"Midnight" campaign setting, by FFG.

[Deleted]

Hey, all!

Looks like I am going to give that one a try as a DM, next year; likely using my particular blend of OD&D/RCD&D as a rules system. Most likely not as a campaign, but as a one- to three-evening affair. So, I am wondering what your experiences have been with that one:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_(role-playing_game)


TLDR - Midnight was arguably the most successful third-party d20-setting, back in the wild 2000s, outside of Paizo's Golarion. (And excluding several of the d20-era TSR-relicense products, like Blackmoor, Ravenloft, and Dragonlance.) It's basic story is VERY inspired by "The Lord of the Rings". Basically, it's how Middle Earth might come to look like if Sauron one the War of the Ring. The production quality and the writing are generally pretty high, even if the setting sometimes overdoes it with the (then very fashionable and new) grimdark. There is an introductory campaign, "Crown of Shadows", that is solid, if a little bit too metaplot-y. I will likely work on streamlining and simplifying the adventures from that campaign to a level where they work as noob-friendly one-shots.

What are your experiences with Midnight, if at all?

(I used to be a pretty big FFG fanboy, by the way: "Dawnforge", also released around 2003, is one of my all-time favorite RPG products. )

Yours,

Rafe

[Starbeard]

Interesting, I don't think I've ever heard of it, but the name strikes me as familiar—like I can almost picture the logo on a book cover.

I pretty much lived under a rock in the d20 days, and by the time I finally started playing something D&Dish I went straight to first edition, so that didn't help. As for campaign settings, that was the period I was really only interested in GURPS style historical supplements.

So, not much help there, but it does sound interesting. I'm 100% all for Extruded Middle-earth Knockoffs with a Twist. Have you run the campaign before?

[mrmanowar]

I only played Midnight twice, both times almost 15 years ago. I liked the setting and the way my GM ran the game. It is exactly like you described with the Sauron winning analogy. I liked it because as we were the rebellion so to speak, we were always on our toes and had to be quick thinking to avoid those more powerful than us investigating what we were after. I don't have much else concrete to offer because this was the era when anyone was making OGL stuff to fit with 3.0/3.5 and many of my friends were distracted by the "new shiny thing" every month or so. I also liked the Mongoose Conan stuff from this era and ran a five year campaign in that. I also played Iron Kingdoms for the same two sessions and made characters for other games in that span, but didn't play.

[scottenkainen]

Never heard of this!

[howandwhy99]

I remember when this came out. It is very evocative and a neat spin on a traditional Middle Earth-like setting. "What if Sauron won?"

Depending on how you set up your D&D campaign there can be problems. (e.g. do you balance your campaign world? are their multiple alignment areas to explore? etc.) The game is very dark and more horrific in feel, so the traditional romp from civilization out into the wilderness and then the chaotic dungeon is inverted. Which puts access to resources, merchants, repairs, food, and the like at a premium and rare. You move more from one found base of rebellion to the next. Sort of like an Empire vs. Rebels set up.

One of the complaints about the game, which came only after a few years of players in that campaign world, was the setting is also the scenario. But I think it takes a lot of gaming to get there. Plus you could just expand the setting to "outside Midnight", or some other option.

[xerxez]

This sounds interesting as a setting. I have not perused the game, which would rock, but I have seen the movie the folks at FFG managed to swing, The Midnight Chronicles, which I think is still on Netflix or Amazon. For the production value, I thought it a very engaging film with a great plot and setting and not half bad acting and effects.

[Deleted]

Dec 21, 2018 17:32:16 GMT -6 Starbeard said:

Interesting, I don't think I've ever heard of it, but the name strikes me as familiar—like I can almost picture the logo on a book cover.

I pretty much lived under a rock in the d20 days, and by the time I finally started playing something D&Dish I went straight to first edition, so that didn't help. As for campaign settings, that was the period I was really only interested in GURPS style historical supplements.

So, not much help there, but it does sound interesting. I'm 100% all for Extruded Middle-earth Knockoffs with a Twist. Have you run the campaign before?

