Recommend me a campaign

[Insinuator]

Hello. I know this is a totally selfish thread, but I am having a hard time sorting through the vast multitude of campaigns out there. I have played all the official ones, of course, and am looking for something new and interesting.

My criteria are:
1. Interesting plot. Something more than Elves driving out yet another invasion of Orcs or Humans driving out another invasion of Undead. And not another earth-shattering-epic-quest-which-changes-the-face-of-Wesnoth-forever story. There are so many of these it's ridiculous.

2. Creative, possibly humorous dialogue. This is probably the most important to me. I prefer a light-hearted story that can make fun of itself and its genre without overdoing it.

3. Some unique gameplay/special effects. This doesn't have to be incredible, but a fresh perspective on the classical map design would be interesting. Or perhaps special event triggers that do something new.

I understand this may be a duanting list, and I'm going to start wading through some campaigns that sound interesting, but if anyone has something they played and thoroughly enjoyed, I'd love to hear about it. As a side note, I don't really care who I'm playing as.

[Pentarctagon]

Invasion from the Unknown is pretty good.

[monochromatic]

Ooze Mini-Campaign and Elvish Dynasty.
EDIT: Though for me, The Founding of Borstep is an example of an extremely well-made campaign.

[Rowanthepreacher]

From everything that you've said, play Swamplings. It's incredible. It's like a warm sleep while eating sex and getting paid to do it. I don't know if that would really work, but you get my point.

It's swamp goblins, with a deep, involving, but ultimately un-epic plot.

The dialogue is funny and interesting.

Many scenes are completely different from the units vs units fights. In one, you play an accidental assassin sneaking through a castle, in another you can turn your little goblins into thundergoblins using a dwarven caravan, in yet more there are items and foes with interesting effects.

It's everything you're looking for.

[Insinuator]

@Pentarctagon: Played it. Too epic and dark.

@elvish_sovereign: Ooze Mini-campaign was fun, if too short. Think I tried FofB and ED a while ago but I'll give them another shot.

@Rowan: Am playing right now (well, not RIGHT now) and it is great!

[Bob_The_Mighty]

You could try out The Altaz Mariners. There's only a demo out at the moment, but it has a sort of non-linear story based around pirate raids, a couple of semi-humorous passages and some neat trading/sailing features.

[Sapient]

Talentless Mage was a pretty funny one, and it has different gameplay ideas. I never finished it but it seems good.

I've read that Shameless Crossover Excuse was funny, too, but I haven't tried that one.

[Velensk]

It's kind of hard for me recommend things to you as it seems like you have your list of priorities about backwards from mine. The most important thing to me is the gameplay, after that it is nice if the campaign has an interesting overall plot (though there's a limit to how many overall plots that don't drift into an overly epic or 'who cares' territory that generate a sufficient quantity of engagements). After all that well written dialogue and artistic flourishes improve the experience. I prefer my campaigns to take themselves seriously (as most of their attempts to lighten the mood fall flat on me and if they don't take themselves seriously I have a hard time doing so) but not too seriously (because it is a game).

Since I cannot serve you in the way you asked for, I will point out a few campaigns I've played that by your criteria I am not so sure you will like and what I thought about them (including why it did not seem like your campaign) so that you can decide if you want to try them or not.

-The Unstoppable Legion: I rather enjoyed this campaigns playstyle especially the first few scenarios. If you want to put your cavalry mastery to the test this is the campaign to do it with. It does however run into a few problems in my opinion. Primarily I feel that a number of the scenarios are rather dependent on luck(either through the base situation or the tight time limit). In the areas you are concerned about: The story is another of epic scope (though not in mainline wesnoth it has it's own world), perhaps overly cliched. In my opinion it takes itself a little too seriously.

-Saving Elensefar has a base concept I rather like and executes it well. After the first couple scenarios you will be on a ship sailing from one continent to the other then back. Along the way there are various hostile ships that will board you which will take you to a map with the two ships as terrain joined by a bridge and you will have to fight the hostile crew, also along the way are islands which you can choose to land at, each of which will have a unique encounter. You will have to fight a ship or land on an island to reprovision every so often so you cannot just skip across. You get there, go through a scenario then have to head back so you can hit a few of the encounters you missed. Upon getting back you have a large battle. From my playthrough I cannot fault the gameplay in any way other than that the ship-ship battles get a little repetitive.
The plot is just a different take on the you must go on a journey to get an army to fight off an orcish invasion but I thought it was not a bad approach to an old concept. I'll admit I cannot remember anything about the dialogue at all. This did not seem like much of a recommendation to you but I feel you might want to try it anyway.

EDIT: Forgot about the Imperial Era campaigns (there's a whole series of them). I did not find the writing in these to be particularly interesting but they use a few non-standard overall storylines (generally more on the serious side than humorous) Uses an alternate era which definitely helps in the varied gameplay department. The only complaint I really have about these is that they felt like they were not playtested thoroughly.

