PDA

View Full Version : What Was Your Best Campaign Ever?



Rosstin
2014-02-07, 04:59 PM
With all the negative "worst" threads, thought it would be nice to turn it around...

What is the most creative, most fun campaign, with the best DM and best players you ever had?

Esprit15
2014-02-07, 05:21 PM
IRL, it would have to be the game I'm currently in simply by the fact that it has survived longer than other IRL games while at the same time, the GM is experienced with the system and knows how to balance encounters.

In PbP, it's tougher. My favorite game I was in (Team Rocket game in PTA) was great at times, but became aggravating later as personal issues between players and the GM got to be too great and we all called it quits. Until then though, it was good. Lots of RP chances early on, including encounters that were mostly RP. The party diplomat felt useful right away, rather than being shoved in the back of things for the longest time. Only complaint was that the GM didn't let the characters really built for combat shine ever, which was in part a factor that led to the game dissolving. Best group of players, though. We're all pretty good friends now two years later, even though the game ended early last year.

Honestly haven't had a game as good as the early days of that one. MesiDoomstker's Rebellion game is getting close to that, and most things that Eshkigal has run are fun, even if short lived. Can't complain about a game being short if it mostly consisted of Rayquayza lifting your cruise ship out of the ocean while looking for its egg, then going to take out a gang in the town you land in, or fighting Poké-Slenderman.

falloutimperial
2014-02-07, 05:34 PM
We were playing ourselves in a zombie apocalypse. We started in the place where we usually play, with only what we had in our IRL pockets. From there, we became heroes, the Gander Mountain Rangers, and cleared a jail years before Walking Dead.

cosmicAstrogazr
2014-02-07, 05:59 PM
I don't know if I have one that I would unilaterally call the 'best', but one of my most fun campaigns as a player was... Okay, so, I was playing a flighty spoiled brat noble-girl on the run from an arranged marriage, who happened to be a wizard. The other players consisted of a ne'er-do-well halfling bard, on a quest to get his own pirate ship, a gunslinging Man With No Name type, and a cook who was actually a ninja with a life-debt to the bard.

The ninja, at TN, was the closest thing to 'good' in the party. The game lasted until aboouuut level 14, IIRC, with the bard (CE) and the wizard (CN) shamelessly using each other for their own ends, indiscriminate burning down of inhabited forests (which shocked and appalled the DM, because he had forgotten that none of the party was anything like good), bloody coups, letters of mark, and eventually a pirate crew that had a Pirate Wizard and a Pirate Ninja, and it was glorious.

As a DM, I think the most fun I've had might be the time my players asked for a party-killer dungeoncrawl (which I gave them, and they loved it) that turned into this planehopping madcap adventure (they ended up in the demiplane of cake at one point); frogs, monstrous centipedes, a cursed music box, an evil dagger (cursed artifact, makes you move toward LE, and provides alignment-linked benefits and detriments) that made the rounds of the party a half-dozen times, before landing in the hands of a recently disarmed paladin, and leading to his fall...

It was a wild ****ing ride, and I had to manage about twelve players, including a CG mindflayer psion; his player was amazing, and acted out all sorts of fantastically inhuman bodylanguage. One of my fave players, and characters, I've ever had at my table, hands down. He started as a more typical mindflayer: LE, manipulating the rest of the party into being mindslaves and/or dinner. And of course he wasn't evil, would he be helping a party with a cleric and paladin of Bahamut leading them if he was?? Of course, he faces ostracism from mindflayer society for his deviant ways, but that's the price you pay for making the world a better place!

Later, he accidentally put on a helm of opposite alignment, and realised that he had been planning the enslavement of his dear beloved friends, oh no how horrible!!!! It was delightful.

Artemicion
2014-02-08, 05:12 AM
Hard choice! The last two campaigns I played in were amazing.

