Poll of the Day > I just finished a year-long DnD campaign!

(+) Yeah! (+)

And it was an evil campaign!
The PCs were a lich, a vampire, and a graveknight. And jeebus crap the graveknight ended up at least twice as strong as anyone else.

I was the GM, of course. Though now I'm gonna let someone else run our games instead, at least for a while.


I was a little worried about the ending, which basically amounted to the vampire betraying everyone else and ruining 2 years of in-game planning and work, right before their plan paid off. But the players loved it (and later told me that they never expected anything but to lose to Good in the end eventually, so whatever) and I find it hilarious.'

Uhhh ask me anything!
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I hear DM's basically play way more than the players because they're constantly planning and thinking about things. It's like a daily thing, almost.

How does it feel to know it's finally over and you can let go of it all?
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supergamer19 posted...

I hear DM's basically play way more than the players because they're constantly planning and thinking about things. It's like a daily thing, almost.

This is true. And not just for the story and NPCs and stuff. The freaking rules are what do my head in every time.
Here's a picture of my second monitor when all was said and done (we play online).
https://image.prntscr.com/image/7c40b139b70e479996441e6cc1cf2dc9.png
Every single one of the spells on those guys' lists has paragraphs and paragraphs of explanation. And I just ran a fight where the party faced 4 of these spellcasters. And I had to make sure to use all of their spells coherently to provide a good challenge. Which took forever to learn.

Seriously, **** spellcasters so much. >.>

I'm pretty relieved it's over. I did this campaign immediately after a different year-long campaign, so I am nothing if not burnt out.
Which frequently spells the end of the group, so it's super rad that one of the players was willing to GM next.
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Hey, congrats! That sounds awesome.
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Gonna let someone else run a game for a while?
That's what I'm doing atm.

Lightning Bolt posted...

The PCs were a lich, a vampire, and a graveknight.

This is our Pathfinder party currently, among others. We've been slowly taking over and corrupting a kingdom. We lead the church and military, and we've got someone on her way to legitimately take the crown. Things are going great for us.
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Evil games are cool, but I've had some bad experiences. Usually will only play in them if the DM takes steps to ensure there won't be backstabbing, petty theft from other PCs, etc... Cause it just gets really irksome really fast. Being "vitriolic best buds" where the evil PCs insult and mock each other and come juuuuuuust short of coming to blows is really fun, though.

Lightning Bolt posted...

supergamer19 posted...

I hear DM's basically play way more than the players because they're constantly planning and thinking about things. It's like a daily thing, almost.

This is true. And not just for the story and NPCs and stuff. The freaking rules are what do my head in every time.
Here's a picture of my second monitor when all was said and done (we play online).
https://image.prntscr.com/image/7c40b139b70e479996441e6cc1cf2dc9.png
Every single one of the spells on those guys' lists has paragraphs and paragraphs of explanation. And I just ran a fight where the party faced 4 of these spellcasters. And I had to make sure to use all of their spells coherently to provide a good challenge. Which took forever to learn.

Seriously, **** spellcasters so much. >.>

I'm pretty relieved it's over. I did this campaign immediately after a different year-long campaign, so I am nothing if not burnt out.
Which frequently spells the end of the group, so it's super rad that one of the players was willing to GM next.

Tell me about it! My game's 3 1/2 years old now, and they just hit level 17 (started at level 3). Got a Druid, Psion, Warmage, and Cleric in the party (and also two non-casters) and damn has combat slowed to a crawl the last few levels! Now combats often take 1 hour per combat round, it's unbearable, but I'm not sure what I can do to fix it this deep into the campaign.

And yeah, it's a daily thing. Designing enemies for them to fight and battle maps is of course a lot of work. But if you have an idea for a plot and want to work it in gradually over time and drip-feed some foreshadowing, it's a lot of thought just to know what the players should hear and when and what's too much info / too soon, and not contradicting yourself (though in some cases, NPCs may be wrong or misled and thus give incorrect info they think is right and then you have to rationalize who should know what and...argh!).

I enjoy it, but I'll be relieved when the campaign's over. If I ever run a campaign again...I'm banning most of the casters. I tried to use carrot and stick method w/o being heavy-handed (giving improvements to noncasters and nerfing a lot of spells and caster prestige classes) and they still went 2/3 caster on me. Never again.

streamofthesky posted...

Tell me about it! My game's 3 1/2 years old now, and they just hit level 17 (started at level 3). Got a Druid, Psion, Warmage, and Cleric in the party (and also two non-casters) and damn has combat slowed to a crawl the last few levels! Now combats often take 1 hour per combat round, it's unbearable, but I'm not sure what I can do to fix it this deep into the campaign.

