Saturday, January 20, 2018

Return of the King - Lord of the Rings: A Master Class in Campaign Planning Part 3

So here we are in part three of our epic fantasy campaign based on Lord of the Rings. When we last left our heroes, the Fellowship had fractured, with our hobbits Sam and Frodo in desperate peril, Sam following the captured and incapacitated Frodo into Cirith Ungol, and the rest of the crew, including new character Faramir, split between marshalling the forces of Rohan and riding to warn Minas Tirith of a coming attack.

Our intrepid GM now faces a further challenge; not only have his gaming groups split in twain, his Saturday group is now facing a potentially long-term party split. He briefly considers branching off into a third gaming group but decides even for him, that's untenable, and besides, the Saturday group are all still pursuing the same goal. He'll deal with the split party by switching back and forth at dramatic moments. He's also got a grand plan, if he can pull it off, for the end battle.

This final section of the series on Lord of the Rings as a class in campaign planning brings it all together, looking at some of the major problems a GM faces when they are many months into an epic game and nearing the end: player drift, party split, character death or incapacitation late in the game, the need to bring everyone back together, and what happens when, after the campaign ends, some of your players aren't ready to let it go just yet...

And so we begin.

Image source: Wikipedia



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