Tell me about them. In as much detail as you'd like. What were they like? What made them great? Would you do anything different today?
One of my favorite campaigns was about 5 or so years ago when I ran my group through ToEE AD&D1e. What made it so great were the changes I did to the adventure.
As a bit of a backstory, one of the characters, Rattituous, used to be part of a circus and was caught in a love triangle between the circus master's daughter and Dougg, a half orc brute. Dougg sabotaged one of Ratt's acts, making him out to be a fool in front of the woman. In a fit of rage and jealousy, Ratt ended up killing Dougg and was disgraced and exiled from the circus. He was also forced to pay for Dougg's resurrection, which would come out of the party's haul from the temple. None of the other party members knew of this until the circus caught up with Ratt in Homlett and he was put on trial. The paladin swore to take responsibility for Ratt, because they wanted to hang him initially. When Dougg got resurrected, he ended up marrying the girl, further agonizing Ratt.
Anyway, unknown to the party, when Dougg was resurrected, being the evil creature he was, he allied himself with Zuggtmoy and became her general. As a gift, he was awarded Blackrazor. The party ended up fighting him in brief skirmishes about a half dozen times before the final battle at the bottom of the temple. It wasn't until then that Dougg's helmet was cast off and he was revealed. Made for quite an epic battle, with Ratt naturally being quite pissed.
After all this, the party was level 8 or 9, and the paladin wanted a holy sword. So I gave it to him. A quest that is, not the sword ;) I told him that divine inspiration came to him, and he must take Blackrazor, have the breath of a white dragon breath on it and immediately smash it with Whelm. then take the pieces and have a new blade forged with the goodness of St. Cuthbert. So the campaign moved from ToEE to White Plume Mountain to do battle with a white dragon. They all retired after that, at about level 10 or 11.
Quote from: The Butcher;619144Tell me about them. In as much detail as you'd like. What were they like? What made them great? Would you do anything different today?
I ran a Ravenloft campaign back in 2000-2001-ish. I am quite certain it was the d20 version, which I have complained about, but in this case the game went really well despite any issue the rules presented for me.
Normally I don't do strange things in my games, but in this case I took a very different approach because a friend of mine had recently moved but wanted to continue playing with us. I had also been taking it a bit too easy on the players and needed to do something to shake things up. So I let my friend play the main villain from a distance. I gave him some basic design parameters, provided resources, and then updated him each weel after the session. Duing the game itself I ran the villain, but he gave me clear instructions of what he wanted to do and how he prepped between games. I also told the players that our friend was running one of the threats from a distance (just so everything was upfont) and that he would be playing the character "to win".
Normally, I doubt this approach would have worked as well as it did. But it was quite successful. Don't recall all the details of the campaign. If I remember correctly, the main villain ended up hiring the party to help him acquire a bunch of nasty things so he could raise up some kind of poweful creature (it was either rakshasa or a demon----been a long time). Eventually they figured out what he was doing and turned on him.
This isn't D&D related, but I ran an extensive Star Wars D20 campaign that involved a star trek crossover and gundam mobile suits. But, the player who asked if he could be a dark sider at the beginning of the game fell in love with the Starfleet Lieutenant that they rescued and became one one of the best Jedi that the resurrected Qui Gon Jinn ever trained.
Yeah, that game was off the hook, but it was *soo* much fun.
Towards the end of 2010, we had a blast integrating our Dark Heresy campaign to our Warhammer 40,000 adventures.
The Characters. (http://thewargate.blogspot.com/2010/12/dark-heresy-under-vast-grey-sky.html)
Adventure log. (http://thewargate.blogspot.com/2011/01/dark-heresy-under-vast-grey-sky.html)
House Semetov background. (http://thewargate.blogspot.com/2011/07/gang-briefing-house-semetov.html)
Band of Basterds background. (http://thewargate.blogspot.com/2011/08/gang-briefing-band-of-basterds.html)
Vae Salubrious subsector notes. (http://thewargate.blogspot.com/2011/12/index-mardannon-vae-salubrious.html)
Some campaigns coming to mind.
Broken Isle campaign (Hawkmoon/Stormbringer): started by using the Hawkmoon campaign published under the same name, and rapidly involved way more than what was originally covered in the book, including a huge conspiracy between the Order of the Elephants, the Druids, the forces of Jagreen Lern in Pan Tang, the home made Granbreton Order of the Salamander, and forces from another, Tolkienish plane of Existence and some characters from the Table Round, too. It ended up with a giant battle in Eire with Demon Trees fighting Ents, Balrogs against mechanical frog jumpers built by the Granbretons and stolen by the Eirish, ornithopters against zeppelins, and more. Yeah. We threw everything we had in this game.
