A Great Campaign Experience

 

Over the weekend I was looking through one of my gaming bookshelves to see if my physical copy of Engine Hearts. Sad to say, it looks like my copies of that game did not survive the great purge of 2018. But I digress, during this search I came across my copy of GURPS Riverworld and seeing that book triggered memories of one of my favorite role playing experiences I have ever had. GURPS Riverworld is based on the book series by Phillip Jose Farmer. For those of you that are interested in playing in campaign and do not want anything spoiled, do not click on the previous link about the books or read any of the books.

So, this campaign happened about twenty years ago and the group and I were in-between World of Darkness games. One of the usual Storytellers of the group called up myself and a few other players and pitched an idea for a campaign. The only direction we were given was that we are going to use the Storyteller system from World of Darkness and we needed to create mortal characters. Our characters could be from any time in history and they could have any background we wanted (royalty, secret agents, ninjas, knights, pirates, etc.). I was not aware of what the other players created but I created a modern day over the top secret agent and our storyteller ran solo sessions for for each of us where our characters ended up dying at the end of the session (which we had no idea that was the goal). My secret agent survived a lot of near death experiences throughout the session to only meet his untimely end as the church the secret agent was hiding in roof collapsed. It was kind of a deus ex machina moment of "rocks fall and everyone dies" situation but it was fine.

Our Storyteller scheduled a game where everyone was going to be there and thus, the campaign begun. All of our characters woke up naked, in a grassy field, a bucket with a lid attached to the the wrist by a string, and the characters could travel south and come across a giant river or north and run into a dense forest. There a gigantic stone stable with holes in the legs off in the distance as well. This information was not presented to us up front as our characters had to explore to find out about the obvious landmarks. 

Our characters also explored the food and other items inside of our buckets, the mysterious stone tables, the dangers in the forest, the dangers in the river, and the interactions of the other people who were resurrected (the societies they created). Some of the people our characters ran into were famous people from history. It was also interesting to learn how the rules of death were different in River World. 

Yes, I am being vague on purpose and why? Because I do not want to spoil it for anyone who may end up as a player in this world. If you are interested enough, then grab the book or watch the miniseries - though full disclaimer I have not seen the miniseries and I cannot vouch for its quality or accuracy. 

Anyway, I am getting lost in the weeds. There was countless reasons why this campaign was such a great experience and something out of the norm that I have not experienced since or I think a lot of people do not experience. I will try to codify a handful of them.

• The entire premise of the campaign and the source material was kept completely secret. The Storyteller even had brown butcher paper folded over the cover of the book so we could not see it. 
• The players created characters from any era with any background in a vacuum. The other players did not know who the other characters were until the characters met in game. If I remember correct we had my secret agent, a Samurai, a cowboy, a person from the future, and a teenager form the 80s. We all got to know each other characters and about them in game and it was glorious. 
• It was sandbox to the max and it was truly up to us to explore, figure out our surroundings, interact with people, and watch the various societies grow and change. 
• Due to the lack of character and player knowledge, the setting and the world became real as the characters explored it and we actually drew maps/kept notes. 
• It was honestly surprising to learn how death and time worked in River World. 
• Our characters had to learn just about everything from trial and error and sometimes those errors were huge. 
• When we uncovered secrets of the world, it was awe inspiring. 
• It was fun as the players would talk between sessions and think of all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories and try to make all kinds of outlandish connections. The campaign just inspired so much talk outside of the table which I think is just rad. 

I think those are all the important points anyway. I feel lucky that I got to experience such a campaign and I hope to do so again.