This is for a couple of reasons.  The first is that whenever you ask D/D players to stat themselves out, invariably everybody is above average.  Intelligence, wisdom, and charisma are especially touchy subjects, and everybody considers themselves smarter than the average Joe (although if everyone is above average than you just have a new definition of average).  

Secondly I want to create a fish out of water, stranger in a strange land sort of feeling.  I want to give the players motivation to find out what happened and figure out how to get home.  If you've ever watched or read the Chronicles of Narnia and thought to yourself "Being a hero of a fantasy world is a lot better than my nine to five job", then you understand why I wanted to give them a little more of a sense of urgency.

There are various quizzes online to determine what race or class you would be in D/D.  I had them take a couple to get an idea and then choose which race and class would be the best fit for their personality.  I ended up with a party of:

Half elf cleric

Half elf rogue

Human warlock

Dwarf fighter

Half-orc wizard

So they have all their bases covered but I threw in one more curveball.  The gender of their new bodies was randomly determined by a roll of the dice.  So now this may be the first party I've seen where female characters (half elves and human) out number the male characters.  (The human was already female on Earth, but the two half-elves are certainly in for a surprise!)

It will be interesting to see where the characters take this.  Roleplaying yourself is easy.  Roleplaying a character is somewhat easy.  Roleplaying a version of yourself that's how you would be in a strange body and a strange land...That should be tricky, but entertaining for me to watch.  

What are your thoughts on campaigns like this? Have you ever tried one, and was it successful?  What role do you think race and gender should play on a personality, and how much will a change in either influence their characters?  Quite the little experiment!

Ever since I came across an old red paperback called "The Complete Book of Elves", I've been in love with the concept of the race.  That was the book that introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons, before I even knew what a Player's Handbook was.  I loved the otherworldliness of elves, their close ties with nature, their psychology and customs.  

I defended elves against the common complaints.  "They're supposed to be really rare and mysterious but they're so common and everyone wants to play on".  "They're good at everything. They're too good." "They don't make any sense.  They are supposed to love life but they're also the best at killing everything with bow and sword."  

As 3rd edition came out, and then 3.5, some of these issues were addressed.  Elves became mechanically not as good, so that more people would want to play humans.  Though now they didn't make sense in other ways (favored class: Wizard, even though +2 dex -2 con doesn't exactly scream spellcaster in 3e.  You're the best bow user in the land, unless you're a ranger or a fighter, in which case your automatic weapon proficiency with bows just means you're as good as a halfling ranger with one).  Storywise, elves still suffered from 'I'm the best at everything' syndrome, being the world's premier practitioners of arcane magic...oh and also druidic nature magic.  They love libraries and old tomes, but also they love forests and the wild outdoors.  

This isn't even addressing the biggest problem with elves...they were not only too common, but they were more varied than humans! Wood elves, wild elves, dark elves, drow, sea elves, winged elves....not counting the campaign specific subraces, of which every new campaign felt obligated to include a handful.  Sun elves, moon elves, gold elves...all the assorted 'nestis' of Dragonlance..

Then 4e came out and from the moment I read the preview book "Races and Classes", I breathed a sigh of relief.  They made elves make sense again!  They managed to take the two common archetypes of elf  : "Bladewielding Master of Fey, Arcane Magic" and "Archer Guardian of Nature" and make two races out of them: the eladrin and the elf.   Elves weren't bipolar anymore...they no longer had a culture that was really two almost antithetical cultures blended into one.  They had put a lot of the otherworldly fey mystery back into the race with their connection to the feywild.  Gone were the subraces that seemingly evolved to fit every conceivable climate on the planet (I swear I think there were desert elves and snow elves somewhere).  Finally the race made sense and even the staunchest anti-elf players in my group had to admit that they liked them as a race now.

So you can understand my trepidation when I saw the words 'Dusk Elves' at the top of my wizards.com article page... After reading the article, I am relieved to find that they are not adding another subrace mechanically, except by using feats the way they did in 4e Forgotten Realms.  The backstory is somewhat interesting and, though they seemed like 'emo elves' to me, I can see how some people who enjoy playing the 'mysterious loner' characters could have fun with it.  What they can do with shadows seems very fun, and I can see dusk elf assassins becoming all the rage.  

However, I hope this isn't the beginning of a trend.  They cleaned out all the trash bringing the elf races down to two (four if you count half elves and drow).  I don't want to get to a point again where there are more kinds of elf races in the game than all the non elf races put together.

When it comes to elves, the K.I.S.S. principle applies.  And speaking of that, according to Penny Arcade, its not gay if you kiss an elf.  That's a rule.

-Elwen

So I decided one of the story threads will be about a once powerful kingdom on the decline (very points of light theme) with an aged king whose son and only heir was recently killed in some sort of...something.  Border skirmish? Freak accident? I haven't decided yet.  I want the majority of my 'villains' in the campaign to not be cookie cutter evil, that is to say, to have intentions that may be good but are twisted and eventually make them into villains.  I'm thinking the king, desperate to preserve his dynasty and keep the kingdom from civil war, is going to go over the deep end a little at the death of his son and start turning an ear to people he would have never given any thought to before.

Enter the Cult of the Undying, (or maybe a less evil sounding name...).  They're gaining popularity in a kingdom on the decline, especially among the poorer classes who are desperate for hope.  They promise eternal life to their faithful, and their recruits are growing daily.  The king will make some sort of deal with them that will put him into the villain role for this story thread.  Maybe he'll become a lich or be a pawn of one.. Again lots of details to iron out.

But for the first adventure, the heroes will be asked to investigate grave robbing, they'll eventually find a way to catch them in the act (skill challenge here?) .

What follows is a delve style adventure.  I still need to design the maps but here's the rough notes (minus statblocks and other copyrighty stuff)

Encounter 1

To begin, I wanted to try a system I read about on the Critical Hits blog  (www.critical-hits.com/2009/06/02/the-5x5... ).  Because I want my campaign to be character driven, each of the five major storylines on the grid will be based around a character, highlighting his or her backstory, goals, family, or something along those lines.  Basically its a quest designed for the character, to put her in the spotlight.  Then, using the system described on the Critical Hits blog, I will weave the threads of the story together in order to make an overarching story!  (The Radio Free Homlett podcast talks about this idea too, so if you want some examples of how this could work, check out their latest episode at www.d20radio.com!)

There are a couple of downsides to this.  For one, I will need fleshed out, detailed and deep characters from the players, which means they will need to put a little more work into it than simply selecting background: Auspicious Birth and printing up a character sheet.  Of course, if they actually do this, I think they'll end up more attached to the characters and therefore enjoy the campaign, so it should improve the game if they'll actually do it.

The second problem is that the players I play with can sometimes be a little flakey.  If someone misses a few sessions and those days are the days I had the storyline focused around their character, it could be very bad.

Other than that, I'm excited to try to make it come together.  I have several months before I'll be returning to the States, so I have plenty of time to brainstorm and plan.  And with the Monster Designer in one hand and the Encounter Builder in the other, I'm having a good time writing up the level one adventure to start it off!  What used to be a chore is actually a lot of fun with DDI...  In fact, 4e, even without the electronic tools, has made DMing a lot more enjoyable even in the planning stages.  But that's a topic for another post.  

Wish me luck!

-Elwen