Paris by Night (Old and New WoDs): long, long running game which started with Vampire the Masquerade and was rebooted later using Requiem and Co. It's an enormous setting mingling most of the World of Darkness games, with several dozens of coteries and maybe 200 individuals on the Vampire side alone, complete with backgrounds, relationships etc. It's been run as a sandbox before there was a name for that, ran 8 years in Masquerade, some 2 or so years in NWOD (the game's on hold at the moment). The players killed Justicars like Democritus and Mme Guil, a Sabbat pack of PCs made Notre Dame explode with a tactical nuke, there are rumors the Lasombra antediluvian is around somewhere manipulating everyone in the shadows, Robespierre is an ultraconservative Ventrue, Quasimodo is a Gargoyle... well I couldn't cover it if I was making two dozen posts about it, to be honest.
The Praemal Tales: there's the first part, which was my Ptolus 3.5 game you can read about on its blog there, (http://praemal.blogspot.ca) and the second part which is my Ptolus AD&D game (300 years in the past compared to the 3.5 game), a play-by-posts here on the RPG Site (on hold at the moment). See there for the first IC thread. (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=18731)
It was an RQ campaign from a few years back set in my homebrew world.
The players started off as backwood tribesmen who knew nothing about the world around them. They got involved in their local tribal summer games and when an unpopular contestant won they stuck their nose into tribal politics and solved the problem. During ther course of events, though, they encountered some foreigners and one of the PCs discovered strange tattoos on his body. They set off on a long quest to find out more about these.
Along the way they:
- Fought off more foreigners who were trying to ambush them because of these tattoos.
- Were hunted by a mountain tribe that kept them up all night for many nights in a row by speaking gibberish directly into their heads.
-Climbed high into the mountains where they helped Prince Yeshik recapture his throne from his usurping brother.
- Descended to the strange lands on the far side of the mountains where they discovered that not everyone who wears an animal mask is really wearing a mask.
- Came across a boy in the wilds who was dragging a huge bag of golden candelabras, then tried to get rid of him and his treasure.
- Crossed a ghost-plagued desert to an ancient ruin where they found the only existing map of the world carved into the floor of a ruin. Sadly it was a thousand years out of date.
- Had their horses stolen by mad cultists who kept a manticore as a pet.
- Went hunting for lions with a nobleman from the back of his chariots
- Snuck into the decadent city of Pavonis guided by a beetle-loving worshipper of the insect god.
- Rescued said guide's sister from the temple of the Lady of Pain by sneaking in on inflated goat bladders.
- Followed some scorpionmen into the desert to free the slaves they had just purchased.
- Hunted for diamonds using Rukhs and raw meat.
- Retrieved a load of willow from a razor-shell infested mire for a chariot-maker.
- Rescued one of their own compatriots from an unscrupulous potion-maker.
- Escorted a merchant caravan and fought off some native Jinn in the form of dust-devils.
- Were captured in Kish and forced to fight in the arena (where one lost his life).
- Discovered that the 'ghost' of the arena was actually a crazy old man who lived beneath and muttered about the 'wheel of life'.
- Defeated the Sharu of Kish and stole his tattoos and his irtu.
- Fled south where they encountered some military deserters on the edge of the jungle just before they were attacked by elephant riders.
- Insulted a local tribesman by eating the musk gland he offered them.
- Encountered a group of travellers who carried a dead man that they all pretended was alive.
- Overnighted in the village of the monkey god, then killed their god and burned the village when they discovered the reason there were so many monkeys in the area.
- Fought off a tiger that tried to snatch one of their donkeys.
- Encountered a young boy who claimed to be a prince and was bound for the city of Makasabini where he would sacrifice himself in order to save his village.
- Entered Makasabini and promptly found themselves cursed by a local god so that a black arm started to grow out of the top of their heads which, when fully grown, would beat them senseless.
- Discovered the Black Arm God was really only an ancient sorcerer, then entered his abode in a jungle ruin and, after a pitched battle with his shadow, killed him using a magic beetle launched from a sling.
- Narrowly fled the jungle ahead of a posse of angry Varanantans and their platoon of elephant riders.
- Encountered a dead man possessed by a friendly spirit that wanted to eat all their food.
