The Mists of Lamordia - wrap-up

My Ravenloft campaign, "The Mists of Lamordia" came to its end today with a grand battle against Adam and Victor Mordenheim. The PCs emerged victorious, but battered, bloodied, and with one fallen comrade (though raise dead fixed that). Three of our heroes then departed the realm of Ravenloft, returning to the barge to Luskan whence they came, while one elected to remain and assume the mantle of the new Dark Lord of Lamordia.

All in all, it was a good campaign, and it was an almost ideal finale today. So I'm very happy with that. I do, of course, have some thoughts:

• The campaign went on way too long - it was intended to run for about a year, started in October 2019, and finally ended today. It also dragged fairly seriously in the first act, where things seemed to take forever to get going.
• The campaign was also rather too lore heavy. Indeed, one player unofficially dropped out because by the time they were ready to rejoin things had just moved on so far that they couldn't keep up. Plus, even those players who did attend regularly found it difficult keeping it all square.
• The multi-act structure, however, was a very solid approach (not surprisingly - it also worked in "The Eberron Code"). Basically, for multi-year campaigns I'm inclined always to break it into chunks that can be treated as mini-campaigns with a fairly clean division between them. In fact, the more modular a campaign of this nature is, the better.
• This is the most satisfactory 5e campaign I've run (though "A Quest for Memory" comes quite close), but it most definitely is not one of my Great Campaigns. I didn't really expect that; I don't think the format or cadence really allows for such a thing.
• The Tarokka gimmick doesn't work.
• The new character sheet format is a distinct improvement over the old. However, I need to work up an inventory sheet for those characters who get too much stuff, and especially magic items, for the existing sheet.
• The tension pool doesn't really work with remote gaming. And the Inspiration token approach both doesn't really work with remote gaming and having it once per level also doesn't work in general. I'm inclined to drop both in future.
• The character secrets, and the side dish in general, worked very well. And the manner in which I've both been building encounters and assigning XP awards has been very good.

And I think that's everything. All in all, a very successful experience; but also I have plenty to chew over for the next little while. And in a couple of weeks we'll have another one of these for "A Quest for Memory".

Isles of Dread

It turns out that I have a new "next campaign" - I've been struck by an inspiration that has driven "Blades of the Desert" into second place. And, of course, when hit by such an idea it's a good idea to follow it up.

The campaign is one-part a follow up to the classic "X1: The Isle of Dread", one part "Lost", one part "The Lost World" (and similar). It starts with a shipwreck, then the establishment of a community, then an investigation, and then a long-delayed confrontation with the Others (whoever they might be).

As is so often the case with these things, I have a nice solid idea for how it can start, I have a fairly solid idea of how it can come to a satisfactory end, and I have a few of the bits for the middle. I just need to flesh out the rest of that midsection.

The other thing I need is a "side dish". I have a rough notion of what it could be, but not yet the full thing. It ties in to the Exploration pillar, and involves reconstructing some lore from the original inhabitants of the island.

(Hmm... a thought: perhaps this is one to have two smaller side dishes, one each for the Exploration and Interaction pillars? That would give a much more well-rounded campaign, so it could be of interest. Perhaps one for rebuilding that lore, and another for making peaceful contact with various groups?)

History Repeats

My "Storm King's Thunder" campaign came to a TPK while in the "Forge of the Fire Giants" chapter - essentially, the PCs got themselves into a situation where the enemies converged on their location, they'd cut off all their own escapes, and they were thus overwhelmed.

To bring "The Quest for Memory" to a premature but still satisfying end, I've decided to run one last adventure, and due to the circumstances of the campaign as it was when I made that decision, that means I'm again running "Forge of the Fire Giants".

The results thus far have been fairly astonishing - the PCs started by dealing with the village on the mountaintop, an encounter that ended in violence. Then they descended the elevator to the Forge itself. Proceeding one way, they discovered a fair amount about the area, before investigating the other.

Thus far, the description could apply to either party - the pattern was uncannily similar.

Where it diverges, and where it may diverge in a fairly crucial manner, is that one party then proceeded directly to facing a band of giants, while the other instead faced some hobgoblin minions of the giants, and then went on to face those giants. The upshot of that being that the second group may have left themselves an easy retreat that the first lacked.

But last week's session ended exactly where the penultimate session of the previous campaign did - the giants have been alerted to something being wrong, they're now rushing to investigate, and the PCs run the risk of being overmatched.

It will be really interesting to see what happens next. Especially as I'm hoping to conclude either in the next session or, failing that, the one after. Though, ideally, without a TPK!

Thoughts About Crucibles

As "The Mists of Lamordia" comes to its close, I have locked the PCs in to the final crucible, which will serve as the final adventure location of the campaign. We're now heading to the final showdown, with the next session potentially being the last.

Having had some more time to consider the matter, and having seen the crucibles play out in two campaigns now, I have a few thoughts:

• As I've mentioned once before, the crucibles need to be kept short - a session or two at most. They should also be fairly brutal, as the whole point is to challenge the PCs as they come to the end of one phase of the campaign.
• As a consequence of that, I'm inclined to suggest a crucible should comprise around 5-6 encounters, with those skewed a little more towards the top end of the challenge range.
• Because of the small number of encounters and the need to challenge the PCs, it should not be possible to take a long rest while in a crucible, nor indeed to retreat and then come back. Face the challenge, or fail!
• And having said that, I've just come up against some fairly serious resistance to that "no resting" approach - some players really don't like it!

About Good Races

One of the big issues in modern D&D is the question of 'evil' races, particularly orcs and drow. It is becoming increasingly unacceptable to portray any of these races as being evil, and to a large extent that's fair enough - if orcs are indeed just another humanoid race with free will (as opposed to Tolkien's orcs, who were neither), then you would expect the full range of alignments.

One of the problems with that, however, is that for the most part the evil races are set up in opposition to the good races - drow are, first and foremost, the opposite of the benign and playful elves, and so on.

I'm inclined to think that a big part of the solution to the problem of 'evil' races must therefore include a significant rethink of the 'good' races. If elves aren't the benign and playful creatures we're used to, the contrast can become much less problematic.

And that's no bad thing. D&D's elves basically suck, being one part Tolkien, one part imaginary girlfriend, and generally without character. I'm inclined to think they're much better to adopt Lennier's maxim, "We may sometimes look like you, but we are not you."

So, have the elves lean in to their fey origins, where even the Seelie court were dangerous to encounter. Lean in to Pratchett's portrayal in "Lords and Ladies". Lean into their dedication to protect the environment, even against a humanity that they see as inherently destructive. And that way, the drow are not so jarring.

Likewise, the dwarves can be creatures of grudge and obsession, and an inhumanly powerful work ethic. And thus the dvergar need not be "evil dwarves", they can be a part of dwarven society in good standing, but be those dwarves that the others think take it all a bit too far.

And so on.