The Birth of a New Campaign

As Gamemaster's we never quite know when we still stumble across a small spark that will ignite a blaze of passion and form a campaign.  The spark can be any number of things; a book, a film, a comic, or any number of other things.

My most recent spark came while I was wandering the Connecticut Renaissance Faire and came across a small camp.  The camp itself was roped off providing a single entrance.  Next to that entrance was a sign that read:

Now one of my good friends that I game with (AngryBear) loves all things German and is currently majoring in German in college.  He had planned to go with me to the Fair, but unfortunately had to work.  Wanting to show him what he was missing I sent him the picture above.  Then I wandered into the camp, curious to know more.

The Geld preparing a midday meal

Though this was only the second Renaissance Fair I have been to, but this was the single greatest thing I saw at either one. The camp was a miniature version, of course, but they had sleeping tents set up, a cook fire, a weapons rack on display, and a bunch of friendly soldiers and camp follower to answer any questions you might have.  One such gentlemen came over to ask me and my wife if we had any questions.  He may have regretted that decision later as I kept him around bombarding him with all manner of questions long after my wife had rolled her eyes and walked away.  This gentlemen, and the other members of the troupe, were a wealth of great information.  He took me over to the weapon rack and showed me all of the most common instruments of war used by the company.  I got to hold most of them and even give a couple of them a swing.  Once I was out of question the I thanked the man and took one more last look around the camp before going to find my wife, but on the way out the man stopped to let me know they were performing an arms demonstration at 3pm on the green. 

We got back in time for the demonstration which was a real blast.  These guys were very funny, passionate about the subject matter, and just a blast to watch.  Here is a short video of them doing their thing.

As we were leaving the demonstration my wife was apparently asking me some pointed questions about lunch but I didn't hear her.  The cogs were already in motion. 

Everything I had learned at that camp and at the demonstration had me convinced that a D&D game in which the PCs were part of a mercenary company would be awesome.  With a ton of historical info to draw from, as well as a number of fictional sources like The White Company and The Black Company, there are endless possibilities.   

When I got home I got started on the campaign right away.  The Mercenary company I had just learned about was a Fähnlein, so I started there.   From there I moved onto Italian mercenary companies from the late middle ages through the renaissance.  I'm still in the process of getting my hands of some books to mine for material such as Condottiere 1300-1500 Infamous Medieval Mercenaries and Medieval Solder. 

With a solid foundation of the subject matter, I turned my attention to my fictional company.  I made some quick decisions based on the research as far as size; 400-500 fighting men with about 600 camp followers for a total size of roughly 1,000 men women and children.   The man who led the reenactment company said that he was the younger brother of a Baron and that is how he had the funds to muster and pay for his company.  That worked perfectly for me.  So my first NPC, the leader of the company, was the younger brother of a Baron.  I decided he was the middle son of three, and through he got on very well with his younger brother, he generally disliked his older brother.  So when his father died and his older brother became Baron our Mercenary Captain took his inheritance, mustered his very own mercenary company.  I settled on the name Eldon Ventris for him, a name that speaks to his adventurous spirit.  Eldon is somewhat cold and cutthroat, but in many ways he is what the life of a mercenary has made him.  Gold is what keeps his company alive and together, so when it runs out the Company's time has run out.  His greatest goal is to see that that never happens. 

Some art I created for the campaign using Terragen and Photoshop.

I had ideas for some other NPCs, a grissled old veteran sergeant who serves as Eldon's second in command, a weary old healer who serves as the company's medic, etc.  But first I wanted to find a name for the company itself.  A lot of great names for a mercenary company have already been taken; The White Company, The Black Company, The Brave Companions, The Great Company, and a host of others.  I wanted something that spoke to Eldon's feeling that he and his men aren't the favored sons of their fathers, and are in some way outcasts.  So I settled on the name "The Black Sons."

That was about all I finished that night, but by fanning the flame immedielty I made sure that the spark that was my visit to the Das Geld Fahnlein wasn't wasted.  Instead, it is well on its way to being the foundation of a very solid campaign.  If you are lucky enough to come across your own spark, don't wait.  Get right into it or you may loose your inspiration before it comes to fruition. 

Fireside Gaming

I didn't get to go to Gen Con this year. In fact, I never get to go, which sucks. Maybe next year will be my year, but for this year I'm taking another gaming related trip.

My whole gaming group and I are going on a camping trip. We'll be spending the weekend gaming and attending King Richard's Faire. We are getting to the campground on Friday, gaming that night, all day Saturday, and attending the faire on Sunday. What we were going to play during the trip took some deciding.

