Campaign Building: The Best bits from your Campaign - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Campaign Building: The Best bits from your Campaign

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
yellowdingo
Oct 12, 2008 9:01:03 During the development of a Campaign DMs realize that not everything went well, not everything meshed with the Game while others were the Gems.

What were the Best Bits of Your Campaign?
#2
Shiftkitty
Oct 13, 2008 15:03:55 Wow. The best bits? Ever since starting DMing in '83? Yikes!

Um, let's see.
1e Taking the DM seat and giving the table a stable, ongoing campaign world to play in versus the "disconnected episodes" approach of the old DM.

2e Derailing my sometimes-DM brother's attempt at forcing "Aliens" into the campaign by stunning the critter with a good sock to the jaw (according to something we'd read in "Starlog" magazine, there were a lot of nerves in that area). When the thing was thus stunned, it was easy to kill. Repeat as necessary. Saved the whole campaign from going sci-fi, which none of us wanted.

3e Splitting the gnolls into two groups, savages and nobles. Savages are like the typical gnoll while nobles are more like the image of the wolf and a bit more civilized, favoring ranger and druid classes.

4e Stay tuned...
#3
ramses_iii
Oct 15, 2008 17:51:42 The best part of my 3E war campaign was the villains. I managed to create a cast of villains that the players really loved to hate. From the demon-spawned tieflings of the Trolles (pronounced tro - YAY) family to the mercenary knight who stole the demon sword back for said tieflings, my villains seemed destined to fill the players with murderous rage.

The best villain moments:
When the party first met Vries Trolles, he was arriving as an emissary to parlay with an ally of the PCs at an occupied castle in Ferrara, the country ruled by the Trolles family. An honor guard of mounted hobgoblins escorted four ogres, who were carrying a black iron palanquin. One of the players says, "tell me the emissary isn't in the box." Of course, the door on the side of the palanquin opens and out steps a tiefling with one cloven hoof and a staff of smoldering black iron. So they hated Vries from the moment they met him.

At another point later in the campaign, the players decided to go on a quest to find demon-slaying weapons to combat the Trolles and their demonic kin. The mercenary knight from above had bribed his way out of imprisonment, and they found him staying at an inn in the town where they were to sail north to pursue their quest. The knight, Aaron Cavait by name, had the inn overrun with his hobgoblin allies and made clear that he was sailing to the south to pursue a lost secret of immortality. The players already had a hate-on for this guy, and it got way bigger after running into him in town in a situation where they couldn't attack him (as his allies were too numerous and they would have likely died).
#4
anuvrix
Oct 15, 2008 18:26:45 Best bit of one of my campaigns:

Eight, count'em, 8 world shattering disasters over 1600 years, all of which the players got to experience, along with a almost completely new world after each event.

and finally, they get to fight the BBEG who caused eight of the nine moons to fall, and if they win, they save the world and are heroes, wielding an unlimited source of power, if they lose, they are forced into lvl 1 bodies and have to start a whole new campaign 1400 years after the fight, on the same world, but where the final moon fell, shattering the entire world into many many pieces now foating in a general spherical shape, with the big bag evil lich as the king, expecting their return.
#5
Lineov
Oct 17, 2008 10:48:47 3.5 and 4e, the god modded pain in the ass, yet still love-able DMPC.

Owen Tanamache, for me, as a DM is a quick time waster when I need to stall midgame because a player did something stupid. He's level 35 (3.5) or level 40 (4e) (I just extrapolated a bit since those levels generally don't exist at the PC level) Ranger that rides around on a Griffin. If the PC's are doing too well, he'll swoop in and distract them long enough to stop the powergaming, if they're doing poorly (more so than usual) he'll swoop in and point them in the right direction.

He also makes buttons...they are the source of his power...

buttons.. you push them, they do... stuff... whatever you want, maybe. It's just a great thing to throw in there to shake up a campaign.
#6
ramses_iii
Oct 18, 2008 3:22:24
3.5 and 4e, the god modded pain in the ass, yet still love-able DMPC.

Owen Tanamache, for me, as a DM is a quick time waster when I need to stall midgame because a player did something stupid. He's level 35 (3.5) or level 40 (4e) (I just extrapolated a bit since those levels generally don't exist at the PC level) Ranger that rides around on a Griffin. If the PC's are doing too well, he'll swoop in and distract them long enough to stop the powergaming, if they're doing poorly (more so than usual) he'll swoop in and point them in the right direction.

