Nooooo.  That way my friend lies madness and strife  

I remember a friend tried to start a Call of Cthulhu campaign like that (much more do-able in terms of the system's compatibility with 'modern' life), and we spent three whole sessions arguing about what stats and skills we all had/deserved.  In the end he canned it.

sleepyCO wrote: Turn your  town or area you live in into the D&D dungeon setting!  Imagine you are any setting D&D, etc. characters and then go through your regular life as if you were playing D&D.

Never tried that but back in the late 1980's one of the gm's in our area ran a short Palladium - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that was based in our city.

If I recall correctly, I played a mutant dog that hung out in strip clubs.  

sleepyCO wrote:My $.02 worth . . . has anyone ever tried running a campaign along these lines:  Turn your  town or area you live in into the D&D dungeon setting!  Imagine you are any setting D&D, etc. characters and then go through your regular life as if you were playing D&D.  (Example:  Try describing a bowling center as-is in D&D terms--it does bring a different perspective!)

In other words, instead of a module, game, CD/DVD, etc.  the setting is the area you live in . . . maybe in a different condition (alternate universe, some form of "post-apocalypse" setting where few if anyone lives in the area, or even a regular D&D campaign with the real area replacing the standard dungeon.  Does that make sense?

We set our 80s Villains and Vigilante's campaign in Texas, with both Dallas and Houston being the focal points. It was actually pretty fun to have superhero battles destroying parts of the city, or have villain hideouts in warehouses or abandoned office buildings nearby.....IIRC, my youngest brother's character lived in my apartment complex....!

Mike B.

Agent Cooper wrote:RE setting your campaign in your home town: Yes, I have done that, years ago in a Gamma World game, where it works very well.  I copied a RW map of our neighborhood and keyed up some encounters to it.  It was alot of fun.

FORMCRITIC:  RE the different interconnected worlds--That's really a great idea.  I may have to steal it from you!  It's time I did something new.  So far,  I've just stuck with Greyhawk, because I like the "feel" of it so much.  My group also plays 3rd Ed rules, but I'm an old school gamer at heart, and that's the feel and style of our game.  So, you know, Greyhawk feels like home.  

I think for my next campaign, I'd really like to do a Basic game set in Mystara.  Just for the nostalgia value.  We had good times there back in the day!

My own group (s) adventured in the World of Greyhawk from late 70s until Forgotten Realms was released...we wrapped up our latest Greyhawk Campaign in 1987 (the original campaign is still going sporadically at this time), and started in FR.  We adventured there until, in the late 90s, after about 20 years I finally gave world creation a try, and unveiled a campaign world I had been planning for quite a long time.  I started out very small, instead of giving the characters a gigantic breadth of things to do, places to go, adventures waiting to happen, etc I took their scale and focus down to the most basic point...

I gave them the village of Rotwood!

Rotwood was located on a small island in a larger chain with five main islands, and dozens of smaller ones.  I worked hard on that ONE island, only giving them bits and pieces of what life was like outside their small sphere of knowledge.  At first they were very, very skeptical, where was the magesty of Greyhawk or the Realms?  Where were the uber level NPCs, the grand foes, the secret deadly organizations, the sweep of history?  They were villagers stuck on a small, unimportant backwater swamp hole thousands of miles away from The League (the quasi medievel alliance of islands far to the west).  The village was known for reed baskets they wove for trade on the largest island in the chain, and growing a tough fiberous plant that was unappetizing but very nutritious.  I gave them a few minor rumors about the island, and a run down of what dangers existed on the island (there was one, a large owlbear that inhabited the forest, but if you didn't bother him he wouldn't bother you...).  Told them to go at it!
 At first they were surly, pissed, and uncooperative.  "This world sucks.  I wanna go back to the Realms.  Where is this world's Waterdeep?  I like the dwarves/elves/halflings the way they were in Greyhawk, not your way" and so on.  I told them to stick with it for one campaign, if they didn't like it, we'd go back to whatever canned world they preferred...
 Well, they started to get into the rhythm of finding out "Everything you know is wrong".  My campaign world had lots of different rules and ways of looking things. There were no horses on the island.  There was one mage, who you either learned spells from on not (no other source).  Lots of the spells they had enjoyed in the past while in GH or FR were either not on my world, or not in the possession of the old coot in the tower.  Elemental gods of earth, fire, water and air were far more important to people than gods of War, Knowledge and Thievery (the priestess of the water goddess had a lot of influence in the town; the priest of war, eh, not so much.....he didn't even have a proper shrine or temple to worship at!)
Following some rumors, they were eased into the U series (Rotwood became Saltmarsh), which they loved since they had last ran through it almost 20 years earlier, and then battling sahaughin and pirates, and in a year they had their own ship and were fighting slavers in the islands of the Shards hundreds of miles north!  We also ran through UK2 and a few others. The intermingling of some old favorites like the U and UK series with new stuff made them realize that great adventures aren't world specific, and were great adventures because they were good as written, not just because they were set on a certain world.  To this day, I always try to work in one classic old school adventure in per campaign (In that campaign it was the U-series; In Night Below campaign it was T1-4, in the jungle campaign it was I1)

