DnD 4e Spelljammer - SlaveShip (1.02 Ixnay on the Meeting in a Tavern Scenario)

We’ve been playing in our current campaign for many years, with no break, except for one excursion into a 3rd Edition modern campaign. But even that game started us out in Westron. So how could I get everyone to abandon their cherished PC’s and roll up new ones to go into space?

I was running a series of adventures that would bring the current batch of PC’s to Epic levels. It was very Cthulhu-centric, but I was relying on one player, who loved to role-play, to go along with the story and have his PC lead the others into each adventure. Well that didn’t go very well as the player decided he didn’t like how the story progressed and how it affected him. This pretty much shot down my whole idea of having the series be character driven. Although, I could easily have adjust the way the adventures were approached I decided to use it as an excuse to end the series and announce the Spelljammer adventures. To add more of an attraction to the new campaign I allowed everyone to create any race and any class they wanted. Everyone jumped at the opportunity to make their version of über characters.

I decided it would be nice if the players started out not owning the ship or even being in charge, but just serving on it. However, then I had to figure out why all of these different races were serving aboard the same ship. I could have just said they all met on the Rock of Bral or something like that, but that seemed kind of hokey, and I wanted to get away from the, “You meet in a tavern.”

I didn’t want this to be just another adventure. I had to find a way to engage all of the players. Coincidentally at this time I was starting to listen to podcasts, mostly ones from fans of TV shows, like Starkville’s House of El for Smallville, The 10th Wonder for Heroes and Galactic Watercooler for BSG. Searching around though I found The Offical D&D Podcast from Wizards of the Coast, and listened to all of those. But my ears weren’t satisfied. There had to be more good gaming podcasts besides listening to Penny Arcade and Wil Wheaton play D&D as Acquisitions Incorporated, which don’t get me wrong, is very entertaining, but it didn’t help with DMing.

I checked out The Tome Show, which was very good, but then I finally found one that helped me directly. It was called Return to Northmoor. It actually gave a walkthrough of how they decided to start a campaign from the ground up. They even had forms you could download from their website. After listening to the first few podcasts of Northmoor I started going to work on my Spelljammer Campaign.

Continued in the next Blog.....