He also makes buttons...they are the source of his power...

buttons.. you push them, they do... stuff... whatever you want, maybe. It's just a great thing to throw in there to shake up a campaign.

Wow... that character sums up everything the anti-DMPC crowd constantly goes off about as a game wrecker. He shows up the PCs, pulls deus ex machina, and is a DM railroading tool (in multiple senses of the word). I suggest you read the section in the DMG on bad structure. Your NPC exemplifies it.
#7
Lineov
Oct 18, 2008 16:33:04 i have, i keep it in check. when i hear a complaint from my players i'll throw him out.
#8
Bobfred21
Oct 19, 2008 1:11:42 Players tend to not complain even when there's an example of bad DMing because usually the DM is a friend and it's not worth ruining the game over. I thought the same thing as Ramses III when I read your post.

Seriously man, that's just bad form. As a fellow DM and occasional player... Get rid of him, NOTHING you described about him seems like it could benefit your game. I see ZERO redeeming factors, everything you described was negative to me. That should say something.

Now... Onto the thread.

My players are a big fan of my epic, over the top battles. They tend to get pretty intense, a couple examples:
1. Party favourite- In a 3.5 Eberron game the PCs are searching for an Orb that absorbs positive and negative energy. It's powerful enough that even touching it will steal the positive energy that fuels a persons life force.

The players have already met the BBEGs, though they don't know who they are yet, a group of Dreaming Dark Inspired agents are looking for the Orb because it was part of the ritual that shunted Dal'Quor away from Eberron and they believe they can use it to open a gate.

Now, after finally having picked up this things trail they know it's in Xen'drik and while an NPC translates the maps they need to get to this thing, they meet another adventuring party in the tavern their staying at. They make friends, have a couple drinks (read a lot), and a couple of them get... Let's call it "very friendly". Alas, the maps are translated and the two parties go their separate ways.

The PCs go en route and discover the ruins where the orb is hidden to be overrun with good old scorpion worshiping Eberronian Drow. Sneaking past large quantities of Drow who do the PCs discover at the entrance of the Orb Ruins but their buddies from the tavern. Looks like their after the same thing.

Their about to duke it out when attacked by basically an army of angry Drow and chased into the ruins. The two groups get separated in the maze of tunnels and fight their way down to a central chamber where the orb is kept.

The Orb chamber is a large circular room with four hallways leading out of it. As the PCs come into the room from one way, their "buddies" are chased in another entrance by Drow. Drow are pouring in one of the other entrances and who should be at the fourth entrance but the dreaming dark agents.

A 4 way fight of epic proportions ensued. Not long after the fight the orb was knocked from it's pedastel (sp?) and begins rolling around killing whoever it touches.

It was awesome. Orb ended up getting taken by one of the few living "buddies" who got away with it before the end of the fight in the chaos.

2. While in pursuit of the guy who got away with the orb in the last fight, he steals an airship and the PCs are forced to steal an airship to give chase. For those familiar with Eberron airships are powered by bound elementals who get free if the ring propelling the ship is damaged. The battle takes place during a high speed chase between two ships with a powerful wizard flinging spells back and forth. One of the NPCs accompanying the party betrays them mid fight AND both ships are damaged to the point of releasing the bound elementals.

So while falling from the sky the PCs must deal with doing battle with a powerful wizard, his hired goons/summoned creatures, a pair of rogue elementals raining havoc on both sides, trying to protect an NPC who's traveling with them and is useless in combat and a friend who betrayed them. Not to mention trying to find the orb before it goes missing and trying to find a way to save themselves from the dieing part when the ships hit the ground. (they crash landed in a forest, luckily surviving as heroes are wont to do)

After their enemies are dead, except the friend who betrayed them (who is tied up), the PCs discover that the wizard had prepared a fake Orb with all kinds of traps and stuff on it. Luckily Lara wasn't fooled and knew the real from the fake.

3. After landing in the forest the PCs are sent by the ships engineer and the combat useless NPC to the nearest town to get some supplies so they can fix one of the airships. They go have a few random encounters get the parts and return to find the agents of the Dreaming Dark bearing down on Lara who has the Orb (Lara is the combat useless NPC who basically knows **** about the Orb and is an archaeologist) and the ships engineer (cid) is dead on the ground.

