Bloodlines Campaign Debrief
In many ways, the Bloodlines campaign was unparalleled in my DMing career. With more players, higher levels, and deeper storylines than any game I've ever run, Bloodlines forged into all kinds of unexplored territory for me and the players.
Like any undertaking, the campaign had its share of successes and failures. I like to think that I'm pretty good at learning from my experiences; since I take running a D&D game pretty seriously, I felt that it was important for me to reflect on the events of the past four years. I asked the players to chip in their opinions as well--after all, we're all in this together.
What follows is my "campaign debrief" for the Bloodlines game. I'll examine some of the high and low points of the game to see what I can learn from them. As I'm kicking off another campaign as I write this, it's a good time to do this. Forgive me my long-windedness--this is more for my benefit than anyone else's, and I understand if nobody but me gets to the end of it.
Without further ado, it's time to climb into the way-back machine. The dials are set for an unspecified date in the late 90s; the place: Cannon Beach, Oregon.
The Birth of Bloodlines
I no longer remember the exact time this occurred, but I can still picture the scene. My brother Greg and I sat on a stout wooden bench along the main drag in the coastal vacation town of Cannon Beach, Oregon, talking about how, with a little imagination, you could picture the place as a D&D-style fishing village. The general store was down there, the pub across the street, and of course you had the crazy old wizard living in William Steidel's weather-beaten art gallery.
At the time, we were still playing a Planescape campaign, but the idea stuck in my head. By 1999, the Planescape game was drawing to a close--3rd Edition D&D was near at hand, and as a new member of the D&D team, I had the good fortune of having access to nearly finished copies of the rules. The new DMG had an interesting section on nonheroic NPC classes and "half-level" characters, which got me thinking about a game that featured "pre-heroic" player characters.
At that time, the group numbered six players: Chris, Dennis, Jesse, Kevin, Marc, and Viet. We gathered in December '99 or January '00 to roll up characters, at which time each player received a copy of the playtest rules and a multi-page campaign handout (most of which is available on the site, starting here).
That handout was the first big new thing for the campaign. Inspired by a similar document I received when I started playing in Monte Cook's Ptolus campaign, it allowed me to communicate the crucial information about this new world to the players. After all, we weren't playing in the Forgotten Realms or some other established setting that they could read about in books--this was a truly home-brewed campaign setting (the first I'd ever run). I've come to conclude that this kind of document is hugely effective when starting a new D&D game, even if you're using a familiar world--it helps ground the players in what's real and important about the setting, focusing them on what the campaign's going to be all about. If you're clever and subtle about it, you can also plant clues for later campaign events.
Also, I encouraged the players to flesh out areas of the world themselves, allowing me to integrate new ideas into my history and geography. Some of the players contributed intentionally--Viet's treatise on a schism in the Altian Church had a lasting effect on the game--while other players added to the campaign through sheer ironic coincidence. Jesse commented that "accidentally naming my character after the god of evil" was one of his favorite parts of the campaign, but admits that he "should have paid more attention to that handout." Jesse, I'm glad you didn't--your gaffe set the stage for some great plotlines.
The Second Wave
After a few months, it was clear that the game had strong legs. The players had taken well to the new rules, and we all looked forward eagerly to the time when we would have actual hardbound rulebooks in our hands. Of course, something had to shake up that stability. In this case, it took the form of two new players, and the first replacement PC.
At about the same time that Greg returned from his year-long "exile" in the wilds of Bristol, Connecticut, Joe "rejoined" the D&D group after a brief hiatus. A regular in the Planescape game, Joe was already familiar with the group's style and was welcomed back into the fold. While Greg already had a character--the bard Adarrial Smythe, created in the same session as the six original characters and intended for occasional guest appearances--Joe was starting from scratch.
Joe's character would represent the first real "outsider" to the group. Though Adarrial hadn't grown up with the other PCs, he was at least a part of the human world, and an occasional visitor to Great Rock. Eandrynn, however, was a full-blooded elf, something only very rarely seen by the young heroes.
Ironically, the entry of these two new characters came at the same time that the group experienced its first PC death: Druga Entier-Dahl, bold warrior, dead at the hands of an ettin. Viet, looking to try a new character type, rolled up Alarion Northsea the paladin.
Together, these three characters energized the group politically, as the gathering of heroes transformed from a half-dozen boyhood friends seeking adventure to a team that included a half-elven charlatan, a loyal member of the elven military, and a religious zealot opposed to all things elven. All of a sudden, the politics of the outside world, both religious and racial, had found their way into the party, and the group would never be the same. These first ripples in the party dynamic would echo until the final days of the campaign.
That said, the politics never seriously got in the way of the group's enjoyment. Though characters might stand at different points of the spectrum, the players knew that ultimately, not only were the characters comrades fighting side-by-side, but also that we were all there to have fun, not to engage in long-winded arguments. A campaign can be destroyed by infighting, but these players were mature enough to role-play their characters dynamically without losing sight of the bigger picture.