I recommend popcorn initiative! Basically, instead of rolling for initiative and keeping a list, whoever went previously gets to pick who goes next.
It's super fun, my players say they pay a lot more attention to other people's turns, and I've noticed people are quicker with deciding what to do.

http://angrydm.com/2013/09/popcorn-initiative-a-great-way-to-adjust-dd-and-pathfinder-initiative-with-a-stupid-name/

Shrug. Or turn timers if it's that bad. I like turn timers.

streamofthesky posted...

If I ever run a campaign again...I'm banning most of the casters. I tried to use carrot and stick method w/o being heavy-handed (giving improvements to noncasters and nerfing a lot of spells and caster prestige classes) and they still went 2/3 caster on me. Never again.

I got all my players to willingly swap to an alternate magic system that's way less overpowered and complicated and stupid. (Spheres of Power) Didn't even have to ask. Just on the sly said "Yeah I'll allow it" and they migrated over.
Greatest trick the devil ever pulled.
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Given the amount of time and effort probably put into it, is there any reason why you didn't just write a book instead? I kinda don't get something this long-term.
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Zeus posted...

Given the amount of time and effort probably put into it, is there any reason why you didn't just write a book instead? I kinda don't get something this long-term.

Because it's not the same thing?
You're running the game and playing with other people...your friends. And while it's cooperative (at least, it's supposed to be...), people are unpredictable, so the players will always be thinking of something clever that you hadn't considered, or be pitifully clueless and miss an obvious solution and thus make things much harder on themselves than necessary. It's fun in its own way. Not sure how else to explain it.

And that's just the story / role playing side. When it comes to combat...it varies by DM. But for me...I genuinely don't want the player characters to die, then they might switch for a new character and all the story built up around the prior character is gone. At the same time, nothing is worse than players knowing they're immortal and ceasing to care about "threats." So you have to kind of walk a tight rope...taking them just to the brink of defeat and putting the fear of death in their hearts, but they come out victorious in the end. (of course, there's some wiggle room, like if they realize early they're doomed and can escape, or if I subtly start using non-ideal tactics if it seems I made the fight too hard...otherwise it'd be impossible to pull off for hundreds of encounters)

I don't think Zeus actually knows what the fun part about playing DnD, or RPGs in general, is.
Which is fine, nobody knows what the hell it's like except for the 1% of people who played it.

shadowsword87 posted...

I don't think Zeus actually knows what the fun part about playing DnD, or RPGs in general, is.
Which is fine, nobody knows what the hell it's like except for the 1% of people who played it.

I literally said that I didn't get something this long-term >_> If something requires substantial effort, I see greater benefit in using a more enduring form.
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Zeus posted...

Given the amount of time and effort probably put into it, is there any reason why you didn't just write a book instead? I kinda don't get something this long-term.

This is pretty much why I stopped running games. So even someone that does get the appeal can still see it from your angle.
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streamofthesky posted...

Because it's not the same thing?
You're running the game and playing with other people...your friends. And while it's cooperative (at least, it's supposed to be...), people are unpredictable, so the players will always be thinking of something clever that you hadn't considered, or be pitifully clueless and miss an obvious solution and thus make things much harder on themselves than necessary. It's fun in its own way. Not sure how else to explain it.

And that's just the story / role playing side. When it comes to combat...it varies by DM. But for me...I genuinely don't want the player characters to die, then they might switch for a new character and all the story built up around the prior character is gone. At the same time, nothing is worse than players knowing they're immortal and ceasing to care about "threats." So you have to kind of walk a tight rope...taking them just to the brink of defeat and putting the fear of death in their hearts, but they come out victorious in the end. (of course, there's some wiggle room, like if they realize early they're doomed and can escape, or if I subtly start using non-ideal tactics if it seems I made the fight too hard...otherwise it'd be impossible to pull off for hundreds of encounters)

Why not try writing a book using the campaign as the background?
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Revelation34 posted...

streamofthesky posted...

Because it's not the same thing?
You're running the game and playing with other people...your friends. And while it's cooperative (at least, it's supposed to be...), people are unpredictable, so the players will always be thinking of something clever that you hadn't considered, or be pitifully clueless and miss an obvious solution and thus make things much harder on themselves than necessary. It's fun in its own way. Not sure how else to explain it.

