So we have made it through to the end of another campaign. I thank you one and all for indulging me as once again I tried something outside the normal box.

I'll start be acknowledging a few errors along the way as once they're out of the way we can focus on the campaign itself.

Reneel
To saddle or not to saddle the party with a sidekick, that was the question. Frankly, someone had to do it and it worked out in the storyline. I didn't want to imbue him with much personality as I didn't want to become a party member but that was a double-edged sword as that left him without personality and therefore without empathy. The gravest mistake I made with Raneel was allowing him to be fleshed out as more than a simple fighter -- sure, it made sense to make him a royal badass but it became a focal point for angst that could have been avoided. I probably won't use a long-term NPC again though short-term is still on the table.

Water
Damn, I should have nixed water spells from the get-go. Zero. Or maybe 'gallons' should have been errataed to 'tablespoons'. Either way, allowing water in the campaign basically gave the party an unlimited bag of gold coins and undermined why characters do what they do -- for the money. I think we lost a lot of motivation due to this. This is the biggest regret of the campaign.
Spell Shaping
This could be the most unbalancing thing ever created for D&D. Too many power spells are impressive when they can be used but are damning when they can be used as 5X5 tactical nukes. This allowed huge spells that should have been limited by the presence of allies to devastating effects. I can pretty much say now that Druids and Illusionists won’t be part of any campaign I run in the future.
Spell Errata
I’d errata Heroes Feast to a +6 save vs poison. An entire party should not be immune to poison for most of the campaign. I’d errata Fire Shield to one person, not a whole party. As it is, a 5th level spell can do 1000+ points of damage and that’s not right.
18th Level
Like a fistful of reeds in the wind, they don’t blow very much when extended a foot out of one’s hand but when they’re 10 feet long, the tops blow with greater force and unpredictability. I think 3.5 fails as a system after level 16, which is about as long as the reeds can get and still be maintained. This was where the monsters either deal 6d6+40 a hit or they fail to be a threat. Unfortunately, 4 hits doing 50 points each generally kills all but the tank in the party. If I ever run again I’ll make sure the party caps out at 16th level.
Scope & the Underdark
This was a new world and as such could have been explored for a hundred more weeks. The ‘continent’ was fleshed out in many places that you never saw and with people you never met. I tried to stuff as much cool stuff into the weeks as I could but I knew that the underground setting would take its toll after a while. Putting the party underground was going to be different and a challenge to make one cave looking the same as the last and though it was tedious at times, I would do it again if I hadn’t done it already! I also knew that by the time you hit the end that you’d have felt like you crawled through broken glass to get to the end and when you look back on caves and caverns in the future, you’ll remember what a hell it was. I think despite the toughness of the campaign, the borderlands of Hell have been defined rather well.
History
I hated that the previous characters wouldn’t be in but the first act of this play. I like having legendary characters play a role and at least update their status but going the direction I did with this, they were automatically shunted off to another realm.
The Future
There’s no guilds, churches, schools or special forces that were created in this campaign, at least not on the surface world.
Those were the major shortcomings of the campaign. All else is debatable.
The concept
I liked the concept of Dark Sun from all those years ago. I thought a brutal world with few allies would be a hard challenge. With a group that’s played together for more than 20 years, it’s always going to be difficult to find something new or an angle that hasn’t been done. So into the Underdark you went; unwilling, but went nonetheless. I also took something from Dan’s world: what if everyone you met wanted to kill you? I know, not everyone wanted to kill us in Dan’s world but there were a large percentage of ‘allies’ who seemed to have it out for us. I thought it would be interesting to push everyone and see who came out the other end with their alignment intact and who would become a part of the Underdark.