What ensues is another fight they remember as being, for lack of a better description, super epic.

As soon as they arrive the woman agent tells the massive male agent to take out the party while she goes after Lara who's taken off with the Orb. The party druid (who has feelings for Lara) wild shapes into a dire wolf and gives chase to the woman agent (who is flying via psionic power) while the rest of the party fights the -BIG- guy.

The druid and woman agent are MUCH faster than Lara meaning she has to swerve and dodge a lot, so it becomes a high speed chase through a dense forest, trees zooming by so fast it becomes a struggle to dodge them. The druid is desperately trying to protect the woman he loves from a superior foe who is directly targeting her, while his friends fight for their lives against a man easily four times the size any man should be. In the end the big guy fights to his last breath. And after a long chase fight, bouncing off of trees and protecting a defenseless young woman the Druid is caught unaware and trapped while the woman goes after Lara.

Lara after putting up a good fight, throws the Orb at the woman hoping to hit her with it and basically kill her by way of it's positive energy absorbtion.
The woman is to clever for that and just catches it with her telekinetic abilities before taking off.

The players are soon after relieved to hear that Lara gave her the fake orb and they basically high tail it out of there as fast as their wounds will allow before the Dreaming Dark realize they've been duped.
#9
anubis_reynard
Oct 20, 2008 22:57:54 Well, the best gem so far in 4th, was actually when I'd passed the screen to one of the players for a session.

We'd extrapolated the level progression backward, so we had 2 characters, each at level (-2), with one at-will, no encounters, no dailys, but with all class and racial features. Oh, and the DM imposed a -2 penalty to all stats, and said we were 12-year olds.

To make it worse, the other player was a Halfling Brutal Scoundrel named Trixy, and I was a Kobold Artificer (Mad scientist in training- I had fun with that) that was called "Nerd"

We had an awesome session and through lots of luck (I rolled 4 20s in 2 hours) ended up in charge of a local (read, a few city blocks) chapter of the thieves guild.

As we wrap up, the other player realizes one of the inspirations I'd had for my character... and begins singing "Pinky and the Brain."

