I’m glad you all enjoyed the idea and/or that it sparked such cool discussions.

See you soon with new, non April Fools material.
.-= ChattyDM´s last blog ..Lost Badgers and Kid Guards =-.

yesss….. EXcellent….

Most of my campaign has been dealing with the renewal of “the old gods,” ie the usual DnD pantheon. A new religion has taken over, with a single deity and a church-controlled state whose corruption is spiraling out of control. A lot of what the PCs are doing now is gathering the power to re-awaken Bahamut and unseat the false church.

Of course, there’s more to it than even that, but that’s mostly what their paragon tier will be concerned with. Epic will get world-ending-and-rebuilding epic
.-= Jenny Snyder´s last blog ..Level 30 Yinzer presents a tribute: The Axe Cop! =-.

@Jenny: If your player is the avatar of the Raven Queen, then it seems like the best way to get her character to achieve apotheosis is to get her killed. I mean, where else would her powers flourish than in her home domain of the Shadowfell? Or you could even have a side quest where a bunch of Shadar-kai track down the party for under-explained “reasons” to help them stop some chaos in the Shadowfell as the different lieutenants of the RQ are fighting who gets to rule in her absence. As the players go thru the portal, that particular player just never makes it thru. Lo-and behold, at the end of the mini-arc they re-discover their missing comrade as the reborn RQ trying to get a handle on her powers. Or even better, months down the line have a “cinematic moment” where one of the players is cruelly and arbatrarilly killed by some falling piece of scenery only to come face-to-face with their old friend who can give them a second chance (extra kudos if you make the sacrifical lamb be the same player as the current RQ incarnate, heh)

Hmm… maybe my next campaign will include reborn gods. Interesting concept. I’ve always felt that a truly immortal being would lose it’s impetus to act. Maybe every god has to go thru a “re-birthing” process every couple centuries just to keep the highest of motivators, the spectre of death.

That said, there’s something a bit missing if you start an Epic tier campaign at level 25 when you haven’t had those characters since at least early Heroic.
.-= Dean´s last blog ..Campaign Lengths and When to Quit =-.

One of the biggest benefits for the “miniseries” style games is seeing how different mixes of party work (or don’t work) together. As a GM, watching a variety of players bring a variety of character types and personalities to the table is a really awesome experience. I enjoyed it so much I’m tempted to run Red Hand of Doom again and flesh it out to add an element of West Marches-style scheduling and character competition to it.

Thanks, Chatty. This is a really great article.
.-= Jason Dawson´s last blog ..Core Tropes For Your Setting =-.

I play only in one campaign (Conan d20, http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/conan-ae/), and I’ve let three of my characters die instead of spending fate points to save them. I guess I like to try different characters.

Not that that is right for everyone, or better than any other mode.

Very Long is my mode. Like, Big Mcstrongmuscle’s dad long.
I wrote some earlier settings for the first 7-8 years I played, then created my current setting. That was 1983. We wrote it with a high lethality, so sometimes switching out is easy…

The current campaigns in the Setting are:
Steel Isle (online over IRC just had session 31 last night.)
Igbar (live, 8 years, though a near TPK 3 years ago has spread things out)
Miston (live, 15 years, 3 original members, 3 others with 10+ yr old characters)

We also use skill based rules, so when a Priest of Lucky Ishma wants to learn about backstabbing, she may inquire through contacts how to contact the local Karin Machination Assassins. Handled within the rules.

But when you plan the kind of sandbox out, you do need to have storyarcs and themes written out way ahead of time. That is hwo I label them, Themes are the huge, overarching campaign-level stuff, Greater Arcs for long-term local affects, and lesser arcs for 2-6 session affects. Though I honestly thought my current Igbarians would not be still stuck on Lesser arc #1 after 3 years since the Near TPK.
.-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..edited Flaming Sphere =-.

However, I understand the desire to play something different, explore a new class. In my current campaign I will be running a specialized adventure I am calling Seige Perilous (after the X-Men comic) wherein the party will be pulled into another reality wherein they will bne asked to assess themselves. After it is over they will allowed to change their race and class while maintaing who they are as a person.

A couple of weeks on my blog I wrote a couple of articles about Dynastic Campaigns. These are campaigns that are played out over generations and years of game time. You start with your first characters, accompish a few goals from the overarching plotline and then the quest is passed to your heirs. This happens over several geneations. It allows for an epic plot while also allowing players to swap up their characters.
http://bigballofnofun.blogspot.com/2010/03/dynastic-campaign.html

I also think my group appears to avoid the death of a character at all costs. Don’t think of it as a disruption to the story. Think of it as providing new plots.
.-= Vincent´s last blog ..Philosophers, dragons and harems =-.

On the other hand, the best campaign I ever ran (at least by popular acclamation in our play group) was a 4-5 session mini-campaign I designed to wrap up 3.5 for us before we moved to 4e. Everyone got to be level 17 to start the campaign, with the backstory that they were adventurers who had saved this coastal city about 5 years ago and retired to be the lords of the city. They were basically playing your typical high level NPCs from Forgotten Realms or something like that, except they had to dust off their gear and get back into PC mode to save the city from a strange prophesied threat (ended up being the Tarrasque). Loads of fun, great character development, good story, lots of drama, and done in 5 sessions.

Myself, I like to switch all the time. I’m becoming infamous for making my next character completely opposite of my previous one. For instance, I had a slow Dwarf Cleric, so when he died, I made a fast Cleric (party still needed a healer) who was more reluctant to rush into battle, a problem the Dwarf never had. The only thing that is important is that I’m having fun and that each character has their own personality, something that has worked perfectly thus far.

Luckily, my DM lets us switch whenever we want or whenever we die. Some factors like party needs or story importance may play a small role, but there is not much restrictions on what you can pick. As long as you fill a role adequately and can figure out a reason for your character to leave, you’re fine. We also have some turnover with players, which makes it interesting when new people and new PCs come in, but haven’t had any difficulties creating a party. The story remains the most important part, so you have to figure out how to make everything work in a dramatic sense. Thankfully, we all like to spend time daydreaming, especially the DM, so we usually have the changes made by the end of the session, if not 5 minutes after we come up with the idea.

Lastly, we play in a high death campaign, which makes it easier too. My DM likes to kill characters and we like to kill monsters, so we have lots of changes in party. It helps to change ideas and relationships quickly, because you have to adjust to new people in the party every 3-4 sessions. One character survived for levels 1-6, which was impressive, since everyone else around the table had died at least once and some multiple times. And while character death can be sad, it does help to liven things up, especially when we all create characters months in advance, or at least constantly throw out new ideas. I think everyone has their next character mapped out in their head, even though we haven’t had anyone die yet. We all like to be prepared, I guess or else just really like making new characters and trying out new ideas.

I know no one currently in a campaign over a year old except for one local Mutants & Masterminds campaign I played in but dropped out of.

I’d love to have the chance to belly up to the same table with the same characters for an AD&D game from level 1 to level 20 some day.
.-= Herb´s last blog ..Adding a Luck Stat to Classic D&D =-.