>
> > * "Farmer campaign", where day-to-day life of the community
> > is the main focus of play. You need to know a lot about
> > economics and social structure for this. Every time I have
> > tried to include daily life in a campaign I have bored
> > the players to within an inch of death, so I also assume
> > it requires a far better GM than I am...
>
> I think the mistake here is confusing 'The farmER campaign'
with 'The
> farmING campaign'. Interesting scenarios should NOT begin 'I was
> ploughing the field this morning, and I went on ploughing it', they
> should be more 'I was ploughing the field this morning, and a
bloody
> great Triceratops was eating the cabbages...'.
>
I think a lot of this comes down to "know your audience." If the
players won't/can't feel an attachment to home and hearth, then a lot
of the motivation for a farmer campaign just isn't there. Lord knows
that with the friends I grew up gaming with you couldn't sell them on
any scenario where their characters cared for much beyond their own
skin. Maybe I'm a little too harsh, they were happy enough to have
vague motives and backstories, so long as it didn't stop them from
doing basically what they wanted. Therefore it would have been very
hard to run a campaign where their relationship to their community
was very important, whereas, in HW terms, making them a rebel band
who is trying to become powerful enough to fight the lunars toe to
toe would have worked, because their primary goal would have been
personal advancement.
On the flip side, I could happily play in a campaign where we had to
worry about whether the food would last through the winter and
whether we could get Rana kicked off the clan ring in favor of
someone less lunar sympathizing.
--Bryan