Evolution of a Campaign

[drawingfreak]

For those of you with experience in a continuing campaign that lasted from 1st-10th or even 20th level, how did your game evolve? How were the continuing appearance of gradually higher challenge rated monsters explained? How did game play change?
I've never experienced a continuing game first hand so I am interested. Be as detailed or vague as you like.

[Quietus]

For those of you with experience in a continuing campaign that lasted from 1st-10th or even 20th level, how did your game evolve? How were the continuing appearance of gradually higher challenge rated monsters explained? How did game play change?
I've never experienced a continuing game first hand so I am interested. Be as detailed or vague as you like.

I'm running an ongoing campaign, the players have just hit level 4 (we started at 1), and to be honest, aside from a couple of class-levelled kobolds, an assassin vine, and a half-dragon monstrous spider (Only the vine was a random fight, and that was to give them some idea of what to expect in the forest they were going into), really all they've fought has been kobolds and first-level elf rangers/elf skeletons. Rather than trying to ramp up the power level of the kobolds, what I ended up doing was giving the kobolds the advantage, running my own "tucker's kobolds" deal, though I hadn't heard of Tucker prior to this. Being stuck in four-foot-tall hallways with traps going off and kobolds sniping at them, makes the standard kobold a much more difficult fight.

Soon enough, they'll move into the next area, which has quite a few kobold priests, as well as multitudes of kobold zombies - something of a step up, but not a massive thing. When they make their way through that, there's a dragon waiting for them... which has the McGuffin they're after. Once they nab that, they'll have the joy of finding their way back home, which I haven't yet worried about planning - I know there'll be some survivalistic stuff needed as they try and make their way through a forest filled with horrible, but that's about it.

[mostlyharmful]

I've found the idea of scale and perspective to be useful over the course of a campaign, the lower levels think small and on a small scale, based out of a civilised area they haven't had time to acrue big enemies or earn rank to run large campaigns so they focus on the stuff in their local area. As they gain power and noteriety more things target them as a threat, people start coming to them with their problems and the old threats become scared of them and call in their allies or superiors. A campaign focussing on an organization is great for this, the players start off as its victims and slowly work their way up the ranks until they're duking it out with archmages and the Dragon overlord of all whosawhatsit.

It's also not such a bad plan to stat out the local area / kingdom before you think about the pcs at all, this means there are npcs and monsters out there right from the start that will stomp your party into the muck if they throw their weight around. Over the course of a campaign the players get a clear sense of their own improvement as what used to be scarey becomes a worthy foe and eventually a walkover. PCs level up faster than any other being in their worlds useually so this isn't an unreasonable stance, plus it means your world makes sense rather than being written to cater to whatever level your players and yourself happen to feel like running at the time.

[Hzurr]

Another thing to keep in mind is how the PCs affect the world. Figure out what will be happening in the world/area that the PCs are in without their involvement, and then adjust it as the PCs do things. If they manage to make enemies of an entire town when they're level one, the town shouldn't "reset" when they come back at level 8. If they steal something from a powerful political figure early on, they shouldn't be surprised when an assassin tries to take them out a week or two later.

Those may not be the best examples, but essentially, remember that the world is dynamic, and the PCs effect things. When PCs know that their choices have long-term consequences, they'll be more cautious and deliberate in what they do.

[DraPrime]

It evolved from a serious mission to conquer a nation, to a crazy escapade to conquer the multiverse. It succeeded.

[Chineselegolas]

The campaign I'm in in RL has started with us at level... 2 I think it was, and now we are 6th. Fights get tougher because well we are a chaotic party with two rogues, a monk with slight of hand, and more ranks in bluff than most con artists, and as such we continually move around the world. Some places are inhabited by tougher things.
And earlier on stuff was very tough and we had to turn and walk the other way a couple of times.

How is game playing going on, well we mesh quite alot better now than we used to, and we know all the other characters quirks, thus plans don't revolve around stats and sheets, but around what the characters actaully do (Think those with short attention span don't keep watch).

We plan to go visit the places we visited earlier at some point and finish off some of the quest we started ((Almost seems like a computer game...)) but left incomplete because the monsters were getting to tough. Like an Incorporeal monsters when we had only one magical weapon... Magic missile came in handy there.
As we have reached higher level, when we have sought stuff to do in town, people with tougher challenges have given us tasks.

The worlds stayed the same, we just go around different parts, hoping we don't take a wrong to turn into the epic level alley before we are meant to.

[Telok]

Levels 3 to 16 over a year and a half. As a player.

Started by taking small, local issues at the behest of the local lords. Ended barganing with epic level dragons, banished gods, and trying to safe a potentally world destroying artifact. Somewhere in the middle we went pirate hunting with our own ship, did some merchant trips, seriously annoyed the goddess of evil dragons (that linked up with the whole artifact thing), and built the world's first flying boat. Throughout the whole thing we we involved in a sort of running grudge match with a S&M/slave trading religon. Those gold altars were good loot.

We TPKed to a bunch of clerics, rogues, and sorcerers. Several of the players had gotten used to scrying and teleporting as our way of fighting. They forgot that the NPCs had access to the same spells we did. Only two people had defenses aginst scrying, and we'd both been harping on the others to get at least amulets of Nondetection. We even offered to pay for them.