Essentially the choice of games came down to D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, and Hackmaster Basic. Bryan (who plays Lyell in our current game) volunteered to run any of the three systems. I offered to run a HMB game. It took awhile but eventually the group decided on me and HMB. So it looks like I'll be running my first ever Hackmaster game. Am I nervous? A little.

The game I'll be running is an introduction to a campaign I've been working on off and on for a while. It is called Caliburn and was originally inspired by the classic PC game Spirit of Excalibur. The setting isn't finished so I'll be running a kind of Caliburn Basic to go along with Hackmaster Basic, kind of fitting really.

The group just made the decision on Thursday so I haven't had a lot of time to figure out what the general plot of the game is going to be. The good news is that I have about a month to get everything ready, which should be plenty of time. I'll probably post about my progress leading up to the trip and then a review of how it went and my impressions of running a game in the system.

First things first... I have to read the GM section of the HMB manual!

Anatomy of a Campaign: Legacy of New Lago - Part 2

Just to recap the last segment...

• I am going over my design for my Legacy of New Lago campaign
• LoNL continues the story of two previous campaigns
• The players are playing the children of former PCs
• I went over the basic plot of the campaign
  
• The campaign is episodic and has several classic modules integrated into it
  
  

The Outline

I am pretty anal in my prep and design. I always want to have an outline with the major plot points spelled out so I can keep the story moving and organized. For LoNL I decided to go with the three act structure one often seen in plays, movies, and books.

Here is the general outline with my goals for each Act...

Act I

The PCs begin their adventuring life and have to deal with the shadow cast by their parents. They struggle to establish their own identities in the face of the prejudices that precede them based on the reputations of their parents. Their early successes will be in stark contrast to Act II when things take a darker turn and the young generations learns more about the flaws of their parents.

Goals:

· Introduce key NPCs to the game

· Give easy examples of what the game is going to be like

· Time of innocence, everything should be smooth and happy at the beginning

· Give hints of future, find a way to introduce the villain in a non confrontational way

Act II

The longest of the three Acts this one has the low point in it. Act II should be about innocence lost. The PCs realize that their parents are people and see them with all their flaws and imperfections. The villain is introduced and his identity is uncovered leading to a host of moral and ethical dilemmas. The PCs also find out about the Prophesy and the truth of their role in things. With this knowledge comes the truth about how they are the way they are, age, skills etc. The PCs have to rise above their doubts and pull themselves out of the hole they are in.

Goals:

· Disillusion the PCs in the aftermath of “Trinity”

· Turn up the difficulty rating of the game

· The Big reveal of the central villain

· The Villain is unmasked, literally, and the PC find out the truth about a lot of things.

· In the aftermath of Trinity Aken takes the group to his Command Center and clears up anything that is still a mystery.

· PCs real test comes in the aftermath of these revelations when they have to put it all aside and spring into action to save one of their own.

Act III

The PCs are now battle hardened adventures cut from molds similar to their parents. They are in (almost) full knowledge of Aken’s Plan to rid the world once and for all of the Dark God. However, now that all the cards are on the table their lives are more dangerous than ever. The Players must hurry to secure the final item needed for the rebinding ritual before their Arch-Enemy gets it. Then finally they must go though the Portal to Old Lago and secure the anchor so that the final confrontation can take place.

Goals:

· The final item is secured.

· The Final Climactic battle takes place.

· Epilogue where Aken grants each PC one wish

Now you may be saying, "you didn't make that at the beginning of the campaign design process." Actually, I did, but it looked very different. I added more and more to it as I created more plot elements for the game. It started off pretty bare, but over time it was fleshed out until it looks like the one above. Now obviously this is a guide, not a script. I can tell you, of the above, not everything worked out as I planned. Even the best planner must be ready to improvise. Knowing your players is key, but players will surprise you, so stay alert.

This isn't the only outline I made for the game. Here is a chapter by chapter breakdown that I used to keep track of individual adventures...


Act I: Ascension

• Chapter I: "Graduation Day" (Last Battle of Theine 1-2)
• Chapter II: "Horns of Chaos" (Keep on the Boarderlands1-4)
• Chapter III: "Hells Bells" (Murder Mystery at a wedding 4-5)

Act II: Sins of the Father

• Chapter IV: "Descent into Darkness" (Ravenloft 4-7)
• Chapter V: "Trinity" (White Plume Mountain 7-9)
• Chapter VI: "Sunstone" (Dragon Strike Adventure (8-9)
• Chapter VII: "Salvation" (A Rescue 9-10)

Act III: Once and For All

• Chapter VII: Coup De Tat (Military Takeover 10-11)
• Chapter VIII: Fracture (Put Kingdom back together 11-12)
• Chapter IX: All-Father (Gather last artifact 12-13)
• Chapter X: End of Days (Final Battle 13)

You may wonder what those numbers are, those are expected PC levels. If the PCs fell behind the level assigned to the chapter it was a sign that they may not be ready for the next part of the game. This never really became a problem even when a few PCs did fall behind. There were seven players so what they lacked in levels they often made up for in sheer numbers. This outline also changed a little as I added or dropped adventures from the game.