I *think* I tried it as a DM a couple of times shortly after I had bought the books, in 2007. I also played in a couple of short Midnight games, around that time. My most profound memories about it come from a PBP, one of the very best I've ever played in, called "Quietus Clarion". I was staged at the Midnight fan board, www.againsttheshadow.org/, and I think the guys are still up and running. (I eventually had had to drop out due to time constraints.)

My own impression of the setting is that it's pretty excellent, perhaps one of the all-time highlights of D&D culture. The main reason that I didn't get more into it was that I was simply already running a game that I liked, back then. - But it's always been something that I've wanted to do.

Problems that I believe to have spotted are mainly that Midnight, like many d20 era lines, is a typical splatbook series: While the premise is very friendly to beginners, the setting's driving metaplot is almost ridiculously convoluted, and using it to one's advantage demands a lot of dedication. Whether that work is later worth the reward is a subjective question: Myself, I like to get a bit lost in these fantasy worlds before I run the games - which is why I am so fond of Thieves' World, Lankhmar, and many 2e TSR settings: In reading the novels, you kind of already prepare your game. - However, I am not too much of a fan of reading actual encyclopedias about any fantasy world before I can feel able to do even some most basic gaming. And while Midnight is far from being as bad as some other "splatbook series settings" out there, the minimal setup that you need to run an "authentic" campaign is four or five books. This implies a fairly expensive buy-in, and we're certainly not talking about one weekend you'll need to prepare the setting. More like, two months.

Also, as howandwhy99 has said, the setting itself is the scenario. While that, in itself, is not necessarily a weakness, the problem I am seeing here is that the scenario we're talking about is essentially unwinnable for the players if you play things out by the book. Yet, at the same time, the metaplot is inescapable, and the natural inclination of especially new players would be to gravitate to it: So, that is something that you need to solve as a DM to keep the game satisfying for the group. - No spoilers here, but basically, if you postulate that there is supposed to remain even a small chance for the players to rescue their world from darkness, then there are two places in this setting where every upper-level game will eventually be going. The way I'm wired, I looked at those two places before ever having my players set their feet into the setting, and while it's not something I would always recommend (like, you can really spend a long time in Blackmoor before you have to figure out for yourself what the Egg of Coot is), in this case, I think it's the key to telling a focused, player-friendly campaign.

But outside of that, I am now returning to Midnight because I do still think that is can be a rewarding experience, and that low-level gaming there is easy, because you can enrich otherwise pretty standard quests through the metaplot. So, even when it's something like "clean out the Goblin's lair", or "capture the old fortress", you can make it more interesting to the players because you can set up the adventure in relation to the metaplot. That is bound to create a lot of atmosphere - even though it means that you will have to embrace the metaplot, and to consequently develop it, later on. In my experience, this can make for a pretty great early game, but also for a pretty convoluted later game (levels 10++, if your campaign ever gets there).


- If you like, I can post a little bit about my thoughts on "Crown of Shadow", the intro campaign, some time in January: So far, my impressions during the first re-read of the module are that it is pretty good, and that it might be really easy to run with OD&D or one of the retroclones. It carries the usual d20-isms with it, mainly that the projected level advancement is far too low: Even under d20, lvl 1-5 is pretty ambitioned. For a system like, say, the DCC RPG, I'd say you'll easily reach lvl 7-10 before you complete it. Also, the adventure, if completed successfully, leaves at a cliffhanger that, again, suggests that the party should pick sides in the war of the gods. Which is great, if you're looking for a game like that; which is not great if you're looking to stay away from the metaplot. ...All else is spoilers. Wanna hear them?

[premmy]

Dec 25, 2018 13:42:13 GMT -6 @rafael said:

...All else is spoilers. Wanna hear them?

Sure!

I've always found the setting's premise intriguing, but I've also always kept a distance due to the system.