The Play
This became a campaign of hack & slash. I generally don’t run such campaigns as I see them as nothing but eventual killers of characters, which this one turned out to be. There were a lot of clues given and glossed over or ignored. I don’t think this is all a product of no interest as much as we all seem more preoccupied with outside forces than ever before. I stated in a previous Best practices post that it’s the DM’s responsibility to re-present items or bits of info that the party may have missed so as to keep them on track. Alas, the well, the hints and clues given at the first meeting of Yorell Monshegar, the second meeting with Yorell Monshegar – all for naught.
Some examples of this: There were clues as to what was going on behind the scenes with the royals. Despite several conversations, there was little follow-up.
Canus: I have heard speakings of a loner rogue by the name of Teur’t Obadra (Minotaur). He spoke of a place where men without swords were beaten men and men without courage were slaves. He is not a person of high regard but his word is his bond. And he wars against the Bard of Maschfield.
Yorell brought him up again though he was never looked for more than a cursory asking during that particular week. Teur’t was a wealth of info on Great Falls and could have gotten you inside the magic school as well as the water baron’s house itself. Oh well.
You never did find Miranda of the Stone or Keobar, the grizzled man, from the well. Both would have given some refuge.
Special Abilities
Dan used his ability to grant more hit points. You never did find the curtain of flames though John used his power. Mike used his ranger ability and Ron’s ‘power’ was useless as I didn’t errata the water. Tom used his ability to hide his spellbook. Bren used his to find secret passages. Sly didn’t use his to become invulnerable – I thought this one would be very cool.
Some Specifics of the campaign
I liked the concept of items that grew in stature as the characters recovered more pieces. I liked the idea that for one character to excel, another would have to do without – only one gem yet so many uses!
I liked the new language and how you had to learn it. Dan was awesome in role playing this and Bren wrote some pretty entertaining stuff involving this. I think it’s stupid that you can take a single skill point and learn a language. Unfortunately, being that you had gobs of water, negotiations were easier than they should have been under the circumstances so this didn’t come into play as much as it should have.
There was an enclave of escaped slaves – mostly humans – who had a place called ‘Home’. It was mentioned several times but was never followed-up on.
I introduced a complete economic and ecological system in the slave cave where you started. There were cool items like mossmater and spideryarn suits; shimmer Metal, caberflash, and umberbright. These all became non-factors with the damn water issue. I liked that you had no idea what was worth anything.
The bulbous white creatures were friendly. You never really had a chance to meet them properly as you escaped before I expected you to.
Meeting Mazracord, the body collector as the first person you met outside the slave cave was fun. He was the first of many completely immoral bastards that you’d meet. The language barrier came into play here though it didn’t last long.
I liked the tribesmen who spit on you as a sign of respect. I was waiting for someone to go nuts and that person was going to die. Tom picked up on this right away though. That ruined my fun.
I like running giants. They’re big, absorb damage well, and deal out close and long-range damage like a pro. Unfortunately, it did not make sense to have very large creatures in the Underdark – the ecology is wrong for it. Large creatures would require too much water, too much food, and would not do well in confined spaced. Hence the growing giants. I liked them a lot.
I liked the zombie room that kept teleporting you unless you made your will save. The corpse colony in the next room was fun to run as well.
I wanted the dragon kings to play a bigger role but decided that the campaign would be months longer if I did. So I let them be dragons and dragons unlike any you have ever seen. Fun to run and it’s great watching the table as everyone tries to decide if this is easier or worse than a large red dragon.
The crux of the campaign was rooted in the temple of the three elven kings. This was where you found the 9 books, the small maze, and the scroll. This was also where the party left the campaign track and decided to just kill everything. Of the 9 books, the one that laid a course was the book of drow history, which remained unread until I asked who was reading the damned thing. There were clues in it along the way. Also, the books you didn’t use were left to rot. They did have a purpose if the drow history was read earlier. I should have demanded that someone was reading it so I’ll take the blame on that one. I’ll probably use the Library of the Dead in another campaign – it was one of the cool places that you just didn’t get to. Doomling Downs was another. Oh well.
Great Falls was fun. I loved everything about everyone’s reactions and thank you again to Tom for playing that up so well. There could have been a dozen weeks in Great Falls but that was a powder keg waiting to spiral out of control, especially with a zealot dwarf in the mix.
I think the battle in Jeridiah with the huge map was one of my favorite battles. I’ll do that again if I ever run again though obviously a different scenario.

