What is your favourite campaign?

[Dr. Azkur]

What is your favourite published campaign for 3.X? And what are its best features?

After a very long time, one of my roleplaying groups decided to play an official published campaign, but we're kind of lost so I'd appreciate your help. We're looking for one which has a lot of interaction and roleplaying opportunities, or not just straight smashing mooks and then bigger mooks (Althought smashing stuff is pretty cool).

Thanks in advance!

[DJroboninja]

Age of Worms, from Dungeon Magazine. Takes players all the way from 1st to 20th, centered around Kyuss and his undead creatures, lots of cults, deception, and death. Also, it features the best non-combat adventure ever (The Prince of Redhand).

The previous adventure path, The Shackled City, is a close second (heads up, it started in 3.0 then transitioned to 3.5). All about the plane of Carceri, lots of demons and daemons, and you gain a really good connection to the city of Cauldron, where it all takes place.

If you can access either one, do it, they're both awesome.

[Dr. Azkur]

Ohhh... I should get my hands on Age of Worms, I've been told its good, and I've read a bit about Kyuss (although that spoils it a bit).

Although there's a thing. One of the players is already playing Age of Worms and she's already lvl 10, do you think we could play The Shackled City without problems?

[DJroboninja]

Ohhh... I should get my hands on Age of Worms, I've been told its good, and I've read a bit about Kyuss (although that spoils it a bit).

Although there's a thing. One of the players is already playing Age of Worms and she's already lvl 10, do you think we could play The Shackled City without problems?

Yeah, definitely -- in fact, if I remember correctly, they released the whole campaign as a hardcover with everything updated to 3.5. Get that and you're set. You shan't be disappointed!

[CIDE]

Pretty much just played in homebrew campaigns. None of them stood out as my favorite. I had favorite pieces of the homebrew campaigns. Such as when my deep gnome Druid tore down an entire Drow city through subterfuge and politics never once having to fight except just to reach the city. Or the variety of games set in a 2e AD&D homebrew setting where somehow the variety of parties (there's probably a dozen of intertwining campaigns throughout that entire world) are the ones that awaken or unleash (accidentally or intentionally) pretty much every major evil while other parties must take it down. the way it's done is fun though.

[Dr. Azkur]

Pretty much just played in homebrew campaigns. None of them stood out as my favorite. I had favorite pieces of the homebrew campaigns. Such as when my deep gnome Druid tore down an entire Drow city through subterfuge and politics never once having to fight except just to reach the city. Or the variety of games set in a 2e AD&D homebrew setting where somehow the variety of parties (there's probably a dozen of intertwining campaigns throughout that entire world) are the ones that awaken or unleash (accidentally or intentionally) pretty much every major evil while other parties must take it down. the way it's done is fun though.

Yup, I have about... 7 years (I think?) of experience with 3.5, 5 of those as DM. So far I have only gone with personal campaigns made up by myself or the other DM.

And those dwarven social skills... damn...

[ChaoticDitz]

I recommend you stick with homebrewed adventures (and probably settings too, but this one isn't nearly as important). Published adventures are, admittedly necessarily, quite railroady. But if you insist...

I've never played it, but I've heard very good things about Red Hand of Doom. Fantastic Locations: The Frostfell Rift was above decent and pretty nice in terms of length, but it was nothing special so only go for it if you have extra time/money on your hands. It's almost impossible to go wrong with The Shackled City except that the 3.0/3.5 version is not available as a pdf and, while easily workable into other settings, is generally expected to be happening in Greyhawk. Other than that, everything good is pretty short in terms of adventures, though with other setting books, you can get some pretty fantastically long adventures as well. (So stuff like Greyhawk, Faerun, Eberron, etc.) Some of the cool generic ones I've seen have been City of the Spider Queen (yay, a generic long-y, those are pretty rare), The Sunless Citadel if you can port forward 3.0 material, and The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde, which was meh at parts and amazing at others.

