How do other DMs on the boards here decide to go about naming their campaigns? I really like having a good name for the campaign, rather than just having my players put my name under the "campaign" section of their character sheets.
But, how do you go about naming a campaign if you don't have an all-encompassing plot already thought up? Things like the APs are easy, since they plot out every adventure from level 1-20. But, if you've only got the adventures from level 2-4 plotted out, and some vague ideas of where to go beyond that for a few levels, how do you decide what to call the whole campaign, which will (hopefully) continue past the point you have already thought of?
Do you decide ahead of time what the last story-arc or adventure will be, and then name it according to that, and just not worry about making things fit until you draw close, or is there another tact you take?
My current GH campaign is named "farewell2kings" because the overarcing plot is a struggle of the Hestmark Highlands to free themselves from the control of the Overking of the Aerdi.
Had the players not chosen to participate in the rebellion, it would have run in the background as flavoring to whatever adventures they were going to pursue, so I figured the name could stick either way.
I usually only pick a geographic area of the campaign world that the campaign will start in and then name the campaign after that, so had I not been so super clever (being sarcastic here, of course) and named my campaign after a Rush album AND the political struggle, I probably would have just named it "Hestmark Campaign."
It is tough to give campaigns catchy names, Saern. A friend of mine used to name his Star Trek RPG campaigns (Klingon based) after Judas Priest albums and the cruisers after Judas Priest songs, so the "Screaming for Vengeance" campaign featured the Klingon D-7 battlecruiser "Helion." It worked as good as anything else.
Same guy also names his characters after infamous historical figures, such as Joachim Pfeiffer, Bedford Nathan Forrest, etc.--obscure enough that casual observers won't immediately get the connotation, but if they know a bit of history, they'll go "OMG." We all know his ploy of course, so we just go with the flow--it's his character after all.
The problem with geographical regions is that I frequently run campaigns in the same large country of my homebrew, which would end up with about five different campaigns named "Merethil Campaign."
How do other DMs on the boards here decide to go about naming their campaigns?
I didn't start naming my campaigns until I started playing this current edition of the game. Before, it was just, "We're playing AD&D." But then, I was the only DM, and it was a homebrew campaign setting, and that's just what we did - there wasn't a need to name it.
With my recent gaming groups, however, there've been more than one DM. With different campaigns and such going, we've a reason to name the campaigns now.
We have two games going these days.
One of them we call the "Second Shift." Originally, this game was a bi-weekly game that took place every other week the evening after our regular weekly game. Not everyone from the earlier session could make it, so we wanted to come up with something that set this game apart from the "main" game.
Our main game used to be set in the Realms, so that's just what we called it - Forgotten Realms. Recently, however, we lost our DM, so we're not really sure what we're going to do now.
When I run a campaign, I like to run in a homebrew world, and I've typically just ended up calling my campaign by the name of the world's dominant ruling party. Not too long ago, with a group that no longer exists, I called my game "The Tryptling Kingdom."
I'm currently building a new homebrew world called "Harsch Kingdom" now.
I've found this seems to work, but after thinking about this too long, I'm thinking perhaps I need to start coming up with subtitles for various story arcs run within the overall Harsch Kingdom setting . . .
(A couple of DMs I've played under have taken to naming the individual gaming sessions . . . afterward. They'll send out emails to the group after the session, awarding experience points and such, and will often give the session a name in the subject heading of the email.)
I've never named, or played in a named campaign. The folks I've played with never bothered to write anything other than "Lucas' or Jimmy's" in the campaign slot on their character sheets. For myself, I use looseleaf paper instead of character sheets so I don't even do that. I figure that if I ever forget which character is in which campaign, I've got serious memory issues!
I know it doesn't help, but when I DM in the Realms, I tend to jump all over the place, so that I can use similar time frames and not have to worry about the PCs running into their other characters.
So one campaign will be the Mistledale Campaign, as it is where the campaign began. If they wander away, that's still where they were based. The next campaign I am running is the Skullport Campaign, way on the other side of Faerun from Mistledale.
How do other DMs on the boards here decide to go about naming their campaigns? I really like having a good name for the campaign, rather than just having my players put my name under the "campaign" section of their character sheets.
I always called my campaigns according to the region in which they took place, with the region's name somehow indicating the nature of the campaign. For example, "The Tundra" was (and still is) a campaign that took place in the far, far north and dealt with a war against evil monks and frost giants.
My newest campaign is called Orcs! however, as the main concept of the campaign is "let's play a bunch of run-of-the-mill Orcs".A good method of naming a campaign, BTW, is simply letting the players name it after a few sessions. It's also a good method pf assigning alignment, but that's a subject for another thread...
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The problem with geographical regions is that I frequently run campaigns in the same large country of my homebrew, which would end up with about five different campaigns named "Merethil Campaign."
