I am quite excited to check this out! The above video contains a discussion of an influential D&D campaign run by my favorite RPG guy: Monte Cook.
I am going to go through this and peel out all of the relevant information about the campaigns. It's a little tricky because the discussion jumps from one campaign to another, and at times it's not clear which group they're talking about.
There are a number of real life D&D campaigns that I think had a huge effect on the game as a whole. Off the top of my head:
- Castle Blackmoor by Dave Arneson - The very first RPG campaign ever?
- Castle Greyhawk by Gary Gygax - The campaign that playtested and formulated the D&D rules.
- Forgotten Realms by Ed Greenwood - The campaign that has actually become the base setting of 5th edition.
- Ptolus by Monte Cook - The campaign that ushered in the mega-popular 3rd edition of D&D.
- Acquisitions Incorporated by Chris Perkins - The campaign that popularized the idea of podcasting/streaming D&D.
- Critical Role by Matt Mercer - The campaign that was so popular that it boosted D&D 5th edition and proved that watching someone else play is a viable form of entertainment.
I have written about Monte's real life campaigns before. I scoured the internet and found quite a bit of info about his Praemal campaign. You might want to read through that first. This discussion adds a lot of info about Praemal, as well as Ptolus.
Participating in this discussion:
- Monte Cook
- Sean Reynolds
- Bruce Cordell
- Chris Perkins
All 4 of these people were working on D&D at the time they began playing together. When they began work on 3rd edition, Monte decided to take the campaign he had been running - Praemal - and advance the timeline 5,000 years to run a new campaign.
Ptolus was a city that had dungeons underneath it. The dungeons had been newly discovered, so there was a sort of gold rush.
Ptolus has an impossibly tall spire with an evil fortress at the top. The idea there was that the characters could be walking around the city and look up and see where they were going when they hit 20th level.
They played upstairs in Monte's house. Monte had piles of dwarven forge products, and sometimes he'd build massive set-pieces.
Monte actually had two groups playing in Ptolus - a Monday night group and a Thursday night group. They would sometimes have a session where both groups would come together to fight waves and waves of miniatures. Monte had to keep close track of things, because one group might hear about what the other was doing. Sometimes characters jumped from one group to another.
Chris points out that the Monday group pursued things linked to a single character, while the Thursday group operated as a mob (until they ran into the dark elves and began dying).
It is interesting to note that while the Monday group did a lot of epic things, most of the discussion revolves around the antics of the Thursday group.
The Monday Group: The Monday group were champions of good. They killed Moloch, the Ordainer of the Galchutt. Unlike the Thursday group, the Monday group never had a TPK, although Shurran did die and became a wraith. Sue used turn undead to kill him and then raised him back to life.
The Thursday Group: The Thursday night group was the Company of the Black Lantern. The Company of the Black Lantern got its name when the group was hit with a fireball and their lantern got scorched.
They were all "haughty elves", and they were always getting involved in shady things. At one point, the entire group became vampires (except for Chris).
One memorable incident was when a crime lord put together a play called "The Boy who Could Sing" for his nephew to star in. The group felt bad for the kid, and protected him from a rival gang's assassins.
Monte remembers that the group got angry at a dark elf and raised an army to go after a dark elf fortress. One ally was a dwarf riding an ankylosaurus. The whole raid failed and the party was killed. They got raised , and died again. Monte points out that this took place over the course of many sessions.
The Company of the Black Lantern also got killed by a lich, and it brought them back to life. Keith Strohm was brought back with his sword in his chest. The sword sang a song that mocked his god.
The Cow: Monte remembers that the Thursday night group ran into a dragon early on. It was going to kill them, but the group negotiated with it and the group promised it a cow. They had an entire game session where they had to get a cow through a dungeon and down to the dragon.
Characters: Chris actually had a character in each group. I'm sure I'm going to mess up the spelling of the character names, so bear with me.
Chris ran elf twins - Serrai (a wizard) and Sercean (a fighter/rogue/wizard). Chris loved the idea of the twins jumping from one group to the other without anyone knowing. Monte points out that only he and Chris often know who Chris was actually playing.
Serrai was convinced he was going to become a great wizard and he would sometimes ditch the party. Chris was sure he would die, and would sometimes push further and further just to see how far he could get before dying.