Bloodlines Revealed
Around about 5th level, the characters began to notice odd quirks about some of their friends. Duran had developed a piercing, intimidating stare, while a whiff of brimstone seemed to linger whenever Seth passed. Beran's hair had begun to take on a distinctly greenish tint, and Jarvis kept outgrowing his clothes. By 6th and 7th level, new abilities were manifesting as well.
I don't honestly remember which one of the players or characters first figured out that something very important was going on. Eventually, however, several of them met with a powerful wizard to learn more about the strange physical and mental changes developing in them. At that point, they learned the first inkling of what lay in store--that each one of them was displaying traits common to certain types of creatures, including giants, dragons, fey, and the like. However, they still didn't know why these traits were manifesting--was it the result of some shared experience, a blessing of the gods, or perhaps a curse from one of their enemies?
But one character learned quite a bit more. On his own, Seth learned that he was indeed displaying demonic traits, and concluded it was only a matter of time before his corruption moved from the physical to the mental. Not long after this, the group suffered a catastrophic defeat at the hands of a black dragon. Left behind by his fleeing friends, Seth managed to convince the dragon to spare his life . But when his comrades returned to rescue him, Seth instead fled the scene, leaving his friends behind.
As it turned out, Jesse had already decided that he wanted to try a different character. Like Chris--whose first character, Aethelred, was a multiclass rogue/druid--Jesse had found that the lure of a first-level skill point bonanza didn't fully make up for the slowed spell progression of a multiclass spellcaster. With some input from Jesse, I designed this "exit strategy" for Seth, allowing the character to stick around in the world even though he wasn't an active participant in adventures. Though I didn't yet know the significant role that Seth would play in the campaign's climax, I had a feeling that I'd want him to reappear from time to time.
This points to my belief in the importance of ensuring that every player enjoys playing the character he has. After all, if you don't like your character, what's the point of playing? That said, it's important to keep campaign continuity in mind as well. If the player isn't happy, my first step is to work together to solve the problem without changing characters--if everyone was rolling up new PCs at the first sign of frustration, the "party" as an entity disappears, and the campaign becomes a revolving door of no-personality one-trick ponies.
In the cases of Druga, Aethelred, and Seth, the right solution was a new character. On another occasion, however, I talked a player out of changing his character. In hindsight, I think I was too insistent on the character sticking around, but the character had become an integral part of the storyline, and I really didn't want to lose him. In the long run, the player seemed to have plenty of fun with his character, so I guess all's well that ends well.
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
By February of 2002, the characters had begun to uncover one of the larger plots of the campaign: the dragon cult of Gulthias, Master of Nightfang Spire. As much as I enjoy episodic adventures, I think that overarching plotlines are crucial to establishing strong player interest in a campaign. An early example of this in the Bloodlines game was the return of the Scarlet Sails (which eventually snowballed into a kingdom-shaking example of deception).
At this point, however, all the characters knew of the dragon cult was that it was an ancient power, once unified under the rulership of Ashardalon, but now a mere shadow of its former self. Apparently, though, new leadership had surfaced: the mysterious Gulthias. This news hit the characters hard, for they realized that their actions had returned Gulthias to power. Thus, they had all the reasons they needed to pursue this line of inquiry.
Eventually, they went up against the forces of the vampire sorcerer Gulthias himself in his lair. Sadly, they didn't do as well as they'd hoped, and had to retreat from the Spire. This was a tough realization for both players and characters--no one was used to declaring defeat and leaving unfinished business behind.
From this I learned the importance of letting the characters (i.e., the players) determine the pace of the adventure. The near-endless forays into the Spire, fighting wave after wave of undead, made the game less enjoyable for many of the players. In hindsight, it's clear to me that the adventure's a little too tough, even more so for a group without a 10th-level cleric (the difference between merely turning the hordes of shadows and destroying them). Gulthias's lair is just too perfectly designed for his minions to defend, and while that makes for a good read, it's not as much fun as it should be. Allowing the characters the option of falling back to pursue other adventures lets them keep their dignity and feel like they're in control of the action.
That said, just because the characters leave an adventure behind doesn't mean the world stops turning. In the case of Gulthias, the characters' decision to leave him be gave him the opportunity to further expand his power base, eventually overrunning an entire town! In the end, all this just made the heroes' final victory all the sweeter.
The Big Split
Undoubtedly the most significant event of the campaign was the decision to divide the group of players--which had grown from six to a whopping ten--into two separate storylines. While inspired by Monte Cook's Ptolus game, in which two separate groups of PCs adventured in the same setting simultaneously, this was a much more delicate experiment, as it required players who had gamed together for 15+ years to give up some familiar faces. In contemplating the split, I had nightmares of bruised egos, separation anxiety, and all-around hurt feelings.