- Got ambushed inside a fortress belonging to another man with magic tattoos and had to fight their way out.
- Finally discovered that the tattoos represnted the syllables in the name of a foreign god.
- Fought off a monster in the jungle that attracted human food by mimicking the sound of a crying baby.
- Trekked back north into the mountains and used cattle as bait to trap and kill some flying zando for the local villagers.
- Entered a mountain village that was about to be destroyed by a stolen elephant.
- Found the secret entrance to the tower of lead and plundered it for its magical secrets, but not before they were hounded by a pack of wild harpies with dog heads.
- Discovered that one of their members was possessed and, after returning home to their tribelands, relieved him of his possession.
- On hearning news that Prince Yeshik was again in trouble, they formed a small army and marched into the mountains.
- With their army at their backs, they besieged a mountain palace and finally killed the dread sorcerer within, bringing peace to the land. But not before one of the party was killed by a giant exploding frog.
It was a blast!
Age of Worms was probably one of the best campaigns I ran from start to finish (1st to 22nd level)
I really enjoyed the lethality to the game. We have well over dozen permanent character deaths in the campaign and three near TPKs.
Loved the story and thought it was an excellent and well-written series of adventures.
the traveller campaign i ran in college, '87-91. the characters early on stumbled upon a tardis-like ship which had limited controls (occasionally misjumped, but never fatally). i made a random table for the maybe 20+ rpg game worlds & alternates i could think of (e.g. star trek, car wars, 40k, ad&d's prime material plane, etc.). i just winged the mechanics/conversions to the traveller/megatraveller stuff. the task system really helped keep things moving.
the group ran all over the multiverse, alternately going good or wreaking havoc as the mood struck. worked with the Law gods of moorcock's books to stop a major Chaos incursion. killed the imperium's emperor strephon, but didn't bring about MT's "rebellion" (the crown princess simply took over). in the end the survivors went to one of the tribes in the volcano-lake on the isle of dread and retired there, campaign pretty much over at graduation.
could never repeat it, i mean we could play almost any time, all together on or near campus. all my books were easily accessible if needed. it was great, epic at times and mundane at other moments. was great practice at the skill/art of winging it, absolutely.
So my most memorable campaigns were
Adventures in Wonderland
1e D&D + UA and 1/2 Ogres from dragon or White Dwarf or maybe Beholder magazine and some Archer class from Dragon.
The Party started at 1st and ran up to 5th or 6th level.
Gonzo style game based round twisted fairy tales and kids stories.
Highlights were
- when the Party met the 7 dwarves who kept Snow white chained up behind their forest hovel and were all taken out by them apart from the Cavalier Sir Elidor (??) who escaped on -15 HP. However he returned having drunk his potion of Superheroism that he had negected to use previously and defeated Doc, Dopey and the rest.
- The legendary fight between the Archer and Hansel and Gretel after they had killed the poor old woman in the Gingerbread House. Still discussed over beer 30 years on...
- When the party helped Jack rob the poor Storm Giant Blind and pinched his magic Harp. Also when I realised the Archer class was prehaps a little over powered
-the look of Horror on the 1/2 Ogre PCs face when in response to the words 'Pick me up' from a magic sword in a pile of gold he actually did pick it up and realised that whilst it was a +5 defender (the party were 2nd level) it has an ego the size of a planet and as a result he would be its slave forever. At then seeing the same look after the same 1/2 ogre was released from prison having been rid of the sword and a peasant walked up to him with a bundle and quietly passed it to him and when he opened it he relaised it was the same sword....
- the look of horror on the face of the player of the female assassin when the goblins she encountered near the Troll bridge rather than attacking her started whispering 'pretty lady, nice lady' and make full use of the grappling rules.....
Mud
2e D&D with modifed combat rules, HP and stuff PCs started at 3rd level
Started as a hey we have been playing a lot of MtG lets do some RPGs. So I aid I'll DM and threw a game together on the fly as the PCs were being made and they were walking to the Town of Durba. Having just watched Seven Samurai I decided the theme would be Mud and it always rained. Became a multiplanar quest game that ran for 2 years
Highlights
- the death of Josedek Horse Slayer, so called for his willingness to take the horse rather than the rider with his 2 handed sword. The Pc had broken into a merchants house they were fleeing Josadek decided to turn and face the 2 guys chasing them as they fled and as soon as he did it he knew he was dead and it turned out he was right, but he gave Lord fantastic 3 more rounds to get away.