Characters
Marqus. He wins for having the most character as many of Bren’s characters do. Sanity long abandoned, he played the dwarf as a true zealot, impervious to pain as long as he was on the path of righteousness. A fine addition to the pantheon of memorable characters.
Talon, a cannon. It’s hard to damage someone of this ilk as they tend to hurl artillery from too far away. I think I’ll errata the archers to one arm next campaign.
Eli. I was sure Eli was going to die not less than about 12 times. He’d step up, do immense damage, and then get pounded into ash. As far as prestige characters go, this was probably the most successful run yet.
Arlis. The linchpin to character mortality. Once Arlis went down the body count rose significantly. I don’t know why Arlis didn’t ask his Paladin to slit Marques’ throat.
Niko. A mage. A dead mage. Sad to see him take a shot to the head and when I say I feel your pain, you know I’m not making it up.
Jeridiah. I loved that Dan played the poor sap down to the intelligence score; I would not be able to do that very well so kudos for that. Dan rolled through characters pretty rapidly after Jeridiah went down but Jeridiah was the most memorable.
Og. Second most memorable.
Rogal. Yes, I should have killed him as an infant.
Ron’s other 9 characters. It really wasn’t me proving a point that characters can die in my campaigns, it just happened and happened often to Ron.
Over all, I enjoyed running the campaign. There were mistakes on both sides but that is par for the course. Hopefully everyone enjoyed the better part of a year in making the story happen. Maybe I’ll do this again in a few years.

Bummer, apparently both my characters were so forgettable that they didn't even get mentioned. J/K I'm sure it just an oversight . I enjoyed Chisel very much and my only regret is that he was not the character all the way through. Sly could have been fun but Reneel was the last straw in my declining enjoyment of Sly.

Nice re-cap Phil and you seem to be right on with most of your evaluations. The Water thing did break the economy of the campaign which is too sad. With characters dying and being replaced by 'locals' the language thing lost it's fun but that was truly a great aspect of the campaign.

You put in some really cool monsters as usual. The growing Giants were very cool and they totally made sense for the world. My favorite battle was the room with the dead kings and then the lives ones in another time. That was well thought and very cool.

Everyone I thought hung there and did a great job. Marques was a lot of fun and I thought Tom really shined with both his characters in this setting. Dan always adds good role playing and fun too. Arlis was way cool and I would have liked to see Ron display his power more but with Marques and the locals seeming lack of awe around those that can make water I understand why he didn't. Mike did great but he was gone so much this time around it was hard to get the feel for Talon. John's mega damage duskblade was very cool and I love the visual of the huge hammer in the hands of an elf.

I would have liked to see varying reactions to Marques creating rain. I think that could have been one of the coolest moments in the campaign and instead the reaction was uniformly aggressive.

The story was very good though hard to follow for most of the campaign. The various areas were well thought out and very challenging as usual. Overall it was a great job.

My error on leaving Chisel out of the mix. A tank and a half and well played. Sly never got a chance to fully develop; I was going to use him more as an NPC but left him on the sidelines due to time. It also threw a monkey wrench into the mix when Yorrell Monshegar got killed.

There were times when the party wandered but those were mostly during times when there was blood in everyone's eyes and direction was overlooked.

Since you never got fully into Great Falls and did not re-encounter the stone walkers, you did not know the extent of their power. Creating rain was the equivalent of printing money and punishable by death (as was using any earthquake spell). The Underdark was ruled by fear and those not in power were easily played for this. Marques did gain followers in reaction to his power on his last trip to Great Falls; he seemed more powerful than the current protector so off they went.

Oddly, this was one of the few campaigns that finished better than it started, or at least better than it was when it hit its stride. When you started throwing interesting battles at us, it actually rescued what had become somewhat painful--the slogging from one place to the next in linear fashion. Opening the battlefield and allowing our choices to produce interesting results was the key. Until you did that, I felt like we were yoked to a plow with no more choice than to pull or get whipped.

As far as your desire to errata this and houserule that, consider that unless we find Pathfinder to be less-than-acceptable, we'll likely never play dungeons and dragons again. Think of it this way: Pathfinder is 3.5 with all of the most obvious problems fixed, and the billions of spells and prestige classes done away with neatly. Now we're forced back into a small set of rules with just our imaginations and creativity to differentiate us. That means that we can disallow vast swathes of even the limited ruleset that exists (like prestige classes, etc.) and just start allowing things a little at a time to see how they work. We can be wise and look at new product carefully and consider its impact before even thinking about allowing it.