[Josh the Aspie]

I envy you all. I've never had a campaign last more than a level or two. *sigh*

[Quietus]

I envy you all. I've never had a campaign last more than a level or two. *sigh*

If you don't mind PbP, feel free to click the link in my signature - it's an ongoing world, there should always be something for you to do, and I keep up on it on a daily basis. Plenty to do to gain several levels!

40 point buy helps to alleviate the pain of starting at level 1, too.

[valadil]

Games I run don't grow that way. There's a plot arch and once it's resolved the game is done.

I've played in plenty of big epic games though. The biggest has been going since 2001. Mine is the only character left from the original group of level 1s and he is now a level 24 gnome wizard.

We play so infrequently lately that I haven't been able to follow the plot, but for the most part its growth has either been that that magical artifact we found is far more powerful than we originally though, and so consequences ensue or that that big bad monster that almost TTPKed us had a boss/overlord/daddy and now we gotta kill that.

The GM thinks that we've reached such power levels that we may stop bothering with combat entirely and do something more free form. I'm leaning towards this, as I have no desire to ever go through my wizard's daily spell preparation again.

[TheOOB]

I break my campaigns up into arcs, I rarely have one BBEG that lasts more then 5 levels or so. When characters are low level, they only face threats that are close to them in power, let more experianced adventurers take the more powerful foes. When the characters reach higher levels they are the higher level adventurerers.

It's not that an adventurers foes become more powerful, but rather as the players get more powerful, more powerful foes take notice and people expect them to do more and more.

[Naleh]

At the moment I'm toying with the idea of a campaign world set before the discovery of necromancy. One guy (the BBEG) has finally discovered that certain magic can make dead people walk around, and the monsters would grow tougher as he perfects his creations.

Maybe.

[Ashtar]

I've had several very long campaigns over the years, but none as long as my Dark Sun campaigns. The players are still asking when I'm going to start the next campaign on that world. I don't know if I'm ready for it again, I've been gaming for more than 15 years on Athas. :smalleek:

Hum, it might help to know a bit about athas to understand this, but it's already long enough as it is.

Anyway, the plot for the last one started out with the players being slaves (L3) and escaping (the absolute classic), surviving to get to the city of Tyr to get pulled into the revolution against the sorcerer king, making friends of the dwarves along the way (earning the enmity of some elven tribes along the way) (L5). After a brief stint in the army, I leave them free reign in the world. (L6) This time, they decided to delve into the history of the world.
After resolving several of their character background subplots (old defiler master of one character), they came upon the tomb of a wemic champion who fought the sorcerer kings during the cleansing wars. (L7)
This was their entry point into their search for history, which took them all over the valley of Tyr to examine the ancient ruins.(L10)
The Aarakocra psionicist had sensitivity to psychic impression, which enabled him to glimpse images of the past. (Boris' last fight with Kemalok, the cleansing of the wemics, pixie blight and her final triumph, the death of the last gnome...). (L12)
All this slowly built up to their discovery that the sea of silt had once been water, but due to a catastrophic event it was turned to silt, locking out the connection to the elemental plane of water. (L14) Several side plots here, like an invasion from the astral plane by the githyanki, for example.
They found clues leading them to the island of shault, where the greatest minds of the resistance had congregated. After a short scenario in the past (playing the now long dead heroes), they learned that the halflings, acting under orders from their patron Rajaat, disrupted the ritual that was supposed to win the war in one fell swoop.
Realizing what they needed to finish the ritual, they start searching for all the lost artifacts of that time, finding items like the psionatrix (a perfect crystal matrix), the primal heart (a living artifact) and others. (L18)
Finally, they gathered for a last session (L21+), which was mostly freeform RPG where they met at shault, several years later, each with their followers, allies, friends (several old enemies) and other characters that they had accumulated over the levels, they finished the ritual that was so badly disrupted and returned the contact of the elemental plane of water to the world. Changing the sea of silt back to water...

So the campaign went from "will we die of thirst here in the desert?" to "I thirst for knowledge" to "Thus we quench the thirst of our little part of the world"!

[Quietus]

Games I run don't grow that way. There's a plot arch and once it's resolved the game is done.

I've played in plenty of big epic games though. The biggest has been going since 2001. Mine is the only character left from the original group of level 1s and he is now a level 24 gnome wizard.

That's kind of what I'm trying to aim for with Vethedar, slightly changed. I plan to have the CHARACTERS and the WORLD continue, but individual quests (with one overarching exception) are standalones. I have a character on there (I have a co-DM, I hate DMPC'ing) who's currently on a quest to collect some gemstones from elementals, which will be used to research protective spells, presumably. I, as a player, don't really trust the quest-giver, but my character was thoroughly taken with the 26 cha woman and agreed to do it. Besides, he's a guard, so anything to protect the city is good stuff for him, and hunting elementals is a half-decent way to make a name for yourself. Well, not really... but if he can get someone telling stories of how he went into a volcano to collect gems from fire elementals...

*Coughs* Anyway! He's on this quest. Once he has enough gems to make him happy, he'll hand them in, and that quest will be over. C'est la vie. There are OTHER things he can get involved with instead that are unrelated to that gemstone quest, but that gemstone quest is more or less standalone. Unless he goes to the core of the volcano, but that's a secret, shhhh.