Home Campaigns

Honestly, speaking as me I wouldn’t mind seeing a “Crusade!” book similar to Year of Ill Harvest and Year of the Fall. Pick a curated list of 5-10 adventures, XP them accordingly to get the player to Tier 1.10 by the end, and release it as a stand alone book while retiring all the adventures which went into the book from the website. It shouldn’t be TOO hard to ‘port’ them into that format, and it gives the people looking for a standalone storyarc something to chew on and get into the Living campaign.

Henry,

I am no expert and i haven’t done the research as you most likely have… i have to say i disagree with those ratios. Out of the 25+ odd gamer’s i know many of which are here playing Arcanis, they all buy the monster manual every time in every edition. Its the holy trinity of RPG gaming books.

DM or not. People like the illustrations they like reading about the things which maybe hiding in the bushes ready to waylay their characters when they go searching outside the abandoned castle…

Once a Players Guide and DM Guide come out the books i think that sell the best are the monster manuals… Pathfinder has made 5 or 6 Bestiary’s now… I have to think they sell very well for them to make that many. I suspect Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition will follow suit they have in the past i have the books on my shelves!

But like i have said i haven’t done the research. Its just what i really feel is missing right now. And i do hope that the new bestiary is a bigger better book with those monsters we are dying to know about which originate within your imagination!

~Tony

I don’t run a home campaign because I like your story of Arcanis better.

I run people through the 3.5 adventures using that rule set because I’m too lazy to convert it. I have a pool of 150+ modules that I could run people through with about a week of prep per module. Obviously some are more complex. I can take them to specific nations, cities, or through the epic world changing event you wrote. Some of my friends who have gone through the campaign before get to try new character builds, unlock new secrets, and lore they missed the last time, because they weren’t the right race or didn’t have the right abilities. And they still get surprised when I pull out a module they hadn’t played before.

Once we’re done going through everything, they now have the option to start again (maybe with that all Elorii table or that all Ss’ressen table) because I don’t reveal the secrets to my players when we finish a module. So my players aren’t sure of where everything they missed is located. OR continue to move forward with the A:RPG (which we play on opposing weekends). Even that campaign we are replaying the Crusade Arc, partly to help level up some newcomers to the table.

Starting to write up our own Arcanis adventures is last on the list when replaying and continuing with the new stuff is still available.

Now that’s not to say we’re against picking and choosing what we like every once in awhile. My wife is building an Elf campaign under the 3.5 rule set, and she grabbed the Elorii immediately, along with some choice feats, and all their base and prestige classes.

And whenever I look at a campaign of my own, “Lizardmen” are immediately filled in with the far superior Ss’ressen, and Dark-kin are selected as my “part Infernal humanoids.” And I’ll always grab some of the many prestige classes that were created in your books. The races and classes you helped build are much better then the material available in other source books, like compared to the Complete Series for example.

I don’t run Arcanis home games but I do pull from Arcanis books when I do come up with a home game idea.

We play Arcanis twice monthly (usually) and have been working through the crusader mods.

The other games I run is Earthsawn on alternate Thursday nights (started when 3.5 campaign finished) and Pathfinder 1 saturday a month.

There are two reasons why I don’t run a home campaign for Arcanis.

The first is time. I ram my own D&D world for 7 years before my last daughter was born. It was a lot or work. When I finished up that campaign, I started a new one, but soon dropped it as I could not keep up the prep time needed and move to a pathfinder adventure path. (Gave players choice or Arcanis, Pathfinder and Earthdawn. Majority wanted pathfinder)

The second is story. The story and the people (ie Henry and co) were the original reason I go into Arcanis. The story being provided is so rich and due to being in Australia we are not outpacing the writing.

But would I run as a home campaign is the chance arose? Yes I think I would.

I have been running the Arcanis Living Campaign (slightly modified to more individualize for the characters) for about a year and a half. We’re going to take a brief break to go back to the Firefly verse, and we plan to switch back and forth when I and the other GM need breaks.

