What setting does your campaign use?

[Korgoth]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

When I built my old AD&D campaign (back in the late 70's - early 80's)' date=' I started running the game with only a few sketchy notes, a bloody huge world map, and a damn fine bunch of players. When they noticed that most of the map was blank (except for really [b']major[/b] terrain features), I set them upon a mission of discovery not unlike the Lewis & Clark Expedition.

 

That one mission took up about 2 years of in-game time and almost 8 months of real time. During that time, my players mapped a large expanse of the main continent and established a trade route between two coasts... not at all what they expected from a fantasy game.

 

I ended up with a very satisfied group and a much more fleshed out campaign world. I also noted numerous plot hooks for future adventures where my gang would return to further explore the more exotic areas that they didn't have time for the first go-around.

 

WHY IS THIS FANTASTIC IDEA not occured to me already What a great Idea. I mean what would be more fun than acctualy exploring, discovering the world. Any Wargame like Civilization or the old Empire game was all about uncovering the map.

 

I think Players tend to resit being railroaded into Adventures or Directions or Travel. Letting them do the Exploring with open ended, loose goals might be a great way to do it. The entire World could already be Mapped out, your just uncovering it like a Dungeon map would be on an old school Dungeon Crawl. At least for me the Map and exploration was half the fun in those Old School sessions.

 

I can imagine a Fantasy World that was Devistated Centuries ago in a Great War of the Gods, and it took that long till there City/Kingdom whathaveyou to recover and set out to discover what happened to the rest of the world. You could even throw the Players a loop and make it our earth and the Magic Items and Mosters as Genetic Mutations or Robotic Leftovers. Sort of an "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" take on Magic. Don't tell the Players right out, but drop hints and see if they figure it out on there own.

 

Heck playing World of Warcraft or any other MMO I enjoy the exploration and discovery more than anything else myself.

 

Thanks for the great Idea Dale A.Ward.

[Korgoth]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

Homebrew. There are certain "official" worlds that I have enjoyed GM'ing (principally Tekumel and Glorantha) and I have done a number of "historical" campaigns (I actually like that because it's less work), but like Fitz, I always end up looping back to my own homebrew.

 

What I tend to do, though is run each campaign in a different part of the world, so that I flesh out a new magic system, new culture, new geography, etc, each time I do it, thus extending the level of detail of the world.

 

cheers, Mark

 

Hello Markdoc

 

Does your friend Fritz ever post here on the HERO forums? And if so under what nicname. I ask as I'm a big fan of his Fantasy HERO (well his RPG website period) page and content. I've gotten allot of good use out of it in the past. I guess I should thank you too as your Massive Spell Book is there as well correct?

 

P.S.

 

I don't know why I never put this together, the fact that the "Ultimate Grimore" page is your work. I have to say a special thankyou to you for all your hard work on this project. I've used this page so many times in the past, I owe you a Pint of Guiness at the very least.

 

[Pentoth]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

I have a homebrew setting that I have been using for about 12 years. It is a setting where magic is rare but extremely powerfull. The way I handled the growth and development of it was I started the players off in a hamlet. From their as they travelled around I developed the regions. I let it's history dictate where things appeared geographically. At present I am working on the "eastern" part of the continent. Some of my players are really into oriental style of adventures so I am kinda looking at various sources (mostly historical) to flush everything out. As always I too rewarded players for assisting me in flushing out regions of the world.

[Outsider]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

My campaign setting? Stun, usually.

 

Seriously, though, I've used home-brew for a long timel and would continue to use it if I had a fantasy game I was running. Back when I started GMing time were a lot easier to come by than prepublished campaign sourcebooks, or the money to buy them. Nowadays, that relationship is reversed, but I already have a fairly extensive (though not KillerShrike or KeithCurtis level) campaign setting worked up.

 

A big advantage of the homebrew is that I always know more about the setting than my players do.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

Yeah, but that can also come back to bite you when players who don't know much about your setting, beyond the tone, are playing characters who've lived there their entire lives. It can be difficult keeping the players informed of things their characters should know.

 

Which makes it a LOT easier when your players aren't interested in taking any background skills . . .

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

Yeah, but that can also come back to bite you when players who don't know much about your setting, beyond the tone, are playing characters who've lived there their entire lives. It can be difficult keeping the players informed of things their characters should know.

 

Which makes it a LOT easier when your players aren't interested in taking any background skills . . .

 

Just what I was thinking, albeit without that last line. This is especially important if your campaign world doesn't play to the popular tropes/stereotypes/genre bits.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

GURPS Fantasy/Banestorm/Yrth and 18yrs worth of Campaign History.

[Markdoc]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

Hello Markdoc

 

Does your friend Fritz ever post here on the HERO forums? And if so under what nicname. I ask as I'm a big fan of his Fantasy HERO (well his RPG website period) page and content. I've gotten allot of good use out of it in the past. I guess I should thank you too as your Massive Spell Book is there as well correct?

