A Life Full of Adventure

Back with my D&D games were many and often, one of our GMs had us make multiple characters, all of which would be linked to a thieves’ guild. We called it our Thieves’ Campaign. The premise was that for each adventure the guild master would assign one character from each player to be part of the team going out for this particular mission. That way we each had many characters, but only played one at a time. The Thieves’ Campaign went the way of all others, falling into disuse after a few adventures. What I was wondering, though, was if anyone else had the same experience: making multiple characters for a campaign, but only using one per adventure and rotating through that way? If so, did it help the overall campaign remain fresh since you weren’t using the same character every sitting? What other experiences to you remember about that kind of campaign?

I've been re-watching some beloved 80s cartoon lately, and some of them give me some pretty cool ideas. The original GI Joe cartoon can be corny in ways (some of the character names are just as laughable as the ones in He-Man), but there are good ideas to be had as well. Early episodes are almost like quests, with the Joes racing against Cobra to retrieve some object or another. Sometimes the two sides even have to cooperate in order to survive the dangers of the locale. Quests can be fun, if not overused. Rare relics can be fun to seek out (and then use!). Cooperating with the enemy for the survival of all is a good twist to throw in now and then. All around, watching these early episodes has given me a few good ideas for when it comes time for me to run a game again.

Art used with permission of the amazing Eric Quigley:  http://www.ericquigley.com/ Beak Horror M  4  WS  48  BS  0  S  3  T  4  W  12  I  40  A  3  Dex  12  Ld  27  Int  29  Cl  41  WP 30  Fel  10 Beak Horrors are an extremely mutated form of beastman, horrendous looking even to other mutated creatures. They are despised by all, and despise all in return, knowing they can never live in any semblance of a unified society or utilize their limbs in a way that would help them create empires. They speak a seductive dialect of the Dark Tongue. Physique: Beak horrors are conspicuously similar in appearance, as if a pet creation of Tzeentch. The head is horned and fanged. The arms are thin and quick, yet powerful, capped with razor-sharp beaks instead of hands. Their skin in mostly missing, exposing the musculature underneath. They also inva...

(Transcribed and Grammaticized by Monk Florey)  No Orc is my friend, Humans fear me; I am a Half-Orc. I am no stranger to battle, having been brought up in a barren wasteland tribe settled scant distances from human habitation.  For all my childhood the full-blooded Orcs shunned me.  They treated me as a slave almost, only stopping when my father finally put his foot down.  He would not let them overuse me, for I needed to be fit enough to become the great warrior he wanted me to be.  To achieve this end he sent me to practice daily.  Not a single night went by where I was not covered in fresh bruises and nasty welts.  The only place that offered any kind of reprieve was with the other half-breeds in camp. The others could not exactly be called friends, but we were all somewhat outcasts and looked down upon by the orcs, so we never bullied each other.  With them was the only time I was not being overworked or physically abused in combat ...

Here's a quick question for this Friday: Let's say you want to keep adventurers interested in one large room for more than just a few minutes. Maybe for an entire sitting. There would have to be many things in the room, right? What kinds of different things would you put in one large hall to keep adventurers' interest?

I have to admit, I get enthused by enthusiastic publishers. I finally jumped on the Spears of the Dawn Kickstarter . I wanted a physical copy of the book (because I'm like that), but I have so many physical books I'm not using right now and won't be using for a while. I jumped in at the pdf level so that I'll have easy access to the digital art that Kevin Crawford is so excited about. If I like and use the game enough, I'm sure the physical book will be available to purchase in the future.

I admitted when I posted these ideas that they were old. While it's true that "old" doesn't necessarily mean "inferior," there are some points I would like to update or alter due to my current mindset. Here are some updates I've been thinking about: In a dark part of the cave complex, they find a door that leads to a finished underground hold. I need to find out what creatures used to live in this hold. The hold isn't populated now. The hold is/ was not a dwarven complex. It's not Skaven. I need to find another underground creature that might have made and live in an actual underground keep. I've already updated the entrance to be a sinkhole that leads into a large hall . I like this idea so much that I'm making the hall larger and larger in my head to accommodate a day or so worth of investigating just for the one room.  Now the complex is filled with undead.  The undead are not human, they are undead of whatever creature used to l...