- Rescuing the Harper from the world of Faerie. No raise dead in my games but in a planar travel game it seemed reasonable that you could travel to the underworld to rescue people so ... the Elven harper died and they went to faerie to rescue him. The trouble is the land didn't want to let him go so as they fled to teh portal the land was growing arms to grab them
- The land of Florenz, which I subsequently used as a goldern Circle shadow in Amber so well did it turn out. Black power and irish and french accents, the party becoming merchant theives
The Holy Orders
Looking to play WoD but couldn't be arsed to buy any books so found on the Web the Holy Orders fan supplement. Created a road trip game where 4 PCs 2 vampires and 2 holy knights had to travel across America looking for the Sabbat villan a fomer Nazi scientist who had build a virus that turned Humans into mindless cattle to be used as a food source for the baddies. The Camerilla wanted to stop it the Knights wanted to stop and so an unholy alliance was formed.
Highlights -
- The PC implosion it had to happen the Templar was turned by a Tzimise and lost the plot. But eh Highlight wasn't Count Orlando Nosferatu thespian taking refuge in the cess pit outside the MacDonalds in New Mexico it was Seamus the Irish Gangrel walking out of said MacDonalds after it had been hit with an antitank missile by the Templar. Flames everywhere the Gangrel who had made the most ludicrous fort saves vs agg damage was able to use the the immortal Saint of Killers line from Preacher ... Not enough Gun..
- Count Orlando chasing an 8 yeald old girl through Bourbon street clothing store due to the temptation of innocence
- The Battle with Reverend Blackwood in his S Carolina southern style house
- The embrace of the Templar , Sasha Vycos rocks
- The Invisible wife at the Assylum they couldn't work out if she was real or part of her 'husband's' Malkav fantasy, the later was the case
- Curtis and McReady the world's coolest vampire hunters, well until Orland dragged McReadying inot a Cess Pit behind a McDonalds in New Mexico and Seamus cut Curtis to ribbons while he was trying to reload his dragon breath rounds spas 12.
- Brother Abraham, the Hospitaler's final reveal, that he had 100 lbs of Plastique explosive under his puffa jacket that blew the Sabbat labs to bits along with a big chuck of downtown Mexico City oh and all the party...
First ever Amber game
Was using our own rules as ADRPG wasn't out. Although our game was also diceless
2GMs - just 1 player (never read the books) who wakes up in a hospital bed with no memories of who he is no character sheet ...
the Dare Devils games, Hunter with Katrina and Sloworm, Danny August and the 007 games, The destruction of Sanctuary.. so many games :)
Best campaign I ever ran was my first Shroompunk-- dark and gritty Mario Bros-- campaign. So much so that I've been trying to recreate it ever since.
Game ran in HARP, which I totally recommend for people who like fantasy games in the vein of "crunchy" D&D, d20, or Rolemaster.
Characters were:
- Father Anderson Smith, an agent of the Vatican (Earth Human Cleric/Monk)
- Abigail, a psychotic teenage girl from the suburbs (Earth Human Berserker)
- Pak, a petty burglar and computer hacker (Earth Human Spy)
- Kyudo, a peerless archer and woodsman (Kingdoms Human Ranger)
Highlight of the game was when Abigail rode a yoshi dinosaur, screaming, off the roof of a six-story building onto the face of one of the dreaded Koopa Lords-- one of Emperor Bowser's children-- and rode it all the way to the ground. Or when Pak taunted the Sun itself into attacking the airship he was standing on.
The current one--5 years of D&D.
Because we have a good time..
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/i-hit-it-with-my-axe/1872-Episode-18-200-lbs-Of-Meat-And-A-New-Fur-Coat
...and the group and players grow with the setting and vice versa.
Quote from: Zak S;619415The current one--5 years of D&D.
Because we have a good time..
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/i-hit-it-with-my-axe/1872-Episode-18-200-lbs-Of-Meat-And-A-New-Fur-Coat
...and the group and players grow with the setting and vice versa.
Why'd you stop doing I hit it with my axe?
Quote from: CRKrueger;619423Why'd you stop doing I hit it with my axe?
1. A lot of the Escapist's money came from Greece--you know what happened to Greece, right?
2. The Escapist cut all tabletop RPG stuff (including J Mal's column) first because it makes less money than videogame stuff
3. The older shows with established audiences over there were videogame shows and the advertisers (where the money came from) sell videogames. And our show, which was relatively new, didn't. So even though ours had a wider crossover appeal, the Escapist was basically set up to sell and make shows about videogames and didn't have a lotta juice for other stuff set up at the time.