[Deleted]

Okay, cool. This is particularly nice because I haven't written anything really related to D&D as a game in quite a while, yet somehow keep haunting these forums on an almost daily base. - So, the one thing you need to know about me as a DM is that I generally treat adventures and campaigns as stories, with all the negative implications. I'm aware that mine is not necessarily a very sophisticated approach, but I stick to it because I feel like it's the only form of DMing that I consider myself to be remotely good at: All sandboxy, low-fi games I've ever run were either simply bad, or I felt really bad preparing them. We all know that feeling, the kind of game night prep that becomes a nailbiter because you realize that your concepts don't work as well as they should - and, ugh, the was that the first player ringing your doorbell already?

So, the kind of games that I am looking out for these days are those where I feel like I can take the general concept of "oldschool" low-fi fantasy gaming where not every 5th-level warrior is already a god of war, and bridge it with an epic story that, beyond rules and theoretical possibilities, keeps the players as emotionally invested as possible. This is also why I've posted about my experiences with horror-gaming scenarios - because the easiest way to make players invested is to scare and to bewilder them. And this probably explains as well why my choices of some adventures are rather odd: Aaron Allston's "Treasure Hunt", for example, is easily my favorite adventure, and the one I've run the most - because I am not running it as the mellow, child-oriented introductory adventure as which it was written, but basically as my homegrown version of "Silent Hill 2".

So, this is my thinking process for choosing „Midnight“ over, say, „Lankhmar“, or the Wilderlands. Now, the reason why I am sticking to published material with „Midnight“ is simply that it‘s easy to get the setting wrong if you base yourself only on the premise; also, I think the signs are that I will stick to this one for a while. My Thieves‘ World game has gradually evolved into „board game night“ - not for the lack of player interest, but for my own lack of preparation time. And so I think 2019 might the first time in probably 15 years in which I am not running a campaign. To take some time off, and to return next autumn with a fresh game, not the worst possible scenario.

--- SPOILERS FOR ALL KINDS OF THINGS BEGIN HERE ---

So, the books I am using for this campaign, outside of the usual sneak peek into some fora – again, www.againsttheshadow.org is an incredibly well-done resource – are the Midnight 3.0 corebook, the intro campaign „Crown of Shadow“, the epic-level scenario „Heart of Shadow“, and the „Fury of Shadow“ boxed set.

I've been rereading „Heart of Shadow“ first, because it‘s arguably the most important book in the series – all campaigns you run in Midnight will eventually nudge you towards having the party confront the dark god Izrador, and this is where you‘re told if and how that is possible. In a mix of ASOIAF, MERP‘s „The Northern Waste“, and Warhammer, Izrador is revealed to have a crypt somewhere in the utmost North of the world, and it‘s there that any party would have to go if they wanted to kick the dark god‘s butt. So, while it‘s not anything I‘m going to need any time soon, I am going to introduce certain symbols, names, and NPCs early in the campaign – so a supposed endgame would feel consequential.

Again, this is probably not the way everyone should plan their game, this is how I tend to structure things – like, how, in the roaring 90s, I read Carl Sargent‘s Greyhawk gazetteers before running „The Fate of Istus“. - I don‘t make this comparison all too randomly, because „Crown of Shadow“ is basically „Fate of Istus“ for Midnight: A wildly location-hoping campaign whose main purpose is to show the players as much of the standard setting as possible, while touching about every main plot of the setting just a tiny bit.

The campaign itself is only a read of around 60 pages, divided into seven mini-scenarios, and it‘s the typical d20 sketch of an adventure, which really means that you get giant stat blocks, but have to rework the fluff big time. The way I run games, I‘d say those seven mini-adventures, if completed and played out with, make for 20-30 game nights, which makes this tiny booklet a two-year-affair for me. Which is borderline absurd, already. - Not that I am that slow a DM, but from a point of narrative immersion, it seems evident to me that one will need to spend more time with the setting, or will totally overload the players with information that they cannot possibly place on their own. IMO, if you‘re not applying „Show, Don‘t Tell“ with a scenario that is as complex as Midnight, you‘re wasting your own time.

