29 September 2020

The 38-year old Dungeons and Dragons campaign

Robert Wardhaugh, a history professor at the University of Western Ontario, has been running a Dungeons and Dragons campaign for thirty-eight years.


The campaign setting sounds rather interesting:

"Being a history professor and always loving history, I wanted to create a world where I was able to use the history of our world. My world is an alternate Earth, so you can be Roman, you can be Greek, you can be Sumerian, you can be Babylonian, you can be First Nations," explains Wardhaugh.

I’m really quite impressed by this accomplishment. It’s one thing to have played various role-playing games—including some extended campaigns—for many decades. (I’ve been playing, off and on, for almost four decades now.) But to keep the same campaign going for so many years it truly remarkable. 

Also, I was amused to learn that this campaign is based in London Ontario. I grew up in London—it’s where I learned to play role-playing games, and where I ran various AD&D and MERP campaigns (as well as dabbling in numerous other games) from around grade five until the end of high-school. (I would not describe London as an especially exciting city—it’s definitely the world’s #2 London—so it may be easier to keep a game going there over many years than, say, Toronto.)

This is a great accomplishment. I’m envious of Wardhaugh for what sounds like an amazing campaign. But I’m depressed when I realize that, should I keep my current Greyhawk campaign going for another 38 years, I’ll be dangerously close to the “venerable” age category for humans! 


4 comments:

  1. Listened to an interview with him a few years ago.

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  2. His house rule about Vancian magic seems very draconian: you can cast a spell once by Level, not once every day.

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    Replies
    1. Yikes!
      I guess it might make sense in a (very) "low magic" setting. But hopefully magic-users are improved in other respects to compensate. (And I'd be curious to know how easy it would be to acquire and use scrolls to cast additional spells.)

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  3. This one won.
    http://harbingergames.blogspot.com/2019/08/my-campaign-turns-40-years-old.html?m=1

    ReplyDelete

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I'm a Canadian political philosopher who lives primarily in Toronto but teaches in Milwaukee (sometimes in person, sometimes online).