Help with New, Better, Longer, Campaign (long) [Archive] - Wizards Community

Help with New, Better, Longer, Campaign (long) [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Dragonfleer
10-27-04, 03:44 AM [Sorry if this should be on another board, but it seemed better here than on ‘What’s a DM to do?’]

After years of hanging around these boards I've finally decided to post something...

And, after years of running three or four adventure mini-campaigns that never really go anywhere, I have decided to begin shortly a campaign that will go, for, well, it really has no foreseen end. As I have never done anything like this before, I’ve decided to post my idea for the starting adventure and the primary ‘arc’-plot (well, it’s more of a main plot really). Here goes…

The characters will begin in Lonelywood (the northernmost of the Ten Towns), with the classic ‘you have known each other your entire lives, and have not traveled outside Icewind Dale etc. as level 0 characters. As a chance for the characters to (understandably) get to know each other, they will go about a few mundane tasks (as determined by the characters – although most will probably end up fishing – what else is there to do?)

Anyway, at an appropriate time, a boar charges out from its owner. Knowing the owner, he begs to party to give chase and return the boar. Party implored to give chase and return boar. The tracks are easily to follow, but it still takes sometime (an hour or so) to reach the boar (random encounters etc.).

The boar runs into another character, who has been encased within walls of ice (as a cube), left behind by Ghadbak-mor with a message for Krandus Pevron, indicating that he will arrive in Hundelstone much later than expected (he is returning to other yak folk who live in The Spine of the World). Okay, since that pretty much made no sense, I’ll explain with some background.

Ghadbak-mor is a yak folk sorcerer who has been outcast from his clan who currently live in The Spine of the World. These yak folk are from an alternate material plane (geographically similar to Toril), where yak folk control pretty much all of Faerun (except the Heartlands) and Kara-tur. Of course, infighting is always a problem and the leader of Ghadbak-mor’s clan, a powerful sorcerer decided that they would be better off trying to conquer other lands than those owned by other yak folk. So, he plane-shifted his clan to new lands he had discovered, which happened to be The Spine of the World.

Once there (a few months before the beginning of the campaign), they began to establish a base – but Ghadbak-mor, being quite aggressive, attacked others in his clan for minor incidents. He was cast out, and ended up near Lonelywood.

Here he found Crenshinibon (or rather it found him). He created a crystal shard tower, where he remained while further investigating Crenshinibon’s powers. While there, a group of wizards from the Arcane Brotherhood encountered him while searching for the recently ousted Julath Alaerth. Realizing the power of Ghadbak-mor, underwizard Krandus Pevron quickly organized an alliance. He has organized to meet with Ghadbak at Hundelstone, and, understanding the importance of the find, is willing to wait for a month until returning to Luskan (he teleported to Hundelstone, leaving Ghadbak to teleport himself).

This alliance, coupled with Ghadbak’s relocating to Luskan, was to be arranged two days after the start of the campaign. Ghadbak ‘decided’ that conquering the Ten Towns would be best to begin conquering the world, as they are easy targets. Instead of meeting with Pevron as planned, he will first return to his own people, gain leadership of them, and then use them to maintain the base he will establish.

Just prior to teleporting the tower, the character ran into the tower and was captured by Ghadbak. Wondering how to leave a message to Pevron, Ghadbak decided to leave one with the character, and surround him with walls of ice (in the standard evil overload demonstration of power). [Of course this makes no sense, as there is no reason that Pervon would return, but hey, Ghadbak’s pretty insane and I need to give the PCs information).

Okay, now back on track.

Ghadbak will then test the power of Crenshinibon by teleporting the tower to Lonelywood and using the rulership power to simply command all the townsfolk and lead them within. He will then teleport to the Spine of the World and then, after consolidating his power, will return to conquer the remaining nine towns (and then the world!). This all happens in the short time the PCs are gone. Sorry, only the attacking Lonelywood bit, not the conquering of the world. The letter left with the ‘ice-caged’ character will detail the above information.