Thanks, Ryan Wendling

I have actually ran a couple of home campaigns set in Arcanis. One was set in Ancient Ssethregore where the ‘heroes’ were servant/slaves of their Ssanu master.
That is actually really cool. I have always wanted to run a home game where the players start off as common folk/apprentices, and they have to find someone who will even agree to train them in the first place. One of the nice things about the ARPG system is that you could easily do this…at character creation you would simply skip certain steps, such as archetype and background.

In regards to Henry’s original question, I have never run an Arcanis home game. I would like to, but we lack a regular local group of players, and my time is so limited I find it difficult to play all of the published modules.

I could see some people being held back by the limited number of published beasties, but I have a hard time believing that it is a huge impediment. I’m sure we will see additional Beastiaries eventually, and I would be surprised if books such as the Ssethregore one don’t have some monster stats in it.

So if I understand Cody and Josh correctly, the living campaign itself is an impediment or a discouragement from running Home Campaigns?

What if there wasn’t a living campaign? Would you just stop playing Arcanis or would you start up your own game?

I’d quit.

Not to be dramatic, but …y’know when some really impressive author of a setting -PCI staff or someone else equally skilled- says “use what I made to tell your own story” I sometimes have that dog-like “cock head and aroo quizzically” reaction because it seems to me there’s a sort of disconnect at work.

My experience is that the mind who dreams up the amazing setting is very often one of a very small number of people able to really make it work.

Take Mass Effect. It’s actually pretty damn smart is a few clever ways. It’s much more Buck Rogers than Modern Warfare. But lots of bad feelings are engendered by what’re poorly understood as “bad story choices.” They’re not. But you’ve really got to be watching the corners to know that.

Or Warhammer 40k. The perpetual floating level of fan community turmoil about fanworks around it is pretty thick. It’s hard to actually keep the “grimdark” tone consistent, and it’s hard to like much of the setting if you do. It takes a damn creative, deft author to truly make it sing in all it’s eternal horror. Most paid Black Library authors can’t even do it.

Same deal Arcanis. I wouldn’t have thought up the Mourner subplot from the 1st Arc. That idea was a spectacular, engaging extrapolation. Or the metaplot with the Black Moon and Umor/Kassegore/whatever? I really don’t know, but I’m dying to find out.

I wouldn’t have designed the history of the Elorii quite as it is. I’m not that ..uh… “merciless” is too strong a word, so let’s say “thematically focused.”

I loved the Dark Kin Life Quest of Redemption. Never would have taken that idea as far as it was, and oddly the few times I’ve brought the idea up with various PCI bright they react with something like curiosity flavored by a tiny little splash of outrage. “We have our name on what and it’s campaign legal?!”

It’s been fifteen bleeding years folks. I’m still waiting to see the “Belisarda Question” unraveled. In that time I’ve been through 20 jobs, 3 cars, 2 homes, 3 years of Uni, 1 near-death experience (hard to measure, but 1 for certain) and an attempt to Enlist. Living/Legends of Arcanis is the strongest single through-line in my life. The others are family and friends -and the ones who’ve lasted that long I know because of Arcanis.

Frex: we’ve met at Origins. For me total Origins costs run ~$1000. That’s the most money I’ve ever spent on any one total thing.

Housing and transportation have doubtlessly amounted to far more. But for money saved, allocated, and spent on a single event? Living Arcanis, bar none. Taken in total all those trips to Origins are more than I’ve spent on anything except my student loans.

If PCI gave it all up, burned the books and moved to Tibet I’d go to my grave wondering if I’d missed something in the lore that’d answer some last burning mystery.

So to me the various Living campaigns are utterly worth the time and effort to know and love, but they’re what really brings the setting to life. Without them it’s just whoever making up whatever story. Odds are good they don’t see the angles critical to keeping the sky where it is.

This also informs lots of the friction I’m part of about “interpreting” aspects of the lore or rules. I don’t toss a salad for someone’s “interpretation” of what they think the “spirit” of the thing is; this is dogma to me -I want to hear the answer directly from the mouth of God, not some jagoff “priest.” I’m happy to speculate and extrapolate, but when we’re talking What Actually Happened I have one source I want to hear from above any other -and he looks like Sam the Eagle.