You'll notice several classic adventures in the second outline. I knew I wanted to run some classic modules. Now that I had an idea of the plot and the structure of the game I was free to choose which ones fit the campaign best.

Coming soon... Part 3 where we discuss which modules I chose and why.

Anatomy of a Campaign: Legacy of New Lago - Part 1

Planning a campaign is a very long process. I took extensive design notes when creating my most recent campaign, Legacy of New Lago (LoNL), and I will go through them and talk about what decisions I made and why.

Background

First, a brief word on the history of this game. LoNL is essentially the third campaign taking place in the same world. Each campaign was run by a different DM using the 3rd edition rules for D&D.

The first game (Now referred to as "Old Lago) detailed the adventures of Bruce Lago and his companions as he set upon a quest to recover an artifact known as The Eye. Bruce and his associates did eventually recover the eye and even used it to place himself on the throne. This was basically the end of the campaign and it was a very fulling one.

The second game (called, "New Lago") took place hundreds of years in the future. It was the story of Aken Lago, a descendant of Bruce's with no ligament claim to the throne. (His line was born of Bruce's first wife who he divorced for political reasons and was forced to flee) Aken's adventures focused again on the mysterious eye which the now King, Jasperius, used to disastrous effect. A pillar of darkness was spreading from the east and threatening to engulf the entire Kingdom. Aken and his companions set about to find some artifacts and dispel the pillar before it was too late. However, even when they were able to do this it turned out to be too late. The dark god who the eye was used to entrap had escaped and banished Aken and his compatriots to the outer planes. There the party recovered and eventually forged a new kingdom on an alternate prime material plane. They called this kingdom, New Lago, and planned to use it to find the resources needed to return to their own world and free it from the dark god's grip.

...Only that never happened. The game ran nearly two years, but it simply wasn't enough to finish. The DM was burnt out and wanted to play something new, so that is what we did. It is never a good idea to have a GM run anything he isn't excited about because chances are the game just won't be that fun. So we moved on from New Lago, but I always hoped that one day we would come back to it. Years passed and I would mention my desire to play the game again, but the group, particularly Christian who ran the game, never had much interest. The characters were too powerful for him to handle and there were many other games he was much more passionate about.

Beginning the Design Process

But I was passionate about it, and it seemed that I should turn that passion into creating a game, thus Legacy of New Lago was born. It started small at first, but by the time it was done I was forced to print and distribute booklets to the players to ensure they had all the information they would need.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me begin with my decision to design the game. I knew that I couldn't pick the game up where we left off. Character sheets had been lost and the party's leader, Aken Lago was actually my character. He was so central to the plot that there was no way to have a party that didn't include him unless...

That is when I decided that a clean slate was the only way to go. All the PCs would be the children of the Old PCs who were busy working on their own goals and running the Kingdom. Having recently played in a Hackmaster 4th game that used the Legacy character generation system I decided I would let the players use that to generate their characters. Those of you unfamiliar with the Legacy method it basically uses the two parents' stats average and is randomly modified from there. It is an amazing way of creating characters and was perfect for this game because what made it so great was the history we already had invested in this world and these characters. Also the Legacy method is how I came up with the name Legacy of New Lago.

As for system there wasn't much in the running. Both previous games were run using 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons. It is the generally preferred system for my group (For now...), and to use anything else would require a lot of conversion of existing material. Not to mention that it would severely alter the feel of the game. It was an easy choice to go with D&D 3.5.

The story was much more difficult. What was the game going to be about? Sure we have these decedents of these powerful heroes, but what are they going to do? What obstacles lie in their way. Now for those of you who were not frequent readers of our prior to out move to blogger, I should tell you that I run plot driven games. There was a lot of debate on the old site over which type of game is better, Plot driven or character drive, and I do plan on resuming the debate, but that's another post. I run plot driven games, let's leave it at that for now. What that means is that I present a fairly complex plot to the players and guide them through it. I don't plot hammer them... much, but I do try to keep them on track.