Upon returning to Lonelywood, they find that everyone has gone, including the animals – and there is very little sign of struggle. Leaving them and the boar very alone.

They then have two options – to head to the Spine of the World to follow the yak folk, or to head to Hundelstone. Either way, they will have to cross Maer Dualdon – the first half of which is solid (and is crossable with sleds) but then becomes broken up (still safe enough to walk on with care, but not safe for sleds).

And that’s about all I’ve come up with so far. Just a few extra things about my group (of four):

I’ve being playing with the two of the guys for the past few years (compared to what I hear on the boards about the US, it’s amazing how few people have even heard about D&D in Australia), and after a few players coming and going we now have a new guy who has been playing with us for a few sessions. The whole point of this is that they will pretty much take anything I through at them, and thankfully will spend time thinking of reasons why the characters will do things, rather then why they won’t. But they still surprise me…

I generally run low-to-medium magic and wealth campaigns, and intend to this time.

I can expect character backgrounds of about a page.

Finally, don’t think that the whole invasion issue will take place any time soon, I intend to resolve that near the end of the campaign. So anything can happen… Mwhahahahaha… Oh, and I will also later on be incorporating 1 or 2 adventures in Kara-tur (and maybe one in Maztica), using the adventures downloaded from this web site.

Okay, if you kept reading through all that, do you have any suggestions? Or adventures? Or tips for running a mega-campaign? Or questions? Or …

I’ve said enough. :D

Cheers,
He Who Flees Dragons.
Mystery Man
10-27-04, 09:40 AM Me.
Want.
PLAY!

heh..seriously

I usually run my campaigns long.

The key is to listen to your players, pay attention to what they're doing and let them open up new possibilities for plot twists and incoporate their histories if you can. They're going to climb in levels, you can't stop that so make sure devote some planning time to think about 3 (or more) levels ahead of the current storyline.

Be on the lookout for potential recurring villians, the players may end up hating someone (I call them redshirts) you wouldn't have thought twice about.

I personally, don't start too huge at first and keep it contained within a limited area and slowly widening the area of the world as they get to know the lay of the land etc. YMMV or course.

Hope I'm not telling you stuff you don't already know. ;)

That's all I can think of until I can get more caffienated beverage into my system.
Chosen of the Dark Sun
10-27-04, 10:55 PM Well several things. One is thatif you haven't already started or aren't far along, you could multiply the amount of experience needed to gain levels. This way you won't end up telling them early on that since the PC's are so powerful, all but the weakest orcs all died of sudden heart attacks from too much raw meat.
If you run out of ideas for a while, you could get an enemy to teleport them to another plane, and for a time, erase their memory so that thay are removed from the picture. Then play for a while with them trying to remember whats happened and who the are, and when they get back, a lot of stuff has happened. Sure it's cliched, but, but if you do it right, it works.
Oh, and you gotta love conspiracies. They're just such a fun way to massively screw the players.
Dragonfleer
10-28-04, 06:07 AM Thanks for the help so far...

Mystery Man: Yeah, I think my biggest problem will be keeping things in a small area. In previous 'campaigns' my PCs generally stay in a town for one session, then pretty much move on to the next (following clues, villains, etc.). However the best adventure we ever had took place completely inside a town, and so I'll probably keep them around for a while.

Also, I like to start things fairly 'standard' before moving on to bigger things, so for the first few adventures (after the one above) they'll probably have to work to stop a minor goblinoid invasion, or maybe just some classic dungeoneering - and hopefully in this the PCs will reveal more ambitions, old enemies and the like that I can work off (I intend to have at least one storyline per character in addition to whole-party type things).

Chosen of the Dark Sun: When giving out experience, I pretty much calculate what it should be by the book.. and then just decide what to give them without much regard to the book at all :D - so I have control over the levels anyway. Hopefully my PCs won't need too many miraculous escapes, but they're pretty resourceful (such as throwing tents at their enemies from 200 feet in the air...).

