The interesting thing is that the Ork World campaign was started as the idea of the players involved. They were tired of tromping about with deadly force, and not having a good time. That, and I wasn't really giving them the Tomb of Horrors game on a silver platter.
Characters. Typically, I have been allowing a lot of flexibility with character generation. This may change at some point.
The characters for this campaign where built by the player, and brought in for approval on the first day of gaming.
Interesting note, I ran an average of the attributes of the characters. They average 97 points of stats. The lowest one only had 95 points. I was forced to reject out of hand a character that had 118 points for stats. All I can say is that I have never rolled that well. My favorite "cheat" attributes tallies 93, using the following numbers: 18,17,16,15,14,13, and I consider that a "cheat" character. The RPGA Living City rules suggest starting with 84 points distributing at will. Interesting comparison there.
Remind me to key in some notes on character creation later.
Initial racial composition: Two elves, one half-elf, two dwarves.
Initial class composition: Fighter (x2), Mage (specialist enchanter), and two Fighter/Clerics.
History. The current campaign was actually started as a revolt from the Tomb of Horrors campaign. The players (or at least one of the more influential ones) were tired of playing super powerful characters, and wanted to do a "by the players handbook" first level campaign.
Starting. The party started out in that strange imaginary place where all games start. We had elves, so they were in a forest. This forest was near some elven town. Note that support network again. The gist of the initial encounter was that the two dwarves were drunk in the woods (for an unknown reason), and that the elves discovered them. One of the players always makes initial encounters really difficult, acting very suspicous of other characters. This was solved through an attack by a bear. This managed to solidify the front, at least initially.
The Hook. Exploding Kobolds.
Rules. We are currently using some weapon breakage rules, just to spice things up.