Name of the Campaign: Swords of the Frontier

Years run: 2021-2022

Rule system: D&D 5th Edition

Core Concept: Showcase the Birthright setting with a group of adventurers that work their way up to becoming rulers of an entire nation.

Participants:

Ross Watson (DM)

Scott Crosson: Naeric/Naerica (Human Warlock)

Charlie Spicer: Jasco Valroy (Human Warlock)

Cash Nesper: Malcolm Conobar (Human Fighter)

Dax Sapien: Victor Der Windel (Half-Elf Wizard)

Randy Buckle: Zircopol Klinkenbeard (Dwarf Cleric)

Chaz Kemp: Raphael Arquette (Aasimar Rogue)

Ryan Powell: Brenviel Artyn (Human Ranger)

Inspiration

It all started with a Shadowrun game. Seriously. Wait, come back, let me explain!

I decided to run a Shadowrun game with some friends at my home. I took this role as gamemaster and host very casually. I’d ran Shadowrun many times previously, and I was intending to use storylines I’d used before to great effect. However, the game did not last long and I felt very dissatisfied with the results. I took a long look at how things went, and I decided the fault lay with myself. I had simply not invested any real time or effort into the game, preferring to more-or-less “phone it in,” and go on autopilot using that previously successful storyline. (And I still think that storyline was a good one, and it’ll end up in this series eventually, but that’s beside the point)

I didn’t like the way this realization made me feel. I didn’t like the idea that I had just “phoned it in” as a GM. And I realized I didn’t want to go to my grave without running a truly goddamn good game. So, that became my goal.

I was lucky enough to join a D&D group that was playing through Descent into Avernus, and the players and I really clicked. It was an awesome group of gamers, but we didn’t really fit well with the DM of that campaign. In time, that game died, but the players and I decided we wanted to keep gaming together. We tried a brief stint with Rime of the Frostmaiden, but then that game ended as well, and I decided to step up.

I rolled up my sleeves and chose to pour my heart and soul into a D&D campaign just to see what it would look like. And that became Swords of the Frontier.

Campaign Description

This campaign lasted for 33 sessions over the course of two years. Each session went from noon to about 7 PM, meaning we got (with breaks) about six hours of solid gaming every other week. I estimate we had over two hundred hours of quality D&D in this campaign, which I think most people will agree is pretty damn good value for the time and effort invested.

The campaign started with an unusual idea; what if the player characters weren’t adventurers per se, but instead guests at a wedding party? I asked each player to explain whether their character was a friend of the bride or the groom, and worked with them to get a good reason why they were present at a pre-ceremony get-together in the small town of Deepshadow.

My goal was to introduce the players to my favorite D&D setting: Birthright. This setting is often aimed at presenting ideas of rulership, politics, and diplomacy alongside traditional D&D adventuring. However, I wanted to try and ease them into the idea of being rulers by having them do some adventuring first and build up to the point where they would be in charge of a region.

Over the course of 33 sessions, the players went from wedding guests to heroes, defending the town of Deepshadow against assassins, rescuing the bride and groom, and eventually gaining noble titles and control of an entire province. We had an extended trip into the Feywild that was highly entertaining (the result of one of the players needing to bow out and being replaced by a new player), and an absolutely epic quest to learn how to defeat… and then confront… THE Chimaera, an absolutely deadly BBEG ruling an entire mountain range to the west.

Because of the way the group had met and begun their adventures, they decided that their group’s name was “the Best Men,” referring to the position of Best Man during a traditional wedding. (This moniker took on a slightly ironic tone when one of the characters switched gender from man to woman later on)

I tried as often as possible to include personal stories for each of the main characters. Raphael managed to rescue his mentor from a psychic prison ruled by a mind flayer. Malcolm claimed a magic sword from a Death Knight’s barrow that turned out to be the Sword of Kas. Naeric embraced a transformation into a warlock of the River King, an enigmatic fey lord. Victor tracked down his missing father and died heroically helping to defeat the evil being who had kidnapped his father in the first place. Zircopol built temples to his god throughout the region and gained perhaps some of the greatest fame of the group.

