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Showing posts from 2009

Formative Sandbox

One of the best campaigns that I've ever played in was the first long term campaign I played in, back in my first year of high school (1980). It was kind of AD&D*, run by two DMs and a horde of players. We'd invade someone's house for about 24 hours each weekend. The two DMs were busy nearly the entire time. While all the players were hanging out, you could organize a group to put down the atari, pause the Monty Python and go after something in the game world - and the DMs would run it. They didn't, to my knowledge, use modules but their own world, city and dungeons. All of it was accessible for us to explore, though a lot of it was dangerous. That kind of player freedom was incredible. Throughout the day and into the evening, you'd hear bits of what other players had accomplished. "Jeff and Chris went off to the island to see the archdruid." Wow - what did they do that for? What did the druid tell them, or give them? "Gabe

Our Castle Zagyg Campaign

Matt and I are co-DMing a campaign of Castle Zagyg. It is set in Greyhawk, using Yggsburgh as another independent city in the area. The wiki for the campaign is at Obsidian Portal . We started it by taking over DMing duties in a 1E AD&D campaign of which we were 2 of 8 players. The whys and whynots of switching to Castles and Crusades are worth post that I may yet write. I was inspired by The West Marches Campaign and memories of my first experiences playing Dungeons and Dragons in a sprawling sandbox campaign also co-DMed. Having players that were turned away from the initial campaign because of a lack of table space, we expanded the campaign to a second session. Each are played every other week. So far we have 13 players, one more to start. Some have multiple characters, and the DMs also play when they aren't DMing, for a total of 20 characters.

Redbeard's Gaming Blog

Howdy. This blog will mostly be about gaming, with occasional other nerdy cultural topics. I've got plenty of other interests, but lately I've been typing more and more about gaming. Current Gaming Interests I've been running a 3.5 campaign for nearly three years. I love the group, and I love the depth that these players tolerate and that the long running campaign allows. However, I am more and more hateful of the system. You'll likely hear what I do and don't like about 3.5. You'll also hear me enthuse (and occasionally complain) about this group of friends, and my devious laughter (or painful tears) regarding schemes I'm plotting. I also play and run in a Castles and Crusades sandbox. It is set in Greyhawk, using Yggsburgh and Castle Zagyg. This is actually where my gaming passion lies these days. This campaign is co-DMed and has a large community of players (14!) so you'll likely hear about the unique situations that brings up, as well as my t