Blood,Fire, & The Importance of Campaign Feel During Adventure & Campaign Construction

Hoping that everyone's having a fantastic 2017, I've been doing quite a bit of contemplation of this upcoming Ancient & Accursed Terra campaign of mine using Adventurer, Conqueror, King & they're Guns of War rules. What I'm trying to go for is the feel of a Hammer pirate film such as The Pirates of Blood River but I want to dial back down the fire arms to the wheel lock era. 

So yeah that's one element of it and another is to mix in the usual sword & sorcery vibe of Robert Howard maybe with a bit of classic black powder B/X D&D  era weirdness combined with the  isolation of the original Aliens film. There are dragons here & PC's should and will be wary as death is around the corner. 

These are not so much rule choices but zeroing in on the flavor of B/X D&D that's going to work for your old school campaigns. I've said it before and will again there are as many flavors of D&D as their colours in the spectrum. Trying to decide what's going to work for your players & yourself is part of the battle. Then taking that material to construct adventurers around is part of the organic process of adventure construction. Its not rocket science but there a bit of an art to it that I've had to learn the hard way over the years. Here are some of the guidelines that have worked for me as a dungeon master over the years when constructing an adventure or a campaign setting:

1. Don't be afraid to experiment with different types of adventures but be sure to advertise exactly what type of adventure your going to be running to your players. 
2. Ask the players what it is that they want you to run & design around those parameters but don't be afraid to color outside of the lines. 
3. Adapt, fold, & mutilate published work to fit your campaign style not the other way around. Take classic D&D or AD&D first edition modules and use them as you the DM need to. Add or subtract monsters, encounters, ideas, and more as needed. 
4. Create your own finger prints on your setting. & don't worry what others think but your players. 
5. Your style may work for your but not others and that's alright. 
6. There are no rules but there are guidelines that can help you but its only a game. You can pick up or put it down anytime. 
7. All of human history is your toybox and don't be afraid to raid it with impunity.
   
   So what does this have to do with Dwimmermount? When the mega dungeon's doors opened it touches off all kinds of major weirdness across the face of Terra. Azoth flows and cosmic events begin to unfold across the globe.Because the megadungeon draws from pulp era inspirations like Abraham Merritt and Edgar Rice Burroughs, & many others there is a consistence to the backstory. But I'm more then happy to modify this setting as I need to. Gasp yes I said that more then happy to take a scalpel to James Maliszewski's baby if I need to. 

The sacred cow routine of AD&D & D&D goes out the window during the campaign construction phase. This is something that many folks seem to forget, these modules were made to be tinkered with and modified at the whim of the players and the DM. This is something that I've seen others observe doing research for this campaign coming up. 

Anyhow more coming up.
 Hope you have a good rest of your New Year holiday!
Cheers!