This is why I am also using „Fury of Shadow“ as an additional supplement: „Crown of Shadow“ starts and ends with the Elves of Midnight playing a key role, and the BTB campaign finale is an audience with the Elven queen, in the heart of her kingdom: After that, the scenarios described in „Fury“ lead right into „Heart“, and towards a possible showdown with Izrador. So, from a long-term planning aspect, this is the most likely, and possibly also the most rewarding sequel to work towards. - Also, but this is just my opinion, I hold „Fury of Shadow“ to be legitimately one of the best d20 books I know, and, in general, a very fine treatment of forest/winter horror scenarios. So, more than anything else, this is enjoyable for me.

Finally, the campaign itself: „Crown of Shadow“, evidently borrowing from MERP and the Silmarilion, is all about an actual item of that name, whose significance BTB is, of course, written to accommodate beginner players; the adventure evolves mainly about the players getting their hands on the artifact, and then escaping with it to Erethor, aka the kingdom of ersatz-Galadriel. As Midnight‘s status quo demands that the balance of good and evil in the world remain more or less the same, the outcome of the adventure is supposed to be largely inconsequential: The Elven Queen will take the crown, and content with storing it in her vault, while giving the characters some level-appropriate rewards.

...Now, of course, what many gamers of our own salt and blood are immediately going to associate this with is something way, way more epic: This could literally be the long-lost crown of Morgoth! Or, of ersatz-Morgoth, however you want to put it. - Maybe Aradil (ersatz-Galadriel, or ersatz-Luthien) is interested in the crown because of personal reasons: Maybe her „Beren“ got killed after stealing the artifact; maybe that‘s why the artifact was lost. Maybe the crown, like, say, Karla‘s headband in „The Record of Lodoss War“, harbors an undead spirit, or maybe it allows a connection to Izrador himself. In any case, here are the roots of an epic story that wouldn‘t feel forced, and that could resonate well with the players. In comparison, Midnight as a static scenario is like a one-shot in Ravenloft, using characters native to the lands of Mist: It can work, yes, but once the players figure out that they essentially can‘t „win“, your job as a DM is going to be rather thankless.

If „Crown“ takes probably two years to complete, and the scenarios indicated „Fury“ probably take one, then it‘s possible to get to „Heart“, and to the endgamem in around three or four years of game time, which is roughly what a modern Paizo Adventure Path takes, from basic to epic levels. So, this is what I‘ll ideally be aiming for, while certainly designing the scenarios in a way that suggests, but doesn‘t force a long-term commitment. „Crown“, with a mysterious and epic backdrop, is by itself a pretty good adventure: It‘s just that the campaign world is a scenario, not a setting – the same way that, whatever „Tales of the Lance“ or „Greyhawk Wars“ were never supposed to be static installments of a believable world. You use them to tell a certain kind of tale, but afterwards, you will not return there.

Notably, me peeking into the books over the last few days, to perhaps figure out one or two one-evening introductory scenarios has been an exercise in frustration: You have to give so many in-detail explanations whenever the conflict between Izrador and humanity is involved, that either you have to oversimplify things to a point where you substitute Midnight‘s uniqueness for „Yeah, it‘s basically Angmar having conquered Gondor“, or… You run some Weis-Hickman railroad like it‘s 1982.

Where I will be going from here, I am not yet sure – in preparing a game that I will start in summer at the earliest, I don‘t want to have to work through the behemoth that is „Crown“ played proper. Instead, I‘ll likely devise some intro scenario, to test whether my take on Midnight is something that the players like. There is an intro adventure in the Midnight 3.0 book, but so far, I don‘t like it, and IIRC it doesn‘t specifically connect to „Crown“. Right now, if I have any specific idea of where to take things, at all, then I am thinking of a short dungeon crawler, maybe with the PCs finding the crown themselves, or maybe with them finding the grave of valiant ersatz-Beren.

