My Granny's Parrot

I always love planning a new campaign. It's like starting with a blank character sheet - endless possibilities, dreams of what it could become... and without input from those pesky players ruining it all. I've therefore been enjoying giving a lot of thought to the topic of the new campaign over the last couple of days, and I've now firmed something up.

I've decided that the new campaign will be a homebrew job. Frankly, I've not been impressed with WotC's output ("Lost Mine..." aside), and converting a Pathfinder campaign isn't going to be less effort that doing the whole thing whole-cloth. I've also decided to give the players a choice of three campaigns at the outset:

The Quest for Memory: The most classic of the three, this is standard dungeon-crawling and treasure finding, with not a huge amount else going on. It will have a somewhat Hobbit-y vibe, and will be centered around an ancient, abandoned dwarven citadel. This one will have some interaction, quite a bit of exploration, and a number of hidden treasure caches - PCs will gain extra XP for finding those caches (in addition to the money itself, of course).

The Mists of Lamordia: Ravenloft, but not in Strahd's domain. The PCs were once smugglers plying the trade in the Realms, but one moonless night they find themselves enveloped in a thick mist. When the mist clears, they find the terrain around them changed, and a silent dock beckons. This one will be a horror/adventure campaign, similar in tone to "The Evil Dead" or "Van Helsing". This one will be balanced between interaction and exploration, and the focus on discovering secrets - PCs will gain extra XP for discovering secrets. Further, each PC will have a secret, and will gain XP from revealing it at an opportune time.

Blades in the Desert: Swashbuckling adventure in Calimport, with the PCs working for one of the five factions in the region. The emphasis here will be on fast-moving adventure, with quests against villainous sorcerers, feral gnolls, and rogue elementals. This campaign will feature some exploration, but will focus more on interaction. The PCs will gain extra XP for advancing the agenda of their faction, and also for rising within the faction.

Obviously, preparing three different-sounding campaigns is a lot of work, and work I just don't have time to do. Which brings me to my own dirty little secret: these are actually fundamentally the same campaign just skinned differently - I'll be using a mostly common map, be reusing the same structure of adventures, and will be placing the key obstacles in the way of the PCs with the same cadence. There are some differences, of course, but those are actually detail work that I can flesh out once I know which way they've jumped.

(Added bonus: whichever way they go, I'll then have the skeleton of two more campaigns to use later. Robust recycling facilities are a must for any busy DM!)

FWIW, the title of this post is from a probably-apocryphal story told me by an old English teacher, about a pupil who wrote one amazing essay, "My Granny's Parrot". Thereafter, he found a way to shoehorn this same essay into being the answer to any and all questions.

Final Thoughts on "Storm King's Thunder"

In no particular order:

• It was okay, but not great. The theme, "Shakespearean Giants" really didn't seem to come through in the material we got to. It's better expressed once the party get to Hekaton's court, but by then you've been playing for a year! That's too late to be introducing your theme.
  
  
• The early chapters really benefit from the DM being willing to flesh out the skeleton that is there. That suited me well enough, so that's all to the good.
  
  
• 5e's Exploration mechanics pretty much suck, and Interaction are little better. Given that that's two of the three pillars of the game, that's not a great showing. Again, the DM really needs to shore up those weaknesses.
  
  
• Giants make for fairly poor opponents - they're basically a big bag of hit points with limited ranged attacks and almost no spellcasting or other interesting features. This weakness becomes especially noticable when you're fighting them over and over again, and when running short sessions that don't favour long grindy combats.
  
  
• The TPK was unfortunate, but was an entirely sensible outcome given the way the dungeon in question was structured. If the PCs give warning, it made sense that the fire giants converged with overwhelming force, and the PCs' ability to meaningfully retreat was always limited.
  
  
• Yeah, I was most definitely ready for something new!

It was a fun campaign, and the dynamic around the table was good. That said, "Lost Mine of Phandelver" was vastly superior. My inclination for the future is that a year-long campaign spanning the lower levels, and featuring a wider variety of opponents, is definitely the way to go with this group.

Smitten on Zalto's Anvil

We were finally able to resume our campaign today, and as feared the result was indeed the dreaded Total Party Kill. As is frequently the case with D&D, as soon as the first PC hit the deck the writing was on the wall - the party was then torn between sacrificing actions to bring people back into the fray or just letting them bleed out. And lacking a dedicated healer who could give meaningful amounts of hit points back, any recovery was short-lived.

The group therefore suffered a domino effect, and just found themselves overwhelmed. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

That brings the question about the next campaign into rather sharper focus. And I'm no closer to a resolution - on the one hand, running a pre-written campaign (and, ideally, a D&D 5e campaign at that) has a great deal of attraction to it as it would reduce the workload I have to face. On the other hand, I'm definitely attracted to the notion of running a campaign designed for about a year of play, which probably means going from 1st to about 8th level, and then coming to a definitive conclusion. That suggests that homebrew is probably the way to go.

I have a couple of weeks in which to come up with three options to put to the group, and then a couple more weeks before the campaign is due to start. (In reality, character creation will probably take a couple of weeks, so add a little more again.) That's really not long, especially if going the homebrew route.

All Quiet on the Gaming Front

If you're wondering why there have been no updates on this blog for a while, it's because I'm still waiting for the resolution of the cliff-hanger from the previous session. For some reason, work is considered a higher priority than getting together over lunchtime for a fun game, which means we've been down a person or two, while the tail-end of the holiday season has also conspired to rob us of a quorum.

There is one key lesson from this: you should probably take the view that the game will go on regardless (or as close to regardless as you can manage). Skipping sessions can become a habit that is surprisingly hard to break. (Also, it's much easier to get a quorum with six players than with five - previously, we've gone on up with two people missing, leaving four; having dropped to five we're now skipping when two people are missing, leaving three.)

However, the basic upshot is that we've had three weeks without the game, and it will likely be at least another two before the next session.

What Would Make Them Stop?

One of the things I'm less than keen about in many published adventures (and, if I'm being honest, in my own adventures too) is that just about every opponent the PCs faces will fight to the death. Part of this is because D&D no longer has morale rules, and part of it is that the game is so punitive of attempts to flee or surrender. Nonetheless, it's something I'm not keen on.

As a corollary to that, I always see at least some thought given to what the villains of the piece want, and usually some thought given to why they want that. However, it's far less common, to the point of being unheard-of to see any thought given to the question of what would make them stop.

But that question is probably one that would give rise to better fleshed-out villains. Can the evil inquisator be persuaded of the error of her ways? Can the warlord be redirected from this conquest to a greater quest? Does the mafia boss have a favoured child who could persuade him to change his ways?

By asking, and answering that question, the door is then opened to solutions other than just fighting through hordes of minions before putting the Big Bad to the sword.

And sometimes the answer might well be "nothing". Some hurts are such that there's no stopping the revenge. Some insanities might not allow for being talked around. And that's fine, and it might even be the norm. But maybe it shouldn't be the only scenario?