It's easy enough to name the campaign after a smaller area than a kingdom, though. You can choose a duchy, or a city, or a mountain range, or a river, or a lake. The campaign need not spend its entire run in an area to use the name.
Another source is phrases from or allusions to literature. You can use the Bible (the King James edition is perhaps the most lyrical): "Through the Eye of the Needle", "Thirty Pieces of Silver", "Two by Two". Or you could go to Shakespeare: "Against a Sea of Troubles" or "Sound and Fury", for instance. Or you can try phrases from songs: "Take on the World Someday" or "I Will Lay Me Down".
There can be a delicate balance between setting the right tone and giving away too much information, though. If you call a campaign "Thirty Pieces of Silver", your players are likely to expect epic betrayal. If that's intended to be a big moment in the campaign, the name may spoil the impact.
I just started naming my campaigns. In the past, they either were nameless, or were named after the campaign setting, sometimes followed by the region and date where the campaign began.
My current campaign is called "The Raven and the Hawk." It is currently set in Greyhawk, but a significant part of the campaign (leading up to some climactic events) will take place in Ravenloft. Since most of my players are relatively new to D&D and TSR/WotC campaign worlds, the title is cryptic enough that it doesn't really give anything way. The campaign is divided into "books", "chapters", and "episodes" (i.e., adventures). While I have a general idea where I would like the campaign to go (and hence what the final chapter/book will be), very few of the books, chapters and episodes between the beginning and the end are pre-determined from the start, with the exception of the first book/chapter. Even though I have general goals for the campaign (e.g., by level 4-5 they should have played "Against the Cult of the Reptile God," and shortly thereafter they should begin their stint in Ravenloft), it must remain flexible enough that the players can influence its direction and not feel rail-roaded. Sometimes, a certain chapter or episode will need to be delayed or moved forward (or completely cut or rethought), as circumstances warrant.
I either name books, chapters, and episodes in a way that provides some colour and foreshadowing without giving away major plot elements (but just enough to get the players excited), or in a few rare instances I will give them the name of the episode after they have completed the adventure.
I find that naming a campaign and dividing it into books, chapters, and episodes gives it a more cinematic feel, and gives it more direction and concrete goals. I now prepare elaborate Powerpoint presentations complete with music, landscape photos, fantasy art, maps and historical/societal/political background info. It's been working so far, and my players have enjoyed the approach (two of the players told the third, who DMs a Dragonlance campaign for us: "You've got a lot to live up to!")... but we've only just completed Episode 1 ("The Burning Plague"), of Book 1/Chapter 1 ("Gran March, Coldeven, 575 CY"/"Mercy in the March")! I'm thinking of beginning each new chapter (which I expect will correspond to each level gained) with a brief Powerpoint presentation outlining "the story thus far," kind of like the way the Star Wars flicks begin. It's also a great way to refresh their memories, to make them reflect on their accomplishments and influence in the world around them, and to put the various pieces of the broader campaign puzzle together.
I hope that helps!
Never actually officially named any of my campaigns. Usually it's defined by the setting, the Rokugan campaign, the Forgotten Realms campaign. My players are smart alecks, though, and have titled some of my campaigns "Liz's Eternal Funhouse of Doom and Torture." :D
The players usually come up with the best names - let the campaign roll for a few sessions, then you should be able to define the campaign beyond just the setting.
Ours also tend to emerge over time; one that I named was "To Sway the Stones", but the metaphor was never really uncovered, so I'm not sure it really had an effect. The next one I named was "In the Face of Darkness", but it exploded before the PCs really engaged with the Darkness.
I've named a few of the ones I've played it, but really, naming by region would work just about as well.
I don't usually give the campaign a name until after it's been going for long enough that I know where it's going. If I'm lucky enough to have been able to plan it out all in advance, then I'd be able to come up with a clever name that becomes meaningful partway through.
One such successful campaign of mine was called The Rynwold Pantheon. Rynwold was the name of the setting, a world in a pocket plane created to contain an ancient celestial war and keep it - and the only god who refused to sign the peace treaty - away from the rest of the multiverse.
In this world, the Rynwold Pantheon is the name given to the ubiquitous holy book that chronicles the tales of the men of ages past, and is used almost all people and churches in the world as a guide on how to live. The player characters unexpectedly find a page from an ancient copy of this book, thinking little of it until they bring it back to their church and divinations reveal that this is no copy - this is a page of the original manuscript! What's more, it proves something that had long been suspected; the modern copies are imperfect translations of the original, with the truth distorted deliberately or accidentally during the cosmic war.
Combined, the book is a powerful artifact capable of unseating the gods themselves - the Rynwold Pantheon literally holds the power of Rynwold's pantheon. The Churches of Light, an alliance of the nonevil deities, suddenly realise that they must find and assemble the rest of the book before the minions of the secretive evil deities manage it first - and the evil guys have a substantial head start.