...But that is another tale, for another time. Let me know what you think. Was this a tiny bit of over-sharing on my side, or is the post okay this way?

[Falconer]

Very interesting. Not too long. The campaign setting sounds cool, particularly your take on it. I often think some of these campaign settings can stand to be written with the crunch and fluff tossed out, and presented as sandboxes. Usually it’s more effort than it would be worth, though.

[bestialwarlust]

I've owned this for quite a while and have been considering converting it to use in an ACKS game. I'm curious how much if any of the setting rules will you be using or converting? The legates? the heroic paths can be ignored probably but will you be converting them?

[Deleted]

Happy New Year, everyone!

Dec 31, 2018 14:10:43 GMT -6 Falconer said:

Very interesting. Not too long. The campaign setting sounds cool, particularly your take on it. I often think some of these campaign settings can stand to be written with the crunch and fluff tossed out, and presented as sandboxes. Usually it’s more effort than it would be worth, though.

Thanks, man. I had the time of my life writing this, I got to say; it's been too long since I took an hour or two and got really into something D&D-related that felt really "fresh". On a general level, I think that settings centered around a general, fundamental conflict are comparatively easy to turn into a sandbox; settings centered around villains (Ravenloft, Birthright, Midnight, Thieves' World, and some takes on Dark Sun) are generally not. - One of the reasons, for example, why Taladas from Dragonlance, or why the Wilderlands of High Fantasy work so greatly for sandbox-oriented, create-your-own-destiny kind of games is that you can adjust the level on which they center around a villain-oriented metaplot, whether it is the lich-king of Aurim (that I still know the name of that one says everything about that campaign's quality ) or the Green Emperor of Viridistan. With Midnight, in comparison, it's almost an impossibility; it's like running Ravenloft without Strahd or Azalin - even if you manage to make it work well, then it's very far from where the original writers wanted to take it.

Jan 1, 2019 9:14:21 GMT -6 bestialwarlust said:

I've owned this for quite a while and have been considering converting it to use in an ACKS game. I'm curious how much if any of the setting rules will you be using or converting? The legates? the heroic paths can be ignored probably but will you be converting them?

Right now, I don't know yet - if only, because I want to map out a complete campaign route, first, and then adjust the rules first to what I want to emphasize, and then, in a second step, of course on what my players want to emphasize. My gut feeling is to keep things as simple as possible, at least in the early stages of a supposed longer game: First, because I generally dislike the way d20 seems to mistake player empowerment for giving out character rules so complex that they essentially make the players co-DMs. Second, because I doubt that my players would generally value or even notice those modifications - to them, it's likely not going to be anything else but "our normal D&D in a new setting", not "d20" or "Midnight".

Without having mapped out the campaign in detail already, I can already say that I don't think we will see the Heroic Path system, though: Instead, I think the power increase, from the run-and-hide part of the campaign that is "Crown", to a possible sequel where the party would be essentially serving as the Elven Queen's personal paladin guard, would simply be bigger: Maybe, at the end of "Crown", I'd reward simply them with one or two extra levels and some powerful extra gear. That way, I could keep the character progression a part of the story.

As to the Legates (Izrador's mortal servants that essentially are the most common first- and second-level Threshold Guardians in any heroic journey through Midnight), I think that will develop depending on what dramatic function the players end up giving them: Usually, the first two legates (from "Crown") should be (figuratively speaking) terrible bogeymen that haunt the party and are hard to defeat. After those, with the party ascending to a status as champions of Good, the legates would have little more narrative purpose than to display to the players how powerful they have become: So, their role in a conflict surrounding the Elven kingdom would likely be only a minor one. As "Heart of Shadow" features orcs as the primary enemies, I would probably start a sequel to "Crown" with a few skirmishes against easy-to-beat legates, and then conclude it with an all-out war against orcish forces. The last part of my campaign (idea ) would probably be mostly a ghost story - because that's an element that we don't see much in the earlier chapters.

