Tabletop Campaigns

[PurpleRain]

I'm currently typing up two CoC campaigns. One of which is a Call of Cthulhu Christmas Special I intent to play over the summer chirstmas hollidays.

So any campaigns you played, made, loved? Mistakes you may have made and way you went about fixing them or just some really cool senario or puzzle you had within it?

 

[jim_doki]

way back when i were a youngster I wrote a DnD campaign. The beginning premise was that the town they were in was being held hostage and they were stuck in a building. mission 1, break out. Missions 2-5, defeat his lieutenants in buildings around the town, mission 6, beat down wizard. when he was beaten he rode off on a dragon, which players had to bring down using their own dragon, then swordfight the wizard on top of the dragon. it was pretty metal

 

[Altorin]

I've had lots and lots of tabletop game stories, none of them are real success stories

my first D&D game was with a guy who had no idea what he was doing. He let a level 7 mage play with a group of level 1 characters and wondered why it wasn't working out. However, the game did utilize some of the best use of maps and models I've ever played with (My friends and I usually play in our head, or on small pieces of scrap paper)

Another game I was in, I played a mage myself, and the players were really cool, but the DM never gave us a moment to rest. We fought tooth and nail to get to a town called Deerhaven, and as we were approaching, we saw fire on the horizon. Deerhaven has become somewhat of a meme in our play sessions since, and shortly after the sundering of Deerhaven, we crucified that DM.

Another issue we had in a Vampire the Masquerade game was a GM completely ignoring our abilities. I was playing a 9th generation Nosferatu who had 6 points of Obfuscate, and not once did it do me any good, as even when I was sneaking around, or tried to hide, everything would see me. Another Crucified DM.

I have more interesting stories (to me at least), but You might be able to pull some pointers from that, or not.

 

[Saskwach]

My favourite game I've run was a one-shot with my friends in which they played themselves in a zombie apocalypse, and I killed them off slowly and gruesomely (as happens in a zombie game). There were insane survivors shooting at anything that moved. There was a mall. There might have been a truck. It was a blast.
Of the mistakes I'm willing to even admit (some were horrendous):
Giving players a truck with enough gas to burn leather. Truck + zombies = no zombies. Hardly terrifying.
Forgetting one of the players had been shot in the head when I zombified him. Luckily no one else remembered either. *phew*
Killing off the first player too fast. It was good for atmosphere and bringing on the sudden realisation that people may die but it just left the player feeling they hadn't achieved much. #1 regret.
Not realising that my players were too smart to stay in the mall. Should have properly planned for that or simply forced them to stay with sheer weight of zombie numbers.

 

[Ultrajoe]

i love WH40K campaigns.

They take about a year all up, what with 8 people and a scoring and territory control system.

Man, i've only ever played one.

It was fun.

 

[rossatdi]

I ran one about a year ago using just the world of darkness book (no vampire, werewolves or mages). I start with the yarn about them all being amateurish paranormal investigators who find the same weird stories in a local paper from a small island of the east coast of Canada. There was demonic presence, a local population under its sway and a girl saviour they had to save.

Unfortunately (although it worked out okay in the end): one of the players went unhinged and had no problem killing scores of mind controlled people, they accidentally got the girl killed by forgetting here whilst saving their own asses, luckily someone stepped up and blew themselves up with a grenade to kill the demon in the end. Was a laugh!

 

[Copter400]

Me and my friends are enjoying the Dragon Warriors campaigns that come in the books.

They are very fun and very interesting. One quest involves fighting a 'evil' sorceror/bunch of rowdy nights in the hope of getting a schweet castle. When you're done, you can go into the fiendishly difficult dungeon with all sorts of nasty stuff waiting for you.

Quotes from the last game:

"There are no words to describe how dead that skeleton is."

"Dr. Esk, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Shove Esk's Face Into Acid."

 

[Brett Alex]

I had a brilliant Warhammer Fantasy one once, absolutely brilliant. Me and three mates had just got into the game and were rapidly painting and assembling and picking teams with that enthusiasm you have when you've just stumbled onto something awesome. I reached the scenario section of my rulebook and it was decided we needed to have a campaign as our first real game together. So I started penning an epic.

It took me ages to draw up, each scenario having different outcomes for victory/draw/loss etc so it was like a campaign tree. It wasn't just set battles or a few generic conflicts either, it was a set of story arcs, with different battle conditions and rules based on terrain with actions from previous scenarios having consequences. It was fluffed up with... well fluff and introductory little mission stories, special characters and units, conversions, the whole kit and caboodle.

It began with a 750pt High Elf force ambushing a lightly guarded Dwarf Engineers Guild Caravan (450pts). The Dwarves had to get the caravan off the table edge, the Elves had to disable it or kill all the crew. If the Elves won, they find a map detailing the route of the caravan to a hidden factory of Mad Dog Pass and make a raid with 400pts of troops+100pts for winning and getting first turn, Dwarf win meant the Elves don't find the map, but become suspicious and search the pass anyway, making the same raid without the +100 points and getting second turn.

