Sunday 24 February 2013

One Page Campaign

Moving on in the 52 Pages project, this is the first page after the character creation section. The basic points of the game have already been explained. Now it's time to be a little bit directive toward the DM and propose a tried and tested training-wheels approach to the campaign for levels 1-3. Amazingly, the isometric graphics are all public domain, from clker.com.

I think there's still a lot of room for DM creativity within this framework, but probably the most disagreement will be had about the campaign goal. My reasoning is:
  • It's something to work towards, beyond just gaining levels.
  • It gives a little taste of the domain game in a situation where very few adventure gaming groups stick it through to the high levels usually associated with that kind of action.
  • It's a good move anyway, to have a safe "bank" protected by a grateful populace as more and more treasure flows through the party's hands.
  • It drains off some the glut of money that can come with adventuring - and having a base to return to from far travels also drains off some of the glut of time in a campaign.
This last advantage, of course, is also a disadvantage to some. Many players see heroic adventurers as rootless by nature, chafing at any kind of ties to the land. They'd rather put their wealth into a pouch full of gems than real estate.

Which brings me to the final reason of all. It's foolish to pretend, when inventing the by now twenty-dozenth variation on D&D, that this is the Muad'Dib of heartbreakers that will sweep all before it and forge a new world order of roleplaying. No, the best you can hope for is that people will dabble with the system and swipe some of your best ideas. With that in mind I've tried to make it easy to carve the 52 Pages at the joints. Another logical progression from that idea is that, when choosing between generic and distinctive - go distinctive. You may be wrong, but you are doing something nobody else is doing, and diversifying the DNA of this much mutated game.
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6 comments:

  1. FrDave24 February 2013 at 22:29

    One of the unintended consequences of my own use of xp = gp spent is that it encourages the kind of activity implied by your goal even at lower levels. One of the really nice outcomes of this activity is that it makes for a much more interactive world where players have ownership over their investments.

    Your goal makes this unintended (and, to my mind, very pleasant) consequence explicit. Therefore, I like it.

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  2. Chris C.25 February 2013 at 00:22

    This is a brilliant little chart. I really like it the framework, especially the citizenship/property-buying. I think it could make the players/PCs literally invested in the campaign environment.

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  3. Hanley Tucks25 February 2013 at 03:48

    This is good.

    Surely it's time to have the 52p pdf updated with all the stuff you've created since August 2012?

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    1. Roger G-S25 February 2013 at 12:56

      That, I hope, will happen later this week, once I get a few of the more recent updates back from my crashed hard drive.

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  4. Gavin Norman25 February 2013 at 06:25

    I also really like the explicit goal being set for low-level play. Excellent idea!

    I was thinking about that, and had the idea that this concept could even be expanded. The players could sit down together with the DM at the start of a new campaign and decide what their goals as a party are for each level (or perhaps every few levels), thus setting the direction and tone of the campaign.

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  5. Unknown25 February 2013 at 07:44

    This is excellent, it succinctly gets the message across about character development within the game world as well as showing new DM's things that they can aim for in their brand new campaign

    Plus I can print it out and show it to some of the people I play with and hopefully then the penny will drop and they will understand what our DM has been trying to do for the last year or so......

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