I expect a lot of cliches, and memory loss (or something similar, such as similar alternate material planes) will probably be one of them - but I don't expect this to come up for a while.

And as for conspiracies... :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Oh, and I will hopefully be starting in a just over a week's time.
Chosen of the Dark Sun
10-28-04, 09:42 PM Just avoid playing when everyones tired and you have somone else DMing. It's happened that one time a player was DMing for a short time at 1 AM, got the players involved with "Mr. Picke" an evil mafia godfather who looked like Hitler, spoke with a russian acsent and drove a limosine. Then the sleep deprived players dumpted 26 flasks of alchemists fire of a fat enemy of Mr. Picke, who ended up being a lord of Waterdeep. It was all a dream, I said...
Mystery Man
10-28-04, 10:17 PM Meanwhile back at the farm

While checking for traps in the woods, Gracy has fallen into a ditch at the edge of town....
xann
10-29-04, 11:12 PM if i might be able to offer a suggestion, when i run a campaign i have a little black book, (the book of Ao, DM humor i suppose) and when i finish a game i write in the book usually how many days, notable npc's, quick little jist of the adventure for the night and any hooks that i think of @ the time. It's happened that i go through the book and find some vampire or npc that the party, myself included has forgotten. Also my players seem to like it when i announce Faerun hollidays and aniversies of big events in the PC's "life". The only down fall to my book is the PC's are afraid of every NPC in the game. "Kill that #@*&% guy or he'll come back to get us later" tends to be the mantra 'round my game..
BrianCritchley
10-29-04, 11:20 PM remember no arc goes on forever thus your gonna wanna start the next arc before the curent one is finished.
greaterbaatezu
10-30-04, 05:30 AM you could multiply the amount of experience needed to gain levels.

You don't have many players stick around long, do you? One of the first things *I* learned as a DM is not to screw your players out of hard earned experience. The only "legal" way to do it is to set level draining undead against them and hope they fail their saves. The only other way to control experience and level gain is to keep the encounters small, and use ALOT of non-xp role playing. Otherwise, you're cheating to screw the players. If they have any brains, they'll realize this and walk away from your table forever. Your not a DM if you don't have any players.
greaterbaatezu
10-30-04, 05:39 AM remember no arc goes on forever thus your gonna wanna start the next arc before the curent one is finished.

I agree totally. Another thing you might consider is the "onion method" to plot writing. Figure out one piece of the puzzle (peel off an onion layer) and find a bigger puzzle underneath (gee, there's more onion). If you layer the plot properly, you could have the same ultimate nemesis for the PCs from first level, and not have them face him until they've reached epic levels. Both good and bad guys of high levels DO work through intermediaries. No one gets anything done doing it all by themselves, or if they do someone kills them for it. Shappurak always gets wasted by any of MY own epic player characters as an example. Also, make sure your evil villain is someone the PCs will LOVE to HATE. The more grotesque his habits, the more vile disgusting things you can add in for him to do to their loved ones for instance, the more they're gonna try to bring his entire organization down. And that's the entire point, for the heroes to win, or end the campaign cuz they lose.

I personally hate DMs that write an adventure that deliberately kills PCs. Why not write an adventure that goes: "Once upon a time, all the PCs die. The end."?
chme
10-30-04, 08:46 AM You don't have many players stick around long, do you? One of the first things *I* learned as a DM is not to screw your players out of hard earned experience. The only "legal" way to do it is to set level draining undead against them and hope they fail their saves. The only other way to control experience and level gain is to keep the encounters small, and use ALOT of non-xp role playing. Otherwise, you're cheating to screw the players. If they have any brains, they'll realize this and walk away from your table forever. Your not a DM if you don't have any players.

Wow, where does one begin?

Greaterbaatezu, did you ever consider the possibility of inviting players to your game that are in it for something more than getting to level 20 asap? There *is* more to it, you know :=).

