While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2009. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.
I’ll admit that the title is a bit of a tease since the article isn’t really about Lego at all. It’s actually about playing in a campaign that relies on a story and characters that everyone knows and loves, as many of the Lego inspired video games do.
The more I’ve thought about this approach to gaming the more I think it would be a lot of fun. The more popular and familiar the setting, story and personalities, the more interesting it would be to adapt it into a D&D adventure.
Of course, if following this kind of established story feels too much like railroading then I suggest you take a look at our article Playing a Recognizable Archetype. Sometimes it’s fun to just take familiar characters and then let the story unfold in a completely unexpected way.
Whether you choose to try either of these approaches to D&D or you just conform to the traditional way of building characters and campaigns, you should always strive to make your campaign exciting and your characters memorable – even if they were drawn from somebody else’s imagination.
As a side note, for those who might be interested, I’ve since completed both versions of Star Wars: Lego as well as Batman: Lego. And even thought I’m a huge Batman fan, I must admit that not knowing where the story was going and who I was likely to encounter (like I did in the Star Wars games) really made it feel like something was missing. I liked Batman: Lego but not nearly as much as I did Star Wars: Lego. Never underestimate the comfort of familiarity.