In hindsight, I should have given everyone more credit. Though the reshuffled lineups took a couple sessions to get used to, every single player handled the split incredibly well. Looking back on the campaign, I can't imagine how we ever would have gotten through everything without the split--it gave every character (and thus every player) more opportunities to shine, and allowed me to explore way more storylines than I'd have been able to with one big group.
As it so happened, the campaign's events lent themselves well to the split. In the kind of story that always happens in comics but never works in gaming, the heroes decided to split up in order to track down two artifacts needed to restore the lost divine powers of Duran Fortnite.
I also took advantage of opportunities to reunite some or all of the characters for special "joint sessions" of the campaign, including a game at GwenCon '02, a weekend-long marathon in Cannon Beach, a couple of unusual "team-up" sessions (one in Great Rock, the other in Brithonen), and of course the campaign finale. These sessions kept the players (and thus the characters) feeling like they were all part of the same team, rather than two separate units competing against each other (a natural risk of a split-storyline campaign).
This experiment taught me a few things:
- Running two groups in the same campaign is only marginally less work than running two campaigns;
- It's OK to run parallel storylines, as long as each group feels equally important to the overall campaign storyline;
- My players are the best group of guys any DM could have.
My new campaign features only one group of players and a single storyline, but that's only because Greg's also running a campaign of his own to fill the demand. I'm not that much of a glutton for punishment.
The End
By early 2003, I knew that the end of the campaign was in sight. The character levels had reached the mid-teens, and some players were starting to get a little fidgety. I had a few important plotlines to wrap up, but I knew that I'd have to do it rather quickly. I also knew that I wanted the campaign to have a single strong finish, rather than two separate ending points.
As the final year of the campaign progressed, I made sure that each group had an important storyline to follow. The "Saturday group" got busy plane-hopping, first exploring the Iron Fortress of the warlord Imperagon, which in turn led to their discovery of the ancient red wyrm Ashardalon's unwelcome arrival at the Bastion of Unborn Souls--an event with dire implications for the entire universe.
At the same time, the "Sunday group" found themselves enmeshed in political strife both at home and abroad. Indeed, everywhere they turned the characters seemed to discover how events from earlier in the campaign had snowballed to create extraordinary tensions in the present day, from the elven crises in Ossington and Brithonen to the former slavers Lorcan Connallsson and Strabo the sorcerer-lich secretly installed as leaders of Helmsport. Trusting only their own consciences, the heroes unsnarled the knot of intrigue threatening to topple two great kingdoms, and followed that up by rescuing the dormant soul of the elves' goddess.
What the heroes didn't realize was that these seemingly disparate plot threads all led back to one master manipulator: the demon-god, Merrshaulk the Corruptor. Of course, Merrshaulk wasn't behind all the evil of the campaign--that kind of paranoid fantasy is better on the X-Files than in a game--but he had his demonic fingers in a whole lot of events, from the newly empowered "Cult of Seth" led by Cathezar Lorcan Connallsson to demonic threats in Ossington and Great Rock, and from awakening demon-gods under Helmsport to dragons gaining entrance into forbidden realms.
As good heroes are wont to do, the characters thwarted plot after plot. But in doing so, they came closer and closer to accomplishing what Merrshaulk needed mortal pawns to do--reunite the fragments of the Soul Totem and deliver them, along with the God-Spark of Anaerynsia, into his possession. Only with these powerful items in hand could he carry out his plan of ascension, after which he would hold more power than any of the other gods.
Of course, the heroes, working together one last time, managed to prevent that particular event from coming to pass. This let me have the best of both worlds: Each group got to see their own storylines through to completion, while also taking part in a single grand finale for the campaign as a whole. I think it worked out pretty well.
Nearly four years after the players first assembled to create their pre-1st-level characters, the campaign was done. In many ways, Bloodlines represented a huge step for me as a DM:
- The campaign went through two sets of rules, including playtesting both of 3rd edition and of version 3.5 of the D&D rules. (In fact, I'd wager that Bloodlines was the longest-running 3E campaign in the world to date, seeing as how we started eight months before the rules were published.) This really tested my ability to keep the players informed and comfortable about rules updates.
- The world of Bloodlines was my first 100% self-created world. While I swiped maps and adventures liberally from various sources, the world itself--including politics, history, and mythology--were my own. I liked the experience so much that I didn't even think twice about what to do for my next campaign--only my own creation would do.
- This was my first campaign that went all the way from 1st to 20th level. I'd run games that came close before, but none with a rules system as robust as this one.
- This was the largest group of players and characters I'd ever managed in one campaign. At the campaign's peak, ten players controlled thirteen player characters (plus three cohorts). That's a lot to keep track of, and it represents an enormous challenge to keep everyone involved in the storylines. While some characters inevitably were more central to the storyline than others, no one got ignored, and I truly believe that every character got at least one "moment in the sun."
And that, as they say, is that.
If you have more questions or comments about Bloodlines, please share them on my message boards.