What do you mean "only other way to control experience"? There are plenty of other options in the DMG alone, but the best way is usually to agree in the group on what principles for xp are gonna be used. In my group for instance, there is no xp for killing monsters at all. We progress pretty slowly with story rewards and rp rewards (the PCs are level 5-6 after ~230 hours of play), but my players seem to like it.

In a real long campaign, I think multiplying the xp needed for different levels (or some other way to make advancement slower) can be a very good idea. It lets people enjoy the cool things about low-, mid- and high-level play for a longer time.
Chosen of the Dark Sun
11-03-04, 10:41 PM Thank you Chme, this is exactly what I was saying. First of all Greaterbaatezu, the only time I ever lost a player in all the long time I've been DMing was when one of them moved to Florida. By multiplying I mean stuff like 5000 xp to get to 2nd level instead of 1000. My players all know this, in fact they suggested the entire idea, and they all except it. There's a lot more to lower levels them slicing the butts off orcs. The players in my campaign don't want to get to 50th level in two weeks. So know what the heck you're talking about before you say it. :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
Supercilious
11-09-04, 02:48 AM My current campaign is just started, and I usually run campaigns for ATLEAST 10 levels, none of my campaigns have ended pre-15, although a few have started at 3-5...

My advice? Do not try to have an "epic" plot all layed out from the start, if the main bad guy is going to be a dragon/vampire/lich make sure the PC's cannot fight them or have no REASON to fight them right away.

You can always say "Remember that strange symbol on the Orc's from your first dungeons shield? Well this ________ has the same symbol on a flag." So that way it SEEMS like they were the mastermind the whole time, rather then someone you just thought of after the last session. Always keep your options open, and reveal only a tiny bit of your plot per adventure, and have several side plots. I know it gets kinda boring and linear to KNOW what to do, always remember to ask "Ok, NOW what do you do?"

