Sidebar: Starting A New Campaign

I've got a question about how you handle time progression in your home games. I'm starting my second Eberron campaign and I'm planning on having it take place at the same time as my first one but in Sharn rather than Q'barra. When you start new home campaigns, do you progress time and have the events of the last game carry over? Or do you just start over in 998 YK like it says in the books and treat each campaign as it's own separate timeline?

This is an interesting question. You've finally brought a long-term campaign to a close, and you're about to start a new one. Where—and when—do you begin?

Personally, I handle starting a new campaign much like developing a TV show. I want to consider the following things...

• What does the audience—which is to say, the players—want to see? Previously I've talked about my Q'barra campaign, which I've described here and here. The point of the Q'barra campaign is to explore something different—fantasy blended with the tropes of the Western genre. But I wouldn't push that on a group of players who hate Westerns! Typically I'll pitch a few different ideas to the players (Q'barra! Gritty noir in Callestan! Commandos in the Last War!) and we'll talk things over, likely coming up with entirely new ideas in the process. When we've found something everyone wants to play, I'll move forward with that.
• I want to focus on short term stories and a long arc. What brings the adventurers together? What's going to happen over the first 2-3 adventures, which is a critical time for developing characters and building a bond for the group?
• With this in mind, I usually won't try to squeeze every major power group in Eberron into a campaign. I'll usually focus on one of the more obvious groups—the Emerald Claw, the Aurum, the Cults of the Dragon Below—as an initial antagonist; choose one of the more subtle and powerful foes—The Dreaming Dark, the Lords of Dust, the Daelkyr—as a long-term enemy; and pick another group—the Lord of Blades, Miron's Tears, House Tarkanan—as a wild card who could become an ally or an enemy.
• If the campaign is going to revolve around a central hub, I'll work with the players to establish details of that hub. I talk about how I did that in Q'barra in this post.
• Beyond this, I'll also work with the players to develop the backstories of their characters and figure out how those backgrounds tie into the developing story. If I've got a Blood of Vol paladin who's determined to bring down Erandis Vol as a long-term character arc, I'll make sure I factor that into the story board. Ideally, I'll look for ways that these hooks can converge—if one player wants to bring down Erandis Vol, and another wants to destroy House Cannith, well, perhaps I'll focus on Cannith East developing a secret alliance with the Emerald Claw...
• Related to the two previous points, I want to make sure there's something that ties the party together—that the players don't feel like they'd never associate with the other characters, but they have to because, well, we're playing this game. Do they share a common background (we all served together in the Last War)? Are they all tied to a central location (We're all looking for opportunity in this frontier town) or united by a common purpose (we're going to work together to bring down the Boromar Clan)? Lacking that, I'll work to make sure that the first adventure will give them a common purpose or enemy, which will build a bond moving forward.

So, coming back to the original question: When starting a new Eberron campaign, do I incorporate the events of the previous campaign or do I start fresh? This ties to that first point above: What do the players want to experience? I was involved in a campaign that went from levels 1-30, and by the time it was over, the adventurers had changed the world in many lasting ways. One of the characters was Queen of Karrnath. Jaela Daran had sacrificed herself to rebind the unleashed Bel Shalor, and the redeemed Melysse Miron had taken her place as Keeper of the Flame. When THAT group decided to start a new game, we all agreed that we wanted to continue in THAT Eberron... that we were going to advance a further ten years and continue from there. As a result, the surviving PCs from the previous campaign were now influential NPCs in the setting. Meanwhile, one of the players decided that his PC in the new campaign would be Jaela Daran: That she would have awoken in the wilds, as an 11-year woman and a 1st level cleric, with no memory of intervening time. Part of the story of the campaign was trying to figure out what her story was. WAS she the restored Jaela? Was she a daelkyr experiment, or a creation of Mordain the Fleshweaver? For my part, I began with my changeling character Max, and established that they had strange ties to the changeling Garrow, who'd ended up as one of the major villains of the previous campaign arc.

So in that case, it was a lot of fun to build on what had gone before. But when I then brought together a group of new players for my Q'barra campaign, I didn't even think about putting THEM in Eberron 1008 YK, because it wasn't their story. Some of them were already familiar with the default world, and even if I took the time to explain all the changes, they wouldn't have personal resonance for them, because THEY weren't the ones who battled Bel Shalor. For the other group it was fun to be following in the footsteps of the epic PCs because those were once their PCs. But for a new group, I wanted to reset the world and see what THEY would do with it.

So generally speaking, I'll treat each new campaign as its own timeline. In fact, I actually have three different Q'barra campaigns active out in the world, any of which I could get back to if I ever have time. But it can definitely be fun to build on previous campaigns, as long as the players will enjoy it.

How do you start a new campaign? Share your thoughts and questions below!