Just wrapped up a campaign.

[email protected]

What surprised you most about how it all played out?

[email protected]

So you're not going to try being a player for a change?

[email protected]

Wow, that's such an achievement. Has got to feel good to see it all come together

[email protected]

My latest campaign of about 5 years wrapped up just late last year too. It's a great feeling when people have done what they feel they needed to do and you sunset a campaign.

This year I have started as a player in a new campaign. It's weird not having to prep for a couple of hours before each session.

[email protected]

The way the party kind of adopted the recurring mini BBEG. He was designed to be a recurring villain , showing up near the end of act 1, and was supposed to be the final boss in act two.

He had done some truly vile things to various members of the party, but apologized for them each time, spoke to them as equals, and was overall a fairly amicable person, at least if you can discount the kidnapping and torture on one players father, and the murders of another character's entire tribe.

Late in act 2, they discovered that he was under a compulsion to serve the whims of the big bad, and I had assumed it was going to lead to a confrontation where they killed him, then went after the BBEG. Instead, they went on a whole redemption arc for the mini BBEG, found a way to break his compulsion, and went on a long quest to free him from the control of the BBEG.

It was kinda inspiring, again except for the multiple murders and other truly vile things this guy did. It was certainly not the outcome I was expecting in a campaign specifically bent to focus on moral grey areas.

[email protected]

Chekhov's Compulsion

Sounds like you did a great job

[email protected]

I can relate to that so much. Switching gears from GM to player is a real struggle for me at times.

[email protected]

I recently joined a second game with a different group as a player, so I still get my individual play time. Some of my players will also likely run one shots or small adventures in the interim while I do the next campaign prep, but they are adamant that they don't want to run any long form stories.

[email protected]

It really does, and there are always some loose dissapear into the weave over the course of a campaign, but there is a huge high from pulling years of work into a final epic encounter and conclusion.

Plus, the debrief at the end where players can ask all the questions about loot they missed and which characters were actually doppelgangers is always fun.

[email protected]

That's really cool to me. Your being a story teller, writing a series. Add in the player spontaneous and that's got to be pretty fun, I imagine

[email protected]

And then the players look in the big dark cave, and John turns around and says, I'm getting really bad vibes here, let's skip this one, and the party agrees and continues to the pub looking for another adventure.

[email protected]

Don't even ask me about the side trip into a dragon cult's lair when my kid and the group I was running decided to completely ignore a dozen preplanned hooks and go haring off through the woods instead.

[email protected]

Unless they plan to stay out of caves forever, then eventually they're going to stumble into the one that you have planned...

[email protected]

It is a great deal of fun and tremendously addictive.

[email protected]

After a weary day of traveling, the group finds a nice tiny cave to sleep in for the night. While asleep, a wolf attacked and shocked John. John rolled a 1 on his constitution check and then rolled a further 1 on his emotional check. John now has a permanent fear of caves preventing any further cave exploration.

[email protected]

I want to play. No one I know plays though. So I live through you guys here haha

[email protected]

The caves are alive and have developed a taste for poor John. They yearn to feed, and their howls sound through the night like gusts of wind through the trees.

John knows the hopelessness of inevitability. Some day, they will find him. Some day, he will wake up deep in the bowels of the caves, and his cries will add to the howls of the caves on the wind.

[email protected]

Ah that's cool. I always feel bad for DMs that don't get to play themselves

agnos.is Forums

Just wrapped up a campaign.