And try not to use up all your awesome ideas on the first few adventures, many campaigns suffer because a DM puts their heart and soul into the first five adventures, then stops caring or runs out of creativity and the campaign burns out.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Dragonfleer 10-27-04, 03:44 AM	[Sorry if this should be on another board, but it seemed better here than on ‘What’s a DM to do?’] After years of hanging around these boards I've finally decided to post something... And, after years of running three or four adventure mini-campaigns that never really go anywhere, I have decided to begin shortly a campaign that will go, for, well, it really has no foreseen end. As I have never done anything like this before, I’ve decided to post my idea for the starting adventure and the primary ‘arc’-plot (well, it’s more of a main plot really). Here goes… The characters will begin in Lonelywood (the northernmost of the Ten Towns), with the classic ‘you have known each other your entire lives, and have not traveled outside Icewind Dale etc. as level 0 characters. As a chance for the characters to (understandably) get to know each other, they will go about a few mundane tasks (as determined by the characters – although most will probably end up fishing – what else is there to do?) Anyway, at an appropriate time, a boar charges out from its owner. Knowing the owner, he begs to party to give chase and return the boar. Party implored to give chase and return boar. The tracks are easily to follow, but it still takes sometime (an hour or so) to reach the boar (random encounters etc.). The boar runs into another character, who has been encased within walls of ice (as a cube), left behind by Ghadbak-mor with a message for Krandus Pevron, indicating that he will arrive in Hundelstone much later than expected (he is returning to other yak folk who live in The Spine of the World). Okay, since that pretty much made no sense, I’ll explain with some background. Ghadbak-mor is a yak folk sorcerer who has been outcast from his clan who currently live in The Spine of the World. These yak folk are from an alternate material plane (geographically similar to Toril), where yak folk control pretty much all of Faerun (except the Heartlands) and Kara-tur. Of course, infighting is always a problem and the leader of Ghadbak-mor’s clan, a powerful sorcerer decided that they would be better off trying to conquer other lands than those owned by other yak folk. So, he plane-shifted his clan to new lands he had discovered, which happened to be The Spine of the World. Once there (a few months before the beginning of the campaign), they began to establish a base – but Ghadbak-mor, being quite aggressive, attacked others in his clan for minor incidents. He was cast out, and ended up near Lonelywood. Here he found Crenshinibon (or rather it found him). He created a crystal shard tower, where he remained while further investigating Crenshinibon’s powers. While there, a group of wizards from the Arcane Brotherhood encountered him while searching for the recently ousted Julath Alaerth. Realizing the power of Ghadbak-mor, underwizard Krandus Pevron quickly organized an alliance. He has organized to meet with Ghadbak at Hundelstone, and, understanding the importance of the find, is willing to wait for a month until returning to Luskan (he teleported to Hundelstone, leaving Ghadbak to teleport himself). This alliance, coupled with Ghadbak’s relocating to Luskan, was to be arranged two days after the start of the campaign. Ghadbak ‘decided’ that conquering the Ten Towns would be best to begin conquering the world, as they are easy targets. Instead of meeting with Pevron as planned, he will first return to his own people, gain leadership of them, and then use them to maintain the base he will establish. Just prior to teleporting the tower, the character ran into the tower and was captured by Ghadbak. Wondering how to leave a message to Pevron, Ghadbak decided to leave one with the character, and surround him with walls of ice (in the standard evil overload demonstration of power). [Of course this makes no sense, as there is no reason that Pervon would return, but hey, Ghadbak’s pretty insane and I need to give the PCs information). Okay, now back on track. Ghadbak will then test the power of Crenshinibon by teleporting the tower to Lonelywood and using the rulership power to simply command all the townsfolk and lead them within. He will then teleport to the Spine of the World and then, after consolidating his power, will return to conquer the remaining nine towns (and then the world!). This all happens in the short time the PCs are gone. Sorry, only the attacking Lonelywood bit, not the conquering of the world. The letter left with the ‘ice-caged’ character will detail the above information. Upon returning to Lonelywood, they find that everyone has gone, including the animals – and there is very little sign of struggle. Leaving them and the boar very alone. They then have two options – to head to the Spine of the World to follow the yak folk, or to head to Hundelstone. Either way, they will have to cross Maer Dualdon – the first half of which is solid (and is crossable with sleds) but then becomes broken up (still safe enough to walk on with care, but not safe for sleds). And that’s about all I’ve come up with so far. Just a few extra things about my group (of four): I’ve being playing with the two of the guys for the past few years (compared to what I hear on the boards about the US, it’s