Okay people, let’s talk about Dungeons and Dragons. It has been a while and I am going to tell you about the campaign I’ve lovingly dubbed ‘The Campaign of Shorts’. Its actual name is ‘The Perils of Princesses’, but I rarely use its proper name now. My partner came up with the concept for this particular campaign. We gathered a group of Game Masters together, and everyone was tasked with creating a 2-3 session campaign. There were no holds on the topic or the format. Everyone had the same task: create a world, make some fun encounters, and develop characters for each player. Honestly, I wish I could play this way all the time.

It began with Chris, my partner. He created an overarching fantasy world with some steampunk/industrial era vibes where all four characters who are secretly connected are summoned by a mystery person to a location. In this campaign I play a handsome, orphaned rogue that flirts with anything that moves. His name is Harry. The story unravels via roleplay and questioning of our companions, and unfurls when we met our strange host in a cave. She’d help us get what we most desire, the payment being stories, one from each of us.

Cue the Game Masters.

I went first. As my rogue spoke into the pool of water, we became immersed, and “woke up” in my world.

I chose to set my campaign in my Work in Progress, Fireborn, and used the opportunity to have people pilot my magic system. I kept my plot simple – I tied my plot to a prequel and developed side characters for my players to use. The end result was a three session campaign where my players tried to resolve an assassination attempt while navigating the nuances of their magic and immersing themselves into Fireborn’s lore. It was incredible to see my world brought to life, to have actual people dive in and play amongst this story I created. I will also say that I received some really great working feedback on the magic system and have some thoughtful adjustments on rounding out these characters. Now I have plans to share this as a bonus once Fireborn is finished, and I think that would be really quite special.

I also have some editing notes for myself, as I gave my party some super cool items at the end instead of the beginning, so they didn’t have a chance to use them, which makes very little sense. I’d love to run it again, maybe in a slightly longer format and more fleshed out to give my players more time to immerse themselves in the world. But that is for next time.

My friend Simon went next. He created this amazing world called Grimmwelt. Picture the place that is the origin of all stories. We had a mission and encountered so many cool twists on the fairytale characters. My absolute favourite element of his campaign is that he asked us about our most beloved fandoms and custom-constructed our characters based on that. Mine was Awendil the Fawn (otherwise known as Radaghast from Lord of the Rings). Awendil was so real that man, some of those battles were difficult. Radaghast was not built for non-magic combat. My partner, Chris, played a version of Spider-man, my friend Justin played Kvothe from Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles, and my friend Ash played Death-faced Ginny. I won’t get into the nuances of the gameplay itself, but I will tell you that Simon is polishing this campaign for potential distribution and if you like role-playing games, I’d definitely keep an eye out for that.

My friend Justin created the third campaign called The Mystery of Hanbarra. It’s a fantastically clever spoof on Scooby-Doo. My character’s name was Winnifred, party leader and paladin (*cough* Fred *cough*). Her character traits were positive, gullible, and very strong. I had a lot of fun with her, including clotheslining a rabid deer. Don’t ask. Too much to explain. Very funny though. 

We were called into the town of Hanbarra to locate a few missing people and things spiraled out of control from there. It’s a little H. P. Lovecraft with some very zany plot twists, and the coolest feature (I still geek out every time I think about it) is that time lapse is built into play. What I mean by that is that no matter what the party chose to do on a particular day, certain things were still going to happen in the game. Our decisions and play order directly affected the outcome. Let me tell you, that last session held chaos like no other, and we didn’t get the best ending, but we didn’t break the world either. So that was a win.

Currently, we are living in my friend Ash’s world, The Isles. I am playing my most challenging character yet, a salty fisherwoman (Ranger) teenager named Akebia. I normally play peppy (read weird) characters, so Akebia has been a very fun stretch on my roleplaying skills. I also have to say, Ash has created a beautiful fantasy archipelago with rich scenery and world building. Unfortunately for you, and fortunately for me, we are in the midst of this campaign, so I am not sure how it ends. I can tell you that the Big Bad likely lives in the water, and that is it. This campaign is so immersive that I actually forget I am living through the temperamental Canadian spring weather, and not sailing between beautiful islands with rich underwater ecosystems. Stay tuned on this one.

Then, looking into the future, the wrap up. I have no idea what is going to happen, but Chris plans on doing something to tie all of these amazing stories together in his own world. It is going to be epic!

There you go. Thank you for attending my ramble on the Campaign of Shorts that I have the pleasure to play in. It has been so educational to learn from other talented storytellers and just a riot of fun. I feel so lucky to engage with these brilliant Game Masters and will be incredibly sad when this campaign wraps. It’s been a wild ride, and I cannot wait to find my next one.