And that's just the story / role playing side. When it comes to combat...it varies by DM. But for me...I genuinely don't want the player characters to die, then they might switch for a new character and all the story built up around the prior character is gone. At the same time, nothing is worse than players knowing they're immortal and ceasing to care about "threats." So you have to kind of walk a tight rope...taking them just to the brink of defeat and putting the fear of death in their hearts, but they come out victorious in the end. (of course, there's some wiggle room, like if they realize early they're doomed and can escape, or if I subtly start using non-ideal tactics if it seems I made the fight too hard...otherwise it'd be impossible to pull off for hundreds of encounters)

Why not try writing a book using the campaign as the background?

Well, in my case, I'm using a campaign setting that was already written and published by other people (a lot of it based off their old campaigns apparently). I've made a lot of tweaks and changes to the story, but it's still overall the same story. So, no can do...
It's an interesting idea in general, though. That's basically how Record of Lodoss War was created.

Zeus posted...

Given the amount of time and effort probably put into it, is there any reason why you didn't just write a book instead? I kinda don't get something this long-term.

It's more fun when you don't know what happens.
The players can do whatever they want for the most part. For instance, I didn't see the vampire betraying everyone coming, but it ended up being a really fun ending.

Plus it's literally a game. Story aside, I enjoy building monsters and sending them against the PCs. Combats are strategic and exciting, and unlike books there's no chance for plot armor so the fights are actually tense. Which again comes down to not knowing what happens I guess.

I don't really see the appeal of writing a book, to be honest. You don't get to "live" the story as much, it's way less social and exciting, and the big benefit is being able to share it with strangers en masse which doesn't really appeal.
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I've been running various smaller campaigns for the last year. Just started the 3rd campaign and we're about 2 months into what's like a 4-6 month campaign depending on scheduling issues.

After that I'm not sure what we'll do.
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Zeus posted...

Given the amount of time and effort probably put into it, is there any reason why you didn't just write a book instead? I kinda don't get something this long-term.

I've debated this as well, as like you said it's a ton of effort... But that said, a lot of my stuff is just improv. I'm horrible at predicting what types of questions people will ask so I don't write scripts or anything for NPCs, I just generally know what they would know and share in a given situation and make stuff up as I go.

So that means it doesn't need to be fleshed out nearly as much as a book would be.
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Zeus posted...

shadowsword87 posted...

I don't think Zeus actually knows what the fun part about playing DnD, or RPGs in general, is.
Which is fine, nobody knows what the hell it's like except for the 1% of people who played it.

I literally said that I didn't get something this long-term >_> If something requires substantial effort, I see greater benefit in using a more enduring form.

You just keep showing up in these sorts of topics going, "I know what I would do", and it not making sense in the RPG-meta-narrative.
Plus if you haven't corrected me, so I know you haven't played them :P

I would love to do this but I don't think I'd have the patience and would get easily distracted due to multitasking. I would probably have to do it it offline.
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Zeus posted...

Given the amount of time and effort probably put into it, is there any reason why you didn't just write a book instead? I kinda don't get something this long-term.

I DM'd a campaign where one of the guys wrote it out as a 90 page novella. He didn't publish but he got an A in his college English class.
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streamofthesky posted...

That's basically how Record of Lodoss War was created.

Huh. Didn't know that, but loved Lodoss... or, at least, the OVA (or maybe what I saw of the OVA?). I still need to see the series which I bought some years ago.

Lightning Bolt posted...

Plus it's literally a game. Story aside, I enjoy building monsters and sending them against the PCs. Combats are strategic and exciting, and unlike books there's no chance for plot armor so the fights are actually tense. Which again comes down to not knowing what happens I guess.

Out of curiosity, do you guys use maps and game pieces -- which I've seen some people do, I assume for reference -- or is it just pure storytelling?

Lightning Bolt posted...

I don't really see the appeal of writing a book, to be honest. You don't get to "live" the story as much, it's way less social and exciting, and the big benefit is being able to share it with strangers en masse which doesn't really appeal.

Plus I guess if anything accidentally turns out a bit goofy or cringey during the campaign, whatever embarrassment is limited to the group. One of the hangups about writing is that you never know how the reader will react. I went to a writer's conference once while in college where, and I still feel a little bad about this, I wasn't able to stop myself from laughing while reading a younger guy's work. Ironically, after that I wound up feeling more self-conscious about my stuff.
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shadowsword87 posted...

Zeus posted...

shadowsword87 posted...

I don't think Zeus actually knows what the fun part about playing DnD, or RPGs in general, is.
Which is fine, nobody knows what the hell it's like except for the 1% of people who played it.

I literally said that I didn't get something this long-term >_> If something requires substantial effort, I see greater benefit in using a more enduring form.

You just keep showing up in these sorts of topics going, "I know what I would do", and it not making sense in the RPG-meta-narrative.
Plus if you haven't corrected me, so I know you haven't played them :P

Not as an adult, no. And there's clearly a difference between fiddling around with a campaign when you're very young and doing so as an adult. Comparing the two would feel like an insult so I didn't address your question more directly.

