[3.5] Black Sun Down: A Campaign Journal

[abadguy]

I really enjoyed reading AslanCross' RHoD campaign journal. Very refreshing to see it from a DM's PoV. I thought it would be good to share the current RL I'm playing in right now and for posterity's sake.

Some background:
I've known the DM for about 15 years. He started me and some other friends on AD&D 2nd Ed back in the day and when that got boring, he crafted some really excellent homebrew PnP RPGs loosely using the AD&D combat system. So when 3.0 and 3.5 rolled around, we rounded up some like-minded friends and gamed on. We've known each other for about a long while so the games and usually pretty fun and epic.

So this here is our 3rd and probably last 3.5 campaign. The previous 2 ran from Lvl 1 to 16 over a period of about 3 years and featured 2 homebrew settings. Before that was a 3.0 campaign which ran to Lvl 17 over 2 years. This one is yet another homebrew setting which he called "Black Sun Down", describing it as 'gritty' and 'dark'. The only background he gave was that there was a war of the gods 1000 years ago which was pretty apocolyptic.

Character creation
We all started at Lvl 4 and for once, were allowed a multitude of options. Previously we could only use LA+0 races but this time around, he allowed races with LA and templates, as well as many ACFs and options. Personally I was perturbed, as they would entail the challenges would be harder as well. I shrugged and decided to play the BSF for once (I was previously a cleric and then a factotum). Decided to go with a Crusader. The others swapped roles and classes and here's what we ended with:

Taurus Hammertime: Half-Minotaur Illuminian Crusader played by me (refluffed as a recently revived "weapon of war", much like an organic warforged)

M'wwrrr: Catfolk Scout/Ranger. He went with the female gender.

Reschal: Catfolk Sorceror. At the time of creation, he had no idea there was to be another Catfolk character and a female one at that. They both took much ribbing about being "butt buddies"

Rory: Elan Warlock. He went pretty far off the optimization end which was fun to watch.

Dinar Goodlight: Aasimar Cleric of Odin. We were restricted to Living Greyhawk, Pharonian, Asgardian and Olympic pantheons.

Next post: the giant hook and plot reveal! Also, How We Made Our Characters Based On The Tier System