Wednesday, April 13, 2011

One Issue Campaign, part 1

Today I'm going to start a new series of blog posts.  This is an experiment of sorts, so maybe it won't work out as well as I think it will.  But I'm going to try anyway.  The basic idea is simple:
  1. Start with set of core rules, preferably one a small amount of setting material or a strongly implied setting.  Too much setting info will spoil the soup I think, while none whatsoever will serve as an insufficient basis.  I'll be using Labyrinth Lord (revised edition/fourth release), with its Duchy of Valnwall sample wilderness.
  2. Get a single issue of Dragon or some other gaming mag.  Ideally I should have selected one at random, but for sentimental reasons I'm going to use Dragon #69.  It was the first issue I owned. 
  3.  
  4. Squeeze every possible of iota of usable information out of that magazine and nothing else to flesh out a campaign for your ruleset.  (FYI I'm not switching campaigns.  This is just a thought experiment.)
Today we're going to start with the cover.  Clearly the main antagonist of the campaign is that sorceress calling up an evil army.  Taking a cue from the character creation example in the '81 Moldvay rules, we'll call her Circe Doombringer.  Statting her up should be a snap.  6 rolls of 3d6 produce Str 11, Int 7, Wis 16, Dex 12, Con 10, Cha 8.  I'd probably swap Int and Wis, since she's obviously a magic-user type.  Her good looks might lead some to think Circe needs a higher Charisma score, but I think I'll leave it at eight and assume she has a terrible personality.  That's why she uses orcs and skeletons in her armies rather than people.  People require social skills to manage, orcs just cower and obey with a little magical bullying.

What level to assign to Circe is mainly a matter of how long you plan for your campaign to run and whether she needs to be a threat for the whole thing.  With skeletons in her army, I think she's probably needs to be at least the minimum level to cast animate dead, which in LL is 9th.  A tower and d6 apprentices of levels 1-3, available at 11th level, would be useful for her master villain status, so let's call her an MU 11.  One of those 3rd level apprentices could make a useful foe for some early adventures in the campaign.

From the picture it looks like Ms. Doombringer owns at least two magic items.  The staff she carries should probably be a Staff of Power or Staff of Wizardry, since she's the main villain of the campaign and all.  We'll call her winged crown the Dragon Crown of [blank], where I'm hoping to fill in the blank with something from later in the magazine.  I don't know yet if that will work or not, as I purposefully did not reread the issue to make this exercise as spontaneous as possible.  What I do know is that one of the powers of the Dragon Crown is to enthrall dragons.  That's why she has a pet dragon on the cover.

Two questions about that dragon.  What the heck color is it?  I think it's actually blue but I keep wanting to call it black.  More importantly, how big is it?  When I got this issue as a kid I assumed it was titanic but way in the background, but the way it's foreclaws are resting on that rock suggests that maybe it is tiny and standing right next to Circe.  Either answer is fine here, but it affects what the PCs think about Circe if they find out she commands Ragramok the Megadragon, the legendary uberbeast that destroyed the city Pha-Zool.  Knowing that she pals around with Ragramok the Runt, least of the litter of the Great Dracomatrona, means something else entirely.  One Ragramok is all fury and destruction, while the other is a master of dragonish guile.

Switching gears entirely, you know what I've always found weird about this picture?  The way the orcs and skeletons are all mixed together, as if they match side-by-side.  That should mean something.  Maybe orcs are natives of the netherworld in your campaign.  And/or skeletons aren't mindless undead robots.  Perhaps they can think and talked because they are cursed souls who can only return to the quietude of death when properly released from their bony prison.  They obey Circe Doombringer not out of magical compulsion, but because she knows the secret magic that can release them from this horrible state.  What if the PCs found out this information?  Would they still be able to kill masses of skeletons, knowing their souls remain trapped inside those shattered, useless bones, perhaps for all eternity?

