Of Campaigns Past: Realm of Baijhan...

Good Evening:

In continuing my discussion of campaigns past, my next big campaign was also my first 3rd Edition campaign. The Realm of Baijhan ran for about 20 months and covered characters from 1st level to 19th level. For the most part, I went with the core rules, and added a lot of the new 3rd-party releases that came out during the first two years of the D20 Era. The pantheon was poorly conceived, built before I fully understood the system. Still, we had a lot of fun with it, exploring a new system and playing through to what we called high level play at the time.

From a purely game mechanical or even background perspective, I never felt that Baijhan held much distinction as a setting in its own right, aside from some great place names. Strangely, what made this setting stand out was not my work, but the players and their involvement in the campaign. I lucked into forging a gaming group that loved to write, and the stories they wrote about their characters and the background were astounding. Some of the side stories written up were very moving, and when the campaign ended on a bittersweet note, some of the final tales of the characters brought tears to the eye. I don't think I could really pull much from that setting, but I'd love to see that kind of player involvement again.

With Regards,
Flynn

Of Campaigns Past: A Multitude of Races...

Good Evening, All:

Work has been quite hectic of late, and I haven't had much of an opportunity to focus on gaming as I would have liked. However, I know that I need to make at least one more post this week, so I'm taking a few minutes to discuss the races of my previous campaign settings, as part of exploring my past games for items to mine for my own elusive "perfect milieu". In this post, I figure I'd list some of the many races I've used frequently in games past.

First, though, I think I'll briefly mention my use of races. In most of my campaigns, I tend to offer a lot of races, particularly in the beginning of my GMing career. I believe I was influenced by a wide variety of sources. Star Wars, in particular, was one great influence. At a young and impressionable age, I enjoyed the cosmopolitan nature of the many species of the cantina scene, among others. My favorite novels growing up were Planetary Romances, often populated by a wild and diverse range of races.

Common Fantasy Races: A majority of my worlds have had a number of common fantasy races. I always have humans as an available character option. In addition, I often include elves (often with an asian flavor), dwarves, halflings and orcs. I truly dislike gnomes, because I've never seen them played well, so I don't include them as options.

Common Planetary Romance Races: I often have one or more races that are inspired by the Sword & Planet novels I enjoy so much. For example, exotic humans with skin tones of strange hues, such as cerulean or crimson, are common in many Planetary Romance adventures. In my case, I've frequently used a blue-skinned human race I call the Merimen, who are exceptional merchants, as well as a crimson-skinned human race known as the Merokee, who live in a tribal society similar to that of the Native Americans of the Great Plains. Inspired by the green men of Barsoom, I commonly use a four-armed giant humanoid race I often describe as having ogre-like features, save for the four arms and a much fairer complexion. These four-armed giants are known as the Tarthani, and are perhaps the most frequently encountered non-standard race of all of my campaigns.

Uncommon Races: There are other fantasy races I've allowed as character races in previous campaigns, including minotaurs, goblins, kobolds, hawkfolk, serpentfolk, mantisfolk, lizardfolk, catfolk, dogfolk and even ratfolk. In particular, I found a good number of the races from Fantasy Flight Games' Mythic Races to be wonderful additions to my campaign worlds. In particular, I enjoyed using the Coivald, Rezorbek, Artathi, Ooloi and Siarrans (like medium-sized Tarthani).

While I've tried worlds with fewer races, I always seem to come back to a more cosmopolitan world. I suppose that means the ultimate "perfect milieu" for me would have to include a wide variety of racial options, beyond the standard handful that often are the only races described in a Player's Handbook. The hard part about it, I guess, would be to create a cohesive whole for all of them in a world where each have their place. That reminds me of the setup behind the Nine Kingdoms of Arn campaign, which I will dive into sometime next week.

So, what kind of races do you like in your campaign worlds? Do you play with unusual races, and if so, would you mind sharing some thoughts on them? What races have given you the greatest sense of enjoyment as a player? As a Referee?

With Regards,
Flynn

Of Campaigns Past: Another World Map of Nova-Kintar...

Good Morning, All:

With some free time over the holidays here in the States, I finally gave in to the urge to pull up Hexographer and whip up a replacement map for my old world of Nova-Kintar. This map measures much the same as the original map did. Each hex approximates 250 miles across. I also shifted the map so that its edges fall along what would be the Atlantic Ocean. (My original map looked much like the simple world map I'd posted previously, at least in terms of continental position.)

And now, without any further adieu, here's an updated map of Nova-Kintar:



Please feel free to post any questions or thoughts as a comment here.

With Regards,
Flynn

Of Campaigns Past: Tales of Port Kar...

Good Evening, All:

After the Nova-Kintar campaign, I ran a 2.5 year long campaign called Tales of Port Kar, using HERO System 4th Edition and the Fantasy HERO rules (plus plenty of house rules, of course, because HERO System is more of a toolkit than a rules system). The primary conceit was that Tales of Port Kar was Cinemax's fantasy series in response to the growing popularity of Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. I started each session with a description of the episode's intro, including a few cut scenes to help foreshadow elements of the day's adventure. This was back when I was still running eight hour sessions, and the response was great. The players really got into it, trying to work in the cut scenes and keeping with the television fantasy show format in terms of description. Our adventurers hit the high seas, saved their homeport, fought dinosaurs and demons, travelled back in time to create a prophecy, and ultimately fought against and destroyed the King of Demons, Sandamos. (This is where I first came up with the name Sandamos, which has remained as the Lord of Demons in many of my campaigns since.)

