This post is a proposed Repository of Incompletely Systematised Campaign TYpes (or RISCTY - yes, I went there) for D&D and other fantasy tabletop RPGs.
What is an incompletely systematised campaign type? In essence, it is a campaign type which OSR and wider nerd game blogosphere luminaries have not yet managed to exhaustively flesh-out through elucidating general principles, providing generalised or specific advice, coming up with iterative methods for generating content, producing substantive gameable material, and so on. In practice, it is probably best understood in opposition to the quintessential Completely Systematised Campaign Type - the megadungeon. Thanks to the hard work and applied wisdom of generations of deep and serious thinkers, nobody in 2024 who has access to the internet and knows what the acronym 'OSR' stands ought to have any difficulty setting up and running such a campaign, and will find a vast wealth of content that will help him to do so - indeed, scientists say that the number of blog entries dedicated to the matter of successful megadungeon campaigning would wrap around the Earth fifty-thousand times if printed out on postage stamps laid back to back.
Other more or less Completely Systematised Campaign Types would include the sandbox hexmap 'Western Marches' style campaign (even if I still think nobody has really come up with a way to make wilderness travel evocative and interesting) and perhaps the urban, city-based type.
Incompletely Systematised Campaign Types that I think any sane person will at some point have entertained will include:
- The Lord of the Flies/Lost/Robinson Crusoe style campaign, in which the PCs are washed up ashore in some improbable spot without possessions of any kind.
- The underwater campaign, in which the PCs are inhabitants of an actual below-the-surface hexmapped region, or where most of the play takes place in such a setting.
- The saltbox campaign, in which sea travel, ship-to-ship combat, weather, trade, and so on are made the focus.
- The virtuous sandbox campaign, in which the PCs roam about doing good (although I have jotted down some ideas about this)
- The institutional campaign, in which the PCs have adventures in a narrowly-defined single location such as a monastery, university, cathedral, castle, etc.
- The murder-mystery investigation campaign, with bonus points if the mysteries involve the use of known D&D spells
Earlier today I was contemplating a campaign based around a medieval/Arthurian questing knight. There is overlap with virtuous sandbox but not completely, I think.
ReplyDeleteNoisms, I mean this with the deepest level of respect and in the kindest way possible when I say...What the devil are you going on about? Can you translate for me please? I feel like you might be on to something here if only I spoke whatever strange dialect this is written in.
ReplyDeleteFor example, are you saying people haven't run a 'saltbox' campaign? I feel like that's a fairly common occurrance, no? A Traveller campaign is that in space.
Do people not run virtuous heroes going from place to place doing good?
I've been in a Hogwarts themed game for the past 7 years now, where 90-95% of the adventures take place in and around the school. Does that qualify for the 'institutional campaign'?
I mean...would a campaign about being marooned on an alien planet and having to survive based solely on what you could salvage from your wrecked starship or scrounge up from the local environment count as one of these Incompletely Systematised Campaign Types?
Intrigued but confused.