That old bone trade magic

Don't miss the N1 post below, which inspired this follow-up.

I think it's interesting how, for both Narbohring and Sarpagal, the first campaign was relatively short and violent, and introduced a lot of ideas, some retarded, some only seemingly retarded, that were then taken to extremes in the much longer and glorious second campaign.

It seems similar to what happens in genre TV shows: the first season ain't great, but there's a glimmer there. The second season is then the best, and the show then gradually gets worse from there. Second seasons hit it right- the mixture of mindless action, internal drama, and struggling to stay on the air. Subsequent seasons get too wrapped up in the internal mythology and are thus less interesting.

This was certainly true for N9K. Not so much for Sarpagal- although the second campaign was truly, amazingly epic, the third and fourth campaigns were both great too, mainly because there were a small group of players (three in both cases), and 1-2 of them at any given time were really into driving the game forward.

N9K had a great DM idea at the core, but it was an unplayable world. With Sarpagal, I think I finally hit on a mythos, a theology, that was perfect, and since I had different players each time, I could re-use and re-cycle the things that worked with each game.

I miss it... been starting to look for gaming groups around here again...