Some highlights of the campaign that I recall include:

• One session where Malcolm was knighted by the Countess of Coeranys had almost no dice-rolling at all, but involved a tense scene where the other characters had to attest to Malcolm’s worthiness of the honor.
• The group faced a green dragon, defeating it, only to discover that it was the spawn of an older and far more powerful green dragon, resulting in a dramatic battle in the ruins of a lost elven kingdom against this mighty and cunning monster.
• The “Best Men” had to journey into the sewers beneath the capital city of Coeranys to deal with an invasion of Slaad that had corrupted the area with chaos, resulting in Wild Magic results for ANY spells cast in the region. These wild magic results were pretty entertainingly random, which contrasted with how Naerica’s wand of wonder functioned with absolute reliability in the same zone.

There were many more awesome moments throughout the campaign, but if I tried to list them all, this entry would be impossibly long. Suffice to say that we had 33 sessions, and each one of them was very fun for me as the DM, and I did my best to make sure everyone went home happy.

Themes and Tropes

• Choices Have Consequences: As often as possible, I made notes of important decisions made by the players and tried to give those decisions weight. Bargains with the fey came back to haunt them, and decisions about which enemy to fight now or fight later became important down the line.
• Ruling Isn’t Easy: Similarly, the choices the players made as rulers had weight as well. There’s no “perfect” way to rule a region; sometimes they had to make the best of a bad situation, while other times they were able to enact fairly important changes to the lives of the people they ruled.
• NPCs are Not Just Window Dressing: I had a wide cast of NPCs, from a talking gold coin revolutionary to a crotchety old gnome woodworker. I had a lot of resources to help me come up with memorable NPCs for the heroes to interact with, and I kept an updated “dramatis personae” list handy for the players so that they didn’t have to work hard to remember who was who.

Legendary Aspects

Engagement: Honestly, one of the main things that made this campaign so damn good were the players. I had a “unicorn group,” a collection of players who were committed to showing up for the game, committed to fully engaging with the setting/story/npcs, committed to taking the game seriously and having a hell of a lot of fun at the same time. It’s truly breathtaking to behold when a group gels as good as the “Best Men” did. 

We were friends, not just around the table, but meeting for social stuff outside of the game as well. We cared about each other, listened to each other, laughed at each other’s jokes, and acted with patience and kindness as much as we could. I remember that the players were never on their phones, always paying attention even when the focus wasn’t on them, and made a special effort to attend every session if they could possibly manage it.

Memorable: With the end of the campaign being so recent, I can only say that I found the campaign highly memorable. My players painted up some amazing miniatures for the game, including a huge monster mini for The Chimaera that is truly awesome. Chaz Kemp gave us some outstanding art of the characters and their castle, Blackmere Keep, that I’ll treasure forever. We made some memories here and I feel good about any comparisons made to this campaign later on down the line for any of the players who took part.

Satisfying: I planned out the final session of the campaign beginning with the climactic final battle against the Chimaera and then allowed over two hours to deal with the aftermath. This included discussions of what the characters planned to do in one week, one month, and one year afterwards. We took another hour just to talk about how the campaign had affected us, and my players all shared some of their favorite moments. I look back on this campaign as a major achievement for myself and a big part of that is the feeling that I had that I succeeded in what I set out to do. And that was always to leave everything on the table and walk away knowing I did not cut any corners or “phone it in.” From the words of my players, it seemed to work out just fine.

Takeaways

• A unicorn group is your most precious resource. Nurture and protect a good group of players!
• You get out what you put in. If you give the campaign your time and attention, it will flourish.
• The effort is worth it. I made color images of my NPCs, bought hand-crafted minis from Etsy, and printed out a huge map of the region, just as a few examples. All of these things paid off.