It’s long past time to introduce the next campaign I’ll be running, officially starting next week.

Legends of Generica: Chapter II, “Year One”

Maybe a month after Earthfall wrapped, I decided I needed to clear my head before continuing to work on the next installment, by looking to something else. At some point, Matt Colville talked about his Birthright campaign, where he did some offline realm management and such with his players, using “letters” written back and forth between the PCs and some NPCs (in some cases, without their knowing who were which). I started making some plans to do the same with Generica, but quickly came to realize that, narratively, I couldn’t make that work properly without getting through Chapter II first. By that point, though, it was too late for other campaigns—this one was already stuck in my head. No way to go but forward.

This campaign was supposed to have started just after the third Banestorm run, now two months past. I probably would have introduced it sooner, but scheduling issues kept cropping up, pushing the start out further—for a while, I wasn’t even certain it would happen at all. I hate announcing something and having to constantly correct, so I deferred…a lot.

What’s New?

We’ll have a proper intro this time. And my YouTube GM presentation has (IMHO) greatly improved since Chapter I.

The characters are the same, minus Rayna, but a couple of the players are new, taking over Dustan and Murdok from their former owners/creators. Some of the rules are changing, but these are mostly minor. The most relevant rule change is the dropping of “general purpose” Plot Points entirely in favor of Bennies, which I’ve used in two campaigns now, and found I prefer them.

Chapter I was a linear, introductory adventure, for the most part, by design. I had always intended for the campaign-proper to be an open-world/sandbox in a more West Marches style. At one instance, I was gearing up to run Chapter II, and realized that what I was developing was not what I set out to create, but a standard “linear” run. This caused me to back-burner the campaign at the time. However, since then, I’ve run multiple sandbox campaigns (see Earthfall and Sea Dogs), and decided I wouldn’t mind going back to a linear approach for a while.

What to Expect

As the name suggests, this Chapter will span around a year in-game. I’ve broken it up into what I expect to be one-session “jobs,” not unlike the Shadowrun series we just wrapped was intended to be. I am going for a “full” 12 sessions this time, but depending on how well (or badly) I’ve paced things, it could go longer. I am already expecting a number of breaks in the schedule, which will cause this run to stretch out to mid/late September. Although I feel pretty confident in the overall narrative, I am definitely feeling that pre-campaign “dread” I usually experience. But the show must go on.

Here goes nothing, anyway…