[Afgncaap5]

Age of Worms and Red Hand Of Doom are both fun games, very nice. I also think the 3.5 conversion/update of Ravenloft is really nice.

I don't necessarily think it's one you should necessarily pursue for what you're trying to do, but I've always appreciated the four-part mini-campaign that was released to kick off Eberron. The first part was in the back of the ECS book, with the other three parts being their own released mini-adventures. It had some fun fights (not a bad Dire Shark encounter), interesting locations, and a few unusual RP scenarios (like a 'find the spy' subplot at a masquerade ball.) I particularly liked the contact who effectively said "Here's the gold I'm offering. Let's pretend that we've already haggled the price a bit, and you managed to raise me up to this. I'm in a hurry."

Again, probably not the kind of thing you want, Age of Worms and Red Hand Of Doom would almost certainly be a better fit. But if we're just talking about favorites... I think I'll list that one.

[Dr. Azkur]

Thanks a lot to everyone! I'm not the DM but I presented the options to him, I think we're going to go with Shackled City, for which I found the official book in PDF (Yeah, not the compilation of magazines, the actual book which is supposed to be impossible to get). PM me if you are interested.

Really grateful to all those who replied.

[DJroboninja]

Thanks a lot to everyone! I'm not the DM but I presented the options to him, I think we're going to go with Shackled City, for which I found the official book in PDF (Yeah, not the compilation of magazines, the actual book which is supposed to be impossible to get). PM me if you are interested.

Really grateful to all those who replied.

Awesome - let us know how it goes, I love reading campaign logs and summaries, especially for campaigns I've run in the past, to see how other DMs run the adventures and how other players react. It's one of my favorite aspects of published adventures/campaigns.

[Dr. Azkur]

Awesome - let us know how it goes, I love reading campaign logs and summaries, especially for campaigns I've run in the past, to see how other DMs run the adventures and how other players react. It's one of my favorite aspects of published adventures/campaigns.

I surely will!

[ChaoticDitz]

Do make note, the published campaigns are, as should be expected, designed for players of character who have WotC-level optimization, or in other words very little. Trying to play something that the usual members of this website say even passes for a character is probably too powerful, though I figure you'd already know that; just giving a little warning.

And yeah, I love campaign logs as well, so make sure to keep us (or at least DJ and me) updated on how it pans out.

Though, although it's off-topic, I must ask, where in the world on this site would I go to post a campaign log of my own? The closest thing I can figure is the Art section...

[TheMonocleRogue]

For 3.5 edition my first ever adventure was FR: The Twilight Tomb. It was really difficult at first but the most fun I've ever had surviving on the brink of death. This is the campaign that got me hooked on D&D.

[Dr. Azkur]

For 3.5 edition my first ever adventure was FR: The Twilight Tomb. It was really difficult at first but the most fun I've ever had surviving on the brink of death. This is the campaign that got me hooked on D&D.

Will check it out, Faehrûn is a bit of a mystery to me, though. I know a lot about the lore but I feel like it's an ocean and I only know about a bucketful of it.


Do make note, the published campaigns are, as should be expected, designed for players of character who have WotC-level optimization, or in other words very little. Trying to play something that the usual members of this website say even passes for a character is probably too powerful, though I figure you'd already know that; just giving a little warning. Actually I hadn't thought about that... hm... I guess I'll have to take it easy on the munchkinism. I don't like breaking games but finding synergy between class levels and feats is something of an excitement to me. Time to play that weretiger monk without the ToB dips I guess.


And yeah, I love campaign logs as well, so make sure to keep us (or at least DJ and me) updated on how it pans out. I'll PM you both (and any other who jumps before the thread dies) when I start doing it, although there's still like 10 sessions left for our current campaign. My Warlock is about to enslave the plane...


Though, although it's off-topic, I must ask, where in the world on this site would I go to post a campaign log of my own? The closest thing I can figure is the Art section...

I don't think there's a place to do it HERE (if there is I'd like to know about it)... but you can always create a blog (Blogspot/Wordpress/Tumblr) and leave it in your sig.