The Convoluted History of My Campaign*, Part One: Out of Character

You might want to take notes, this gets complicated.

So I started my D&D campaign with four players - my SO, JS, T and C. Their brief was to think of a character they wanted to play and then build a D&D character they would make - the intention being the character they ended up playing would have their "player"'s personality but their "character"'s abilities and skills. Confused? Yep, well, it wasn't such a good idea as it first seemed for many reasons, not least because while my SO and JS chose previous characters from other games as their "players", T and C chose real people they know. It largely fell by the wayside, though, except as a slight backstory quirk, so never mind.

So we started with my SO playing a human swordmage called Pete, J playing a Dwarven cleric called Charles, T playing an Eladrin rogue whose name I've forgotten and C playing a human wizard who never had a name as far as I can recall. They did some stuff, all was good, then my SO got a bit bored of playing the swordmage and wanted to give a half-orc fighter a go. Being GM's SO has it's perks, so we happily invented another "player" called Chuck who takes Pete's place.

Shortly after that, I misjudge how hard a couple of Elite Controllers can be, and we narrowly avoid a TPK by me letting the half of the party still on its feet to leg it. I give the players who were left behind a few choices, and as my SO hadn't been playing Chuck long, she opted for the character to be taken captive. T was quite happy to let his rogue die though, and built a Drow sorcerer instead (still played by the same "player").

Next change happens when C finally gets sick of playing the wizard and asks to try a different class. He makes a Dragonborn warlord and after a few sessions decides to stick with that over the wizard. Of course, then my SO's gamer ADD kicks in again and she asks to play a twinked out elf ranger to help the party dish out more damage. I say yes, because I'm a sucker, and because it gave me an opportunity to shake things up a bit. So my SO's new character, Mouse, is a "native" to the game world and has no "player" behind her. Chuck gets killed in a scripted assassination attempt.

So at this point the party consists of a Dwarven cleric "played" by Charles played by J, a Drow sorcerer "played" by E played by T, a Dragonborn warlord "played" by someone who may or may not be T played by C, and Mouse, an Elven ranger "played" by no-one played by my SO. Got it?

This actually lasts a reasonable while, before out-of-character drama happens and J takes a break from the game for "some time". I play Charles as an NPC for a bit before realising "some time" could be anything from months to forever, and cunningly manage to write the character out of the game for an arbitrary amount of time, simultaneously sending the remaining party on a quest away from all the undead they'll have difficulty dealing with without a cleric.

We ran with three players for quite a long time. Then, just after I foolishly introduced C's old character (the wizard) as an NPC which had reason to tag along with the party, a colleague of my SO asked if he could join in. As he was new to 4th ed D&D, we thought we'd give him the quite easy to run Mouse (if in doubt, Twin Strike) and resurrected Chuck to "play" the wizard.

So as it stands we have D playing Mouse; C playing (via some intermediary) The Warlord; T playing (via some intermediary) The Drow (aka Balthus); and my SO playing Chuck "playing" C's character's old character. I'm hoping this set-up actually lasts for a bit.






* If anyone can think of a decent campaign name, by the way, I'm quite open to suggestions. Otherwise I'll just have to keep referring to it as "My Campaign" which is a bit dull.