Living Greyhawk - Design of The Campaign

Design of The Campaign

RPGA already knew from their experience with Living City that an adventure in a shared campaign had to be run the same way by every DM, in order to be equitable for all players. This created problems with some of the rules, which could be adjudicated several different ways according to circumstance. There was also the problem of certain character classes and items that could unbalance the campaign by providing one character with too much power.

In order to try to avoid these problems, Living Greyhawk used Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition (later v3.5), but modified by a set of "house rules" set out in the Living Greyhawk Campaign Sourcebook. Some of these house rules included:

• Limits on starting character classes and races All new characters were required to start at 1st level. Originally only races and character classes found in the Players Handbook were allowed. This was later modified to include some new character classes such as favoured soul and hexblade. Occasionally access to new races was granted under particular circumstances. For example, if a player chose to play the first adventure of the "Bright Sands" story arc, centaur could be chosen as a race. In another instance, a special card issued by RPGA allowed the player holding the card to create a kobold character.
• Limits on levels gained. Although D&D 3.0/3.5 was designed for characters up to 20th level, LG required characters to retire from the campaign when they reached 18th level. (This was later modified to require retirement when 16th level was reached.)
• No evil Characters could not have an evil alignment, nor could they worship an evil deity. If a character committed an evil act, such as attacking another player character, the DM was required to report this to the local Triad. If the Triad decided this act indicated a change of character alignment to evil, then the character would be permanently removed from the campaign. For this reason, any character infected by lycanthropy was given a chance to remove the curse, but if unsuccessful, was removed from the campaign.
• One play opportunity only. Players were only allowed to play each adventure once. If a person had already run the adventure as a DM before playing it, then he or she was barred from playing the adventure afterward. (This was called "eating a module".)
• Certain things banned from LG. To try to maintain some balance between the characters and adventure encounters, and also some fairness in the powers and abilities of the characters, some character classes, prestige classes, magic items, weapons and spells were banned from play. Additionally only new items, spells and powers found in books published by Wizards of the Coast were allowed in the campaign
• The use of Time Units to regulate number of adventures played per year See Time Units below.
• Campaign documentation. In addition to the standard character sheet used in Dungeons and Dragons, every player was required to keep complete campaign documentation for each character. Living Greyhawk was sometimes derisively called "Living Accounting", since the list of documents could include
  • an Adventure Record (AR) for each adventure played by the character, which tracked accumulated gold pieces, experience points and Time Units spent, as well as access to magic items and spells, and any favours or curses gained during the adventure;
  • a Master Item Logsheet (MIL), which described when each special or magical item had been bought or created by the character.
  • a Magic Item Creation sheet (MIC), which logged magic items created by the character
  • any campaign documentation or certificates earned during adventures
• Character Death If a character died and the player was unable or unwilling to pay for resurrection during or immediately following the adventure, the character was removed from the campaign. A dead character could not be resurrected or otherwise brought back to the campaign at a later date.

The various adventures themselves were loosely tied together and storylines were developed based on general successes or failures from previous adventures. To enable the Circle to monitor this, at the conclusion of some adventures, the DM was required to submit the results to the Circle (campaign administrators), which then planned future plotlines based on these results. This interactivity was what inspired the word "Living" in the title of this type of shared campaign.