OK, I admit it. I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons since the 1980's. It's been fun. Got started with family members, played with friends in Northern Virginia when we lived there, and have done some playng with the next generation of family members (neices and nephews) since. I'm using this page as a place to post some of the adventure records that might be of interest to those who have participated. Not much at the moment, but more later. Also, methods that I have used as a Dungeonmaster (DM) over many years, but especially for solitaire play.
Thumper: Thumper is my player character for the Suhala campaign, run by Stephen West as Dungeonmaster from 2008 to 2013. Thumper started out as a lowly first level magic user and eventually reached 4th level over the course of those five years. Playing Thumper was a lot of fun, in large part due to the skills and dedication of the dungeonmaster. (This was a First Edition campaign, with a number of house rules in use and some elements of Second Edition also used.)
Thumper's AdventuresAnjina: Anjina is a player character for an experimental 3rd Edition D&D campaign. I had conducted several solitaire campaigns using D&D "modules". While doing so, I would read ahead in the module just enough to navigate to the entry for wherever the characters were. Then I would read the player entry, decide what the character(s) would do, and only then read the material designated for the DM. Then I would adjudicate any action as appropriate. This system worked fairly well in presenting "surprises" to me as the Player, especially at the overall adventure level. This campaign was not the first time doing this, but would be the first in which I documented this process while trying out methods for managing campaigns. (A description of those methods is at the bottom of this page.) The description of the campaign was in "Three voices", including the character's first person narration, the player commenting on role playing decisions, and the DM describing how the campaign was adjudicated. This campaign made use of the "modules" "Maiden Voyage," "Temple of Elemental Evil," and "Iuz the Evil," the last two being "Greyhawk" campaign modules from First Edition, adapted on the fly for Third Edition play. The player character Anjina, a cleric starting out at First level, ultimately reached 16th over the course of about 6 years of game time. The campaign was a success in showing that the methods developed could sustain an interesting campaign, albeit with various adjustments and revisions being made along the way. Ultimately the campaign reached a level that was the limit of what could reasonably be managed by these methods.
Anjina's Story 1
Anjina's Story 2
Anjina's Story 3
Anjina's Story 4
Eridanus: Eridanus is a player character for a campaign in Xrune, the setting for most of my Dungeons and Dragons play from way back around 1980. This was something of an experiment. I had developed methods to "auto-generate" dungeons using tiles, tables of how to select what is found next, and encounters. Sort of like what was in the Dungeonmasters Guide, but more elaborated. I had similar methods for wilderness travel, and eventually like methods for conducting campaigns. This was one of several such campaigns, this one using 3rd edition rules. What is different here and with Anjina's story above, is that the story is told in three voices. The Character narrates his 1st person story. The Player steps in here and there to explain why the character did what he did, usually a matter of why role-playing decisions were made as they were. The third voice is that of the Dungeonmaster, explaining how the world was managed and the reason events played out as they did. Essentially, how the play was adjudicated. I have done three campaigns written up in this style now. This was the shortest, and perhaps the most satisfactory, in the sense of reaching a satisfying conclusion. Unlike Anjina's story above, it did not make any use of adventure "modules." All of the campaing setting materials were from those I had developed for Xrune earlier. The story is broken up into four "books," in the form of separate .pdf documents.
Eridanus of Arport
Eridanus of Arport and Friends
Eridanus Adventures Further
Eridanus Beseiged
Jonathan: This was the most recent of these "Three Voices" campaign stories. This one differs by being in a completely new campaign setting which was being developed as the campaign was played out. The "Rock Coast" region is in the same game world as Xrune and an "Aarbat" campaign played extensively earlier. Yes, the skeleton of the setting was developed ahead of play. It was designed to be a relatively constrained campaign start, with the characters being slaves (actually, indentured) in a LN society in which characters are more constrained than the usual freebooter adventurer gang. Indeed, this solitaire campaign was started as a trial run to see how that campaign setting might play out, and to help develop places, NPC's, and background story lines. This campaign saw the player character, a LG Paladin, whose alignment tended to clash with the dominant ethic, go from first up to 15th level, where the methods for generating viable challenging situations run out of steam. This campaign will be posted when materials are ready. It included more details on the adjudication of events by the DM than the previous campaigns. Perhaps too much. This ran about six years of game time.
Other campaigns: Here's a complete list going back a while spanning the time when I have developed the "solitaire" techniques described below
Adventuring Campaigns>
My Methods: I've been a DM for all of this time, as well as occasionally a player. I've developed some useful tables, tiles, and other resources for managing campaigns, wilderness expeditions and dungeon crawls too. Some of this covers stuff that as a DM I would have to do ad-hoc. This works pretty well solitaire too if that's the only way I can get a Dungeons and Dragons fix, which is more often the case now than not. If you are going to look at this stuff, I recommend doing so in the order listed below. I ultimately intend to put all of my tiles and tables here, when I can get around to it.
Dungeon Crawling
Wilderness Adventures
Other Outdoor Tiles (appendix to above)
Adventuring Campaigns