Joël's campaign (transition toward Shadow Rift adventure))

[Joël of the FoS]

Been a while, here's sessions 113 to 115. Basically the end of Servants of Darkness:

Session 113 - after meeting with Loht, and hearing his hostage ultimatum, a trip to Keening, meeting angry widderrìbhinn, and climbing Mt lament.
Session 114 - exploring the (expanded) entrails of Mt Lament.
Session 115 - going deeper in the mountain, and meeting Tristessa for a trade!

As I wrote elsewhere here, I really like the way I portrayed Her Sadness, it was fun roleplay, and the players liked it a lot.

Link!

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Great googly moogly, that was tense!
And getting tenser all the time, with that damn' sword in play.

[Joël of the FoS]

Ah ah ah, indeed!

I like to vary the pace of my scenes, and this one was made to pressure them into a very dangerous situation.

[Joël of the FoS]

Three more journals, for those following.

116 - return to Loht with Arak's sword. Doesn't go as planned - Loht doesn't free the kidnapped girls from Viktal. Battle with powries. Travel to a goblin lair to save the girls!

117 - Nasty nasty goblin lair. Slaying the boss and rescuing the girls.

118 - Exiting a goblin lair isn't as simple as planned when you have slayed their chief, and meeting the wondrous Queen Maeve.

Last session will be later followed by a rewrite of the Shadow Rift adventure.

link!

[moonglum]

I am only a tertiary Ravenloft fan (my campaign is a Greyhawk one, using 3e rules, and Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Eberron, Scarred Lands and Dark Sun are my other favorites).

Your journal entries and the wonderful 3e sourcebooks make Ravenloft so attractive to me. My hang up is always that I am not very interested in horror, but am interested in dark fantasy and fair tales, but the 3e books make me believe that I could really focus on this as the genre and ignore the horror angle almost entirely (although a bit of horror has its place in pure dark fantasy as well). Elric, Conan, Castlevania and HP Lovecraft would be among my influences.

Regarding your journal entries: You put a good amount of work into these. Over the course of so many years, do you still do them out of habit or does it really make a difference in the feel and enjoyment of the campaign for you to write these? I have considered such a practice, but figure one or two players will read them on occasion, and maybe a few people on the internet. I am unsure if it is worth the effort, though I do enjoy writing for the sake of it.

I am also curious how you organize your campaign and setting notes, details, resources etc.?

[Joël of the FoS]

Back from vacation.

I am only a tertiary Ravenloft fan (my campaign is a Greyhawk one, using 3e rules, and Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Eberron, Scarred Lands and Dark Sun are my other favorites).

Your journal entries and the wonderful 3e sourcebooks make Ravenloft so attractive to me. My hang up is always that I am not very interested in horror, but am interested in dark fantasy and fair tales, but the 3e books make me believe that I could really focus on this as the genre and ignore the horror angle almost entirely (although a bit of horror has its place in pure dark fantasy as well). Elric, Conan, Castlevania and HP Lovecraft would be among my influences.

Thank you for the good comment. I also think that horror is the cream added on top of a dark fantasy game. If you achieve it, it’s great, but the dark fantasy story has to be a solid foundation.

Regarding your journal entries: You put a good amount of work into these. Over the course of so many years, do you still do them out of habit or does it really make a difference in the feel and enjoyment of the campaign for you to write these? I have considered such a practice, but figure one or two players will read them on occasion, and maybe a few people on the internet. I am unsure if it is worth the effort, though I do enjoy writing for the sake of it.

I first wrote it to publish it here, in order to have comments, feedback and suggestions. I was following the tradition of the great long running campaign journals of Stu of the Kargatane and also Ron of the FoS.

Then I realized that, if detailed enough, it becomes the « official » campaign archives – you can search through it and see previous NPC interactions, exactly what was said to whom, etc.

I often go back in this (nearly 1 000 pages now) document to search for info and make sure a new thing isn’t contradicting previous information. That campaign started in 2003, so I do not remember everything

My players do too, when refreshing themselves about something and trying to clarify a NPC’s intentions, for example.

I am also curious how you organize your campaign and setting notes, details, resources etc.?

