#RPGaDay2024 - 21 - Classic Campaign

[Dom]

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This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)​

Q. Classic Campaign?

A. The Darkening of Mirkwood for The One Ring RPG

My immediate thought went to Twilight’s Peak for Traveller, which I’ve mentioned in previous years. However, I think this is asking something different.

I’m tempted to answer Black Sword / Stealer of Souls for Stormbringer, which I’ve run twice and loved both times, but instead I’m going to go with something that I’ve played rather than GMed or just read.

Shortlist then;

Albion’s Ransom for Esoterrorists. Set in the North of the UK and Scotland mainly, this is an epic campaign of modern horror using the Gumshoe system made all the more real by the familiar locations.

Eternal Lies for Trail of Cthulhu. I have read this (way back when it first came out) and I’m playing it right now. This is creepy, evocative and scary and I find it a level about Masks of Nyarlathotep, which was my previous favourite Cthulhu-based campaign. Impossible Lies for Delta Green is the only campaign I’ve read that potentially rivals this. Part of the reason I’m enjoying it so much may be because we’ve a duo of players, but the writing and atmosphere is really strong in Eternal Lies. I talk a bit about it here.

The Dracula Dossier for Night’s Black Agents is more of a campaign frame than a campaign, but my experience of it was superb. Spies and vampires across Europe and one of the biggest player handouts ever. Fantastic.

The Darkening of Mirkwood for The One Ring. This was fantastic. Tolkien - and especially the Hobbit - was one of my early influences and the chance to play an epic campaign around Mirkwood was fantastic. We faced Nazgûl, Giant Spiders, Orcs and men corrupted by greed or the evil of the Necromancer. We nearly died crossing the wastelands of what was Angmar and met Beorn. Altogether epic and fantastic. It is such a same that this campaign is now out of print because of the change of publisher. I can’t believe that it’s five years since we completed that campaign. Anyway, the link here will take you to various One Ring related posts including some snapshots from the campaign.

So what do I choose?

I’m going to go with The Darkening of Mirkwood, if only because we’ve played all the way through it (and Eternal Lies is only half way through), but it was very, very close.

21 August 2024

PS I did consider adding in The Yellow King to this list, but we’re still very much up in the air on this and have only played through two periods of the game. I hope we get back to this again too!

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[Guvnor]

This one is tricky.
So many great campaigns I have played and run have been GM brewed.
So the House Barolo campaign that @Neil Gow ran with ASOIF in Westeros is right up there, maybe number 1.
Others have been a blend: such as many that @First Age has delivered and is building with Trudbane (Dragonbane running of Trudbane campaigns with some system crossover).
(Symbaroum’s) The Throne of Thorns campaign, again run by @Neil Gow, same players, was sooo excellent and right next to House Barolo, jostling for first place.
Curse of Strahd (D&D5e), as run by @Dom, was a classic published campaign, and even though he did a mountain of work calibrating it, is a "published campaign".
My own? As I may have said, I consider Pirates of Drinax (Traveller) as wonderful and also deeply flawed, a sandbox masquerading as a campaign. I really enjoyed it both times I ran it, and I suspect I'll be running all the bits left until I die. Shout out to @Sablemage, who seems to feel the same.
It's been a while and I talk about it less, but I loved running Secrets of the Ancients (Traveller) and I do think it is a classic and awesome piece of space opera.
But for me the twin strand campaign I really think delivered long form mossy Georgian fantasy with psychotropics was Dolmenwood which was published as B/X D&D in the Wyrmskin magazine and I ran it with D&D 5e. Wonderfully esoteric, sandbox, great players who really built characters and story arcs. There is no Dolmenwood campaign as such, so that's down as home brew from a sandbox.

So, bearing in mind I will have forgotten some, I think it's

As a GM, drum roll, Dolmenwood.
As a player, Throne of Thorns tied with Curse of Strahd.