1. We were playing with home brewed rules using a magic system similar to Mage (WoD). We started by being summoned from different ages to stop time travelling big bad dude from destroying the world or something. (Which seemed pretty uninspired at the time). However, we quickly found out that things were much more complicated then expected. We ended realising we were "outside the line of time" which meant whatever we did when time travelling would not affect us. And we could have incredible influence over the course of history. My character, a soul devouring Spirit caster created a soul devouring forest which effecively replaced the Apocalypse that would have been created by the initial evil guy. Another PC absorbed the sun to power his endless thirst for power. I actually had to fuse his soul and mine together to gain some control over him and stop the rampage. So we basically played together the same character together until the end of the campaign. Of course nothing was ever as it seemed and we eventually realised that we were been manipulated from the beginning, which lead to an incredibly epic confrontation that we could win only by ensruing the True evil guy was hit by a terrible Paradox.

2. In the most recent one, we were playing in a different system in which we were all playing different wizards. Mine was a clockwork craftsman and expert alchimist. My first creation was of course a small exploding monkey with drums. The story was amzing, but oce again what stays the most in my mind is the player agency we had. In between chapters of the story, our characters would have 6 months or a year to further their own goals, gain political power or create crazy ass constructs.

Rhynn
2014-02-08, 07:21 AM
The most memorable was probably the MERP/Rolemaster campaign we ran for probably 5-6 years, starting young. I think everyone involved has more quotes and reminiscences from that campaign than any other. ("He's going to find a magic ring, turn evil, and MAKE ME INTO HEADGEAR.")

The longest continuously running was out first D&D 3E campaign, started in 2000, which ran probably until 2006-2007. Most hours clocked, for sure. It fell apart because 3.X, epic levels and bad math and horrible rules and druids.

The one I've enjoyed running the most was our fairly recent first Artesia: Adventures in the Known World game. The rules and the setting grabbed the players fast and hard and they engaged the world and characters with a vengeance. Very satisfactory. Very easy to run, too - after every session, I'd spend a few hours seeing what consequences their actions would have and on what timescale, and prepare a bit for whatever they were planning to do next.

Tengu_temp
2014-02-08, 01:17 PM
Still Not Safe. Definitely Still Not Safe. A Mutants and Masterminds PbP game that ran for 3 years, described roughly as Evangelion Meets Power Rangers.

Premise: several years ago, the world was attacked by horrible giant monsters, and cultists who worshipped them. Normal weapons were ineffective, because the monsters could shift and become immaterial. However, a group of teenage heroes appeared, with the power to turn into masked heroes, shift like the monsters did, and battle them. In the end, the heroes stopped the invasion, but at a price - all of them but two sacrificed themselves.
Now, years later, the monsters have returned. But the organization that found the old heroes have scouted new teenagers with the same gift. Those are the players; a group of troubled kids, one of several in the world, now living together on a semi-military island base. Given both great power and great responsibility. Trying to both stop the monsters, and figure out the mystery behind them.

This game was amazing. There was quite a lot of combat, but it never was the main focus; it was a roleplaying-heavy game, with focus on interactions between the various PCs and PCs and NPCs. The game had a large cast of varied and interesting characters, including many NPCs we found really awesome. Bonds of friendship, love and rivalry were forged. Intense emotional moments happened all the time; funny, sad, disturbing, moving, anger-inducing, awesome, all such scenes happened. There were times of loss and tragedy, times of interpersonal drama, but also times of uplifting heroism. Both PCs and NPCs pulled some awesome, unforgettable moments during the game.

The characters felt very real; they were real teenagers with real teenager problems, combined with the burden that was suddenly put on their shoulders. Over time, they grew and matured, but nobody suddenly got over their issues in one magical epiphany; at most they slowly learned how to cope with them. It helped that, unlike Evangelion and similar shows, the organization we worked for genuinely cared for our well-being, mental and physical health, and future. That place was like home, and the PCs were like people you knew.

The game wasn't flawless, no game is. The pacing was slow or uneven at places, some things we did were weird (not in a good way), some opportunities were missed, the cast and setting were a bit bloated at times, the last third of the game wasn't as good as the previous parts (especially since we lost a few players on the way). But it was still the best campaign I ever played in. If anything else I play climbs to the same level, I will be amazed.

GPuzzle
2014-02-08, 01:34 PM
The War of Draent.

