Over a year ago, I started up my most recent game-mastering endeavor in the Iron Kingdoms, an adventure pitting a Morrowan monk, a priest, and an Ordic nobleman against a series of Orgoth tombs, all seeking out a personal relic of Morrow Himself. The specifics of the relic were unknown to the adventurers. The details of a monastery raid were long lost to time, as the Orgoth had rather thoroughly defaced their records and monuments at the end of their occupation four hundred years ago. Of the original party members, only Lord Farad Zacharo, retired Capitan of the Ordic Army, the eldest son of a minor Castellan family loyal to Baird Cathor II, survived to see this task completed.

This time around I was trying something a little different as a GM. Normally I would run a Dungeons & Dragons game starting from a very low level, with a long-term goal that they would build up into. This is what I did with my Falconbridge campaign, it’s how the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil adventure was structured, and generally matches the expectations of my play group. After being lowly nobodies for a while, the adventurers would build up a little notoriety for themselves and around the time that the Fighters are getting their third attack per round and the Wizards are starting to get some truly-interesting magic, they would find their calling: the big bad threat or opportunity that the campaign was to revolve around. I’d sprinkle some foreshadowing around during the early phases, introduce recurring NPCs that would turn out to be involved in the centerpiece of the campaign, and so forth, giving everybody lots of time to develop their characters, get comfortable with their abilities, and so forth.

A problem would come up more often than not, though. By the time the stage was set and the adventurers were up to the task, it would already be a year or more since the original idea was conceived. A long series of largely-unrelated adventures that served the purpose of toughening the party up runs the risk of leading the players to build up goals for their characters that are unrelated (or even contrary) to the intended grand direction of the story. Players getting into their characters’ shoes and coming up with appropriate goals and ambitions isn’t really a problem, it’s just something that can detract from this particular aspect of running a game: the overarching plot.

The different approach,this time, was to start the players out with both a clear direction and the ability to deal with it. Things would take time due to the nature of the story, not so much the nature of the character progression rules. The campaign took our heroes up and down Ord, from Midfast to Merin to Berck, down to Ceryl in Cygnar, and up to Port Vladovar in Khador. They were to use their combat, social, and intellectual prowess to locate and recover this priceless religious artifact.

The adventures had a pretty strict structure to them, alternating between a brief, focused combat leg (a dungeon delve, an attack on a Lich’s stronghold, etc.) followed by a brief, focused intellectual leg (information gathering, research, social challenges). Each combat leg would leave the party one step closer to a clear goal (there are three key needed to gain access to the Orgoth Governor’s tomb, each leg covered an attempt to gain a key), and each intellectual leg pointed the party clearly towards the next combat leg. The structure worked fairly well for me, and gave the players several opportunities to be glad for their non-dungeoneering skills and class abilities.

Although the players were able to accomplish their goal, recovering a personal artifact of their god and using it to halt, temporarily at least, a battle that was consuming one of the great cities of their world, it’s always a little sad to say goodbye to a campaign. I’ve asked my players to make a copy of each of their character sheets for me, so I can perhaps bring the same cast back in the future. For a little while, we’ll be playing a Shadowrun 4th Edition game, giving me an opportunity to take off my GM hat for a time. After that, we have a Serenity game lined up, which will be the GMing debut of one of our players. I’m looking forward to that.