Narrowing The Focus

Since we finished the second session with my new group, I've had some time to develop the campaign into more than a vague mention. Taking a cue from my PCs, this is going to be a dwarf-centric campaign (all but 2 are dwarves). I've decided to center it in the Caras Peaks in Dahara. I've developed the main plot, and have now begun the Character Document. This will detail out the world from the PCs perspective, and help them narrow their focus on their characters.

At first I thought this was going to limit them a bit. To a certain extent it will. As I look at it further though, I see that this isn't a bad thing. As new players, I don't need them overwhelmed by all the choices available. Give them a select few within the scope of what I'm planning and things may actually proceed better than before. I think having such wide-open options, as I did with my Dahara: Duke's War campaign made some elements a bit difficult.

We'll see.

So, once I've completed the Character Document, I'll send that and the "20 Questions" document (to help them define their PC backstory) to my players and let them chew on that for a while. This will really help me flesh out the plot better and give me ammo to integrate each character in the larger story.

In other campaign notes, I'm making use of the Obsidian Portal Campaign Wiki site. You can find this campaign, which is now titled: Dahara: Faterl's Forge there. Not much on there yet (just a couple of NPCs), but slowly but surely.

Once the Character Document and 20 Questions are completed I will post them.

Saturday Looms Closer

An update on my upcoming gaming. It's going to be a Saturday Morning-Afternoon affair. Also, it looks as if the size of the group has expanded to 5-6 players.

I honestly don't know what to expect. As I work through my 25th year of gaming, I've never really walked blindly into a group like this outside of a convention setting. It sounds like most, if not all of the players have not gamed in some time, or at all. What I'm really hoping for is some players who want the fun, but also are looking for a little depth beyond just "kill monsters, get loot."

So knowing the little that I do, I've decided to sort of merge my two previous concerns about Campaign vs One-Shot. I have sent my contact, Kevin, the brief character creation guidelines I came up with. That will help set the framework if this does develop into a campaign, rather than telling one of the players that his gnome illusionist can no longer exist (no gnomes in my game). The adventure I'm starting them off with is a pretty simple scenario, but one designed to best ease everyone into the mechanics. If I discover some role-players in the group, I can work with that easy enough.

So, chargen guidelines, huh? This would mean I should post them. I will, when they are in a presentable format, rather than the e-mail I shot off.

Time permitting when the session winds down, I want to try and talk a bit to everyone about what they are looking for, what we have time for, and what type of schedule we could have, if any.

And Just Like That

I'm going gaming again. I called the guy I met about gaming and he is interested. He, along with his two sons, and possibly one of their friends might be sitting down around a table possibly next weekend.

I'll be running things, which puts me in kind of a bind, because now I have to strike that balance between doing something that could be a one-shot adventure, and something that could lead to a longer campaign. We both expressed a desire to do a longer campaign, and I think it could develop into that, but I need to be careful. You never know what you get with new players.

My initial thought is to just find a simple adventure that has no major impact on things. They haven't played in a while, so the rules will be their biggest concern, as will mine for that matter. Beyond that, I want to set aside some time to find out what they are really looking for in a campaign and in adventures. I found a questionnaire that may help to solve this dilemma.

I am thinking about Dahara though. I'll need to really think about and quickly compile together character creation guidelines for them.

Most of all though, I'm excited. It has struck me as odd to be writing a gaming blog when I'm not even doing what I'm writing about. That, hopefully will now change.

Dahara Developed - What to Do?

So I find myself at a bit of a crossroads with Dahara. It's my campaign world, and for some time I've wanted to really develop the world into something that could be published. As it sits right now, the world is in D&D 3.0 stats. With the coming of 4.0, I really don't have much of a desire to convert all that, as I'm not incredibly stoked about 4th Edition right now, and I don't know if I will ever be, to be honest.

I'm reading the Savage World rules, and really loves those, but I'm not real sure of the licensing rules for that system to allow such publishing. Something worth looking into.

Of course, there is always the option of simply writing up the world as generic and letting it sit out there.

I know for sure that I will likely write up some adventures in Dahara and set them out to here to be used. That is coming for certain.