I was the DM for that one.
It started simple. Players are slaves in a slaver's boat, boat crashes, marauders decide that it is a good idea to kill the slaves.
Boy, that was the most epic Level 1 fight I've ever DM'ed.

Then they started a Resistance against the governments. Just to find out that there were another 8 Resistances. And then the thing turned into a weird mix between World War I, Genghis Khan's campaigns and Eberron's Great War. And then it went to Gambit Pileup to an extreme level.

It felt like an actual war, with political decisions and all that. When it came down to wars, I developed a wargame, played with my brother throughout the campaign and kept track of just about everything.

It was awesome.

Nerd-o-rama
2014-02-08, 02:49 PM
Sigil Prep. I had the honor of participating in I think the original PbP game run by Pat Duke/DM Swift for a while. Best 3.5 setting ever created, if only because it fully embraced the crazy, and had some of the greatest characters - PC and NPC - I've had the pleasure of playing with. From the sweetheart Beholder RA to the terrifying drow cheerleaders to the equally terrifying Eberronian popular chicks and their soap opera on over to the nerdy monster kids with no friends but their Cohorts. The plot was episodic but fantastic at the same time, covering the whole spectrum of personal conflicts, plane-hopping dungeon crawls, and general Sigil weirdness you could want from a parody of Planescape.

I still miss it sometimes.

cosmicAstrogazr
2014-02-08, 04:25 PM
Sigil Prep.

....oh my goodness that sounds amazing.:smallbiggrin:

PairO'Dice Lost
2014-02-08, 04:54 PM
I don't know about "best," but my craziest campaign is one I've posted about here a few times before.

I ran one campaign where the premise was that a secret brotherhood within the ruling elven empire had conspired with Baator to help the elves conquer the rest of the world in exchange for the devils gaining free access to the Prime. There were two parties of five PCs each in the same world (one mostly good goblin party and one mostly evil human party), and both had about the same basic, simple plans to start with. The first session went about as expected, with the PCs escaping elven troops, meeting up with some dwarven resistance fighters, etc.

By the end of the fourth session, the goblin PCs had united all of the major non-elven races in the area in a massive trade agreement under their newly-established Platinum Scales Merchanting Company, created a base of operations in a dormant volcano, and begun construction of a gigantic flying Blastoise-esque turtle-shaped stone fortress. The human PCs had infiltrated a major elven city, started turning a bunch of elven troops into spawns of Kyuss to cause chaos in the ranks, and headed to the Plane of Shadow to meet up with the Votaries of Vecna.

By the end of the ninth session, the goblin party had started destroying ancient devilish artifacts on the Inner Planes that were aiding the invasion effort, run into a Husk of Infinite Worlds from Eberron and turned it sentient to help them, and had two of their number join a yugoloth law firm in Sigil. Not to be outdone, the human party had captured a githyanki scout ship, "upgraded" it, enslaved a few hundred krinth (a race on the Plane of Shadow), and started making pirate raids on the elven empire.

By the end of the fourteenth session, the parties met up for massive battle between the turtle fortress and githyanki scout ship on the one side and a Star-Destroyer-esque flying adamantine devil fortress and a Ship of Chaos on the other, after which they led a raid into the Abyss to rescue one of their party members, then fought the leaders of the evil elves to the death in one of the BBEG's demiplanes, at which point one of them rose to demigodhood and had to be defeated by the combined might of the PCs and all of their allies thus far.

Interspersed with all of that were fun diversions like a sentient staff of fire tempting one of the PCs to evil because it was secretly created by the devilish forces and planted for them to find ("Please allow me to introduce myself, I am a staff of wealth and taste!"), both parties getting hit by destabilized portals early on and turning into multiple-templated monstrosities, and stuff like that. It was all but two of my players' first RPG campaigns ever, and it certainly started left a high bar to clear for the next DM to run a game for them. :smallwink:

Rosstin
2014-02-08, 05:15 PM
I don't know about "best," but my craziest campaign is one I've posted about here a few times before.

