It’s in the title! What’s your current campaign or setting you’ve been playing in recently?
I’ll start:
I’ve been running a homebrew game that’s gone all over the place over the years. My group fought a doppleganger invasion, overthrew a local oppressive government, battled with a devil cult, and many more odd ball adventures.
Recently after one party member drew the Moon from the Deck of Many things and wished to become “God Emperor” I decided to overhaul the world as a space themed adventure. The party is now playing in an alternate reality where the party member who made the wish is now Emperor but the party’s old characters, twisted by some evil magic, are now working against them to bring down the empire.
I homebrewed a thing set on an alternate history future Earth where basically, there’s an alternate history divergence with Jimmy Carter not losing reelection and then the US basically turning into a demsoc utopia resulting in world peace and sustainable prosperity, and then three different races of aliens show up. At first things go well with humanity, but then there’s complications and tensions both between and within those three races, and the most advanced of the three ends up seeing humanity as a threat to them due to a bunch of other factors I introduced that would take way too long to explain and releasing a viral bioweapon that ended up killing most of humanity in the space of a year before a coalition of scientists and soldiers from all four species banded together to synthesize a cure and stop things. All of the game stuff happens well after, in the ruins of civilization, a la Fallout, but with a post-plague instead of post-nuclear aesthetic.
I have a whole novella detailing all of that lore on my Google Drive, most of which I wrote while unemployed in 2019. So you can imagine how weird 2020 was for me.
But that’s on the backburner at the moment because my group is playing through the one with Gundren Rockseeker on the Sword Coast right now, with someone else DMing, because my mental health wasn’t great in 2021 but we still wanted to play.
Currently running Dungeon of the Mad Mage after we finished Dragon Heist. We’re in level 3 and skull port in the dungeon. But the party has taken a way back to the surface of Waterdeep now to deal with their conflicts with the Xanathar guild which has escalated into all out war.
How has the transition been? I’ve played Dragon Heist, but Mad Mage is a megadungeon, right? It seems like a completely different gaming style, has your group adapted well? Do you see them finishing the megadungeon, or do you think their travel back to the surface means the campaign is going towards homebrew?
There is a lot of homebrew that I added in. I tied in NPCs from the PCs back stories. All the lose ends from the Dragon Heist adventure I’m also directing to down there such as the fleeing Skeemo Weirdbottle is making his way to skullport now. Some is already in the adventure like the Xanathar guild.
The gameplay is very different but the party said they wanted to try it and it’s a nice change of pace. But I make sure to expand some of the roleplay elements down in the dungeon to be more prominent. Overall the dungeon is pretty well designed imo so it all ends up working out well.
Currently they are back to Waterdeep to deal with the Xanathar once and for all.
A homebrew pirate themed campaign. The party got their own ship, and are trying to overthrow The Honourable Southern Islands Company, a mercent company who are the de facto rulers of The Southern Isles, who are bleeding the local populace dry while letting the starve. The party aim of starting a pirate republic. I use a lot of real history from the golden age of piracy, as well as every pirate and maritime trope I can fit in there. Tone of the campaign is chaos and silliness, but with epic shit happening. Its great fun!
I also homebrewed a tropical pirate-themed campaign! The party currently got duped into aiding a lesser noble steal an ancient artifact and have fallen in with a pirate fleet. They’re all various alignments of Good, so this is not where they want to be, but if they play their cards right, could potentially destroy the fleet and make off with a ship of their own.
Also trying to incorporate a lot of “realistic” elements from the Age of Sail, but a bit more of a serious campaign with some general shenanigans.
I’m running a vaguely Acq Inc themed homebrew campaign. They run their own salt business which has expanded into garlic salt, a mud based deity and a themed restaurant. They flit between adventures with a vague goal of making money. They are currently in a personal demiplane of a hag to steal a magic item for the thieves guild in another city. They have a few irons in the fire but mostly just do standalone adventures
Currently DMing CoS and my party thinks that’s all it is, but I’m actually making the Domains of Dread connection to the shadowfell the way to tie everything into a world heavily borrowed from my favorite fantasy lore. I was working on a homebrew but everyone wanted me to run CoS so I’m using the opportunity to introduce my own world and make the players happy by continuing to level instead of just ending after Strahd.
I started by porting over Ghosts of Saltmarsh from Greyhawk to the Crowded Sea region of the Forgotten Realms, we started near the Pearl Cities (so we’re using a ton of al-Qadim books). I’ve added a lot of other modules like Veins of the Earth and Fire on the Velvet Horizon and the last fifty sessions they’ve been in The Halls of Arden Vul, which I’ve set on Dabab Island. Archontean becomes al-Hadhar, Thorcin becomes al-Badia, and Wiskin becomes sahuagin. They’re fighting three cults: Set, the Blood Moth, and Istishia of the Cold Water.
We’re 258 sessions total into this campaign; we’ve had other, earlier campaigns set on the same continuity and planet (al-Toril). We reset the numbering since Tomb of Annihilation used the rule “Replacement characters are at the party’s level” and this campaign uses “Replacement characters start at level one”.
I’ve set my current campaign in the Nentir Vale, because the Acquisitions Incorporated podcast when it started back in…2010? was my first introduction to D&D and I have fond feelings towards it.
Homebrew campaign is currently deep in the underdark with the players trying to unravel a mystery and looking for a way out!
I’m running a homebrew level 11-20 campaign in Ancient Netheril from the Forgotten Realms. We’re currently at level 17.
Netheril is a “once great empire of magic that fell 4000 years ago”. It exists to create the backdrop for why the “modern” Forgotten Realms are, well, forgotten. I’m running it as a sequel to WOTC’s “Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden”.
Its taken a lot of work to flesh out the setting since most of the published content about it is from AD&D, but its been a great high-level backdrop. Netheril’s powerful mage hegemony gives me endless opportunities for high-level encounters, and the empire’s divide between floating magical Enclave cities and the non-magical people who live on the ground creates for some great tension and quest hooks.
I’ve been DMing Keys from the Golden Vault, and we’re playing it like a campaign with the Golden Vault as the party’s patron. The setting I’m using is Faerun, and the process of running it is teaching me so much about how to be a good DM.
It’s been really great exploring the non-combat side of D&D. The group had a blast on our last heist (Stygian Gambit) and we didn’t even have one combat!