[Falconer]

Dec 27, 2018 11:11:41 GMT -6 @rafael said:

So, the books I am using for this campaign … are the Midnight 3.0 corebook, the intro campaign „Crown of Shadow“, the epic-level scenario „Heart of Shadow“, and the „Fury of Shadow“ boxed set.

Pardon, I’m just going to jot down their ISBNs here.

Midnight 9781589941144
The Crown of Shadow 9781589941090
Heart of Shadow 9781589941830
Fury of Shadow 9781589941960

[Deleted]

Thank you!

Here is a complete list, on RPG.Net:

index.rpg.net/display-search.phtml?key=system&value=Midnight%2Bd20&sort=system,systemversion

Also, here is a fairly useful beginner-oriented Wiki:

wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Midnight_RPG_Campaigns:_Main_Page


BTW, I realize that I hadn't posted about this: Of course, "The Night Kings", Midnight's Nazgul stand-ins, will not feature in my campaign in that form, if at all. The reason for it is obviously that little show called "Game of Thrones". That said, I don't think I need those NPCs for the plot I have in mind.

[Deleted]

Still working on this one; realistically, I think the campaign is going to start some time in 2020. No time to do it, before, and... Oooh, I want to be a player for a while, again!

Now, what I found over the weekend is a freebie for the setting that I thought some of you might enjoy, after watching me write, what, a small booklet on the setting already:

images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/midnight-chronicles/midnight-chronicles-dungeons-and-dragons-preview/excerpt-midnight-the-heart-of-erenland.pdf


Of course, a lot of stuff is available via DTRPG, but an extended look at things might be interesting for anyone who perhaps considers branching out a bit from the usual settings.

[grodog]

Dec 20, 2018 18:40:48 GMT -6 @rafael said:

What are your experiences with Midnight, if at all?

I've worked with Jeff Barber and Greg Benage, two of the lead designers, from back in the 1990s on their hard-SF game Blue Planet, from Biohazard Games: www.biohazardgamespublishing.com/ Jeff was the primary writer/designer for both Blue Planet and the Midnight core book and the Crown of Shadow campaign (and more-recently on Upwind), and I really love his ability to design deeply-engaging campaign settings.

Dec 22, 2018 17:06:38 GMT -6 howandwhy99 said:

One of the complaints about the game, which came only after a few years of players in that campaign world, was the setting is also the scenario. But I think it takes a lot of gaming to get there. Plus you could just expand the setting to "outside Midnight", or some other option.

Agreed: much like Star Wars or Middle Earth, I think that you can broaden the footprint of the setting in the scope of a campaign to step away from the existing metaplot/existing canon.

Dec 22, 2018 19:33:48 GMT -6 xerxez said:

This sounds interesting as a setting. I have not perused the game, which would rock, but I have seen the movie the folks at FFG managed to swing, The Midnight Chronicles, which I think is still on Netflix or Amazon. For the production value, I thought it a very engaging film with a great plot and setting and not half bad acting and effects.

Thanks, I haven't watched this yet, but picked a copy up at my local used DVD store sometime last year. I'll have to carve some time out to watch it!

Allan.

[Deleted]

Apr 18, 2019 12:11:52 GMT -6 grodog said:

I've worked with Jeff Barber and Greg Benage, two of the lead designers, from back in the 1990s on their hard-SF game Blue Planet, from Biohazard Games: www.biohazardgamespublishing.com/ Jeff was the primary writer/designer for both Blue Planet and the Midnight core book and the Crown of Shadow campaign (and more-recently on Upwind), and I really love his ability to design deeply-engaging campaign settings.

Hehehe, Benage is easily one of my favorite designers. His "Dawnforge" series, about which I think I've read somewhere that it was his actual "home setting" in his college days, was highly influential on me for my own take on fantasy. Greg even has a novel out there that is free to download on Kindle. ...And not at all terrible, as most of the fantasy titles that go free on Kindle usually are. One of the people in the hobby that I'd most like to shake hands with. Too bad he hasn't published anything (I believe) in a decade.