The DM's brain melted on the spot.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 yellowdingo Oct 12, 2008 9:01:03	During the development of a Campaign DMs realize that not everything went well, not everything meshed with the Game while others were the Gems. What were the Best Bits of Your Campaign?
#2 Shiftkitty Oct 13, 2008 15:03:55	Wow. The best bits? Ever since starting DMing in '83? Yikes! Um, let's see. 1e Taking the DM seat and giving the table a stable, ongoing campaign world to play in versus the "disconnected episodes" approach of the old DM. 2e Derailing my sometimes-DM brother's attempt at forcing "Aliens" into the campaign by stunning the critter with a good sock to the jaw (according to something we'd read in "Starlog" magazine, there were a lot of nerves in that area). When the thing was thus stunned, it was easy to kill. Repeat as necessary. Saved the whole campaign from going sci-fi, which none of us wanted. 3e Splitting the gnolls into two groups, savages and nobles. Savages are like the typical gnoll while nobles are more like the image of the wolf and a bit more civilized, favoring ranger and druid classes. 4e Stay tuned...
#3 ramses_iii Oct 15, 2008 17:51:42	The best part of my 3E war campaign was the villains. I managed to create a cast of villains that the players really loved to hate. From the demon-spawned tieflings of the Trolles (pronounced tro - YAY) family to the mercenary knight who stole the demon sword back for said tieflings, my villains seemed destined to fill the players with murderous rage. The best villain moments: When the party first met Vries Trolles, he was arriving as an emissary to parlay with an ally of the PCs at an occupied castle in Ferrara, the country ruled by the Trolles family. An honor guard of mounted hobgoblins escorted four ogres, who were carrying a black iron palanquin. One of the players says, "tell me the emissary isn't in the box." Of course, the door on the side of the palanquin opens and out steps a tiefling with one cloven hoof and a staff of smoldering black iron. So they hated Vries from the moment they met him. At another point later in the campaign, the players decided to go on a quest to find demon-slaying weapons to combat the Trolles and their demonic kin. The mercenary knight from above had bribed his way out of imprisonment, and they found him staying at an inn in the town where they were to sail north to pursue their quest. The knight, Aaron Cavait by name, had the inn overrun with his hobgoblin allies and made clear that he was sailing to the south to pursue a lost secret of immortality. The players already had a hate-on for this guy, and it got way bigger after running into him in town in a situation where they couldn't attack him (as his allies were too numerous and they would have likely died).
#4 anuvrix Oct 15, 2008 18:26:45	Best bit of one of my campaigns: Eight, count'em, 8 world shattering disasters over 1600 years, all of which the players got to experience, along with a almost completely new world after each event. and finally, they get to fight the BBEG who caused eight of the nine moons to fall, and if they win, they save the world and are heroes, wielding an unlimited source of power, if they lose, they are forced into lvl 1 bodies and have to start a whole new campaign 1400 years after the fight, on the same world, but where the final moon fell, shattering the entire world into many many pieces now foating in a general spherical shape, with the big bag evil lich as the king, expecting their return.
#5 Lineov Oct 17, 2008 10:48:47	3.5 and 4e, the god modded pain in the ass, yet still love-able DMPC. Owen Tanamache, for me, as a DM is a quick time waster when I need to stall midgame because a player did something stupid. He's level 35 (3.5) or level 40 (4e) (I just extrapolated a bit since those levels generally don't exist at the PC level) Ranger that rides around on a Griffin. If the PC's are doing too well, he'll swoop in and distract them long enough to stop the powergaming, if they're doing poorly (more so than usual) he'll swoop in and point them in the right direction. He also makes buttons...they are the source of his power... buttons.. you push them, they do... stuff... whatever you want, maybe. It's just a great thing to throw in there to shake up a campaign.
#6 ramses_iii Oct 18, 2008 3:22:24	3.5 and 4e, the god modded pain in the ass, yet still love-able DMPC. Owen Tanamache, for me, as a DM is a quick time waster when I need to stall midgame because a player did something stupid. He's level 35 (3.5) or level 40 (4e) (I just extrapolated a bit since those levels generally don't exist at the PC level) Ranger that rides around on a Griffin. If the PC's are doing too well, he'll swoop in and distract them long enough to stop the powergaming, if they're doing poorly (more so than usual) he'll swoop in and point them in the right direction. He also makes buttons...they are the source of his power... buttons.. you push them, they do... stuff... whatever you want, maybe. It's just a great thing to throw in there to shake up a campaign. Wow... that character sums up everything the anti-DMPC crowd constantly goes off about as a game wrecker. He shows up the PCs, pulls deus ex machina, and is a DM railroading tool (in multiple senses of the word). I suggest you read the section in the DMG on bad structure. Your NPC exemplifies it.
#7 Lineov Oct 18, 2008 16:33:04	i have, i keep it in check. when i hear a complaint from my players i'll throw him out.
