table of contents

roll4damage:

I want to hear from you and your thoughts on this issue! I just read this article and in the comments, it seems a vast majority of players are pretty anti-published adventures.

I feel like my most successful games have been pre-published ones. They have a defined beginning-middle-end, there’s a…

Gosh, that character limit for “answers” hurts. I do prefer homemade adventures, though I don’t have anything against the pre-made ones. I’ve played through two of Paizo’s Adventure Paths (Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne), and both of them were very good. I feel that some groups are better playing pre-written games, just as some GMs are better running them. Not everyone has the time, energy, or gumption to run a big, successful campaign of their own design, and not everyone has to.

I find, however, that GMs burning with the drive to run their own games are a delight to play with, and their games are a real treat to participate in. A homemade game is something that has been made for you, and no one else. It’s special. As a GM, I run a game because I want to create a story for my players to participate in; I don’t want to tell someone else’s story, I want it to be mine.

With that being said, I don’t especially care for homebrew settings. It’s not that they are bad, or that I don’t also enjoy those games, I just prefer to have access to setting information while creating my character. I like to know who the gods are, what the cities are like, and to read about these things until a character jumps out of the campaign setting pages at me. Some homebrew settings can achieve this level of detail if they’re created by a madman, or if they borrow gods and other details from other settings, but you’ll never get the wealth of information a published setting can provide.

Then again, as a GM you’re also free of the baggage that wealth of information comes tied down to. Hello, town with eight 12th level retired adventurers as innkeepers.

roll4damage:

prince-of-spades:

Am I the only one who has trouble running an Evil campaign? They tend to be out of control and very hard to handle, which makes planning really tricky. And half the time the characters are douche bags who screw each other over. Which is why for this upcoming Evil game I’m running, I’m implementing…

I would say that you’re far from the only one who has trouble tackling this kind of campaign. I can honestly say that I’ve never tried, but once I did play in one for a brief time. It was as you mentioned, out of control and most of the players were totally douchy for no other reason than that they were ‘evil’. The idea of a notoriety system is intriguing, though. Good luck with it! You are gutsier than I am… I decided a while ago that I really don’t have much of a desire to run an evil game.

I’m actually prepping to run an “evil campaign,” myself, and this is something I’ve given quite a bit of thought to. Fortunately for me, I at least know my players will cooperate with one another, both OOC and IC. The characters may not trust one another, and they may not see eye to eye, but they’ll work together for their mutual survival. The campaign I’m running is a two-party affair. I have three players, and each has made two characters; one character for a party that is predominantly lawful/neutral, and a third party that is entirely chaotic neutral and chaotic evil. They will be experiencing the story from these two perspectives, and participating in events from separate angles.

Part of the reason I’m willing to run an “evil campaign,” though, is that it’s a Planescape game. The PCs may be selfish and greedy and a rotten bunch of people, but there is a whole plane full of demons that are so much worse; there’s an entire plane of devils ready to try and take advantage of them; there’s five planes of Celestials angling to put them in their place if they step on the wrong toes and attract too much attention. At the end of the day, they’re going to need to make SOME allies, or they’re just going to die.

Should be fun times.