Finally, look at the lower right corner of the cover.  That's the signature of artist Clyde Caldwell.  If you've been playing D&D or reading fantasy novels for a while, you've probably seem a gazillion pieces by him, mostly involving various degrees of cheesecakery.  Anyway, we can steal his mark, too.  Make it the Rune of Circe.  Perhaps it turns up as the mysterious signature on the bad guy correspondence the party discovers early in the campaign.  Or maybe it's a Glyph of Warding type trap that zaps the PCs with some nasty effect, like maybe level drain.  Stumbling across a few of those before the final confrontation ought to get the players good and mad at the villain.

Maybe omit the (c) 1984 part when you use it in-game.

Next installment I'll actually open the magazine and we'll see what ideas fall out.

42 comments:

  1. Totally awesome thought experiment! Seriously time-consuming, though... :)

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  2. Great idea. Love thought experiments like this and I'm loving reading what you are coming up with.
    I'm inspired to try this myself.

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  3. This is a great idea. I've got a stack of old dragons at home that are just waiting for another look.

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  4. I like this idea. And good Dragon issue choice, too.

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  5. This is an awesome idea.

    I've been a player in a campaign that used this as a premise. The old Dungeon Issue #10 (the towers) was the spine of the entire campaign. And it was a great campaign.

    Kind of makes me want to try it myself.

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  6. This really is an excellent idea. I might give it a try; I don't have any Dragons, but I have plenty of White Dwarfs, which might give the resulting One Issue Campaign an interesting flavour.

    More of this, please Jeff!

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  7. "One Issue Campaign"

    Okay, I'm totally stealing that term.

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  8. It's yours! Open Gaming, Creative Commons, whatever.

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  9. I used to do this with Dungeon Magazine. I would use the 3-5 adventures (usually a low level, a mid level, and a mod-to-high level) as the defining set piece adventures of a campaign, then create connections between them and imagine a game world where they existed. I came up with a few great worlds this way.

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  10. Excellent thought experiment. other thoughts: the orcs and skeletons are coming from somewhere light to the current room... returning from a raid to their cave lair?

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  11. Nice idea,man very interesting,engaging, very cool. I might do something similar or rife off of it.

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  12. That campaign's gonna veer into some pretty awesome/trippy territory if that particular issue has an "Ares section" or a "Marvel Phile" in it.

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  13. Excellent concept. I especially like your thoughts on the possible nature of the skeletons.

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  14. Anonymous1:21 PM

    Love the idea! My first Dragon was #132 (I'm a little late coming to the game) but the cover features the cast of SnarfQuest. So, I think I'll try this but choose a random issue instead... the game I'm currently a player in already has fantasy characters thrust into sci-fi/space.

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  15. #1 Awesome

    #2 I do hope there are some classifieds in this issue

    #3 This thing you do where you imagine campaigns looks like so much fun but it would depress me since at a certain point you invent more than you will ever have time to run.

    #4 I shouldn't have said that because I want to read the rest of this series.

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  16. "This thing you do where you imagine campaigns looks like so much fun but it would depress me since at a certain point you invent more than you will ever have time to run."

    I troubles me none. The universe has infinite diversity in infinite combinations and I only have one brain, so that horserace was lost a long time ago. Besides, sometimes the process is more important than the end result.

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  17. This is a great idea Jeff - really cool.

    - Ark

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  18. And even if Jeff doesn't use it, it'll be out there for someone else to use one day, which I think is one of the best things about the OSR.

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  19. What the heck color is it? I think it's actually blue but I keep wanting to call it black.

    Obviously, it's bluish-black, and it spits electric acid.

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  20. Oooh, I am off to hunt down a random Dragon mag....

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  21. Talysman is correct about the color.

    Also, a request: Having seen only the cover, Dragon 211.

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  22. This post makes me want to start a D&D blog of my own just to do this myself!

    Nice work.

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  23. Alan: Please do and leave a link here!