amazing how few people have even heard about D&D in Australia), and after a few players coming and going we now have a new guy who has been playing with us for a few sessions. The whole point of this is that they will pretty much take anything I through at them, and thankfully will spend time thinking of reasons why the characters will do things, rather then why they won’t. But they still surprise me… I generally run low-to-medium magic and wealth campaigns, and intend to this time. I can expect character backgrounds of about a page. Finally, don’t think that the whole invasion issue will take place any time soon, I intend to resolve that near the end of the campaign. So anything can happen… Mwhahahahaha… Oh, and I will also later on be incorporating 1 or 2 adventures in Kara-tur (and maybe one in Maztica), using the adventures downloaded from this web site. Okay, if you kept reading through all that, do you have any suggestions? Or adventures? Or tips for running a mega-campaign? Or questions? Or … I’ve said enough. :D Cheers, He Who Flees Dragons.
Mystery Man 10-27-04, 09:40 AM	Me. Want. PLAY! heh..seriously I usually run my campaigns long. The key is to listen to your players, pay attention to what they're doing and let them open up new possibilities for plot twists and incoporate their histories if you can. They're going to climb in levels, you can't stop that so make sure devote some planning time to think about 3 (or more) levels ahead of the current storyline. Be on the lookout for potential recurring villians, the players may end up hating someone (I call them redshirts) you wouldn't have thought twice about. I personally, don't start too huge at first and keep it contained within a limited area and slowly widening the area of the world as they get to know the lay of the land etc. YMMV or course. Hope I'm not telling you stuff you don't already know. ;) That's all I can think of until I can get more caffienated beverage into my system.
Chosen of the Dark Sun 10-27-04, 10:55 PM	Well several things. One is thatif you haven't already started or aren't far along, you could multiply the amount of experience needed to gain levels. This way you won't end up telling them early on that since the PC's are so powerful, all but the weakest orcs all died of sudden heart attacks from too much raw meat. If you run out of ideas for a while, you could get an enemy to teleport them to another plane, and for a time, erase their memory so that thay are removed from the picture. Then play for a while with them trying to remember whats happened and who the are, and when they get back, a lot of stuff has happened. Sure it's cliched, but, but if you do it right, it works. Oh, and you gotta love conspiracies. They're just such a fun way to massively screw the players.
Dragonfleer 10-28-04, 06:07 AM	Thanks for the help so far... Mystery Man: Yeah, I think my biggest problem will be keeping things in a small area. In previous 'campaigns' my PCs generally stay in a town for one session, then pretty much move on to the next (following clues, villains, etc.). However the best adventure we ever had took place completely inside a town, and so I'll probably keep them around for a while. Also, I like to start things fairly 'standard' before moving on to bigger things, so for the first few adventures (after the one above) they'll probably have to work to stop a minor goblinoid invasion, or maybe just some classic dungeoneering - and hopefully in this the PCs will reveal more ambitions, old enemies and the like that I can work off (I intend to have at least one storyline per character in addition to whole-party type things). Chosen of the Dark Sun: When giving out experience, I pretty much calculate what it should be by the book.. and then just decide what to give them without much regard to the book at all :D - so I have control over the levels anyway. Hopefully my PCs won't need too many miraculous escapes, but they're pretty resourceful (such as throwing tents at their enemies from 200 feet in the air...). I expect a lot of cliches, and memory loss (or something similar, such as similar alternate material planes) will probably be one of them - but I don't expect this to come up for a while. And as for conspiracies... :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D Oh, and I will hopefully be starting in a just over a week's time.
Chosen of the Dark Sun 10-28-04, 09:42 PM	Just avoid playing when everyones tired and you have somone else DMing. It's happened that one time a player was DMing for a short time at 1 AM, got the players involved with "Mr. Picke" an evil mafia godfather who looked like Hitler, spoke with a russian acsent and drove a limosine. Then the sleep deprived players dumpted 26 flasks of alchemists fire of a fat enemy of Mr. Picke, who ended up being a lord of Waterdeep. It was all a dream, I said...
Mystery Man 10-28-04, 10:17 PM	Meanwhile back at the farm While checking for traps in the woods, Gracy has fallen into a ditch at the edge of town....
xann 10-29-04, 11:12 PM	if i might be able to offer a suggestion, when i run a campaign i have a little black book, (the book of Ao, DM humor i suppose) and when i finish a game i write in the book usually how many days, notable npc's, quick little jist of the adventure for the night and any hooks that i think of @ the time. It's happened that i go through the book and find some vampire or npc that the party, myself included has forgotten. Also my players seem to like it when i announce Faerun hollidays and aniversies of big events in the PC's "life". The only down fall to my book is the PC's are afraid of every NPC in the game. "Kill that #@*&% guy or he'll come back to get us later" tends to be the mantra 'round my game..