Thanks, I haven't watched this yet, but picked a copy up at my local used DVD store sometime last year. I'll have to carve some time out to watch it!

The movie is okay for mid-2000s, pre-GoT B-Movie standards. If this had gone to series, as apparently was initially planned, this could have become... Something. It's so weird to think that, ten years ago, the gold standard for fantasy on TV was to be found somewhere between "Robin of Sherwood" and the "The Beastmaster". Compared to those, Midnight is not at all that bad.

[Deleted]

www.enworld.org/threads/midnight-legacy-of-darkness-announced-at-gencon-online.673654/

Midnight is coming back!

The original designers are not involved, though, it seems, which is a bloody shame. ...But I'm happy that this setting is back; it's one of the best of its kind, for sure.

[tdenmark]

Dec 20, 2018 18:40:48 GMT -6 @rafael said:

(I used to be a pretty big FFG fanboy, by the way: "Dawnforge", also released around 2003, is one of my all-time favorite RPG products. )

Interesting back story about Dawnforge. It was at the time WotC was on the lookout for a new campaign setting, I think they even had some sort of writing/submission contest. Well, FFG believed that WotC was planning to make a golden age era setting and wanted to beat them to the punch and rushed out Dawnforge (I'm not suggesting anything about the quality, it might be fine for all I know).

WotC surprised everyone with Eberron. Not what people were expecting.

Anyways, I don't think Dawnforge got much traction. Midnight on the other hand, that was a cool concept and pretty well executed (though not nearly as well as Brandon Sanderson did with the same concept in Mistborn. Which has become a modern fantasy classic).

[Deleted]

Thing is, "Dawnforge" is really, really well done - but it's not easy for beginners. "Eberron", "Midnight", and other successful settings from the 2000s, they are all extremely beginner-friendly. It's extremely easy to pitch them to newbies. "Dawnforge", "Oathbound", and whatever else, they were pretty well done, as were reimaginations of older settings, like the "Ravenloft" or the "Dragonlance" revamps. Just not for relatively inexperienced/teen and tween players. Narrative immersion and unique character traits are a thing of beauty, but they are wasted if new players cannot learn them quickly. - Since this has been a topic we've been talking about quite a bit, lately: This was one of the chief reasons why I turned towards more sandbox-y, oldschool campaigns. Midnight, Ravenloft, Blackmoor, you could explain within three sentences, and the players would catch the drift. Dragonlance 3e, in particular, was a beautiful read, but borderline useless if the players didn't have the novels as a background.

[grodog]

Aug 3, 2020 1:41:38 GMT -6 @rafael said:

Midnight is coming back!

The original designers are not involved, though, it seems, which is a bloody shame.

Apparently Edge Entertainment does have some former FFG folks on staff, but it may not be Benage, Barber, etc. (and Jeff's still very active with his RPGs Upwind and Blue Planet).

The EE web site is only available in Spanish and French, atm, and doesn't seem to have much info about the recent announcements yet: www.edgeent.com/home/noticias

Allan.

[Deleted]

Benage posted on ENWorld, saying that the situation was news to him. So, I assume he's not involved at this stage, which is a shame. The direction in which he was taking Midnight seemed interesting: There was a novel trilogy planned that never materialized with FFG, but whose pitch sounded pretty good. (Somethingsomething Eldar Elves returning.) I hope that they get those novels out, finally, or at least adapt the storyline in some other way.

[thegreyelf]

I had a chance to pick up Midnight, like the entire line, from a Chimera "buy one get three free" sale at Gen Con way back in the day, but decided my group would never play it. Now I kind of wish I'd jumped on it.

[Deleted]

Midnight was pretty good for d20, though, of course, the franchise got pretty bloated, in the end: There were two or three items that really made sense and were well done, but there were also quite a number of books that were written quite badly, and, worse, had no real purpose within the kind of more sophisticated/convoluted d20 gaming that some people liked to do, back in the day. In terms of atmosphere and straightforward playability, the setting remains consistently attractive through its d20 run, though.