So last night marked the ending of my Dreamlands Campaign. Not the dissolution of the group or even the end of those characters as we are continuing, though on a much less contiguous basis.
I am proud though, it's the first continuous narrative campaign I've run from start to finish and it was fairly epic in scope, spanning three continents across two planets. It was a heavily modified version of Chaosium's published campaign The Dreaming Stone. Modified because I like the plot and such of the original, but I don't like much of the execution which is very 'fighty'. In fact my players got around 3 or 4 sessions into the eponymous Dreamlands before any combat at all was encountered. I count this as a success because all the players still enjoyed it and I was not at all convinced that they would necessarily go for it as at least one of the players is a MMORPG beat-em-up player.
One thing I liked about this campaign (particularly as I didn't push the time constraints too much so they could explore a bit, as this is what the Dreamlands are best for imho) was how the PCs integrated with the setting. While there was the overarching story they were following along and various investigations cropped up along the way, they also carved out their own little niches. They all obtained temporary jobs in a Dreamlands city, learnt a little of the cultures and (I can't stress this enough) they had fun without killing everyone. I'm so pleased that it turned out this way. Obviously there were bumps along the way and I can recall at least 2 out of the dozen or so sessions it took that went 'not as well as planned'. But 1 in 6 is not bad, especially for a beginner, so I'll keep my pride at least.
One of the characters played an actor who impressed King Kuranes himself and subsequently led a band of sailors against a Moonbeast force. One player had 3 characters die (two heroically, and all three spectacularly) while everyone else brought a single character through alive. Another had himself pinned to a camel's arse with a javelin and developed a telepathic connection with his cat. Yet another had a net loss of 0 SAN (I'm not happy about that...) despite direct contact with a minor deity. The final character learnt Summon/Bind Nightguant and appears to be too scared to use it. Things like this are a joy to recount and really make a campaign worthwhile. More to the point, none of these were written into the story. However, none of them could have happened without the story arc either, so I'm fairly happy with my middle-of-the-road approach as always.
The only problem is, I don't know where to go now. Time-constraints mean that another drawn-out campaign is out of the question, but after the epic scale of the Dream-crawl (which I'm coining as a game type by the way) I'm afraid that the players will be less than impressed by one-shots and small scenarios. I suppose it'll work out in the end though. Watch this space.
I think this also links back to what I said in yesterdays post, as long as you're having fun it's all good!
I am proud though, it's the first continuous narrative campaign I've run from start to finish and it was fairly epic in scope, spanning three continents across two planets. It was a heavily modified version of Chaosium's published campaign The Dreaming Stone. Modified because I like the plot and such of the original, but I don't like much of the execution which is very 'fighty'. In fact my players got around 3 or 4 sessions into the eponymous Dreamlands before any combat at all was encountered. I count this as a success because all the players still enjoyed it and I was not at all convinced that they would necessarily go for it as at least one of the players is a MMORPG beat-em-up player.
One thing I liked about this campaign (particularly as I didn't push the time constraints too much so they could explore a bit, as this is what the Dreamlands are best for imho) was how the PCs integrated with the setting. While there was the overarching story they were following along and various investigations cropped up along the way, they also carved out their own little niches. They all obtained temporary jobs in a Dreamlands city, learnt a little of the cultures and (I can't stress this enough) they had fun without killing everyone. I'm so pleased that it turned out this way. Obviously there were bumps along the way and I can recall at least 2 out of the dozen or so sessions it took that went 'not as well as planned'. But 1 in 6 is not bad, especially for a beginner, so I'll keep my pride at least.
One of the characters played an actor who impressed King Kuranes himself and subsequently led a band of sailors against a Moonbeast force. One player had 3 characters die (two heroically, and all three spectacularly) while everyone else brought a single character through alive. Another had himself pinned to a camel's arse with a javelin and developed a telepathic connection with his cat. Yet another had a net loss of 0 SAN (I'm not happy about that...) despite direct contact with a minor deity. The final character learnt Summon/Bind Nightguant and appears to be too scared to use it. Things like this are a joy to recount and really make a campaign worthwhile. More to the point, none of these were written into the story. However, none of them could have happened without the story arc either, so I'm fairly happy with my middle-of-the-road approach as always.
The only problem is, I don't know where to go now. Time-constraints mean that another drawn-out campaign is out of the question, but after the epic scale of the Dream-crawl (which I'm coining as a game type by the way) I'm afraid that the players will be less than impressed by one-shots and small scenarios. I suppose it'll work out in the end though. Watch this space.
I think this also links back to what I said in yesterdays post, as long as you're having fun it's all good!
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