I am a huge fan of tabletop rpgs, especially of the indie variety (PBTA et al.). I think it's one of the highest forms of gaming since it is so responsive to a particular group of people and the stories they want to tell, which creates a lot of potential for cool leftist gaming experiences and stories. However, I haven't been able to find time to run a game for a few years (and I struggle playing solo rpgs since it's basically just creative writing) so I wanted to hear from chapos that are (or have been) in a campaign so I can live vicariously through you.

What game are you playing? What's your character (or favourite NPC) like? Any highlights from your campaign? Are you living out a revolutionary power fantasy or playing a chill "beer and pretzels" type game?

  • SickleRick [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I've had a pretty solid 5e group going for almost two years now. We started with Curse of Strahd, because I had always wanted to run it, but my previous group got real flaky. It was three completely new players and two with some experience, all long time friends. It was good, and they were too smart for the module, so they missed a lot of content.

    Next, I ran Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus, and, honestly it was lame. Like, I had to come up with a few things to flesh out CoS and do the normal improv, but BG:DIA is just fucking barren. Even though it covers a lot more levels, we ran through it in maybe 1/3 of the time as CoS. Like a third of the book is just a reprint of a history of Baldur's Gate and how to run games there, but maybe 10% of the module is spent there, so it's absolutely wasted. Honestly, I could have done a better job running it, but it would've been more work and less satisfying than just homebrewing a campaign.

    So, I'm homebrewing a campaign. One of the players started running a side campaign towards the end of CoS, so we've been doing that every week instead of alternating. It's their first time DMing, but it's been pretty fun. I find myself less engaged than normal, though, but other players are having a good time with it. I've got a rough framework of my homebrew setting and campaign, and I'm working on fleshing it out now to the point where we can do a session 0.