EDIT: Remembered another, I guess I'll just keep editing as I remember. I found Ruthless to be rather rather difficult to follow/swallow and was significantly annoyed at a few of the authors choices (such as making it so that units if your units die on your turn you cannot put another unit into the same hex, and attacking a wose only to be told by a message that the story requires the wose to not be attacked at this point and thus making it so that all my swings miss). I did not think the gameplay was all that bad however (what I saw) and the story was of a slightly humorous bent. If you're not deterred by the rather strange story/setting and the peculiar changes to gameplay you might want to give it a try.

I've written a few campaigns myself though they were made with my priorities and as such I cannot really recommend them to you. Most of them use user mad eras which will help the gameplay be novel (also none of them take place in wesnoth and thus cannot affect it).

Count Kromire is a vampire campaign requiring the Era of Myths. You play a fairly typical disposed warlord with the advantage that he can make minions out of anyone he can bite. While you fight your way back to power you do get involved in an event which has a significant effect on the EoM world however the campaign ends upon you discovering just what it is before you try to resolve anything about it. I have been told that it is rather difficult but I'd consider it of medium difficulty and medium length. The vampires are a fairly interesting faction to play and they fight a number of foes you are not used to.

War of the Dragon is not yet finished (and likely won't be soon) and is the sequel to Count Kromire where you actually play as a good guy and try to do something about the thing that Count Kromire stumbled upon. Rather epic in scale and also the hardest campaign I have made so far. Possibly takes itself a little too seriously.

Salt Wars is for the Era of Four Moons. This was a short and easy campaign with a simple plot though I have gotten more positive comments about the quality of the writing in it than any of my others (not that that is hard). As an mercenary officer of a merchant house you have to deal with some militaristic pressure put on your house by one of its rivals and the neighboring empire. The main purpose of this campaign was to give the person who did the art for the era a campaign using her era that was in her difficulty range.

[joshudson]

Story of the Wose may or may not be what you want. It's barely longer than Ooze though.

[Chefu]

EDIT: Forgot about the Imperial Era campaigns (there's a whole series of them). I did not find the writing in these to be particularly interesting but they use a few non-standard overall storylines (generally more on the serious side than humorous) Uses an alternate era which definitely helps in the varied gameplay department. The only complaint I really have about these is that they felt like they were not playtested thoroughly.

I would agree with Velensk's comment. Both the dialogue and the balancing need some improvement. I don't think any of the campaigns got their final polish before Turin went on wesbreak. I have recently revived the Orbivm project (Imperial Era and related campaigns and eras) and the campaigns are now on the 1.8 addons server. I am still ironing out some minor bugs after which I will get working on the balance/dialogues. Feedback and suggestions are more than welcome .

As far as suggesting a campaign, you might want to try out To Lands Unknown by Inferno8. It has a good plot and dialogue as well as some of the most amazing graphics I have seen in Wesnoth. It uses the Era of Magic so the gameplay will be different. It also has lots of unique gameplay/special effects. On the downside (for you), the plot is more of the epic quest type. Overall: one of my favourite campaigns, I would highly recommend it.

[Mountain_King]

Talentless Mage was a pretty funny one, and it has different gameplay ideas. I never finished it but it seems good.

I've read that Shameless Crossover Excuse was funny, too, but I haven't tried that one.

What he said. Shameless Crossover excuse still needs a bit of polishing though on the last scenarios. Another campaign which comes to mind is called Prudence. As I recall it had some pretty good scenarios, not very many orcs/undead, and is funny to boot. Probably everything you're looking for, but the campaign never made it to 1.8. Swamplings is definitely a good campaign, which you probably already know.
I'd recommend my own campaign (Ice Age Fun), but it's a bit more epic struggle+humans vs orcs/undead type thing, with kind of zany humor that's sometimes like Rocky and Bullwinkle. Not what you're looking for.

Roar of the Woses, The Dark Hordes, Inky the Cuttlefish, any of those are pretty good. You play as Saurians, undead, and cuttlefish respectively in each of those campaigns. Creatively done the lot of them IMO.

Hope this helps,
Mountain_King

[Insinuator]

@Velensk: There is quite a lot to respond to. Played the Unstoppable Legion but found the scenarios too repetitive. Saving Elensefar, on the other hand, was a wonderful scenario in my opinion. I like the story and the variety of scenarios. Quite creative gameplay too. I took some ideas from that for my own incomplete campaign. I played Count Kromire and liked the unique story. However, I thought that the units were too similar to provide for interesting tactics suiting my taste. I'd like to try Salt Wars, despite the condescending remarks.

@joshudson: I enjoyed Story of the Wose but I agree it was too short. I don't know if there have been changes since I played it last.

@Mountain_King: What version was Prudence released on? EDIT: I'm curious about the Shameless Crossover campaign. What exactly is it about?

[Alarantalara]

What version was Prudence released on?

There's a copy in 1.6. Beware of puns.

[Hulavuta]

Talentless Mage.

[Rowanthepreacher]

How do you get Talentless Mage? It's not on the add-on list.