 

Yep - Fitz is around - he posts under the name "Fitz" He and I gamed together back in the ages before the dinosaurs.

 

I don't know why I never put this together, the fact that the "Ultimate Grimore" page is your work. I have to say a special thankyou to you for all your hard work on this project. I've used this page so many times in the past, I owe you a Pint of Guiness at the very least.

 

 

MMM. Guinness Anyway, I'm glad it's useful. I was thinking the other day it needed updating, but given how hectic life is, I'm not sure when that will happen.

 

cheers, Mark

[Killer Shrike]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

I ran many campaigns in mostly Carl Sergent style Greyhawk over the course of about a decade and a half, about a 45-45-10 split between AD&D 2e, HERO System 4th, and D&D 3e. There was also some AD&D 1e before all of that as well, but that was very early in my gaming "career", we were all very young, it was the era of really bad adventures, and the less said about that the better.

 

My last Fantasy campaign was run in a homebrew setting that Ive been slowly building up as the muse (and available time) strike....its here:

 

http://www.killershrike.com/sandora/SanDora.shtml

[Old Man]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

A big advantage of the homebrew is that I always know more about the setting than my players do.

 

Yeah, that was always a big problem in D&D 2e and Shadowrun, when a player would show up with the new Complete Half-Drow Ranger Mage Handbook that no one had seen before (least of all the GM).

[Wolfe-Chan]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

I'm prepping for a new FH campaign and trying to decide between a homebrew or published setting. This isn't really a "sell me" thread, I'm just trying to sort through my thoughts.

 

(Also, it's nice to trade ideas and stuff with an online community and I'm wondering how many folks are using the Turakian Age. But I'd love to hear from everyone.)

 

Personally I enjoy homebrewing and that way you know it inside and out, but it can be a lot of work writing everything up from scratch. Also, a homebrew is limited to only my ideas and can feel stale and/or sketchy. A published setting does things differently than I would and as a result it seems large and mysterious, more real. It also stretches me as a GM far more than I'd ever push myself. Anyone else find this to be true?

 

So...

 

What campaign setting are you using? Why did you choose it? How is it working out?

 

If you've run or played in other FH campaigns in the past, what setting did you find most successful? Least successful? Why?

 

Mike

 

Well I am working on my own setting because the few I found that were steampunk did not feel right to me. I started working on a Machine verses Man idea and then went tech verses magic aswell and a little bit of other stuff for veriety. An island of undead some Zepplin using pirates and an Analytical Engine that is so large it became sentient and evil.

 

I basically wanted bit of both worlds but wanted to do things how I thought they should work I am borrowing a lot of stuff from other sources. As well as making up a bunch of my own.

 

 

 

Wolfe-Chan

[Cosmosemeritus]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

A long time ago on a dinner table far, far away...

 

My best friend and I started an AD&D (1st ed, as it was later known) campaign using the boxed Greyhawk setting and the recently published T1-4 Module. We didn't play it often, mostly playing a modern-genre game using Palladium's Heroes Unlimited, but we did play it semi-regularly until I left for college about 3 years later.

 

When I returned home from college I brought 4th ed Hero with me and started the long and painful process of converting my old gaming group from their pagan d20 habits. Oh how they wailed when I threw their platonic solids in the crucible and burned their saving throw tables at the stake!

 

It was during this tumultuous time that our old Greyhawk game was re-born. Since the original campaign was based out of only a few supplements, much of the game world was devoid of detail. Over time the details have played themselves into being, with the players creating much of the campaign background themselves through the backgrounds and actions of their characters.

 

Today the campaign probably bears little resemblance to the published campaign world, but its ours and we're happy with it. Magic bears no resemblance to AD&D systems, having more in common with Gygax's Mythus Magic system. Gunpowder, but not guns, exists in the game though the PC's don't know from where it arrived.

[swobeas]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

I use the Warhammer-Setting using HERO rules, a bit adopted to catch the flair of the setting.

I love reading novels in the gaming world to get as much as possible of the atmosphere

 

and Warhammer provides me with a setting consisting of a elaborated world, a dark and deadly atmosphere and a portion of humor that should never miss if people play games:thumbup:

[Savinien]

Re: What setting does your campaign use?

 

Do you have a link?

 

http://www.savageearth.net/

 

Currently, I'm running two campaigns in the Fourth Age of Middle Earth. After long debates about mood and theme, I finally decided to simply do what I wanted. Of course, those overall styles still exist and I try to adhere to them, but they're really sort of like meta-gaming or game mechanics. They are there, but transparent to the story taking place.

 

Using Middle Earth isn't easy because the majority of players have some ideas concerning what Middle Earth is and should be. Going contrary to that isn't always easy but I try to be up front that this is MY Middle Earth, not yours, his, or some other dudes.