My gaming group usually takes off for the summer. We put our campaign on hiatus because of vacations, family quality time and yard work. While we gamed some (Magic:The Addiction, one shot RPG games, etc) this summer was rather dry.
Next Friday is the long awaited start of our new gaming season and both my players and I are pumped! This is going to be my first D&D 4e campaign and it’s going to be a first for most of my players.
Here’s our player lineup for this year, and my interpretation of their Player Types:
- Yan: Story-driven brilliant planner with a side of cool power accumulation and setting exploration (he’s DMing his own 4e campaign so he’s our rules guru)
- Math: Supercool butt kicking power accumulator (New dad, so we’re going to game at his place).
- Franky: Story-driven setting explorer with a taste for power accumulation
- Eric : Near pure butt kicking psychodramatist
- Stef: Ex-Casual turning into storytelling butt kicker
- Mike: Franky’s brother and our newest member, I haven’t pegged him yet, I’d say Casual Storytelling Butt Kicker but the jury is still out.
- Phil: Incredibly talented DM with a side order of God complex (ha ha!)
While mentally preparing the campaign over this summer, I made a few choices to make the most of our 4e experience and cater to my player tastes. Chief among those was that I want players to be able to use any new sourcebook that comes out this year, including new classes:
- The campaign background/plot is vague to allow storytellers to help me build a story.
- The season will be made of short, British TV-like campaigns around one core adventure/theme.
- Each campaign will be in the same shared world.
- Significant in-game time will pass between mini-campaigns (months to years), allowing players to set stories as they see fit (marriage, kids, disease, retirement, etc) outside of my control (As long as PCs don’t level up).
- Players may chose to create a new character (at the current party character level) or play with an existing one from earlier in the season.
- I’m stealing the West Marches concept of the build-as-you-play Table Map.
- The campaign is set in the same homegrown world as my previous campaign except it’s one or two thousand years after the cataclysm that nearly destroyed it.
- None of the world’s original empires and countries exist anymore.
Here’s my campaign’s Elevator Pitch (borrowed from Paizo’s Pathfinder concept)
You are adventurers! In a world who’s history is muddled by the rise and fall of numerous civilizations, you seek fame and fortune through the search of ancient treasures and artifacts that can help decipher the countless mysteries of the past. You also are willing to sell your swords and wands to whomever needs heroes in this dangerous world.
Friday’s adventure is going to focus on us players rejoining after a long summer break. Such meetings usually do not lend themselves to a serious game so I plan to focus on having players discuss their characters, drink beer, form relationships, drink beer and maybe do a few encounters to review/try rules while drinking beer.
That’s why this year I didn’t ask for player backgrounds and such, we’ll discuss it in-game. That’s also why my first scene is going to be dead simple:
You are a group of adventurers who recently joined together to perform a service to your local Liege-lord. Having successfully performed your quest, you have been befriended by the Noble. You have all been invited to stay at his main residence and partake in the festivities that mark the beginning of the Harvest Season. You are currently in the Lord’s company, in a Banquet hall, eating and carousing. You are enjoying the Bard’s somewhat embellished retelling of your recent deeds…
…and we’ll see where that leads us.
So far the PCs are lining up to be:
- Yan: Elf Fighter
- Franly: Eladrin Warlock
- Eric: Eladrin Wizard
- Math: Elven Cleric
- Stef: Halfling Rogue
- Mike: Dragonborn Warlord
Talk about a balanced party, they’ll be unstoppable once they start teaming up!
I think it’s going to be a great campaign!
Credits: Wizards of the Coast (Image)
Great setup! My group is:
Eladrin Ranger, Human Rogue, Human Warlord, Human Wizard, Dwarf Cleric and Dragonborn Paladin. Gotta love it when the group divvies up the roles themselves without [much] prompting fro me.
Have fun with it!
@Rafe: Thanks. Funny thing, it’s only when Dave pointed out to me the makeup of the party that I noticed that there were no humans… this is going to be interesting Story Wise.
My 4e game began with an Elf (Fighter), Eladrin (Wizard), Halfling (Rogue), Tiefling (Warlock), and Orc (Fighter). So when we began, no humans either! Then the next two players chose human (Cleric and Warlord), and the last player to join was a Dragonborn (Paladin). I was completely surprised that no one was interested in the mighty Dwarf!