The point being, there is now on my part always an urge to tighten the focus in my campaigns, get the adventuring down to the "basics", the lowest common denominator..."You start from here and you only have THIS much and only know THIS much".  Great events do happen, and characters do manage to rise up to a place of power.  But it's now harder, and the traditional paths and destinations are not open as much (How does a high level fighter in a island chain settle down?  Why, by clearing out a small island, building a fortress into the rocky side of a cliff, and having a small fleet of merchant ships...as one player had his character do.  Not traditional, but fun!)

While adventuring in GH or FR still has a certain appeal and tugging of nostalgia for me, I can't see myself ever going back.  I like having the total control for one.  Now, I don't have to allow any FR or GH racial stereotypes, classes, spells, monsters, history, etc to enter the games. Focus is just on the adventuring, and what you know about your current area and situation, and the grand tapestry of world events stays far out of reach, unless it intersects the world of the players in some way.  

Anyway, well Mark talks of how his players put up with him and his campaign worlds, I'm right there with him.  Sometimes it's hard to break the chains.  But once you do, it's just as fun.

Mike B.

sleepyCO wrote:My $.02 worth . . . has anyone ever tried running a campaign along these lines:  Turn your  town or area you live in into the D&D dungeon setting!  Imagine you are any setting D&D, etc. characters and then go through your regular life as if you were playing D&D.  (Example:  Try describing a bowling center as-is in D&D terms--it does bring a different perspective!)

In other words, instead of a module, game, CD/DVD, etc.  the setting is the area you live in . . . maybe in a different condition (alternate universe, some form of "post-apocalypse" setting where few if anyone lives in the area, or even a regular D&D campaign with the real area replacing the standard dungeon.  Does that make sense?

I remember this type of game (maybe based on CoC) was run at my local game shop in the 80's.

It was eventually canned due to it becoming too creepy (it creeped some of the players out due to the fact that some of their relatives were 'killed').

FormCritic wrote:Mike -

   I call a small, localized setting like Rotwood a "micro-campaign."  It forces the players to role-play because it keeps them in a smaller place where they have to take responsibility for what they do...as opposed to a continent-wide campaign where their characters are essentially bandits.

Micro-campaign....I like that.  Did you think that up Mark, or did you read it somewhere?  If you thought it up, I'd like permission to borrow the nomenclature the next time I describe one of my "microcampaigns" to an interested party....

Mike B.

And...droning on about Shadowrun in Seattle...

The cover of one of the supporting rule books (I believe it is the one that details the tribes surrounding Seattle) shows a beautiful shaman woman conjuring with a model of the Space Needle...which is getting hit by lightning in the distance.

The point of view in the picture is well known.  It is the view from one of several small parks on Queen Anne Hill, immediately adjacent to the downtown.  (If you see a shot of Seattle with the Space Needle prominently placed, it was almost certainly shot from there.  These parks are often used in shots for movies and TV shows set in Seattle.)

My point is....Queen Anne is hardly wilderness as depicted in the cover painting.  It is a community of high priced apartments and includes Seattle Pacific University just on the other side of the hill.  It is in the heart of Seattle, between the downtown and Ballard.

The same scene, shot from Bainbridge Island, with the Space Needle much smaller in the distance across Puget Sound, would make much more sense.  The FASA artist was clearly using tourist poster art from Seattle.  Shots of the Space Needle getting hit by lightning are common fodder for postcards and framed posters...photographed from Queen Anne Hill.

Now....there was also the time when the runners in my campaign shot it out with Native American terrorists called "The True People" at Point No Point Lighthouse, up in Hansville......

i always wanted to play a proper ran shadowrun game, but the guys were never that fussed to give it a shot.

Al

We did a Car Wars game set in Cleveland, Ohio (my hometown). It took me weeks to map out downtown on graph paper, but it was worth it to battle it out in familiar territory. CW was much of a role-playing game, even though it was promoted as such.

My gaming group did the exact same thing for our hometown of East Jordan, Mi ...look for the name on all fire hydrants, manhole covers and sewer grades.

Nothing like being 14 and spending the weekend vulcan machine-gunning your local hometown and it's residents.