#8 Bobfred21 Oct 19, 2008 1:11:42	Players tend to not complain even when there's an example of bad DMing because usually the DM is a friend and it's not worth ruining the game over. I thought the same thing as Ramses III when I read your post. Seriously man, that's just bad form. As a fellow DM and occasional player... Get rid of him, NOTHING you described about him seems like it could benefit your game. I see ZERO redeeming factors, everything you described was negative to me. That should say something. Now... Onto the thread. My players are a big fan of my epic, over the top battles. They tend to get pretty intense, a couple examples: 1. Party favourite- In a 3.5 Eberron game the PCs are searching for an Orb that absorbs positive and negative energy. It's powerful enough that even touching it will steal the positive energy that fuels a persons life force. The players have already met the BBEGs, though they don't know who they are yet, a group of Dreaming Dark Inspired agents are looking for the Orb because it was part of the ritual that shunted Dal'Quor away from Eberron and they believe they can use it to open a gate. Now, after finally having picked up this things trail they know it's in Xen'drik and while an NPC translates the maps they need to get to this thing, they meet another adventuring party in the tavern their staying at. They make friends, have a couple drinks (read a lot), and a couple of them get... Let's call it "very friendly". Alas, the maps are translated and the two parties go their separate ways. The PCs go en route and discover the ruins where the orb is hidden to be overrun with good old scorpion worshiping Eberronian Drow. Sneaking past large quantities of Drow who do the PCs discover at the entrance of the Orb Ruins but their buddies from the tavern. Looks like their after the same thing. Their about to duke it out when attacked by basically an army of angry Drow and chased into the ruins. The two groups get separated in the maze of tunnels and fight their way down to a central chamber where the orb is kept. The Orb chamber is a large circular room with four hallways leading out of it. As the PCs come into the room from one way, their "buddies" are chased in another entrance by Drow. Drow are pouring in one of the other entrances and who should be at the fourth entrance but the dreaming dark agents. A 4 way fight of epic proportions ensued. Not long after the fight the orb was knocked from it's pedastel (sp?) and begins rolling around killing whoever it touches. It was awesome. Orb ended up getting taken by one of the few living "buddies" who got away with it before the end of the fight in the chaos. 2. While in pursuit of the guy who got away with the orb in the last fight, he steals an airship and the PCs are forced to steal an airship to give chase. For those familiar with Eberron airships are powered by bound elementals who get free if the ring propelling the ship is damaged. The battle takes place during a high speed chase between two ships with a powerful wizard flinging spells back and forth. One of the NPCs accompanying the party betrays them mid fight AND both ships are damaged to the point of releasing the bound elementals. So while falling from the sky the PCs must deal with doing battle with a powerful wizard, his hired goons/summoned creatures, a pair of rogue elementals raining havoc on both sides, trying to protect an NPC who's traveling with them and is useless in combat and a friend who betrayed them. Not to mention trying to find the orb before it goes missing and trying to find a way to save themselves from the dieing part when the ships hit the ground. (they crash landed in a forest, luckily surviving as heroes are wont to do) After their enemies are dead, except the friend who betrayed them (who is tied up), the PCs discover that the wizard had prepared a fake Orb with all kinds of traps and stuff on it. Luckily Lara wasn't fooled and knew the real from the fake. 3. After landing in the forest the PCs are sent by the ships engineer and the combat useless NPC to the nearest town to get some supplies so they can fix one of the airships. They go have a few random encounters get the parts and return to find the agents of the Dreaming Dark bearing down on Lara who has the Orb (Lara is the combat useless NPC who basically knows **** about the Orb and is an archaeologist) and the ships engineer (cid) is dead on the ground. What ensues is another fight they remember as being, for lack of a better description, super epic. As soon as they arrive the woman agent tells the massive male agent to take out the party while she goes after Lara who's taken off with the Orb. The party druid (who has feelings for Lara) wild shapes into a dire wolf and gives chase to the woman agent (who is flying via psionic power) while the rest of the party fights the -BIG- guy. The druid and woman agent are MUCH faster than Lara meaning she has to swerve and dodge a lot, so it becomes a high speed chase through a dense forest, trees zooming by so fast it becomes a struggle to dodge them. The druid is desperately trying to protect the woman he loves from a superior foe who is directly targeting her, while his friends fight for their lives against a man easily four times the size any man should be. In the end the big guy fights to his last breath. And after a long chase fight, bouncing off of trees and protecting a defenseless young woman the Druid is caught unaware and trapped while the woman goes after Lara. Lara after putting up a good fight, throws the Orb at the woman hoping to hit her with it and basically kill her by way of it's positive energy absorbtion. The woman is to clever for that and just catches it with her telekinetic abilities before taking off. The players are soon after relieved to hear that Lara gave her the fake orb and they basically high tail it out of there as fast as their wounds will allow before the Dreaming Dark realize they've been duped.
#9 anubis_reynard Oct 20, 2008 22:57:54	Well, the best gem so far in 4th, was actually when I'd passed the screen to one of the players for a session. We'd extrapolated the level progression backward, so we had 2 characters, each at level (-2), with one at-will, no encounters, no dailys, but with all class and racial features. Oh, and the DM imposed a -2 penalty to all stats, and said we were 12-year olds. To make it worse, the other player was a Halfling Brutal Scoundrel named Trixy, and I was a Kobold Artificer (Mad scientist in training- I had fun with that) that was called "Nerd" We had an awesome session and through lots of luck (I rolled 4 20s in 2 hours) ended up in charge of a local (read, a few city blocks) chapter of the thieves guild. As we wrap up, the other player realizes one of the inspirations I'd had for my character... and begins singing "Pinky and the Brain." The DM's brain melted on the spot.