Granted, even when I was looking over the manuals, I more thought about it solely from my perspective than that of a group. And I was big into D&D novels at the time which, in retrospect, most just strike me as being so bad I have a hard time reading them now. Two of my fave books as a kid were the Wyvern's Spur (book 2 of Finder's Trilogy) and the Ring of Ice. I tried re-reading both, didn't get far.

Firewood18 posted...

Zeus posted...

Given the amount of time and effort probably put into it, is there any reason why you didn't just write a book instead? I kinda don't get something this long-term.

I DM'd a campaign where one of the guys wrote it out as a 90 page novella. He didn't publish but he got an A in his college English class.

Which is a pretty neat idea.
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Zeus posted...

Out of curiosity, do you guys use maps and game pieces -- which I've seen some people do, I assume for reference -- or is it just pure storytelling?

I use maps personally. Sometimes they'll be maps I've built myself, a lot of times I'll find maps online and repurpose them as actually building out maps is very time consuming.
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Zeus posted...

streamofthesky posted...

That's basically how Record of Lodoss War was created.

Huh. Didn't know that, but loved Lodoss... or, at least, the OVA (or maybe what I saw of the OVA?). I still need to see the series which I bought some years ago.

Yup! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_of_Lodoss_War

Record of Lodoss War was created in 1986 by Group SNE as a Dungeons & Dragons "replay" serialized in the Japanese magazine Comptiq from 1986 to 1988, though they also used the setting with other systems such as Tunnels & Trolls and RuneQuest. Replays are not novels, but transcripts of RPG sessions, meant to both hold the interest of readers and convey the events that took place. They have proven to be popular, even to those who do not play role-playing games but are fans of fiction (including fantasy fiction). Similar to light novels, many characters and parties in replays have become popular as characters of anime. An example of such a character is the female elf Deedlit in Record of Lodoss War, who was played by science fiction novelist Hiroshi Yamamoto during the RPG sessions.

The popularity of the Record of Lodoss War replays was such that the Dungeon Master Ryo Mizuno started to adapt the story into some of the earliest Japanese-language domestic high fantasy novels in 1988.

When the replay series went on to become a trilogy, Group SNE had to abandon the Dungeons & Dragons rules and create their own game, dubbed Record of Lodoss War Companion and released in 1989.

Zeus posted...

Lightning Bolt posted...

Plus it's literally a game. Story aside, I enjoy building monsters and sending them against the PCs. Combats are strategic and exciting, and unlike books there's no chance for plot armor so the fights are actually tense. Which again comes down to not knowing what happens I guess.

Out of curiosity, do you guys use maps and game pieces -- which I've seen some people do, I assume for reference -- or is it just pure storytelling?

Maps. Pretty much needed for combat, though somehow I managed to run my first campaign online through AIM chat and just roughly describing locations and distances. Since I don't live near my friends anymore, I pretty much have to use online to play. At least there's plenty of virtual tabletops (VTT) available. I use Maptool, I've played in games that use Roll20 and others.
VTT all generally let you load a picture to use as a map, and then you can place a grid on it (a character occupies one square) and move the grid around to line up right w/ the map and resize the squares (effectively making the map larger or smaller).
The problem is finding nice battle maps... You can draw your own, either in the VTT or outside of it and then load it as a picture, but that's really time consuming. I use Tiled sometimes, it's a simple program w/ SNES and PS1 era RPG objects and terrain as square tiles that you can paint onto a background to make a map.
Once you've got the map setup in the VTT, you can bring in pictures and make them "tokens" to represent the characters. There are tools to measure distances and/or show how far a token is moving, tools to create areas of effect (like if you wanted a 20 ft radius blast), the ability to make the map dark and assign different light sources (torch, lantern, etc... w/ different light radii) to each token to illuminate the proper distance and even create vision blocking layers (basically blocks line of sight, like a wall of a dungeon you could lay one over) that the light sources will be obstructed by and bend around appropriately.
It's amazing how advanced the stuff has gotten, and most of them (including maptool and roll20) are free to use.

Zeus posted...

Out of curiosity, do you guys use maps and game pieces -- which I've seen some people do, I assume for reference -- or is it just pure storytelling?

Yup! It's a real strategy game, like FFT or whatever. Check out what the map looked like at the end of the campaign:
https://image.prntscr.com/image/c1edc9cbb5cc45908ec7dc1ee5ff824b.png

Had to zoom out to get that cheeky wizard launching devastating spells from across the map. OP BS!
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