So do you think you’ll be able to handle 6 players?
Dave T. Games last blog post..Inq. of the Week: It’s All About You? 2008
Six players is the maximum I’m comfortable with. Since we’re all busy adults, I don’t expect us to have full quorum most of the time, but we all agreed to accept the little disadvantages of playing with a larger group.
Sounds wicked fun…
My home group is comprised of a Human Wizard, Elf Ranger, Human (*coughdopplegangercough*) Ranger, and a Shadar-kai Rogue…I’ll be starting up another campaign with a few nubian players this semester…
I don’t think my players are used to not having me in the party yet…lack of a Defender has made encounters rather interesting…
Reverend Mikes last blog post..Sermon #2: Believe In You Who Believes In You!
Reading this post increased my symptoms of D&D withdrawal! Its been too long since my group had the time to all get together. Based on a quick glace of my schedule.. I won’t be able to find a dedicated game night until the Winter of 2011 🙁
Let us know how your group adjusts to 4e.
OOOh! Thanks for the link to ars ludi’s West Marches! This is exactly the kind of material I’m digging up for my research/whatever into ‘entourage/troupe’ style game play. THIS RULES!
Wish I lived in Montreal… sounds like a good time (game+beer FTW).
Jonathans last blog post..Entourage Gaming?
Looks like something of a paradigm shift. Good luck with it.
(Also: 2/3 of the group are elves. Take that, elf haters.)
Tommis last blog post..Persistent fantasy – system update
My group consists of five human wizards (Noble teenage wizards attending The Great School of Magic – with all the stuff they didn’t dare show you in Harry Potter books).
Chatty wrote:
“That’s why this year I didn’t ask for player backgrounds and such, we’ll discuss it in-game.”
I usually don’t bother with a anything but the most cursory background stories. Mainly from the principle, that anything not presented in play (ie. the shared fiction between the players incl. GM) is not very interesting. It is much like books or movies, you don’t have long detailed back story for Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones, and whenever their background story becomes important it is introduced into the story – either through some sort of exposition or from flashbackscenes (take a look a various Asian movies, they have lengthy backgroundscenes).
The reason for this is twofold:
If you have cool background story, I’d rather play it than read it.
A slim background story is easier to integrate into the game and to expand upon.
So if and when a player introduces a background story the trick is to mine it for the relevant plot elements: What is it the player wants introduced into the game? What are the exciting parts?
And if they’re truly cool: Do play flashbackscenes!
Some might argue that flashbackscenes cannot be exciting, because the characters can’t die. Well, that argument also goes for movies and books, and yet those scenes are exciting. That’s not because we fear for the lives of our heroes, but because they reveal why the hero is where he is and how it happened … and it does reveal wether or not he has a spare Potion of Giant Strength hidden in his backpack. You see the cool thing about flashbacks is, that you can use them for more than character exposition. Here is a houserule:
Dramatic Flashback
Once pr. Milestone (game session or whatever marker you prefer) a player can during combat activate a flashback (non-combat) scene. The scene must reveal something important about the character, his or her personality or motives. Once the scene is played out (lasting from 30 seconds to about 5 minutes), the player is immediately granted an Action Point or the reuse of an Encounter Power (or Daily Power if it were a cool background scene).
The purpose of the houserule is to integrate backstories into the game. A flashbackscene can be purely narrated or it can be roleplayed normally with the other players handling NPC’s (so everybody is active during the scene).
Morten Greiss last blog post..Spillederkompendiet fra Fastaval 08
@Reverend Mike: Strikers-R-us eh? That Wizard must be afraid for his/her life a lot!
@Czar: Less blacksmiting and more gaming is what I say! Or you can live vicariously through my gaming reports with my friends or my son.
I missed doing play reports.. it’s what this blog used to be about mostly…
@Jonathan: Thank Tommi and Jeff Rient. They are the ones that pointed me to Ben Robbins’ excellent blog.
@Tommi: Shhh… don’t say it too loud, you’ll scare my players away. There will still be lots of pointless fights though… I mean I do have a few butt kickers in there.