So we get to start fresh, and if we learned from past mistakes, maybe we won't let the game get broken again.

Some lessons learned from Andior this go-round:

One setting, all the time, is a terrible burden for a DM to bear. Phil says he would do it again if he had the choice to make. I wouldn't.

Taking the characters out of their world for the duration, especially to a place that they will leave when it is over, is a motivation killer. Don't do this. What is the point of building something other than a stack of corpses?

Small tinkers to the economy can have dramatic flavor effects. Massive replacements are too much detail for every character to deal with. This is like announcing that the campaign will be played in Spanish, and expecting us to go along.

Language learning worked well. I liked it. But you should also allow characters to spent skill points on it, and that should count for more than raw ability or random rolls. That way people can choose to learn.

Too many riddles, too much plot, too much time between hint and execution, all that won't bother the characters beyond a few moments of minor annoyance when you look at them like they're stupid, but it will bug the crap out of you when we ignore huge amounts of content and subtlety. We really aren't that subtle, and most of the really memorable moments come from the characters themselves. Just draw the set and let the actors act!

I think the monsters and their variety were okay, even though it was a bit drow-heavy and, after a certain point, all monsters had to be unhittable hit point sinks with multiple gauss cannons or they weren't there in round two. I don't think that was badly handled, although I think it would have been better had it not been necessary.

I think the magic weapon collectables (amaze your friends, collect them all!!!) have been tried and tried and found wanting. At best they make the characters too powerful, because you have to make them good enough that the characters don't chuck em for something better, and at worst they make some characters feel excluded because they don't have an item from the collection. I think there's room for that sort of thing on a small scale, but as a major element of the campaign, not so much.

Overall, I think your campaign redeemed itself well. Considering all of its faults, I walked away feeling good about it, which indicates some good DM'ing when it was desperately needed, and a selflessness that we couldn't all pull off if we were in your shoes. (diagram that sentence if you're bored) I was very disappointed when Nikko died, and I think a lot of good momentum went out of the campaign for me at that point. I never really warmed to Rogahl, but he was serviceable and fit better in the silly season that Marqes' predominance in the campaign ushered in. Can you ever really be as fond of a replacement character as you were of your original character's concept?

It struck me that we all seem to play the same character, no matter how different the creatures are that they live in.

Bren always plays someone who is slightly detached from the "reality" of the campaign, a loose cannon, and faintly ridiculous. Nobody trusts him. Bren doesn't care.
Greg always plays someone who is earnest, smart and a team player, even when they shouldn't be. Everybody trusts him. I think this is a class ability of a banker.
Ron always plays a gruff and grumbly guy who, when the chips are down, is willing to do what has to be done, no matter how vile. Nobody trusts him. This is probably wise.
Dan always plays someone who starts out in character, but turns smart and sarcastically funny, even when they shouldn't be. Nobody trusts him except Greg. He is too clever to be trusted.
Mike always plays someone who is an endless font of enthusiasm, who invariably spends half of his time a little annoyed by the irrational quirks of the others. Nobody trusts him (anymore).
John always plays someone who spends the campaign doing battle with his own innate passivity. Everyone trusts him. We'll probably all pay for that one day.
Phil always plays a character that (not so) secretly wants to be great some day, like tomorrow. I don't trust him because he owes me (Leviticus). He probably owes you too.

The irony of it is that I wouldn't trade any of you in for anyone else. Not Dennis or Mike or Paul, or another of the handful of others from the misty past. For each one we lost, we got a better one in return. Ah well, new campaign tomorrow! Woot!

And at the end of it all, we meet the great big party cock at the end of the hall.

Hmmmm, we're all spirited off and fighting for our return, yet, once there, we find it doesn't quite work that way.

Some elect to stay. Some good elect to stay. Some were ready to leave thirty seconds after they arrived and after everything comes around, Sly gets to find out he's not going anywhere cause he's not good. And if you're not good in the next day, you ain't leaving. Love to know what segment party cock is in when he tells Sly he's stayin' behind.

