A veritable PLETHORA of campaign/adventure/etc 5x5 design

[kesher]

Using the 5x5 Method

[xerxez]

I like this Kesher.

I have wanted to design smaller scale dungeons myself, mainly so I could build paper mache models of the terrain.

There are dungeons and ruins in some tales of Lovecraft, Howard, and Burroughs that seem perfect for scenarios. Can't remember the story title, but there's a Cormac tale with a ruined temple, it has maybe three to four significant chambers on the top and hints at a small cave complex below, maybe a few tunnels and some caverns. What a perfect dungeon--I want to build a model and kind of run some games that are as much M2M (Chainmail) as roleplaying, but obviously with mega dungeons this would not be possible except for certain areas.

I like this idea and have considered it for awhile--you could even abbreviate things between the five key encounters in short story form given to the players, they could write in actions, and it would eliminate so much roleplaying in matters that seem to bog down and go nowhere--keep things focused on your key encounters.

I've just come out of a year long campaign of a game I ran from Rules Cyclopedia...over a year, actually, like 16 mos. It was glorious for the most part, but the last few sessions I could see it had lost steam, and this at the climax. And looking back, I can see what diverted some of the stream was side junctures of little or no consequence. So its disappointing that on the last stretch it bogged down, my fault as a DM, but I learned. And what I learned is to stick to some kind of model like the one your advocating.

Also, I was running it from the R.C. and then some people wanted to use spells and magic items from 1st edition AD&D and next thing you knew, we had a confusing and bastardized system that frustrated people when the DM chose to stick with whichever system he thought best on the question at hand but wasn't what they wanted. The Pathfinder folks liked the story but kept grumbling about the failures of combat without feats and five foot step thingys and then one guy got into 5th edition and lost interest because of that...

Sigh.

It woulda been better to simply cut out some stuff and quit on high. This method you are on seems to be a good way to go from this perspective.

[Deleted]

I am not sure if I understand the concept all too well: WOuldn't this mean to overload the campaign right from the start?