4. Our show was the most expensive show--most of their shows are people where that's all they do--they're up-and-coming animators or whatever. To let our games be filmed, we basically need The Escapist to pay us what we'd be getting during a normal work day. So we cost 2-3 times what they did.
5. There's only one TRPG company that had the kinda money that could afford to advertise on the Escapist. And that company was selling a product we were not playing and we weren't gonna change games.
EDIT:
(That said, a handful of companies have been asking lately about starting it up again with a bigger budget, so....mayyyyybe)
The Very Last Traveller campaign I ever ran was the best one. I still don't know if this was in spite of, or because of, the fact that it completely "off the map" in the very first run.
What happened was, one of the PCs had demolitions skill, but he started off the game w/o any high explosives, and this really bothered him. (You see where this is going....) So he appealed to his crew mates for help. The guy with Streetwise? No. The woman with Admin? Absolutely not! So he says "I got Chemistry skill; I'll make my own explosives!"
GM: (me) "Where you doing this?"
Him: "In my hotel room." (They're dirtside at that time.)
GM: "Roll for it."
Him: critical failure....
Long story short... the other PC's have to smuggle him out of a heavily guarded ICU, then onto their ship. They make an unauthorized take off with a "suspected terrorist" (demolitions boy) on board, followed by an emergency jump under fire from system defense forces.
At this point I ceremoniously picked up my campaign notes and shit-canned them. "Never mind what I was planning; this is way better!" The rest of the campaign was going to be all about the PCs on the run because of his stupid stunt, and everyone had a blast. I don't remember everything that went on, but it was epic.
In the second game session, someone handed him a brick of plastic explosive, and he was happy. Then they surreptitiously handed me a note that read "It's actually just modelling clay, but we're not telling him that."
Best players ever.
I ran a Call of Cthulhu campaign set during the battle of Hue in Vietnam. It had a high body count (more from the NVA than from some monsters the guys found while patrolling the city). I put a fair amount of work into this and the players were involved in several incidents that actually happened (along with a few more pertinent to the cthulhu stuff).
Another favorite was a Rifts campaign I ran a long time ago. The guys were your normal mix of glitter boy, juicer, crazy, SAMAS pilot, and Scholar. They had a number of run-ins with the Coalition States. This all happened back when the latest new book was Atlantis. We all had a blast.
Quote from: Zak S;6194251. A lot of the Escapist's money came from Greece--you know what happened to Greece, right?
2. The Escapist cut all tabletop RPG stuff (including J Mal's column) first because it makes less money than videogame stuff
3. The older shows with established audiences over there were videogame shows and the advertisers (where the money came from) sell videogames. And our show, which was relatively new, didn't. So even though ours had a wider crossover appeal, the Escapist was basically set up to sell and make shows about videogames and didn't have a lotta juice for other stuff set up at the time.
4. Our show was the most expensive show--most of their shows are people where that's all they do--they're up-and-coming animators or whatever. To let our games be filmed, we basically need The Escapist to pay us what we'd be getting during a normal work day. So we cost 2-3 times what they did.
5. There's only one TRPG company that had the kinda money that could afford to advertise on the Escapist. And that company was selling a product we were not playing and we weren't gonna change games.
EDIT:
(That said, a handful of companies have been asking lately about starting it up again with a bigger budget, so....mayyyyybe)
They give you any info on your hits compared to other content?
Quote from: CRKrueger;619554They give you any info on your hits compared to other content?
Zero Punctuation was basically half the traffic (millions) and this one other video game show was behind that (a million), then there was a whole pack of other shows regularly getting high 6 figures including us.
oddly, my first campaign (adnd) was a real success, which was quite a feat given two of the players (one a rules-lawyering, min-maxing, spotlight-hogging, asshole and the other who existed only to push him over the edge of sanity). short synopsis: the dirty dozen meets wilderlands.
campaign started out with the various pcs being scooped up in legal dragnets for their (player-defined) crimes and then having their deaths staged very publicly, afterward being resurrected in secret to serve as part of an elite task force who answered directly to the invincible overlord (yes, that overlord).
the campaign was mostly episodic, though an underlying plot was introduced at a later date, drawing largely on the mayfair city state products. fun was had by all. well, most of the time, anyhow.
for years, i tried again and again to recapture this first campaign, but could never make it work. i think i might give it one more go - this time with vornheim and ruins of the undercity.