Monday, January 03, 2011

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

1 comment:

Robert Conley said...

Perhaps the generic nature of the campaign it's saving grace. These detailed back stores, if you have copies, could be readily incorporating into another fantasy campaign.

And make a list of the names you used. You can never have enough cool place names.

Players generated material is gold as they bring variety and diversity beyond even what the most imaginative referee can generate.