The Campaign Builder's Guild

Aw beans. I'm gonna miss this site. However, I am tentatively excited to see where the CBG goes from here. I'm hoping that a new format might shake things up a bit. I'm a bit torn because while I do frequent reddit, I never saw it as a place to really lay down content and more as a site to surface-binge mildly interesting material (not that I've been "laying down content" in a long while; I also just peruse the top posts on the main page of reddit so, there ya go). I'm unfamiliar with discord but I'm entirely open to trying new venues. Ultimately, I'm in favor of whatever everyone decides on. I want to stay together as a people rather than just a site.

I am in graduate school to become a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, so also pretty busy.

I am also, in my own time, working on a setting inspired by somewhat by biblical apocrypha and Steerpike's Tempter. The basic premise is that there's a powerful, vengeful god that humanity manages to kill by building a city tall enough to reach the heavens. It's just a notepad with a bunch of bullet points, but it's something at the back of my mind.

Durp Snake is up there as one of my faves. As is Kurt; it's so innocuous that I can't imagine it as anything but horrible.

Happy New Year to all!

Quote from: Steerpike
Screw em. Hang the clerics, invade the celestial planes, kill the gods, democratize the heavens.

This sounds like a Supergiant games premise waiting to be developed.

Or a setting.

Wait, I'll be right back.

I'll also echo Steerpike's sentiments to not worry too much about the system and focus more on the setting, but it's worth noting that most D20 systems (and probably other systems that aren't as "narrative-focused" like Fate or sparkle's Asura system) will force you to bend a bit of your creativity to fit the bounds of their system, unless you want to really gut it or exclude certain bits of content (or large chunks of content in more extreme cases). So in that regard you're not wrong for wanting to imagine a ruleset alongside the setting, but I would let yourself explore the space you've imagined a bit before getting concerned with the system at large.

I was going to cut out this next part because it makes my post come off as wishy-washy and noncommittal, but I figured I'd just throw it out there anyways:

I also think that a fair majority of us here (at least the more vocal members) probably err on the side of the setting over the system, and I have, in the past, used D&D's creative limitations to further spark ideas for my setting. This may not be the case for you, but I've also found value in having a setting based in a system that almost all my players wanted to play in despite my desires, and in favor of having a good time, made a 5E D&D game that was altogether pretty fun. Gauging what your players want in addition to what you want is definitely worth your time.

Quote from: Steerpike
Good horror is definitely not expensive; in fact, horror as a genre is singularly inexpensive and almost always profitable, one of the few genres for which that is true.

I tend to agree that it's somewhat hard to find, but generally I can find a good horror movie a year. Get Out (2017), The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Witch (2015), It Follows (2014) and The Babadook (2014), The Conjuring (2013), The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Insidious (2010) and Let Me in (2010). I haven't seen much from 2011 but it seems like the only dud year, at least by my tastes.

The previous decade was rougher but did include films like Paranormal Activity (2009), Let the Right One In (2008), The Descent (2005), The Ring (2002), and 28 Days Later (2002), so it's not a total loss.

The Orphanage (2007) could also be listed as a low budget but (in my opinion) very good horror film. I felt obligated to mention it because I generally don't do horror but I recall liking this one a lot.

Seeing as no one has mentioned it yet, I just finished the first two books in the Kingkiller Chronicle and highly recommend them. The third book is not out yet and the second book came out in 2011 sooo, yeah, be forewarned. It's fairly standard fantasy with a neat, pseudo scientific approach to magic. It's also a pretty easy read (though I had finished Book of the New Sun prior to it, which is almost baroque in how strange its writing can be).

Steerpike, I might dive into Too Like the Lightning, as I have a woeful lack of any female authors in my collection. If you have any further recommendations, let me know.

Interesting project! Why is the Co-Optional Podcast under Worldbuilding and Roleplaying? I haven't listened in a long while, but don't they just talk about video games and the games industry?

Quote from: Steerpike
I think the "villain as DMPC" issue relates to a larger issue with DMing, which is DMs getting precious with their settings and characters and plots - being overly protective of them or trying to insulate them from the PCs wrecking/derailing them. Like, I spent a long time mapping and detailing various districts of the main city in my game, but if the PCs unleash a catastrophic conflagration, it's going to burn down (at least parts of it). Ditto with villains escaping - it's fine if they can credibly escape, but if the PCs fire off Hold Person and the save is failed and the bad guy gets offed, the PCs deserve the victory.