Back to plot of LoNL. The Old Guard (That's what we called the old PCs from the previous campaign) had their own story, to defeat the dark god and reclaim their homeland. That was their story, their goal. I wanted them to be able to finish they goal and bring closure to their story, but at the same time the worst thing that I could do was to focus on the NPCs and have them overshadow the PCs. The PCs were to be the stars of the show, that was the first of my major goals.

So the plot of the game was that the young PCs were to aid the Old Guard in returning to Old Lago and destroying the dark god. Along the way the PCs would find their own nemesis they would have to defeat in order to make victory for the NPCs possible. I wanted an episodic feel to the game so I decided that the King, Aken Lago, and his friends were simply too busy to gather the materials, that were needed return and retake Old Lago. This mission based format would give me the opportunity I needed to incorporate several classic modules into the game.

Alright that is it for now. I realize that there is a lot of rambling, but that rambling is a necessary evil. Now that all the background information is out of the way I can get into specifics without confusing anyone.

Coming soon... Part 2: The Outline

Gamemaster's Corner

I'm going to be adding a few new sections to the Blog. The first of them, Gamemaster's Corner, will be articles ranging from Campaign Design to how to keep things running smoothly at the table. Running a game, regardless of the system, is an Art rather than a Science. There is no right or wrong way to do it, and what works for some may not work for others. I'll go though what has worked for me, or what I've seen work for others.

The first series I'm going to do will be called 'Anatomy of a Campaign' where I will go though the steps I undertook in creating, running, and finishing one of my more recent campaigns.

So stay tuned...

Obsidian Portal

Recently I was reading Gnome Stew and came across an article about a gaming website called Obsidian Portal. For those who have never visited I sincerely suggest that you do. Obsidian Portal allows people to create a wiki for their campaigns, making information more easily available than ever. I was unsure of how useful a wiki for my D&D campaign would be until I made one.

I am a believer.

Not only is this site great for creating a wiki to archive campaign information, but it is a great tool to use to design campaigns. I started designing one using Obsidian Portal and have found it a great way to build an interesting setting from the ground up, keeping everything perfectly organized.

I am not great with HTML but you really don't have to know any to use the site effectively. On top of offering an amazing service Obsidian Portal is free, at least to a certain extent. Any user can create two campaign wiki's for free. They also have a premium service called Ascendant Membership. Those members enjoy some cool benefits the biggest being an unlimited number of wiki campaigns. You can also upload more maps, attain a higher zoom level on those maps, and you can say goodbye to all those pesky advertisement banners.

In addition to being a great campaign tool players can also use Obsidian Portal to find a group. The tool uses a map of the United States and players can see what groups are in their area. Recently Obsidian Portal has teamed up with Pen & Paper Games to enhance their search feature.

Go on over to Obsidian Portal and I think you will like what you find.

World Building with Obsidian Portal from Michael Harrison on Vimeo.

The Side Campaign

I love playing games every week. I look forward to it, and am disappointed if the game get's canceled. After all, sometimes life get's in the way and people just can't make the game. This is not necessarily a problem if that person is a player in the game, PCs can be run by the GM. But what is the GM can't make the game?

It is for this reason that my group and I always have a side campaign that we play any week when we cannot play out main campaign. I certainly recommend this to other groups as it avoids gaps in play and offers a refreshing change of pace from the regular campaign.

Here are some of the most important factors in running a side campaign...


Choosing a System
When choosing a system for your side campaign you want to make sure that everyone in the group who will be playing it is familiar with the rules, this isn't a good time to introduce a new rules set to the group. Remember, this game is going to be played infrequently and everyone should be able to pick up the game after a long absence without a lot of review in terms of rules.

Choosing a GM
After all you'll need someone to run the game with the normal guy away. Ideally the person you want running your side campaign is an experienced GM who is familiar with the rules you'll be using and takes excellent notes. The most important criteria for this position is consistency in the attendance department. This job is only important when your regular GM cancels so it is important to know that even if he does cancel your backup GM will still be there.

Building the Campaign
As far as side campaigns go I've found that plot driven games, rather than character driven games, work best. Also remember that less is more. This game will be played sporadically with large gaps of time in between, so do not make the story too complicated or it will difficult to pick back up down the line.

Keeping Notes
Detailed notes are crucial for running a sucessful side campaigns. Little recaps of what took place work very well to refresh everyone's memory. I have also found that collecting player's character sheets and keeping them with my notes works best when I run a side campaign. This prevents players from forgetting their character sheets, or even worse, losing them during the off time.

Be Prepared
Games can be canceled for last minute due to emergencies, so the side GM must always be prepared to run his game. He should always have the next phase of the game ready to go!


So there you have it. Those are the keys to running a successful side campaign and keeping the group playing even when the GM is away.