The lack of Humans made me ponder what type of liege Lord they could have and, more importantly a ‘What happened to Humans’ plot idea. What if I tackled a non-human mini campaign first… They were mostly responsible for the fall of the world in my last campaign… And we had an Anti-Human sub-theme in it too.
My current plan surely can support this.
@Morten: Wow… just wow. That’s a great storytelling 4e house rule. Mind if I repackage it as a Mini post soon? With full credits to you of course!
@ Chatty: You’re most welcome. I’m glad you liked it. I use a lot of this kind of rules in my own campaigns.
Morten Greiss last blog post..Spillederkompendiet fra Fastaval 08
I’m generally a big fan of the well developed background, only because it puts things in a concrete form before the game begins and can’t be altered later on. Everything IN the background has to be revealed in game though. Sounds like having the players hang out for the first session and tell tales is a good way to get the party members to know one another.
I’m really looking forward toward seeing how this progresses 😉
Toms last blog post..Alignment Part 9 – Goodie Two Shoes
Definition “striker-heavy”: An upcoming campaign of ours has a dragonborn paladin, two rangers (human and elf), a human rogue, a human wizard (with multiclass cleric), and one other character to be determined (hopefully some sort of leader).
The lack of healing made me take Heal as a skill, just in case, though the paladin can do a bit (but he’s mostly there to be a tank – 20 AC at level 1, woo!) The general lack of defending will make things…interesting.
Ah, that new campaign smell! It’s always so exciting at the beginning.
The West Marches deal always seemed really interesting but impossible with my current group. Here’s hoping that what you are doing works out.
Davids last blog post..Messing with Players
In the D&D Racial department we’ve often been human heavy in our groups. Although Math often takes an elf. Seems this time is no exception. 😉
I for one often steer my racial decision by the strategist in me. I then fluff it so it fits with the general aspect of the game…
With some exception like Lilly (the Pixie sorceress for which I even designed a class that is somewhere on this blog) in which case it was a complete fluff character.
As for the role distribution we have very different play style.
Me, I like it up close and personal. The classes that sing to me are the Warlord, Fighter, Paladin, Clerics (battle mages!) and Ranger (two weapon fighting style)
@Morten: I shall repost you comment soon as a ‘Chatty’s Finds!’ or if you want to do a guest about your 4e House Rules (or link to them) let me know!
@Tom: The format I’m using (Short campaigns), the blank slate of my reset Gameworld and the fact that I don’t have time to do much advance world building kind of drives my campaign decisions.
I’ll let the game do the work by taking notes of what players say and do.
@Kawa: People like strikers… I myself play a Mage on World of Warcraft all the time. Hopefully leader types are as fun to play!
@David: I’m not going to do a Sandbox game. While I have leveled up at Gen Con, I haven’t reached that level of comfort yet (nor can I commit to the work).
I will borrow the ‘Let’s build the map as we go along’ concept by having a Plastic Hex Map (with plenty of colored markers lying around near player hands) as the tablecloth of our game table.
Heck, I’ll encourage players who doodle when idle to do it on the map…. adding monsters, towns, rivers and such!
@Yan: This is going to be an interesting experiment… looking forward to tomorrow night!
@ Chatty: Thank you. I sure would like to guest you for a houserule or two, but for the next few weeks I’m quite busy, so a repost is fine.
Morten Greiss last blog post..Spillederkompendiet fra Fastaval 08
@Chatty: It’s a “different strokes for different folks” kind of thing anyways 😉
Tomcat1066s last blog post..Alignment Part 9 – Goodie Two Shoes
I went back and I’ve now read most of your logs of the Ptolus campaign you ran, Chatty. I look forward to more adventures!
I’m hoping to start my own new campaign sometime next month, depending on my players’ schedules. It won’t be D&D… I still haven’t had a chance to look at 4e, and I have my regular NWN campaign to keep up my fantasy quota. But this will be the first tabletop campaign I’ve run in a long time, and I’m looking forward to it. As for the character backgrounds, I’ve asked folks to write a little bit about their character. One player has gotten a little carried away, and he’s up to 3 pages.
Indeed, strikers galore…
Worst yet though…both rangers are focusing on the ranged aspect of things…which makes the rogue the best candidate for frontline defense, sort of…
Melee combat is NOT their thing…
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