The raid was played using skirmish rules, and the Elves had to get in and mess up the Secret Advanced Gyrocopter factory with Alchemical Fire in 5 rounds before reinforcements were summoned. High Elf win meant in the next scenario, a pitched battle, the Dwarf players would be unable to use the upgraded Transport 'copter loaded with an elite Dwarf S.Q.U.A.T. insertion team, if the Elves lost, the Dwarf players could use aforementioned S.Q.U.A.T. team. After that battle, the campaign split into different paths and arcs based on wins/losses etc. Suffice to say it was truly epic.

The one problem, my young ambitious and jellylike childish brain severely overestimated me and my mates skill, commitment, understanding and painting speed and ability. Suffice to say... we only every completed the first scenario, and even then one player was using semi-painted Elf spearmen. The campaign was shoved aside for easier, less complex battles, which eventually became irregular before stopping completely. Oddly enough 2 of the 4 of us moved states and never played each other again.

...and so the moral of the story is "don't convert your 8 seater gyrocopters before you paint your crossbowmen w/hand-weapons+sheilds."

 

[TomWhitbrook]

My D&D crew are currently trapped in a shadow dimension and surrounded by insane cannabalistic dwarves driven mad by the black power of a demonic essence. As they're level 1, I might be pushing things a little, but I've found 4E to be awesome at low level heroism. We'll see how it goes.

My desire to run or play in some Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay knows no bounds at the moment though.

 

[Saskwach]

Babylon 5

*gasp*
Is that system good?

 

[PurpleRain]

"Dr. Esk, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Shove Esk's Face Into Acid."

I love you forever.

I'm trying to make an epic, cultist/sadistic/horrifying CoC game at the moment, but it may take a little while. I'm starting to think of a shorter one. Perhaps something with a made scientist or something.

 

[Saskwach]

Perhaps something with a made scientist or something.

Made by whom?

 

[Spinwhiz]

I ran a RIFTS campaign back in the day. I really enjoyed it, regardless of being overpowered. Mutants and Masterminds is very fun too.

 

[Zemalac]

I've played in a lot of tabletop games, though only a few have actually worked out. Some died because none of the players could ever make it, some we just lost interest in. The longest-running game is a D&D campaign I'm DMing and sort of making up as I go along, the other is a Deadlands game using GURPS rules where I'm a gunslinger who knows some magic.

Out of all the games I've played, I think the current D&D one I'm running right now is my favorite. Everything just clicked--original world idea, epic adventures, decent story, savy players...good times. I have a vague idea of where it's going and just type up adventures a couple days before the game.

A good campaign is truely a joy, isn't it?

 

[Saskwach]

Babylon 5

*gasp*
Is that system good?

The new edition is pretty decent. I mostly picked that one up because it's one of the few games that let you design starships.

Design starships? That game is now mine.

 

[PurpleRain]

So what do people find more ineresting?
-Comedy
-Things to do and more options
-Serious action/horror/violence

 

[Vortigar]

I once cooked up a map based 40K campaign with five other guys. All seasoned warlords with 2500+ pts in models. We quit after two got eliminated and two others were driven so far back they would have no influence anymore. The two super-powers just shook hands. About a year later we organised a final so we could officially pin a flag in the middle of the map to determine who had won. The original campaign was fought out in two months of waaaay too much 40K.

My fave rpg campaign was a homebrewn 40K rpg I created/wrote and hosted. I went very lenient on the fluff, creating a sort of rogue trader idea and let the usual racism inherent to the universe gather dust (else the party consisting of humans orcs and eldar wouldn't be able to visit any planet really). The whole thing was set up extremely episodic, just a load of planets I cooked up with various conflicts brewing on them and letting the players choose which planet to go to. Once they got there I had a vague outline of the type of people who lived there and one or two main characters they'd interact with, the rest was improvised in. Except for the battlefields and armies, I'd take that from armylists and strategies I planned out for my normal games of 40K (this was in the days I dreamed of playing every army).

I find that strategy board games are not really that compelling to me really. I never turn down a game of Risk though as I've found I'm one of the few who actually likes that one.

PurpleRain:
Options, definately options. You've got to create an as open world as possible in an rpg campaign. Be able to adapt to the ideas of the party, take off hand remarks into account and build on them dynamically. Add just enough detail in your story to create a compelling initial backdrop and then let it fly (organically if you will). Comedy will come automatically and action is simply a means to an end. I never cared much for horror. I've got a DM who's using it in my DnD group right now and find it rather forced really.

If we're talking about a map based tabletop wargame campaign you've got to keep it as simple as possible. Keeping track of armies (and possible exp) is a hassle enough as it is.