Who here plays Epic Games?
I don’t, not anymore, I haven’t got the time to play them, but I’m sure
we all remember the times of massive adventures with huge purpose, intrigue,
millions of b’stards to bash, and the grand prize at the end of them.
But the thing that struck me today was that the Epic Scenarios never
really had Epic titles to them, they tended to be the name of the place or the
name of the item that the players were after, such things as the Temple of
Elemental Evil or the Rod of Seven Parts, things that are now classic because
everyone played them at the times, but now seem a little...tame?
I ask because I’m currently doing some more of the scenarios for Quest
and in amongst them, I’m finding that the original title for the scenario seems
a little flat, a little lacking in the “Inspire people to play things”
category, and then I considered, if you’ve got an epic title, surely you need
an epic story to go with it. You can
call a scenario “The Fall of Tiamat”, but if the scenario only has an encounter
with a bunch of Tiamat cultists, people are going to be feeling a little
cheated by the whole thing I would have thought.
That said, I look at a lot of published material out there at the
moment, and a lot of it is reasonably simple stuff to get through, there’s very
little in the way of strong puzzles, investigations to be carried out, people to
hunt, clues to find and so on.
And then the other thought occurred...
What if no one plays those sorts
of things anymore?
So I’m curious to what other people think on the matter, are huge arcs
of story a good thing in RPG’s, or does everyone prefer the “Today’s scenario
will be...” sort of thing. Are campaigns
(real campaigns, huge detailed tomes of data) a thing of the past, do people
still want to put in the time to do these things (particularly at my age when
we’ve got so much else to do.), or is it just a dream of my yesterdays?
I’ve got some of the Quest module titles here and I’m going to put them
up here to see if any of them, just by the title, are interesting, and if so,
why?
One of Us
A Million Hungry Strands
The Island of Wood and Rope
Seven heads, One Soul
Teeth in the Darkness
A Hole in the World
Bright lights, Darker Shadows
But I am interested in peoples thoughts on campaigns in general...