Fast forward a couple weeks in the future and the King's court is showing up at the gates of party cock with about 8-10 evil guys and leavin' them there for him to deal with. Then repeating two hours later. No longer welcome in our world, you go play with them.

And regardless, an 18th level and growing everyday (still plenty of bad agents running about the Hardlands of St. Cuthbert) gaining the planer shift spell is only a matter of asking for it. Then, just like water is no longer a commodity, mass transport will turn the place into a vacation spot...and party cock will sit at the gates wonderin'...where'd they all go?
Times out a minute. Clerical water spells are not new. You had to see that as an equalizer going in. Marques, however, didn't even get a water spell until 2nd or 3rd level since he had no idea he should start with it.

I really liked the campaign even if I didn't like the end. The land was a tapestry and Marques the water color. Some of the challenges in the battles were very original good enough to either kill of make it a real posibility to get killed.

A few items, however, that might have worked better. A map. Someone, somewhere had to put together a map of the place. As it was we only saw what what we saw and pissed on it to make it our own. If the place was huge, a huge map would have let us know that and rather than making himself king, he would have made himself king of perhaps a burough.

There was a lot of power and diplomacy in our group yet no fight that was written was going to go any other way. In the end, I bet there were a number of paths not taken just because we had the obvious bad guy to fight and knew that was where we would eventually end up. Like you said, it was an evil campaign. That's fine, let's go knock on evil's door and see if he wants to come out and play. We weren't looking for good guys and such as much as a way to get straight to the biggest and baddest guy out there.

Mirya. Reneal wasn't annoying but Mirya was? She at least had a purpose! Every week some rock assassine didn't jump out and cut her throat left me in complete surprise. In the end, we were just supposed to pass through this world, not do anything to change it...except for leave Sly behind when we all left it at the end.

But in the end it was, as always, well thought out and a great campaign, but like so many movies out there, I think I'd like to see the extended director's cut and the alternate ending.

I'll send Marques' postscript tomorrow.

/clap, clap

Nice follow ons Bren and Tom. To pile on a bit, I think if I had played SLY to the end (which means I would have gotten away with killing Reneal) I likely would have stabbed Phil in the heart when he told me Sly couldn't leave. The thought of getting him home was all that kept me playing him for last month or so.

Note to self: Do not box in the characters at the end. Give them choices and when I say choices I mean choices that are not restricted by something so vague as alignment.

It is absolutely the guys that show on Wednesday that make the game. No question. I know in my next campaign I am striving for an even more open-canvas campaign. I really want to see what 7 great D&D players can bring to life if given the chance.

I thought Phil did a great job overall. I do wish he had not spent so much time trying to keep Marques down. It could have really made the whole campaign a lot more fun had the rain cloud incident lead a different direction. Oh well it gave me an idea of a new character at least. Phil's biggest plus is like Tom said, his ability to save a campaign that was having a tough time capturing our imagination. Better to finish strong than start strong and finish weak.

Well, I thought about it long and hard and finally decided to chime in as well.

I really liked the ending statement that the "party cock" (as Bren called him) laid out there. Making the statement that we are in the upper-lower class of the afterlife certainly seemed to bring the story together quite a bit.
I was disappointed that it ended there. We originally were trying to figure out why pieces of the castle blinked in and out and why those freaks jumped in and scared everyone at the party while dogface-boy was reciting lyrics and the retarded kid was making a bit of coin reading palms. I thought were we going to go back and put the piece of the puzzle in place.

The weapons were cool, but with the sets we seem to focus on the sets and not the story line as much. I don't care that the prince does a face plant into a blade barrier as long as I can get a gem. We saw this in Greg's last world and again in this world. Magic is cool, a couple of things that can play together is cool, but building a campaign around building sets means that we will build the sets and then wait for the big hack and slash ending.

Phil has always put a great deal of time into the riddles, the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, and the hints and clues that need to play out as the world evolves. These are usually fun in the beginning, but become less fun as the months of real world time play out. We don't need a neon sign pointing in the direction at each crossroads (lord knows we miss those, too), but we don't do well with things that won't come to pass after Spring Break when we learned of them before Thanksgiving. And then it really ruins things when the DM has to dumb it down, show us the section to re-read, and then explain it to us. It's like we just aren't getting a joke - it's never as funny when its explained; the riddles are as good when you have to get half a dozen hints to figure it out.