Other than that mammoth campaign journal, I have other documents, to help me when planning a new game:

- A summary table of past sessions, with detailed content – quick summary of what happened during that session, and adventure source

- An Index of NPCs, sorted by domain, with this info: # session when first met, # sessions when met again, # session where his image appeared, and basic DM info (possible ideas to bring him back to the campaign, or a note that this NPC is dead). And the font used for that NPC’s handwriting.

- An index of places, also sorted by domains, with basic “places” info – name of inns & taverns, churches, other famous places seen in the campaign. Also the # session where a map was shown to the PC, if applicable.

- Given the looseness of RL maps and scales, an atlas of “moving around” for my campaign – how much time to get from Ludendorf to Rivalis by horse, by boat from Martira Bay to Mordent, etc. This is to answer quickly the players’s questions, and so I do not contradict myself (“What do you mean, three days to get to ABC, it took us two days the other time?”)

I update these once every 3-5 sessions, and it takes half an hour.

[moonglum]

Back from vacation.

I am only a tertiary Ravenloft fan (my campaign is a Greyhawk one, using 3e rules, and Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Eberron, Scarred Lands and Dark Sun are my other favorites).

Your journal entries and the wonderful 3e sourcebooks make Ravenloft so attractive to me. My hang up is always that I am not very interested in horror, but am interested in dark fantasy and fair tales, but the 3e books make me believe that I could really focus on this as the genre and ignore the horror angle almost entirely (although a bit of horror has its place in pure dark fantasy as well). Elric, Conan, Castlevania and HP Lovecraft would be among my influences.

Thank you for the good comment. I also think that horror is the cream added on top of a dark fantasy game. If you achieve it, it’s great, but the dark fantasy story has to be a solid foundation.

Regarding your journal entries: You put a good amount of work into these. Over the course of so many years, do you still do them out of habit or does it really make a difference in the feel and enjoyment of the campaign for you to write these? I have considered such a practice, but figure one or two players will read them on occasion, and maybe a few people on the internet. I am unsure if it is worth the effort, though I do enjoy writing for the sake of it.

I first wrote it to publish it here, in order to have comments, feedback and suggestions. I was following the tradition of the great long running campaign journals of Stu of the Kargatane and also Ron of the FoS.

Then I realized that, if detailed enough, it becomes the « official » campaign archives – you can search through it and see previous NPC interactions, exactly what was said to whom, etc.

I often go back in this (nearly 1 000 pages now) document to search for info and make sure a new thing isn’t contradicting previous information. That campaign started in 2003, so I do not remember everything

My players do too, when refreshing themselves about something and trying to clarify a NPC’s intentions, for example.

I am also curious how you organize your campaign and setting notes, details, resources etc.?

Other than that mammoth campaign journal, I have other documents, to help me when planning a new game:

- A summary table of past sessions, with detailed content – quick summary of what happened during that session, and adventure source

- An Index of NPCs, sorted by domain, with this info: # session when first met, # sessions when met again, # session where his image appeared, and basic DM info (possible ideas to bring him back to the campaign, or a note that this NPC is dead). And the font used for that NPC’s handwriting.

- An index of places, also sorted by domains, with basic “places” info – name of inns & taverns, churches, other famous places seen in the campaign. Also the # session where a map was shown to the PC, if applicable.

- Given the looseness of RL maps and scales, an atlas of “moving around” for my campaign – how much time to get from Ludendorf to Rivalis by horse, by boat from Martira Bay to Mordent, etc. This is to answer quickly the players’s questions, and so I do not contradict myself (“What do you mean, three days to get to ABC, it took us two days the other time?”)

I update these once every 3-5 sessions, and it takes half an hour.

Very insightful, thanks for the response! Have you considered consolidating your campaign into something like OneNote or Obsidian.md in order to have it all linkable like a wiki? Much more consolidated and easily searchable.

I too have disparate notes, word documents and so forth as you do, and have been considering one of the above tools for better organization. But there is also something charming about things being kind of messy and using different tools (physical notes, word docs and so forth) to organize.

[Joël of the FoS]

No, I never looked at these options. I get good results from current files.