway i volunteered to go to the village and get shovels.

The village was a run downwith some interesting NPCs.  Rusty had me cracking up a few times.  While exploring the village I found another quirk of Rolondo, he over thinks stuff.  He tried to correlate what was going on in the village to this old tale he knew from a child. 

The three plot lines we have going currently are:
1. A chicken stealing fox.  Agnar caught it and brought it back to the village and that's where we left off.
2. I decipher some ancient script on the alter in the church.
3. And of course the bandits that hit us. 

The point I made when we were tracking the bandits was what would we do if we found them?  We didn't fare so well the first time.  And there were a lot more of us then.  Mostly everyone else was killed. 

So that was our kickoff session.  With the fox caught and a celebration looming I'm thinking things are going to get hectic real quick. 

Start of a New Campaign

Last night Rob (Bat in the Attic), Dwayne (Gamers Closet), Rusty (formly of The Rusty Battle Axe) and I got together to work out the kinks of Fantasy Grounds 2 and to finish our characters.  Rusty will be GMing using a home brewed version of Castles & Crusades.  He said he was very excited to GM us, but I am sure that wore off as the night went on. 

Gaming over the internet is great because you can still get together with your gaming dudes, but one of these sessions where the files are downloaded, the new GM gets some play time with fiddling with all the new contraptions of FG2 is critical.  The will be Rusty's first time using FG2 as a GM.  He has a good instructor with Rob, and an excellent peanut gallery with me and Dwayne chastising him if he makes a mistake.  Overall I think we got the major kinks worked out and filed downloaded.

So far I have my bard Rolondo.  Who despite Dwayne's insistent does not go the way of Elton John.  Dwayne is playing a priest.  And Rob has got himself an illusionist.  Bard.  Cleric.  Illusionist.  We are so dead.

We are going to need to hire some front line fodder before too long I am sure.  Rusty is using the Splinters of Faith adventures from Frog God Games, the S&W version.  I'm not sure how brutal the series is, but I am sure it will leave us with a few nasty bruises and scars. 

Rusty did a lot of research on instrument of the time.  I am trying to get him to do a guest blog and post about the instruments.  I think it would be interesting and helpful.  So if you would like to see the blog let Rusty know by leaving a comment saying, Rusty, don't be a slather ass and write a blog for cry'n out lout.

Next we begin our new adventure.  It will be fun exploring a new world with a new GM and finally get to play with Rob and Dwayne.  Rusty is a clever fellow and I am sure he is going to have lots of surprises for us.  Can't wait!

Gaming Road Trip and a Start to a New Campaign

Our old gaming group was together again in person.  All except Rusty, but we'll catch up with him later this summer.  We got together and had a board game night.  We ended up playing Munchkin (read more about it here) for the first time.  I had the starter pack for about a year and finally was able to break it out.  It was a blast.  You'll see the result in the left hand column of my running total of the year. 

On Saturday we went on a game store road trip.  The three of us hadn't gone on a road trip for nearly twenty years.  We went on a pilgrimage to the Warzone Matrix in Cleveland.  I love that store.  It's like an archeological dig into gaming's history.  Just layers and layers of gaming stuff in every corner.  I found a set of the Spell Compendium's I've been looking for and after a little wheeling and dealing I got the set for $100.  Which was great.  Then I ended up buying 3 Munchkin accessory packs.  Yup.  Damn you Munchkin!

The second store we hit was...well it pretty much sucked.  After an amusing encounter in the parking lot with two 'dudes' trying to move a truck that was blocking everything the game store with a huge reputation was underwhelming.  I guess if I was into Magic the Gathering and it did have a bunch of board games, but as for role-playing stuff, D&D and Pathfinder.  There were a few other core rule books for other systems, but the owner said the only thing he sold were Pathfinder and D&D. 

The one funny note was there was a cork-board with gamers looking for gamers.  One guy's ad looked something like this.

Me: 30 year-old gamer, Teacher, Not Smelly

Looking for: RP gamer, adult, Not Smelly

The last night we were together we got to play a mega game of Munchkin with all the additional packs I bought.  You need to be a professional card shuffler to play it once you have all those cards added in.  It was a good weekend of gaming. 

Rusty Battle Axe is feeding us information about his campaign he will be running us through.  Still trying to decide what I want to play.  I actually considered playing a bard for the very first time in my gaming career, but don't see that on the list of classes.  Looking forward to exploring a new world and see what kind of trouble I can get to into there.  I'll probably blog about my character selection process.

Conclusion of a Campaign

Last night our group concluded our campaign. Dwayne had a true Point of Light setting for his world where a displaced group of followers of the Maiden were transported from another world where extinction was eminent. The new world we found ourselves in was no more welcoming, but here we had a chance to survive, rebuild and hopefully one day return.

Upon arrival we were discovering many wonderful things we had no knowledge of. Most civilization was driven underground as demons and brimstone warlocks terrorized the surface and their only real competitor was a massive undead army formed by the victims of the demons. Torrun of the Red Hand and Ambrose a Priest of the Maiden slogged through an alien world trying to piece together scraps of knowledge. It was a lot of fun discovering this world. Stereo types were twisted, what you thought were truths in the old world did not apply here. I think Dwayne did a great job at keeping us guessing and keeping it consistent at the same time.

Last night we concluded the campaign. Our characters found the castle of the avatar of the maiden. He told us truths that we were not surprised to hear, but meant we had to change the way we did things as an order or we would repeat the same mistakes once we returned to our home plane.

It ended with my character Torrun marrying a woman from one of the native villages bonding our two people together. With the work ahead of us there are still a ton of story lines Dwayne could explore, but I like where we ended it with the possibilities. Down the road when Dwayne wants to run his world again we can pick up our old characters or make up new ones in the present or years down the timeline to see the effects of our work. Either way I look forward to exploring this world and discovering more of its mysteries.

Thanks Dwayne for a campaign well run.