Little discussion focused on how you put groups together and what methods you use for party creation.
I currently run two games. The first is a weekly game that runs Monday nights for about three hours a session and has six players. It can be found here:
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/the-age-of-kings
The second will be starting up in January and will run every other saturday for about six to eight hours a session. Its looking like it will have four players, my fourteen year old daughter being one of them. It can be found here:
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/caer-twyn-age-of-kings
The second one is not really fleshed out yet on the Obsidian Portal.
Both are set in a homebrew world that I created a few years back. The second group is actually going to be playtesting an adventure path that I have written that I would like to have published somewhere someday.
It's basically dark ages inspired and low-fantasy, pulling from sources like Lord of the Rings, Conan, and Game of Thrones.
I am restricting most content to the core rulebook though other things may be considered at my discretion, provided I don't see it busting the campaign balance and making super-hero characters (we just came out of 4th edition. I played 3/3.5 since the beginning from 2000 - 2008 so this is our first foray back into the old system)
To encourage backgrounds and what not, the game defaults to the 10-point buy system, and any players who submit a 1000 word bio get to use the 15-point buy system. Also players who add a 500 word journal entry to the Obsidian Portal get a 10% xp bonus at the next session.
The Monday group is fairly diverse. Six player, and it's split three ways in style.
The Saturday group has some overlap with the monday group (some players in both) and has more roleplaying elements, as opposed to the monday group which contains a lot of hack and slash combat players.
I use facebook to help recruit from my friends list, and Obsidian Portal to keep track of what is going on.
I have a lot more maps at http://dnd.chrisnye.net though that site's content is overall outdated and from the last 4e campaign.
Discuss your campaigns =)
I'm running carrion crown and using Obsidian portal to help keep track of things (won't post link cuz I think that might breach forum)
I go to university so what normally ends up happening is that one person says "I wanna do X, who's with me?" Logistics are then finalized, and boom Campaign starts. So far they've been weekly meet ups.
Provos -> I used to use Fantasy Grounds =) I ran two online campaigns with buddies from the army that I hadn't seen in a while plus some guys from the WOTC boards. It was great fun.
My dnd.chrisnye.net website used to have the session logs and everything from those.
Thank you for the compliment I appreciate it.
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My group and I have been playing since 2006, usually once-twice a month because of distance and varying timetables, often due to other interests in life (we are all 35-40 years old).
We are currently running 2 APs (RotRL and Serpent Skull) alternately with 2 different GMs. Because of my great interest in med-fan japanese/asian environments, I have volunteered to GM Jade Regent.
I mostly use the common rules put down by the previous GMs (ie, 20 points-buy, mostly Paizo stuff and 3-rd party only if vetted by the DM) and have started outlining a few houserulings of my own on specific points that appeared while playing the other APs. I usually state these by saying "In Jade Regent, you should not expect such and such".
I tend to accompany my players' creation process quite strongly. I will take everything they give me about their character as input and ask more questions so that I can better understand the concept of their character and especially what they want to be good at, ie what they define as their character being successful. In doing so, we usually expand quite a bit on the character's background so that the whole concept makes sense, especially to them, and can easily be inserted in the AP.
Then, I will check if their proposed build fits their needs and I will use my optimizer's skill to try to improve it. I will also comb these boards in search of options/builds/advice which my players might be interested in, all the while respecting the concept they have in mind.
In the end, I hope to help them build a unique character who will have both an interesting background story and a build that helps him or her being really good at what the player envisioned, while still being able to be part of the whole party.
And then I give them hell.