Voicemail from DM Cojo

Matt V. comments on One Campaign to Another

Very timely episode for me gentlemen. We have a couple months left on our current campaign and have been kicking around what to run next, and brought up a campaign I had previously ran. We’d be running the same campaign, but in a different system. I have already caught myself thinking about a few things that went a certain way in the previous campaign. Hard to go into blank slate, but Brett was right, its a new campaign, and this group may go through it in a totally different way. My last group took the “good” path almost the entire way through, but there are plenty of variables, and I need to be careful not to nudge them towards one path or the other. I already caught myself thinking of one outcome and how cool it would be for them, but there are actually 3-5 outcomes, and they may not pick the one my last group picked.

I have never previously ran the same game twice, other than some single’s in PFS. I have often ran something after playing it back in PFS. I would notice if I didn’t really read the adventure before running it, I’d basically run it exactly how my GM previously ran it, even if in retrospect they had obviously done it wrong. Especially when running on the fly, which happened to me a lot back then, I’d end up doing something just because it was done that way previously, then read it like half way through and go oops! If I had more time, I’d try to pick out the good and the bad, and see what mistakes they may have made.

If we end up doing this I’ll update you in the future in how it went.

Jared Rascher comments on ep 291 One Campaign to Another

Because our local AL crew ran a lot of hardcover adventures, we’ve got a lot of local stories about how different groups handled similar challenges. One of the AL tables was notorious for making every possible bad decision when they were playing Out of the Abyss.

I ran Storm King’s Thunder (using Lost Mines of Phandelver as a starting point), and I’ve got a blog post all about what I would do if I ran it again.

knighterrantjr.blogspot.com

Thoughts on Storm King’s Thunder–Structure and Pacing (Spoilers)

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I have so many ideas of what I would do differently, including the order of resolving the plot of the adventure. I loved it, but it kind of fell apart towards the end, and lost some clarity.

While not published adventures, I started two Star Wars Age of Rebellion campaigns where I would love to start new campaigns with the same setup.

One campaign was the PCs going undercover as military contractors at an Imperial shipyard, trying to sabotage the whole she-bang while trying to recruit local insurgents, and another one has to do with all of the PCs starting six months before they enter the Rebellion, playing through the first session when the Empire ravaged their planet, then skipping ahead six months with them already in the Alliance.

I had to watch Brett’s recent Avalon one shot, because I was also a former Reverend Cat, and I can attest that my Reverent Cat (cleric of Hermes and ‘matron mother’ of the street urchin runners), was definitely different than others I saw.

Gabe comments on ep 290 Weapon Damage

This was a pretty great episode, guys. Good pick, Sean! Or should I thank Hobbes?

I’ll have to look up Hobbes’s show, if he spoke about this recently. But here are some thoughts, possibly engendered by hearing Hobbes talking about this some other time, possibly from OSR articles from Smoldering Wizard or somebody.

In original, WhiteBox D&D, all weapons did 1d6 damage. That’s right. A dagger did the same damage as a longsword. Realistic? Probably—I have heard someone argue, pretty convincingly, that a knife cut is a knife cut; its efficacy is all in how a weapon is used. And it was this episode that caused a Eureka in me, a pretty exciting one: what if that is what should be done? All weapons do the same damage—maybe—because tell me how you’re using it.

I think different weapon damages is definitely preferred by players, but I would love to game in a narrative/descriptive manner with d6 damages.

(Incidentally, in Original, all hit dice were d6, too.)

Jerry poses a question

Hey there, gentlemen….

First things first, I do want to say it was a pleasure meeting you both at Gamehole this past year and hope this season is treating you well. That said, I have a question for you both: 

When one of my 5E campaigns I run went completely off script, I found myself scrambling for content, only to discover that my players wouldn’t bite on the adventure hooks for anything I had planned for one night. From that point on, it’s been both tremendously rewarding and profoundly tough to prepare for whatever comes down the pike. Mercifully, I’ve been able to keep things coherent so far, but my question simply put is how do I balance using books and written adventures with sandbox play without resorting to more “railroad-y” methods? I love how most of the WotC books have a good balance of places to go and things to do before things kinda weave  back into the center to finish the narrative they’re telling. Any ideas?

Love the show and wish you and yours the best.

Good Gaming:

Jerry Garcia