About Our Campaign
Our campaign plays Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 in the World of Greyhawk. In the real world, we're located in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania.
Overview
Our campaign is based in the World of Greyhawk, the original campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. Our particular focus is on Obsidian Bay, an independent city state founded by adventuers a century ago, and located on the humanoid-infested peninsula of the Pomarj. The campaign began in Fall 1996, and for many years has been dominated by the misadventures of the Blackrazor Guild, a motley, extremely chaotic band of adventurers.
Despite their tendancy towards chaos and destruction, they have somehow managed to liberate the Grand Duchy of Geoff from giant invaders, save their home city from demonic invasions (which had been unleashed through a portal in their own basement), and even prevent an evil cult from resurrecting the Temple of Elemental Evil and unleashing the imprisoned god Tharizdun.
The primary campaign has spawned several sub-campaigns. The first of these was the Pirates of the Vohoun, a campaign set in the southern reaches of the Flaness that we used as a testbed when converting to D&D 3.0. The next was the Redshirts campaign, which saw several low-level Blackrazors take on the threat of a restored Temple of Elemental Evil. We are currently preparing for a third campaign, the City Campaign, in which players will be takng on the role of 1st level characters unaffiliated with the Blackrazors or any other guild.
The Obsidian Bay setting and campaign is itself a sequel of sorts to DM Ken Newquist's earlier college campaign at Lock Haven University in Lock Haven, Pa.
And in the Real World...
We're a bunch of guys from the Lehigh Valley, Pa. who meet once a week to play D&D in Easton. We've been playing regularly since the Obsidian Bay campaign's launch in 1996, and while our roster has fluctated over the years, for the most part the original core is still intact.
While our regular game is Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition, we supplement it with a few other games. On the RPG side, we try and run one alternative RPG a month, trying out different games that are of interest to at least a few of our members. In the past, this has included Godlike, Stargate SG-1, and Conan d20. We also have two side-campaigns that we're running primarily through e-mail:
- Fading Suns: This game is run by Damon Agretto, and is set in Holistic Design's Fading Suns universe. We use the d20 verison of the rules.
- Spycraft: Prometheus: Ken Newquist's play-by-email Spycraft campaign has two other Obsidian Bay campaign members in it, as well as a few other folks from around the net.
We've got more than just RPGs in our gaming closet though. When we need a break from role-playing -- or just don't have enough players to run a game -- we turn to board or card games. Here are a few of our favorites:
- The Hills Ride Wild: Insane hillbillies compete to summon their dark gods in Pagan Publishing's humerous tribute to H.P Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. It's a miniatures based game that's a hell of a lot of fun.
- Illuminati: Steve Jackson Games' classic card game inwhich secretive groups compete for world domination. It's a completely cutthroat game that inspires plenty of backstabbing among friends. We love it.
- Risk 2210: Avalon Hill updated the old Hasbro game, adding off-sea cities, moon bases, space stations and field commanders in a sci-fi setting. It's one of our all-time favorties.
- Risk Godstorm: A mythological, fantasy variant of Risk, similar to Risk 2210, but at the same time, very different in feel and tactics.
- Settlers of Catan: A "German" board game involving the colonization of a hex-based island. A great, relaxing game.
- HeroClix: About half the group is into WizKids' collectible superheroes game.
- Vs: A few of our players have recently picked up this superhero card game based on Marvel and DC Comics.
We also do some online gaming via Xbox Live -- our primary game there is Crimson Skies but we're looking forward to Halo 2.
The Spin-Off
In 2002, one of our players from the Phildelphia/Delaware region decided to launch a second campaign, also set in Obsidian Bay. The "Delaware campaign" draws players from its home state, Philly, Pa. and southern New Jersey. Learn more by visiting their Yahoo Group.
About the Crier
Our web site, The Griffin's Crier, has been in existance since 1999, and it serves as both as an online archive and as an online meeting place for our campaign.The site's played a crucial role in keeping track of the campaign's ever-growing history, and its served as an important recruiting tool ever since it went online. At this point easily half the members of our campaign found us through the Web site.
The current version of the GriffCrier is built using a variety of technologies:
- MySQL: A database used to store all of the site's dynamic content (stuff like the organizations, places, people and sagas.
- PHP: A server-side scripting language used to pull content from the database, and display it on the Web.
- CSS: Cascading Style Sheets are used to control the presentation and design of the site. We cheat in a few places, using tables to construct a rudimentary layout, but everything else is done through CSS
Ken Newquist is responsible for the design of the web site, but just about everyone in the campaign has contributed to its content. Questions about the site can be e-mailed to Ken.