As described in the Pantheon, the god of shadow, trickery and deceit never signed the treaty of non-interference, or at least, through loopholes, is free to walk the land in certain circumstances as long as he doesn't harm any non-divine beings. Of course, what the player characters have to worry about is that the more pages of the Pantheon they hold, the more divine they become, and the more the deity can affect them, until, when they have finally pieced together the entire book and they are as powerful as gods themselves, he intends to take it from them in a final battle and use it to bind the gods by their own doing, casting the world into a cliched darkness...
Hum, I seem to have rambled... Basically, the point is that it's both the name of the book that forms the focus of the campaign, both literally (they search for it) and figuratively (the player chracters work for one or more of the churches); the name also referes to the deities of the campaign, who play an important role.
Hey i'm new...
This threas sounded interesting so i thought i might comment... though i may get flamed and called noob for the rest of my life :)...
The campaign world i'm running with a bunch of my mates is called Htrae (bragging rights to whomever guesses why it's called that) and all the locations are really odd names (ike Otnim, and Mount Tsereve) but yeah, mostly i like naming my little mini campaigns things directly connected to the final encounter. Like the one on my mates are currently stuck on (he he he) is called 'Dragon's Tooth and Vampire Fang' (both the same thing strangely)
Later Days
Can't fool you guys :)
Granted the people i live around had absolutely no idea why i'd call it that lol :)
Later Days
Theleb K'aarna, Mordenkainen, Thoth Amon... I used to throw a weird wizard name at people and wait til they figured it out...
Yob Dratsab chuckles madly...you won't survive my FIREBALL, worms!!!
And here for a second I thought you were just trying to cast spells like Zatana from Justice League . . .
Lol, been running my campaign for, hmm, 26 years and never named it. Different story arcs or chapters if you will have had names, but only so players and myself can refer back to what happened and what gear if any was aquired and any abilities of said items. I have never known anyone who named a thier own campain; is kinda a premade world/dungeon crawl thing I have always thought was just a marketing tool so that people in general wouldn't confuse with other marketed campaigns; nobody who has played in my homegrown campaign could ever mistake it for something else and as it is unique; it needs no name. Names are given to things that are common or to be reproduced; names give the namer power over the item and possibly legal benifits, and may cause dread in younger players, hehe, but names of dreaded npc's are more my style.
I suppose if I HAD to name my campaign; it would be "a tribute to Kansas" but that just doesnt have any ring to it; but I wrote and designed the entire framework of the epic story and adventure line having drawn inspiration from three Kansas albums. I believe that several of my players know this and if they bothered to listen to songs like the Tempest, or Closet Chronicals, they would have gained a much better idea of what is going on in overall terms much easier. Hence, having a main theme and protagonist is much more helpful to a gm running a campain world than a name for it.
1980
Now from my players view; it would be more like; in the beginning: Ah;a fresh new world, lets look around.
then, Something fishy is going on....
then, Waddaya mean there was a army to the north and it dissappeared.
then, There's a underwhat under the what?
then, Are you serious; this prophesy is real; grap the shard; quick.
then, who turned out the lights and why can't I heal or Undead go bump in the day and night.
then, The day evil won most of the world or better living through betrayal or so thats where the bad guy army went.
then, some bad guys draft a some bad guys to help the good guys fight the bad guys cause homey dont play with demons.
then, hey, don't worry about that floating skull; its just a rock that like to smoke halfling smokeweed; he dont mean nuthing by it; jsut ignore him 0r return of the really old, pissed off elf.
then, something smells fishy,
then, hmm, the fish have tenticles,
then, hmm somebody needs to do something about all them big golems,
then, hmm, not to many humans left; or hey, we are in the army now,
then, oh! explitive; here come the elfs - all of them or whaddaya mean our little evil pc cleric/assassin did in the Lord Marshal of the elven military and captured his spirit.
then, waddaya mean the devil are on our side?
then, oh (something runs down you leg)! Cuthulu is behind all of it and half the gods are dead; bend over and kiss it good buy fellas; or anybody got any good ideas on how to fix this?
then, advice from everyone or time to sneak up far north for a breather. (current spot)todays date.
I guess I don't really run mine like a campaign. I run my world more like a Comic book or a Soap Opera. I give it a name based on the world it takes place in, but it's been one long continuous story for the last 17 yrs. (About 150 yrs has gone by in game terms). It helps that I have one player who was on the first game that I ran in my newly created world still playing today (When he can, he lives over an hour away.)
Hmm pull names similar to authors writing books. Something generic or placeholder maybe until you come up with a good name. For instance: Greyhawk Vista, v3.5 compatable doesn't work. "Fun with Tentacles" won't either unless it's a really really weird campaign.