Living campaigns

Living Campaigns are part marketing tool, part volunteer campaign settings, which allow people all over the world to play role-playing games in a shared universe. While the most popular living campaigns are run by the RPGA (Role Playing Gamer's Association), a division of Wizards of the Coast, many groups around the world run active living campaigns.

Overview
Living campaigns are a shared campaign setting with a codified set of rules for the campaign that govern how to build and advance characters as well as how the campaign will handle rules elements of the setting. Campaign staff create, distribute, and manage new adventures in that campaign setting, and quite often administer a player database and promote various products. A living campaign lets players build and advance characters, develop their personalities, and forge relationships. Living campaign games are run at conventions, game days and other gatherings. The rules for character tracking allow a player to take their PC they created for the campaign to any of these gatherings and play it in the adventures offered. Prior to this, it was common for adventures to be offered at conventions with premade characters that fit to the story.

Much to the dismay of some, Living campaigns are rigid in their administration and do not allow for much DM caveat on rules or setting. DMs are not at liberty to change and/or ignore rules that they do not like or agree with. They are not allowed to go "off script" in adventures or allow thing in the campaign that aren't approved by the campaign staff. For some people, not having the ultimate control of a home campaign is a real turn off. Living Planar is an exception to this rule, allowing dungeon masters a great deal of flexibility in running their games, giving it a feel somewhere between a normal living campaign and a home campaign.

The original Living campaign was the Living City, set in the Forgotten Realms city of Ravens Bluff. The campaign ran in its original form in Polyhedron magazine starting in the mid-1980s, and continued until shortly after the advent of 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in 2000. It then restarted under the auspices of the company Organized Play, but lasted only two years under that license and then reverted in 2003 to Wizards of the Coast.

What is a Campaign-Style Game?
WOTC began, with Legacy of the Green Regent, to offer a living style campaign that was a slightly different play experience. An campaign-style game follows many of the same conventions as other Living campaigns such as Living Greyhawk, but differs in a couple areas:


 * 1) All accounting/book keeping is done on the RPGA website.
 * 2) The campaign provides periodic level bumps so everyone in the campaign is the same level
 * 3) In traditional Living campaigns, you cannot level without gaining experience from playing in adventures
 * 4) Your character in the campaign isn't as static, meaning you can change a lot of details in between play opportunities.

Providing adventures to retail locations through their retail support packs and providing fast play characters on the campaign's official website, even if you never played in the campaign before you can pick up a character and play in the adventure right away without having to deal with sometimes cryptic and/or complicated character creation rules.

There is much debate amongst players over whether campaign-style games should truly be called Living campaigns or not. They are generally lumped into the same category, although WOTC/RPGA very obviously left the term Living out of the campaign titles.

RPGA Living Campaigns
WOTC/RPGA-sponsored Living campaigns:
 * Living Greyhawk: A D&D campaign set in the world of Greyhawk. This campaign is set to end in 2008.


 * Xen'drik Campaigns: A campaign-style game set in the Eberron setting, first appearing at Origins 2006 and officially launched at Gen Con 2006. Has four sub-campaigns within it. While not a true Living campaign in the sense that it has a fixed ending, it is included here since it is a massively multiplayer roleplaying campaign in much the same vein.
 * Living Forgotten Realms: Announced at Gen Con 2008, this upcoming campaign will use the forthcoming D&D 4th Edition and will be set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.

Third Party Campaigns
Living campaigns that are or were part of the RPGA, but administered by third parties, include:
 * Living Arcanis: A d20 System campaign set in the world of Onara. No longer part of the RPGA as of 2007.
 * Living Kingdom of Kalamar: A medieval fantasy setting set in Kenzer & Company's Kingdoms of Kalamar.
 *  Living Spycraft: A world of espionage using the Spycraft d20 System rules, managed by Crafty Games (previous to 2006, it was managed by Alderac Entertainment Group and Raven). No longer part of the RPGA as of 2007.

Unofficial Campaigns
There have been quite a few grass roots movements among fans to create Living campaigns for other settings.

The following are known non-RPGA Living campaigns that are actively running:
 * Legends of the Shining Jewel: A D&D 3.5 edition campaign set in its own high fantasy campaign world. Its orginally was an expansion of the Living City campaign known as Living Procampur, but was redesigned into a custom setting when RPGA withdrew support of the campaign after the end of Living City.
 * Heroes of Rokugan/Champions of the Emerald Empire: Uses the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game
 * Living Planar: Mixes all types of settings using D&D 3.5 edition rules into a dark planar setting. Character creation generally begins at 14th level.
 * Iron Kingdoms: Chronicles of Immoren: A new campaign in the planning stages using the setting published by Privateer Press
 * Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: Campaign set in the "original D&D setting" updated to 3.5 edition.
 * NeoExodus: A House Divided: A new campaign in the planning stages using the setting published by Louis Porter Jr. Design
 * ShadowRun Missions: Uses the ShadowRun Roleplaying Game.
 * Thardferr: One of the first Dungeons and Dragons Online Living Campaigns, set in a unique and detailed fantasy world.
 * Gathis: A multi edition Dungeons and Dragons campaign set in a unique world

Extinct Campaigns
The following campaigns are no longer in existence or have ended but still have adventures available:
 * Living Death: A second edition AD&D (later converted to d20 System) campaign set in the Victorian era, based on the Ravenloft expansion called Masque of the Red Death. Its finale premiered in February 2007.
 * Living Force: A d20 Star Wars RPG campaign. This campaign was designed to have a 5-year run, starting in January 2001, its finale premiered in January 2006. It was originally set in the time period just after The Phantom Menace and moved forward in Year 3 of the Campaign to just after Attack of the Clones.
 * Living City: Set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting
 * Living Jungle: Set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting
 * Virtual Seattle: Used the Shadowrun rules and setting by FASA
 * Living Verge: Used the Alternity rules system and Star*Drive setting by TSR
 * Living Rokugan: Used the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game. It has since become an independent campaign known as Heroes of Rokugan
 * Legacy of the Green Regent: A D&D campaign set in the Forgotten Realms. Its finale premiered in January 2005.
 * Mark of Heroes: A D&D campaign set in Eberron. Its finale premiered in February 2007.

Where to Play?
Living and Living style camapigns are played all over the world. The Living Greyhawk campaign boasts the highest play numbers and is played in North America, Australia, and Europe. Campaign adventures are offered at conventions (such as Origins and Gen Con), at retail locations, and also for home play. A current popular trend is to play them online using a variety of software that range from simple chat programs, to open source projects such as OpenRPG, to full scale retail applications that provide a reasonable simulation of a tabletop to game at including mapping features, miniatures, and in some cases, dice you can roll.

Part of the lure of Living campaigns is the ability to take your character to any of these places and play it in the adventures offered and continue to advance that character.