Chris says that when Serrai got high enough level, he bought some property in the nobles' quarter that the group used a base. When working on Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, he put Trollskull Manor in there as a base because of his experience in Ptolus.
Sercean was captured by the dark elves and was secretly replaced by a dark elf magically disguised as him. So, for a time, Chris was secretly playing three characters. The dark elf imposter eventually got banished into the sun.
Bruce had a number of characters. One of them was an elf archer named Chantaclair. This character used a prestige class that Bruce made that ended up being a bit "broken", so dropped that character and made an undead-hunting paladin named Farooq.
Bruce eventually jumped to the Monday group due to scheduling issues. His character in that group was Canabulum, a minotaur who multi-classed.
Sean Reynolds played Shurran, a rogue/fighter/cleric. He would write spell scrolls with calligraphy and he fell in love with many female NPCs. He was in love with a front desk-person of a tavern, but she had a policy of not dating adventurers because they died. When Shurran retired, they became a couple.
Sean played in the Thursday group for about 2 months. He was an elf named Akoru who didn't speak common very well. His battle cry was: "I have red pants". This is because Monte was very into painting minis at the time. He painted everyone's minis and Akoru ended up with red pants.
Erik Mona played an obnoxious character named Barbatos. Everyone in the group had punched him at one point. He ended up bluffing his way through a game of chess.
Praemal: In Praemal, Sean once used a frying pan tied to a rope to pull a flying creature down to the ground.
Using Magic Items: Monte was generally very stingy when it came to handing out magic items. Monte was shocked when Chris got a potion of strength and immediately drank it. Monte soon after embraced the idea of actually using your cool stuff rather than hoarding it.
Chris says that in general, if he gets a magic item, he uses it. If it just sits on his character sheet it's no good to anybody. Monte points out that a lot of times you scour your character sheet and see items that you forgot you even had.
Going to the Moon: The group once went to the moon - the Vallis moon. The group broke off a piece of the moon and rode it back to earth.
Why did the group go to the moon? On Praemal, a rift to the land of the dead had opened up. The only way to shut it down was to go to the source of all magic in Praemal - the moon. They had to deal with the 7 solars who protected it. Then they used a wish spell to break off a piece of the moon and fly it into the rift.
Bruce asked if they created the rift. No. Monte points out that the Praemal world was new and there were no undead until that rift opened.
There was a big black dragon named Father Claw that the group fought while they were on a comet.
Ptolumeus: John Ratcliffe had to leave the Praemal campaign due to real life reasons. His character was named Ptolumeus. He said "I guess my character founds a city or something." That became the city of Ptolus.
More Ptolus: After the two Ptolus campaigns were done, the heroes had hit 16th level and the storylines wrapped up. Monte decided he was going to run another Ptolus game with just one group.
The timeline advanced one year and the players made new characters. The heroes ended up in a cavern with elevated walkways. They encountered steampunk bad guys called the Shuul who rode mechanical dragonflies. Chris tried to jump on one.
Chris spent 3 hero points just to avoid dying. Chris points out that the hero points were good because Monte's games were lethal.
Sean's character, Shurran, was able to get a critical hit on a 12 or higher. The heroes were in the insane asylum in Ptolus, which is full of wizards. One of the wardens was a beholder.
Erik Mona was playing a paladin named Zophus Adarr. In the insane asylum fight, Zophus was fighting a beholder. He kept making his saving throws against the beholder's eye beams, but he knew he was in trouble. Sean's character came over to help. He rolled a critical, killed the beholder in one hit and then went back to what he was doing.
Favorite NPCs: The players name their favorite NPCS:
- Lord Delmothian: He ran a house of dragon-touched people.
- Jebbakanor: She had a magical glass arm that Sean's character really liked.
- Prince Ironheart: He had a heart that glowed through his chest.
Monte mentions that he tried to give the NPCs special traits because there were so many that he was worried the group couldn't tell them apart.
Final Thoughts: Really fun stuff! This show actually gives out some great ideas. I LOVE some of the NPCs, and the idea of leading a cow through a dungeon seems like a fantastic idea. An escort quest through a deadly dungeon? That's really great.