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  24. This is a great idea that I'd absolutely love to put into practice myself! I'm a 4e man, but think I might hunt up one of my old 3.x Dragons and try this--perhaps this weekend.

    I'll be very interested to see what your own process adds to the campaign, but the amount of data you managed to squeeze out of the cover is exceptional.

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  25. This is a brilliant idea, Jeff. I'd try it too, but sadly my players and I have way too many issues to make it work :)

    But seriously, when I decide to work up a new campaign (like I'm not poking at enough stuff already!) I'll definitely give this a shot. It might be an old Space Gamer rather than a Dragon, though.

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  26. Absolutely brilliant!

    Could Jeff's idea kick-start the One Issue Campaign Contest in the future?

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  27. Between the posture and the eyes I wondered if those were zombie orcs?

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  28. Jeff, that's awesome. I was pumped up to read this post as soon as I saw it -- it was also my first dragon!

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  29. I did something like this on my nihilistic gaming web blog BLUR on a dare:

    http://blur-rpg.blogspot.com/2009/12/turning-can-of-lysol-spray-into-game.html

    It's a great exercise and can help if you feel stuck in a rut or just need a break from the routine.

    Now I'm going to have to unpack some U-Haul boxes of zines and see what inspires me :)

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  30. Neat idea and great cover of choice!

    Some thoughts...

    Orcs living above ground allied with Undead of the catacombs? Proposterous you say? Sorry ladies and gents but I direct your attention to the world's most popular MMO, World of Warcraft. In WoW the Undead and the Orcs are uneasy bedfellows and members of the Horde with a number of other species. Maybe Circe knows something that keeps the two in her thrall or from destroying each other.

    In some of my old campaigns it was rare, though not unheard of, for two Chromatic Dragons of different colors to mate. The Wintergreen (Green/White) Dragon breathed a sort of Freon/Liquid Nitrogen like mist. The Deep Crimson (Red/Black) breathed a burning, naplam-like liquid.

    Perhaps this is a Blue/Black, breathing an electrified battery acid.

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  31. I used to do this years ago, but without the one-issue restriction.

    I love this idea and am adding it to my to-do list.

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  32. If I can find any time at all, I will do this and post the results on my blog - well done sir.

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  33. Jeff, Love the idea of using the random Dragon cover to inspire.

    I see an undead human warrior leading the troops. An unfortunate fellow that actually loved Circe and in his love was brought back as a leader of her army.

    Those that question, die. So he leds the troops. No questions asked anymore.

    The dragon is either a young blue or a drake sent by its master to assist the sourceress in her task.

    She wishes to suffer onto those that rejected and hurt her by destroying them, their guild, and their cities. She especially wishes to torment and humilate the Magic User that damaged her when she was but a wee girl apprentice.

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  34. This is great and exactly the kind of supported freethinking that can make great games and books.

    I am going to follow this and appreciate it greatly.

    Altho, of course I won't use a D&D, but RQ or Savage Worlds.

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  35. This is a really neat idea, Jeff.

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  36. Awesome. Kinda reminds me of the "Alchemical Proposal" post you did two years ago, which had us creating settings based on our favorite rule sets and just five major books.

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  37. If anybody wants to check out the old post Robert is referring to, here it is:

    http://jrients.blogspot.com/2009/06/alchemical-proposal.html

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  38. Anonymous7:50 PM

    It may be a young dragon she is raising and will protect as if it were her child.

    This process could work pretty well with an issue of National Geographic.

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  39. What would be hilarious is one of those Dragons with an installment of the Marvel Philes in it. Superheroics in the D&D world!

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  40. yeah man - the skeletons! I've always wanted to run them with intelligence. totally fun experiment btw

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  41. Jeff: YOU sir, are a mythopoeic milkman. My hat is off to you for demonstrating what can be accomplished with focus, frugality, and creative fancy. I can't wait to see future installments.

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  42. Great idea. Reminds me of the box of old D&D magazines that gathers dust here. :D

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