The opening scenes in Castaway seemed to drag on for a long time in order to help the audience feel the pain that the poor bugger was going through. The DMs have a tricky time trying to do this as well - the heat of a room, the cold of the Winter, the suffering of being in a cave too long. Phil has tried 2 out of 3 of these, and did a great job of them (with the exception of the water thing that we all agreed should have been erratta'ded), but they get difficult to continue on with. After a period of time, like all things, they get ignored - trying to figure out the differences of one cave to another just doesn't mean much - it's a cave...got it, what are we fighting in this one?

Character death is always something that really stinks once you hit a certain level. You spent a lot of time on those characters and built them up - there is no replacing them. In this world, like others it was much the same - we lost characters and created new ones that were products of the environment. However, the long term goal of the party was lost little by little as each new character joined the party. There was no love for the royalty (which my last character barely even saw), there was no true desire to go "back" where ever that was, so the only thing that drove us to join was the companionship of having people beside you as you beat down the people you hated. Thus, a hack and slash. DMs usually have a tough time putting a new character into the fold depending on where the party is. Sure, a town is always handy, a traveling slave-trader, or just a random 7th level cleric that is out and about on his own coincidentally after the party just lost a character. But if that new character does not have the same background or long term goals, it will be hard to get into the flow of the campaign. Sure, we as players, must make that happen, but we need sometime of guideline to make it feasible without just being an next James Bond - new face (actor), but same role, same friends, same office, same allies, same enemies, etc. There has to be a reason why we are where we are and why we need to blend in with this new group.

NPCs - ugh - I know you talked about these, but I really don't like them. Unless they are unconscious or a slave we have to bring back to a town I'm OK with it. But the tricky part is - how can a DM put an NPC in place without it being a) a distraction, b) a neon sign of what to do next, c) a party clown, or d) all of the above. There is no easy answer to this and some have more relevance than others. Each one knows bits and pieces of info that they are give based on kindness, money, the right questions, fear, etc., but then it's a tough path to follow if the right questions aren't asked, the right names aren't used, etc. If we ask about direction to a pub and the guys tells us about a secret passage, its just kind of creepy.
The NPCs that we encountered were well played by Phil, as usual, but the royals and slaves just got to be a pain. Maybe more so because I lost Jeradiah, as he would have gone to the ends of the earth (or this level of hell) to save the royalty, but none of the new guys really cares anything about the 3rd son in line for the throne to Batswana.

Overall I really enjoyed Phil's campaign. The monsters were cool, the growing giants were a neat addition, and the challenges were...well, challenging. Each DM has a different way of doing things - some good, some bad - but I do hope, Phil, that you do get the urge back and run again in the future. You try different things that make us take notice and put quite a bit of time and effort into them, and for the most part they all worked very well this time. I, for one, look forward to your next world...I'm hoping we get to play evil guys in the lobby of heaven this time hehehehe

With Phil’s world now passing into the record books I don’t want to miss my chance to add to the comments. I though it was extremely creative and very much “outside the box”. As always with Phil’s world the detail was extreme. I learned a lot and had fun. I know it takes exceptional skill to keep us all under some form of control every week just to have some type of game to occur. I’ve noticed that by some weird coincidence that campaigns often have close themes, Greg’s magic sets and Phil’s gems sets for example even though I’m sure that was not the intention. Most of the things I didn’t like in this last world I think will be taken care of when we move to the Pathfinder system, 3.5 is dead, long live 3.75. Other things I found I didn’t like were basically starting off captured, your entire well thought out expenders at roll up time a basically flushed. I think a DM can give a little insight on what the campaign setting is going to be over all so that the players can have a better idea of how to set up their character. Had I known the setting I would have played something way different than a lawful good priest. The ending was just as odd, maybe Marcus can interpret it for all of the followers of St.Cizil and the we can go ahead start working on different factions. All in all I’m looking forward to Phil’s next endeavor it should be much different.