Friday, April 21, 2023

Not Yet Ultimate Campaigns

In yesterday's post, I talked briefly about the concept of an "ultimate campaign," a RPG campaign so good or so exhaustive in its scope and subject matter that it more or less forecloses the possibility of ever again returning to the game and/or game setting with which it was played. I used my ongoing House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign as an example of an ultimate campaign, but I also referenced the D&D 3e Planescape campaign I played from 2000 to 2004 as another. I could probably add a couple more to the list, like the AD&D 2e Forgotten Realms campaign I refereed throughout the 1990s, but, for the moment, I'm more interested in talking about games and game settings where I have not – yet – experienced an ultimate campaign but would very much like to do so:

  • Traveller: You'd have thought, given how often I've played this game and how well I know its rules and official setting, I'd have achieved an ultimate campaign by now and yet I have not. The closest I've ever come was, years ago, when I ran The Traveller Adventure to its conclusion. As satisfying as that experience was, it did not prevent my desire to referee (and play in) other Traveller campaigns. I wonder if, given the vastness of subject matter and setting, Traveller might not be susceptible to the creation of an ultimate campaign.
  • Call of Cthulhu: This is another game that I've played extensively over the decades and yet has never yielded an ultimate campaign. This one makes more sense to me, however. Since the game's release, Chaosium has regularly published extensive campaigns for use with CoC. The conclusion of almost any of them could, I would think, result in an ultimate campaign. In my own case, I've never managed to play any of these campaigns to their end, though I have used bits and pieces of them. I don't know if this is a failing unique to me and my gaming groups or if it's a common problem with Call of Cthulhu. Either way, an ultimate CoC campaign remains out of reach.
  • Pendragon: This one is wholly explicable. Since the game's release in 1985, I have participated in three excellent Pendragon campaigns, twice as referee and once as  player. In every case, the campaign ended before we reached the end of the death of Arthur, thereby depriving us of proper closure. I hope one day to get a fourth try, because Pendragon really deserves it.
  • Twilight: 2000: I'm currently refereeing a T2K campaign and have hopes that it might become an ultimate campaign. We've only been playing since December 2021, so it's too early to say whether we'll be successful. However, the campaign has good forward momentum, a solid collection of characters, and, perhaps most importantly, a dedicated group of players – all the necessary ingredients for an ultimate campaign. If we can keep this up, who knows where it'll lead?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, all of the games appear on my list of Top 10 non-D&D RPGs. They're the roleplaying games about which I think the most and thus about which I have the most flights of fancy regarding potential future campaigns. There are, of course, many other games with which I'd consider myself fortunate to experience an ultimate campaign – RuneQuest comes immediately to mind – but that I don't expect I ever will. At my age – I turn 54 in October – I no longer have an infinity of time to fill with RPGs, so I need to keep my expectations constrained. Mind you, even non-ultimate campaigns are fun, so it's not as if I'll only play a game I think will lead in that direction, though I try to keep my hopes high.

How about you? Are there any RPGs whose ultimate campaigns have eluded you? Are there any you'd like to get the chance to experience?

11 comments:

  1. What Call of Cthulhu I think has over most other RPG's is how many of the tales, written by Lovecraft and others were short stories and could easily be adapted as a scenario. Recently I watched Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosity adaptation of Henry Kuttner's "Graveyard Rats" and how well it could make for a fantastic gaming session.

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    1. I saw that episode. Well done, but the man was a little obsessed.

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    2. He had to be obsessed. Otherwise, he would never had gone into the tunnels.

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  2. Twilight:2000 may be my Ultimate Campaign, but I don't want it to be. I've ran several short campaigns of it, but the first one, ran in 1985-86 as the modules came out, might be my Ultimate Campaign. I've long wanted to run a long (non-convention) game of it again, this time not as a group of teenagers, but I doubt that will ever happen.

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  3. While I played or GMed quite a few campaigns, I'm wary of dubbing any of them as "Ultimate". On the other hand, there's a lot of games I'd love to try out, but "time is our tyrant"... as of right now I wouldn't mind running or playing a campaign of any of these games:
    Gamma World
    BASH or ICONS
    Advanced Fighting Fantasy
    Shadow of the Demon Lord
    Forbidden Lands

    Plus, I'm always up for some old school D&D or retro-clone

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    1. Advanced Fighting Fantasy yes! :-) 1st or 2nd edition?

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    2. Awesome! I'm doing #dungeon23 for AFF 2E on my blog: http://fantasygamebook.blogspot.com/

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  4. I'd like to take part as a player in a 3rd Age MERP campaign, where the party is the Fellowship. Not necessarily to do it as the books but from Rivendell with the same objectives.

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  5. I have never experienced an "Ultimate Campaign" as I have always discovered, or invented, something more. Fictional worlds are only limited by a lack of imagination. I hope that I will never find the finite edge of these worlds.

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