Campains

To me it feels like storming the Covenant's Tower took longer than three sessions. Huh. That campaign was like a video game.

Hmm... maybe. Certainly, everyone was sick of it and each other by the last session. I had to plead with you guys to hang on and just finish the last fight, after school one day around ye olde dining room table.


What world was the slums campaign in?

That was its own world. Don't recall the name... there was a big country map, but you'll remember that the game fell apart when you guys left town. Great tight little construction, that, that worked well for Shadowrun too. Dave ripped it off wholesale for one or two of his games I believe.


Was Harold Reilly in Sarpagal?

Yeah, that was the beginning of the second Sarpagal game, with Sam and Harold Riley. I've got the entire Sarpagal Chronology. Shit, actually there were five Sarpagal games. I forgot about the short third campaign over summer 1999. But yeah, Harold was S2.


Was Linus Planck in Narbohring 9K?

I believe that was your guy in the third Avorgoine campaign... or no, wait, this was the first Sarpagal game. You played a mage in S1. He was a wannabe necromancer, broke into a house and stuff. This was in Boston: Jon P was definitely there, hating it the whole time.


In which campaign did we have the Big Boat Battle? -I recall playing Elliot Bosche then. Someone was in the water with a birdcage...

That was Narbohring 9000. You were working for the Archaeologists; one of their members was covertly trying to discover the secrets of viral magic. There was an invisible key hidden in the birdcage, if I recall. I forget the details- this all used to be written down somewhere- but two boats attacked your ship, just off the Skullgate harbor. Biggest body count of any single fight, excluding combats where massive spell effects killed lots of people (usually for storyline purposes, e.g., destruction of Barrowsreich by the Blackstaff).

Sort of an unwritten rule of my games: there's always a bad mage, working by himself, to uncover ancient secrets. He's almost always under-cover at some knowledge-based institution too. It's a deep psychological thing, why science/magic is ultimately bad and must be destroyed by brute force. God, how many movies, games, and stories have this as part of the plot?

N1: Baalphegor Pheng
N2: Garrison Bones
N9K: some dude

S1: Glasser
S2: Glasser, Amanda
S3: Thrave Nil
S4: one of the PCs (Doug's druid), Lady Jacqueline,
S5: one of the PCs (Jessica's bard), plus two NPCs: Rupert Smalls and Edrac Reeves

Sarpagal campaigns also always had a priest of Typhon as the PCs friend, the guy who would help move the plot along. Played sort of the same role, but in a more complex manner: the bad mage was actually the party healer, who was a nice guy and had magic item-filled adventures for the PCs to go on. Meanwhile, he was working on furthering the apocalypse, usually through whatever the PCs were doing. It was the most singularly successful plot mechanic I ever hit on.

Game masters, here ya go: 1) discourage PCs from playing clerics; 2) add a healer NPC to the party who's a nice guy and knows some ancient history; and 3) he's an awful villain. The key, the key damn it, is that his villainy isn't a surprise. The PCs know the guy's a demon worshipper. It's just that he's so damn friendly- not suave, just friendly- he's a middle aged fat Friar Tuck.