Category Archives: Campaigns

Campaign Write-up: The Eight Arms and the Day That Wasn’t

I don’t spend a lot of time here talking about how my current campaigns are going. I generally only mention what we’re doing week-by-week when it’s something I can apply to gaming in general or an opportunity to make fun … Continue reading →

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Campaign Songs: Contract of Barl

I’ve spoken before about our campaign theme songs, but only for a paragraph or two. Since one of my campaigns had ended recently, it’s a good time to talk about one in more depth. The Eight Arms and the Contract … Continue reading →

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One-Shot Characters in Ongoing Campaigns

One of my favorite tropes in media is the individual face-offs between antagonistic teams. That is, I love it when the good guys meet the bad guys, and the good guys have a genius magician but the bad guys also … Continue reading →

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Serious Stories and Emotional Taxes

It takes a lot for me to drop a story early. I’ve struggled enough with pacing and storytelling to know how important a good beginning, middle, and end are to any narrative, and I feel like I can’t effectively judge … Continue reading →

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Wish

Some years ago, when I frequented the Wizards D&D message boards, there was a user whose signature said something to the effect of “the spiked chain exists to find the DMs brave enough to ban Core material”. That is, the … Continue reading →

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Campaign Report – Monsters

The monsters for this campaign were weird. When I started in 4E, I wanted to make as many creatures as possible on my own. I didn’t trust the official monsters to be able to do all the things I needed, … Continue reading →

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Campaign Report – King Thistle

Dungeons and items are important to a Zelda campaign, but they aren’t enough. A D&D game with dungeons is just a typical D&D game, and even one with a Hookshot is a typical D&D game with an allusion. But if … Continue reading →

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Campaign Report – Feelies

Zelda games are about items, second only to dungeons. Without a vast inventory contained inside improbably spacious pants, a Zelda game is more like Mario, where you use a limited, static set of options to deal with ever-expanding problems. So … Continue reading →

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Campaign Report – Zelda Maps 2

The Zelda campaign ended during August. Normally I’d do a postmortem of sorts to explain what the campaign was, what went right, what went wrong, and where we go from here. But I don’t think I can compress the lessons … Continue reading →

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Law A – Campaign Songs

I’ve talked about how I use music to help me flesh out story and character dies, but I haven’t shared what those ideas are. I think even my players don’t know a lot of the songs behind the campaigns unless … Continue reading →

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