Picking a New Campaign: Part II- What's Important

As covered in my last blog, we were picking from a number of possible campaign settings:

1. Ages of Middle Earth
2. Nephilim (pre-flood earth)
3. Hidden World (19th century up to the modern era)
4. Shadowrun
5. Year 1 (our re-imagination of silver age Marvel)
6. Morrow Project (cross off list as we just did)
7. Outreach (early sci-fi interstellar expansion)
8. Federation (original show star trek like setting)
9. Tri-Galaxy (wild sci-fi)

To end things before it begin we attempt to find out if we had any real consensus on what it should be. No such luck of course. After spinning our wheels a bit, we took a slightly different tack- define what was important to see in the next campaign and narrow things down to match.

It turned out to be a somewhat interesting list, both in what it was and in if actually influenced what we chose.

An overarching storyline like we had in the Morrow Project campaign, i.e. a planned end.

This was rather easy in any of the settings truth be told. It's really little more than defining a goal and the basic idea of what would be in the way. So, really no impact.

More niche for the characters.

This one took me a little by surprise. One of the players wanted a change from Morrow Project which featured an all military group using national weapons to a group of PCs with radically different backgrounds and 'weapons'. Now the Morrow Project campaign did have solid niches and roles for the characters (I doubt I could enjoy a game without them), so this call for even more niche, more to have those niches be more front and center.

This removed a number of possibilities. Outreach, Federation, and Tri-Galaxy were all intended to focus primarily on what were in effect military characters, armed with military arms. Something we just did.

Sure we could focus on a different aspect of the setting, but at this time there was little appeal to that. Do these were removed.

The more we consider this, it seem that in general it was the concept of production firearms and their like that was really the core of the objection. Colonel Colt made all men equal it seems :)

This dropped us back to the two fantasy periods where sword and sorcery were the rule of the day. Ages of Middle Earth or Nephilim.

A player's background will have influence

One of players has a degree in theology. The concept of linking pre-flood Biblical accounts to Middle Earth was something of draw. Roughly on par with my interesting in modern military history and weapons causing me to often be drawn to more modern settings.

This perhaps was the turning point that removed the Ages of Middle Earth from the running.

In the end, campaign choices are made by a small subset of the players

In over thirty years of gaming, I don't think I've ever seen a group where a majority of the players felt strongly about what they're playing. I don't mean they're uninterested, just that they are open to a wide range of options.

That was the case here. Everyone was involved in making the decision, and everyone pointed out advantages and disadvantages. But nearly everyone would have been happy with any of the choices before us. So the final selection came down mostly to the just one of the players.

Next, I'll spend some time detailing the new setting.