BrianCritchley 10-29-04, 11:20 PM	remember no arc goes on forever thus your gonna wanna start the next arc before the curent one is finished.
greaterbaatezu 10-30-04, 05:30 AM	you could multiply the amount of experience needed to gain levels. You don't have many players stick around long, do you? One of the first things I learned as a DM is not to screw your players out of hard earned experience. The only "legal" way to do it is to set level draining undead against them and hope they fail their saves. The only other way to control experience and level gain is to keep the encounters small, and use ALOT of non-xp role playing. Otherwise, you're cheating to screw the players. If they have any brains, they'll realize this and walk away from your table forever. Your not a DM if you don't have any players.
greaterbaatezu 10-30-04, 05:39 AM	remember no arc goes on forever thus your gonna wanna start the next arc before the curent one is finished. I agree totally. Another thing you might consider is the "onion method" to plot writing. Figure out one piece of the puzzle (peel off an onion layer) and find a bigger puzzle underneath (gee, there's more onion). If you layer the plot properly, you could have the same ultimate nemesis for the PCs from first level, and not have them face him until they've reached epic levels. Both good and bad guys of high levels DO work through intermediaries. No one gets anything done doing it all by themselves, or if they do someone kills them for it. Shappurak always gets wasted by any of MY own epic player characters as an example. Also, make sure your evil villain is someone the PCs will LOVE to HATE. The more grotesque his habits, the more vile disgusting things you can add in for him to do to their loved ones for instance, the more they're gonna try to bring his entire organization down. And that's the entire point, for the heroes to win, or end the campaign cuz they lose. I personally hate DMs that write an adventure that deliberately kills PCs. Why not write an adventure that goes: "Once upon a time, all the PCs die. The end."?
chme 10-30-04, 08:46 AM	You don't have many players stick around long, do you? One of the first things I learned as a DM is not to screw your players out of hard earned experience. The only "legal" way to do it is to set level draining undead against them and hope they fail their saves. The only other way to control experience and level gain is to keep the encounters small, and use ALOT of non-xp role playing. Otherwise, you're cheating to screw the players. If they have any brains, they'll realize this and walk away from your table forever. Your not a DM if you don't have any players. Wow, where does one begin? Greaterbaatezu, did you ever consider the possibility of inviting players to your game that are in it for something more than getting to level 20 asap? There is more to it, you know :=). What do you mean "only other way to control experience"? There are plenty of other options in the DMG alone, but the best way is usually to agree in the group on what principles for xp are gonna be used. In my group for instance, there is no xp for killing monsters at all. We progress pretty slowly with story rewards and rp rewards (the PCs are level 5-6 after ~230 hours of play), but my players seem to like it. In a real long campaign, I think multiplying the xp needed for different levels (or some other way to make advancement slower) can be a very good idea. It lets people enjoy the cool things about low-, mid- and high-level play for a longer time.
Chosen of the Dark Sun 11-03-04, 10:41 PM	Thank you Chme, this is exactly what I was saying. First of all Greaterbaatezu, the only time I ever lost a player in all the long time I've been DMing was when one of them moved to Florida. By multiplying I mean stuff like 5000 xp to get to 2nd level instead of 1000. My players all know this, in fact they suggested the entire idea, and they all except it. There's a lot more to lower levels them slicing the butts off orcs. The players in my campaign don't want to get to 50th level in two weeks. So know what the heck you're talking about before you say it. :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
Supercilious 11-09-04, 02:48 AM	My current campaign is just started, and I usually run campaigns for ATLEAST 10 levels, none of my campaigns have ended pre-15, although a few have started at 3-5... My advice? Do not try to have an "epic" plot all layed out from the start, if the main bad guy is going to be a dragon/vampire/lich make sure the PC's cannot fight them or have no REASON to fight them right away. You can always say "Remember that strange symbol on the Orc's from your first dungeons shield? Well this ________ has the same symbol on a flag." So that way it SEEMS like they were the mastermind the whole time, rather then someone you just thought of after the last session. Always keep your options open, and reveal only a tiny bit of your plot per adventure, and have several side plots. I know it gets kinda boring and linear to KNOW what to do, always remember to ask "Ok, NOW what do you do?" And try not to use up all your awesome ideas on the first few adventures, many campaigns suffer because a DM puts their heart and soul into the first five adventures, then stops caring or runs out of creativity and the campaign burns out.