I ran one campaign where the premise was that a secret brotherhood within the ruling elven empire had conspired with Baator to help the elves conquer the rest of the world in exchange for the devils gaining free access to the Prime. There were two parties of five PCs each in the same world (one mostly good goblin party and one mostly evil human party), and both had about the same basic, simple plans to start with. The first session went about as expected, with the PCs escaping elven troops, meeting up with some dwarven resistance fighters, etc.

By the end of the fourth session, the goblin PCs had united all of the major non-elven races in the area in a massive trade agreement under their newly-established Platinum Scales Merchanting Company, created a base of operations in a dormant volcano, and begun construction of a gigantic flying Blastoise-esque turtle-shaped stone fortress. The human PCs had infiltrated a major elven city, started turning a bunch of elven troops into spawns of Kyuss to cause chaos in the ranks, and headed to the Plane of Shadow to meet up with the Votaries of Vecna.

Dude, was your DnD campaign Goblins (http://www.goblinscomic.org/)?

In all seriousness, that really does sound like the best campaign ever.

Tengu_temp
2014-02-08, 06:24 PM
Dude, was your DnD campaign Goblins (http://www.goblinscomic.org/)?


Goblins wouldn't qualify as a best campaign by any stretch of imagination, though. Unless you like deus ex machina, really slow pacing, and the DM constantly smacking your head with a rulebook while yelling "GOBLINS GOOD, HUMANS BAD".

Rhynn
2014-02-08, 09:01 PM
Goblins wouldn't qualify as a best campaign by any stretch of imagination, though.

Hey, come on now, it's full of cool and clever ideas and reversals if you're aged 13 to 16 or so... :smallamused:

Seriously though, it's up there with (ugh) Dominic Deegan as one of those RPG-related things I read and think "I can't believe a grown-up is coming up with this."

BWR
2014-02-09, 08:05 AM
I think that particular honor would have to go to the V:tM Brussels campaign we played. We were told to make people. Not vampires, just plain people. The ST ran us through one-on-one sessions detailing our introduction to the city and the vampires and being made into ghouls. The intra-group backstabbing and political plotting started at this moment. We barely knew who was who ofthe vampires, just our masters. We were shoved in a room with a bunch of other noobs (the other PCs) and told to work together, given no instruction about the hidden world of vampires other than 'keep this a secret'. We hated eachother's guts from the first and the only reason we stuck together was because the other PCs were all we had. It started off paranoid, ****ty and terrifying and it got steadily worse every session.

All the players absolutely loved it.

Honorable mention goes to our 8 year Dragonlance campaign.

Nerd-o-rama
2014-02-09, 06:44 PM
....oh my goodness that sounds amazing.:smallbiggrin:

It was at least as awesome as it sounds. The campaign notes/setting site fell off the internet after Swift's game ended, but most of the information made it to dndwiki and Swift did intend to spread the setting around to people, in an entirely unofficial and non-monetized-and-therefore-WotC-lawyer-free way.

DigoDragon
2014-02-10, 09:23 AM
I'm my own worst critic, so I don't know what would be my best campaign I've run... I suppose it's the one I had the fewest issues with. It was a modern adventure in the style of the TV show LOST.

The PCs wake up in a plane crash on an uncharted island. They have to deal with the other NPC crash survivors while searching the island for help. They stumble upon a research facility that is mysteriously abandoned. The campaign was focused on piecing together what happened at the facility (because the hints point to something that killed the people who worked here and whatever it was, it could come for the PCs). They also had to figure out that a couple of the crash survivors were not on their side and could turn on them (indeed, two friendly NPCs were killed and made to look like 'accidental deaths').

Eventually the PCs figured out that THEY were the ones who ran this secret facility, which was reverse engineering alien tech like FTL drives, quantum computing, and zero-point energy. The problem was that the captive aliens got free and went on a murdering rampage. What started the campaign was the PCs had tried to flee the island by wiping their minds and using a teleporter to beam themselves to a passing jet. The teleporter wiped their minds, but failed to teleport them correctly, causing the airliner to crash on the island.

The PCs decided that the best thing to do this time was blow up the island to kill the aliens... but this meant they'd die too. Yet, they did it anyway. Quite remarkable a sacrifice, and some of the players like to tease me that it was the only time a TPK resulted in the PCs winning. :smallsmile: