RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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I was just interested to see if anyone else bothers to name their campaigns. I know I do mostly because I like having a captivating title (and usually one which might offer a bit of foreshadowing or define an overall theme). Not only that but, since my group tends to run more than one game at a time, titles help us differentiate between them. Sure, if the DMs are different, you can just say "Steve's game" or "Joe's game" but when the same DM is running 2, 3, or even 4 games at the same time, you need to find a way to tell them apart. Campaign names are perfect for that.
So yeah, anyone else do it? If so, what are the names of the campaigns you're currently playing in? If not, any particular reason why you don't feel like naming them?
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So yeah, anyone else do it? If so, what are the names of the campaigns you're currently playing in? If not, any particular reason why you don't feel like naming them?
My current world/campaign is the "First Home of Men and Elves," or simply "First Home." Now that you mention it, I don't know if my players know that or not.
Tom
I’m currently planning a Greyhawk campaign with a working title of “When White Hands Speaks.” Its going to put the characters into the center of a struggle between the Orc pantheon and the Earth Dragon for control of the Pomarj orcs, with the struggle ultimately centering on an artifact called The Voice of White Hands. I hope to have the campaign make stops in Esmerin, Csipros Erd, the ruins of an orc city deep under the Lortmils now infested with undead, and a Derro city allied with the Earth Dragon. Still early yet, and the players choices and early feedback can alter quite a bit of that so I’m trying not to script it too much, but that’s what I have in mind.
I tend to only name my campaigns after they have finished*, although I often name indivisual adventures with in a campaign at the time I am devising it.
*Unless the campaign is designed at the outset to be very short, in which case I will name it ahead of time.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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I'm currently running two play-by-post games that I have named. The first one, "Fade to Black," is named such because the party members are all evil alignment and attempting to battle other evil forces for their own gain. No matter the outcome of the conflict, evil wins.
My other one, "Echoes of Eternity," I can't really say much about since my players might read it. It's relevant though, I assure you.
Recent pen-and-paper campaigns I've run have included the following:
- "Frozen Lies" eventually became known by my players as simply 'the Neverwinter game' because of the city that featured most prominently in it but the overarching plot involved two evil deities seeking a hidden vault of knowledge in the vicinity of the PCs home town (Neverwinter). The two deities were the Goddess of Winter (Auril) and the Prince of Lies and Murder (Cyric).
- "The Plague" was pretty straightforward. A lich had devised an insidious necromantic plague and used mind-controlling magics to command a small group of children bearing the disease to throw themselves into the wells of a major city and infect the populace. Infected persons died within a week and were summarily raised as uncontrolled zombies.
- "The Twisted Rune" revolved around a cult who worshipped an ancient red dragon that had attained a deific status by discovering a way to consume the power of several lesser deities. The 'rune' in question was discovered to be the holy symbol of one such fallen god, horribly twisted and altered by the cult to serve as their 'new' god's holy symbol.
That's really all I've got for now. Keep 'em coming though! I'd like to hear the titles that others come up with.
My favorite campaign was named after the name of our adventuring company in the FR: Companions of the Crescent Moon.
My AP campaigns, I just use the AP name.
The Silver Coast was my previous homebrew campaign, but it was scattered and not very unified, so it was mostly just a setting for a basic core-world campaign.
And The Splendor of Heaven is the name of a campaign I'm still working on and haven't run yet. That one will take some major house rules, home brewed classes, and probably new magic systems in order to capture what I want. It's a very specific vision that isn't really reflected in the core rules or standard SRD rules.
The summer game I'm running is called War of the Blood Dragon, which has nothing to do with the draconic and everything to do with a hobgoblin army named the Blood Dragon, two soldiers of which my party has already tangled with.
I love naming campaigns and always do so. My players almost never ask/know/care, but I like it. :)
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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I love naming campaigns and always do so. My players almost never ask/know/care, but I like it. :)
I feel the same way. Most of the time, my players will create their own names for the campaigns, usually referring to them as "The X Game" where X is the central NPC, city, god, artifact, etc. to the plot. Then we get things like "The Neverwinter Game," "The Plague Game," "The Underdark Game," and "The Dragon God Game."
*sigh*
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Contributor
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I feel the same way. Most of the time, my players will create their own names for the campaigns, usually referring to them as "The X Game" where X is the central NPC, city, god, artifact, etc. to the plot. Then we get things like "The Neverwinter Game," "The Plague Game," "The Underdark Game," and "The Dragon God Game."
I refer to a campaign's name if the DM bothers to tell me. Thus I'm in Erik's Age of Worms campaign and Jason's Eberron Campaign—guess which DM told me the name of his game? ;)
The campaign I'm running now is, in theory, the first of many set in my "homebrew" real-world setting. So I stole an idea from Star Wars and have an umbrella name for my theoretical saga (Warmakers) and a specific name for this particular campaign (The First Wave). My players at least call my campaign Warmakers, which in my mind is a billion times better than "Mike's D&D game." :D
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I tend to name my campaigns and let the players know about it.
