Today’s prompt about RPG’s with well supported campaigns can be read in two different ways. Either we are talking about games that support campaign play really well, or we are talking about games with well made published campaigns. So let’s tackle both!
RPGs With Campaign Support
It is a little ironic that my answer here is going to be very similar to my answer yesterday. Ironsworn and Delta Green both have great framing devices that make you want to play a long game of those. But they also have and force an ending, and a good ending is as important as a good everything else.
Ars Magica
The old grandad of campaign play, a game that makes no sense if you are not playing it for years to come. it was basically built for campaigns, longer campaigns, or campaigns that your grandchildren will be passing on to their grandchildren. It also don’t really, as a game, have a need ever to end. A big deal for me, but the prompt of the day does not care.
RPGs Supported With Campaigns
This is is a bit difficult for me to answer. While I know about quite a few, I haven’t seen, let alone read or played that many campaigns. So this will mostly be the few I have encountered in some way.
Band of Blades
This was an easy one, Band of Blades is interwoven with the campaign (both literal game campaign, and the in game military campaign) to get The Legion to Skydagger Keep where they make their last stand. I’m not saying the game and the campaign are inseparable, you can easily make an alternative campaign, or a second campaign.
Band of Blades feels to me very board gamey in it’s presentation. Maybe even like a legacy board game. You have everything you need to sit down, play, and finish this inside the covers of the book.
It was while I was reading Band of Blades that I realised my affection and the importance of ending a game.
The One Ring: The Darkening of Mirkwood
The Darkening of Mirkwood is a campaign framework, and it is an awesome one. It is a brilliant setup of things that happen in the region, filled with NPCs and adventure hooks. It looks like you need to do a lot of prep before you start, but you really don’t.
Your present a situation and because characters act things will snowball. And this campaign presents what is going on, so it makes it easy for you to envision how the characters affected other players in the region. I think you could literally wrap up a campaign and just start over and you’d get a completely different experience.
A friend and I started playing it in Strider mode and it was beautiful. We poked the campaign slightly and it went off like a Rohirrim after an orc!
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Enemy Within Campaign
As I and Warhammer grow older we drift away from each other. But if there is a reason to bite a bullet and play in a system I’m not particularly into, that reason would be The Enemy Within. I have been hearing about it for so long, including a really good overview on The Fear of the Black Dragon, that this is one of the things I want to experience in life.