Unlike Nova-Kintar and its Greyhawk-esque pantheon of gods, Tales of Port Kar addressed the spiritual needs of the setting through churches and theologies, including a healing church that used rings to demonstrate a person's place within the hierarchy (the more rings you wore, the higher you were in the church) and a rune-jin who combined Oriental magic with symbols and runes to forge some spectacular special effects and powers. We had a ninja-pirate-poet, a ranger/shaman who was worshiped by Jermlaine-like cave dwellers at one point, an angellic vestal virgin who was corrupted by the forces of evil, and a mad inventor. I used my considerable skills as a horribly bad impersonator to portray "guest stars" in the series, the most memorable of which was a paladin-king based on Sean Connery.

Since Tales of Port Kar supposedly was a Cinemax series, we dealt with issues of sexuality as an adjunct of our adventures, and all in all, I found that the game went very well. I was fortunate enough to have mature gamers who did not turn the game into the mess it could have been when such matters were brought up, and like Nova-Kintar, this was a campaign in which I felt the players had a lot of personal investment. I really loved the level of Asian influence I was able to bring to Port Kar, and the use of a Fantasy TV series as the core conceit helped us focus on cinematic scenes that were easy to picture and did not bog down in day-to-day details of shopping or walking from Point A to Point B. This was also the first campaign in which I portrayed orcs as Jamaican pirates that went by the name of the Stefari (derived from the word Rastafarian.)

When the prophecy that the players had created had been fulfilled, and the Lord of Demons was slain, I felt the game had come to a close, so I wrapped it up and moved on. Tales of Port Kar was a change from Nova-Kintar in many ways, including gaming system, players, presentation style, setting and so on. I found it very successful on a number of levels, but when it was done, I never tried to go back to the setting again, nor did I ever really feel the desire to make that effort. Over time, some of the elements of the setting have found their way into other games, as is my way. If I ever compile a single world from my past campaigns, I think I'll likely use some of the flavor of the magic systems, as well as the use of Asian influences in portions of the campaign world, because it worked so well with Tales of Port Kar. Again, we can see the influence of time travel as a major element of plot development. This becomes less with future campaigns, but in the beginning of my GMing career, I enjoyed creating a setting and then letting the players change it through their actions. While I stopped using time travel as the means to do so, I still enjoy empowering players to make choices that have impact.

With Regards,
Flynn

Of Campaigns Past: Nova-Kintar

Good Evening, All:

My last post has had a great amount of response, and I'm very pleased to see the variety of comments I've gotten, as well as from whom. Thank you to everyone who responded. Rob Conley, who published the wonderful Supplement VI: The Majestic Wilderlands, suggested that I post a few details of past campaigns, in the hopes of helping me cull some of my previous work toward the creation of that elusive "perfect campaign milieu."

Nova-Kintar was my longest campaign, running over seven years and using the AD&D 2nd Edition rules (and the Skills & Powers optional books toward the end). The world map was based on a Vincenzo Coronelli replica globe turned upside down, under the premise that the Coronelli map was actually accurate for an alternate Earth with the north and south poles switched. The campaign primarily took place on the continent that was a combination of what would be Antarctica and Australia on Earth, which sat atop the North Pole of the world of Nova-Kintar. The continent's name was Tanalis, although that rarely came up, and a majority of the action took place in the Kingdom of Synovia, the great Walled City of Catabolas, and the wilderness around this region. This world supported a pantheon of Greyhawk-esque proportions, with well over forty deities listed in the core house rules document. The players mostly played themselves as characters mysteriously transported from Earth to Nova-Kintar. Over the course of the campaign, they obtained swords that together allowed time travel (technically travel between parallel dimensions that greatly resembled time travel to the uninitiated and unknowing.) They freed an insane mage from captivity and then had to hunt him down and slay him, built a city of their own, fought a war with the neighboring kingdom of Pasalovakia, and eventually worked directly for the gods to battle the influence of that destroyer of universes known as the Something. They did a lot of other things, as well, but these are the big world-changing events that I recall off hand. It was the ultimate success against the Something that really made me feel that the world was done, since I couldn't come up with anything to top that. Over fifty different players participated in the game over its seven year history, and I still look back on it with a lot of pride and happiness.

The latter years of the Nova-Kintar campaign took place on the earthly North American continent known as Cameria (hence the name of the main continent of the Hammersong's Legacy Campaign Setting.) In Nova-Kintar, the continent of Cameria was populated by cultures similar to those that contacted North America of our world in pre-Columbian times, including Aztec, Chinese, Egyptian, Native American and Norse cultures, as well as the Republic of Roanoke, where the lost colony of Roanoke ended up when they disappeared from our world. I had a lot of fun with that particular arrangement, and that sub-setting lent itself well to some interesting and non-standard cultural interactions. The Englishmen of the Republic of Roanoke had some interesting challenges with orcish "Vikings", four-armed Native American tribesmen, Aztec raiders and a brief brush with an Egyptian-style mummy and its servitors. I didn't get to pursue as much of the setting as I wanted before I found I needed to wrap up the campaign with the "Coming of the Something", but what I did get to explore was a lot of fun, and it taught me a lot about what I like and don't like as campaign content.

And thus ends a brief description of my first successful campaign world. What was your first successful campaign world like? What elements might it have shared with my Nova-Kintar?

Thanks,
Flynn