The first name I can recall was actually a series of Greyhawk campaigns called The Hero Kin Trilogy. Though we never finished the whole saga the idea behind it was each player would play a descendant or relative of a character in the first campaign. One of the important themes was "sins of the former generation" being visited on subsequent family members. The first part,called The Prelude to War or The Honor of Verbobonc, dealt with clones of the long dead wizard Acererak pulling strings to bring about the Greyhawk Wars. The second part took place after the war and dealt with a pact the first generation characters made with a green dragon. She came calling at the door of the "second generation". We never made it to the third part.
A few others off the top of my head Fall of the Flanaess (Greyhawk again), Beneath the Pillars of the Earth (homebrew setting), Rise of the Devourer Wyrm (homebrew setting), and our current Ptolus game, Servants of the Shard
I feel a name, either good or bad, really makes the campaign stick out in the character's memory.
Most of the campaigns our group has going right now (or has done) are published ones, so they're named (Age of Worms, Shackled City, War of the Burning Sky, etc.).
Our current homebrew campaigns are "King of Sutter" and its spin-off "Tale of Sutter," and a new one called "Trust in Sharn."
In the past I have run "Lankhmar Nights" and "Pawns of the Zulkir," and played in "Crimson Reckoning," "Shadows of the North," and "The Broken Circle."
Naming campaigns makes it a lot easier to keep track of them, and makes them seem more like real stories rather than "just a game."
Mine is very simple - "Caravan." The gist is the party is attached to a caravan that is traveling from Waterdeep to Kara-Tur and back.
Typically when I've played, however, there was no all-encompassing campaign, it was usually, "hey, this looks like a neat adventure, let's play that!"
Because I use a consistent homebrew and have for so many years my campaigns almost always have names simply because the players need to call them something when metagaming during the current campaign. So I get stuff from my players like
"Whoa, Hold up Ange, I think this is the ruins of the Spottle Parlour! Dave, Remember in the Black Mace campaign when we burnt the hobgoblins out of the Spottle Parlour? I think these guys in the ruin are part of the same tribe. Umm, wasn't there something about them having weird fire arrows? I think we should cast protection from energy before messing with these guys".
However I think the current campaign Shattered Empire is the only one I've tried to name before the campaign started and I'm not at all sure that my name will stick. If one of the players happens to christen it something else at a later date I doubt something as minor as my having an 'official name' will dissuade them from using whatever annoying name they have come up with.
I don't name campaigns as such but sometimes they get other name than DM's World campaign...like if campaign is centered around one location or person, that name becomes campaign name, sometimes with bit more explanation (Ravnovesie campaign, Vampires in London campaign...). Or if I am the player, I can refer to a campaign with my character's name.
A lot of it depends on if it's a published or homebrew campaign. For a published campaign, "{DM's} {published name}" is the most common, since it's simple. For a homebrew, either the campaign is named for the region the adventures take place in (for an organic/serial campaign, where everything builds on what happened in previous sessions) or it's named for the central theme or main foe (for a campaign where I develop an overarching plot, like an adventure path).
I ran a campaign entitled The Rynwold Pantheon, set in a prime material plane named Rynwold. The campaign name is a double meaning: it refers both to the gods of the world, as well as a holy book. The players find a page from the original manuscript of this book - from before the Time of Demons, when mankind hid underground and the powerful churches led factions that warred against each other, gradually developing their own versions of that holy text until the original, written by the gods, was lost forever. Now, the very pages themselves each hold a divine spark, and anyone who collects the Rynwold Pantheon would wield the power of the gods themselves. The players, minions of one or more of the churches, must collect the pages before they fall into the wrong hands.
(Feel free to use this for your own campaign, anybody. I'd be interested to hear how your interpretation of the setting turns out.)
Really, though, campaign names aren't that important unless you plan on publishing your work.
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Usually the campaigns amongst our gaming group are known by the DM's name (eg, "Mick's Game") or the campaign setting (eg, "The Ravenloft Campaign").
In recent years, I've taken to naming my campaigns, although I can't say the names are terribly original. Oh, and as one of the games I'm running is the Shackled City adventure path, the campaign name is done for me there! Currently I've got my Shattered Empire campaign (no relation to Jeremy MacDonald's game of the same name I don't think!) and my Age of Darkness play by post game.
All the Time- Half the time I make cool logos for them
Darkest Days (for Werewolf)
King of Crimson (Werewolf)
Bearers of Fate (Greyhawk)
Favored of Fortune (OA d20 Greyhawk)
Lost Souls (Greyhawk)
Clandestian Crusade (Mortals WOD)