It's strange. I used to be less concerned with what the players destroyed and where the plot was going and more on how I assumed they should react to certain events, as if I would somehow be able to author their characters. I would think that surely my hand-crafted villain would elicit sympathy or rage or some other feeling when they learned of their backstory - it was pretentious drivel, of course. I'd like to write that off as me being younger and naive but I'm sure it was far closer to recent memory than I'm willing to admit.

I will say that while I'm all for the PCs succeeding even when I don't expect them to, "firing off a Hold Person" and the villain failing a single roll leading to their demise is pretty lame, but I think that stems from issues more related to the system than anything else :P. I would say the same if one of my players died that way as well.

Part of what makes villains in video games and movies so great is that you get to see a side of them that is fundamentally difficult to portray through the medium of D&D (or what have you). That's why I think villains like Joffrey or Ramsay Bolton from A Song of Ice and Fire are so resonant - they just act petulant and vile when you see them. Joffrey isn't a very complex character (I think Bolton is a little bit more complex, but it's not explored too deeply), but easily hatable (that's a word!) because of their simply portrayed dispositions.

I find the act of balancing an interesting villain difficult through D&D or FATE without having them come off closer to the aforementioned two examples. Or I should say, I find those types of previously mentioned villains the easiest and most resonant, especially if they somehow manage to stick around for more than a few encounters. The driving hatred and seeing them meet their inevitable end is extremely satisfying. However, the idea of making a fully realized villain often walks the line of DMPC too closely for me, and in the past I've fallen prey to the notion that the players should somehow know their story, and would MAYBE even think differently of them because of it. That fell flat, naturally, but lesson learned.

I do think the idea of making players create their own villains is actually really novel, and I think in some ways I've witnessed that without realizing it. When Kryzbytn confronted the Man in Armor it felt very special and rewarding to me.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: sparkletwistInteresting choice of a character to name yourself (or at least your forum persona) after, Steerpike.

I've got a real soft spot for this sort of character - Milton's Satan, Frank Underwood, Tyrion Lannister, Edmund from Lear. In a lot of cases these characters are treated unjustly for some reason, be it due to their class, their legitimacy, their physical body, etcetera. I think they make good villains precisely because they call into question the moral foundations of the society they exist in, pointing out its hypocrisies and undermining the legitimacy of its rulers. This is sort of the opposite of how things work in texts like The Lord of the Rings or Narnia, where the bad guys, even when they seem nice, are unambiguously bad, while the good guys are rightful kings or leonine deities or whatever, and killing the bad guys solves the problem and restores everything to how it should be. Steerpike is a murderer and a liar and a manipulator, but he also exposes the cruelty and absurdity of Gormenghast, the way its power structures are arbitrary and oppressive and its traditions just a means of preserving those structures. Milton's intentions aside, this is also how Satan operates in Paradise Lost, as the Romantic poets observed - calling out God as a tyrant, insisting that he created nothing, only falsely claims to be the creator. These sorts of villains can be evil or amoral, but they often ask us to look at our own society and institutions with a more critical eye rather than assuming the status quo is morally defensible.

And we love you anyways <3

I will be waiting patiently for the followup session  :yumm:

I'm curious and thought I would ask your opinions. While I love a good, smarmy, unsophisticated, "evil for evil's sake" style villain for kitschier games, I find myself most endeared to villains I can almost sympathize with, or whose ends might be noble but their means are deplorable. At the same time, I also find the truly awful, easily hated villains the most satisfying to defeat. What, in your opinion, marks a good, memorable villain for you? Examples appreciated!

Quote from: LoA
What else should I have as far as transportation goes. Would airships work, and if not, should I have flying cowboys riding on giant eagles or something? And I plan on having steamboats of some form.

I would wonder if airships, depending on their rarity, would invalidate or at the very least detract from railroads, which come to mind when thinking of a stereotypical western setting, though you might be able to have some fun with this. Perhaps the dragon robber-baron is supporting the railroads because he or she wants to rule the skies alone but is willing to support or otherwise placate the human(oid) settlers? Although the idea of a group of people religiously devoted to a draconic god obsessed with laying railroad tracks speaks to the delightfully weird Mieville in me. Regardless, so while maybe airships aren't particularly rare, they could be incredibly risky.

Cowboys riding giant eagles or flying dinosaurs wouldn't seem too far off-base given the information you've provided thus far, though I'll admit to being unfortunately unfamiliar with space western anime.