Comments on: How much Campaign do you Plan before the Start?

By: Leonard Wilson

Leonard Wilson — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:48:08 +0000

@Loz: Absolutely — one size does not fit all, when it comes to GMing styles. We all have our priorities. But you’re inventing a problem that doesn’t exist when you look at mine. If I leave the premise open enough that a player could say, “I want to play a dragon rider,” and I okay it, I just won’t create a story arc where a dragon rider doesn’t fit. I use the PCs themselves as the springboard for the story. It’s just a different sequence of brainstorming than you use, and the one that’s happened to work best for me personally over the years.

By: Loz

Loz — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:30:05 +0000

re: leonard “I see it as my job to adapt the campaign to them, not vice versa,”.
I suspect we just have different degrees of willingnes to bend our campaigns to match the players players. I prefer to let players run up against dilemmas and either adapt their characters or the circumstances. I will adapt details to characters to provide more interesting encounters, but won’t dilute the concept/quality (and thus pleasure for *every*body at the table). Possibly we have differences in what we consider acceptable levels of “Artistic integrity vs desire to please a player”?
I definitely see this as a sliding-scale sort of thing. My campaigns generally have a theme (i.e. “Allegiances”) above and beyond the master story. Given this, I can judge if a Player’s Character concept will “mesh” with the flow of campaign or grate against the grain to everybody’s displeasure. Certainly the campaign will be adjusted somewhat in mid-flow according to the PC’s actions/player’s desires. But some PC concepts are just too “awkward” for it to work.
Real example of requiring prior knowledge of a master-story : A “Dragon-rider” sounds cool, but if your campaign involves extension teleportation networks / travel to Dragon-hating countries, the poor Dragon’s not going to be of any use to his rider very often… Better to warn the player before he spends more time on an unworkable concept.
Real example of requiring prior knowledge of the campaign theme : An utterly frivolous team-work-less Psionic has NO place in a serious “Super-heroic Resistance-fighters vs The Evil Super-villain Organisations who conquered the world twenty years ago” campaign. Lord, if only I’d seen that one coming in time….

Re: new players. Gotta love ‘em, definitely want to encourage ‘em (they’re the future of role-playong after all!) So “oh Yesyesyes!” They get special attention and preparation and leeway.

By: Leonard Wilson

Leonard Wilson — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 05:08:21 +0000

@Loz: To more specifically address your (rhetorical?) question, “… for Players asking ‘would such-and-such a type of Character be playable in this campaign?’ … How could I answer them wihout knowing the mastery-story concept at that stage?” I would say:

“How can I know what story concept would work for the campaign without knowing what characters I’ll have to make it playable for?” I see it as my job to adapt the campaign to them, not vice versa, as long as they’ll abide by the overall tone I want to set for the game.

By: Leonard Wilson

Leonard Wilson — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:59:46 +0000

@John: Anything I post here I’m just hoping someone will find it helpful, so feel free to use it. :)

@Loz: I hadn’t consciously thought about it before, but my PCs-over-story-arc priority is a tactic I developed for trying to bring new players into the RPG fold (more precisely, convincing girls to join our group during my college days).

When running a game for veteran role-playing addicts, you’ve got a certain amount of the captive-audience factor at work. In order to get their fix, most of us will put up with quite a bit, and we’ll certainly try to meet the GM halfway. When you’ve got brand new players who’re just a little curious, and are there for the company more than anything, it’s a different ball game. When you’re highly motivated to get those folks hooked, you find yourself jettisoning everything that doesn’t specifically focus on THEM and their needs.

At the time, I was enthralled with Fantasy Hero, which was the first fantasy RPG that didn’t force specific archetypes onto the player characters. Like Champions, the superhero RPG that spawned it, it just provided players with a long shopping list of character options that could be combined and recombined into endless variations. I loved all the plotting and planning and mathematical juggling involved, but what the girls loved was hearing, “We’ve got a world full of fantasy adventure to explore. What do you want to be?” I’d get answers like, “An elderly weather-witch with a siamese cat for a familiar,” and when we sat down to play, I’d hand them a character sheet, along with a verbal overview of their abilities.

Since then, I’ve always been very conscious of reaching out to my players and making the whole experience about them.

By: Johnn

Johnn — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:34:20 +0000

Thanks Loz.

To date, the best in-media res starts I’ve GM’d have:
* Jumped right to initiative rolls / combat
* Confused the heck out of the players
* Helped players get their bearings through clues and details as the encounter wore on.

It seems a combo of action and confusion hooks gamers right away. Much better than three hours of contemplative character creation.

By: Loz

Loz — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:34:27 +0000

Thinking back I *have* actually used this planning technique in the past (but not consciously/systematically…) and it has worked. Nice one!

P.S. Blanket authorisation : Any and all of my gaming words/thoughts that can help and encourage other gamers can be quoted by anybody (caveat : in-context and with attribution of authorship, of course)

By: Johnn

Johnn — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 01:21:03 +0000

@Loz and Leonard: those are great recipes. Mind if I put them in the e-zine?

@Leonard: “when I say I “sketch out” ideas, that can be literally true”

I agree. I used to wonder why I could remember my hand drawn maps much better than maps in modules. Then I read a few books and articles about the brain. ‘Course, it should have been obvious, but I’m slow that way. :)

@Loz: I’ve used in-media res a few times with great success. If you try it let us know how it goes.

By: Loz

Loz — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:56:52 +0000

[Cherry-picking, here...]
I like that concept of planning an action sequence first and back-filling to set it up. Especially the part about planning for the “mid-action” point. I’ll try that.
I’m a bit more doubtful about leaving the master-story until the players have finished the PC creation purpose. I often find that with a master-story 70-90% in mind (the other 10-30% being, yes, adapting to profit from the player-characters) I can suggest a few ideas to players that would be helpful to both them and open up new possibilities for the campaign. Sometimes if they’re reeaally stuick for Disadvantage points (to pay for all those Avantages they’ve fallen in love with) I can say “You could take a Secret Disadvantage worth [Large number of points], and it’ll help me introduce certain elements but even your character won’t know what it is until it appears…” My players generally bite the bait (they do love a challenge!). Everybody wins : they get their beloved Advantages, I get a cast-iron justification for inserting campaign enemies into the PCs lives….
This ties back into the campaign preparation question because without a master-story / concept already in mind and thus knowing which villains are waiting in the wings I wouldn’t be able to make them this kind of offer.
Ditto for Players asking “would such-and-such a type of Character be playable in this campaign?” (they’re thoughtful people as well…) How could I answer them wihout knowing the mastery-story concept at that stage?

By: Leonard Wilson

Leonard Wilson — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:37:40 +0000

I’m probably about a 3. My best campaigns always seem to go…

1. Pick a premise (including a synopsis of the setting) and rules set.
2. Have the players create their characters.
3. Sketch out some vague thoughts for a master story tailored to the PCs’ motivations, with an important NPC or two.
4. Sketch out some vague thoughts for a more immediate story arc, with an important NPC or two.

Before each session, I then…
5. Write an opening script for the session (a la West End’s “Star Wars”) to begin in mid action, brainstorming what has set up this cool situation, and some directions and scenes it could all lead to. This is always where my hardest prep-work comes, trying to make sure that everyone’s imagination is fired up, and we can hit the ground running.
6. Sketch out some vague thoughts for the NPCs who’ll be critical to the session.
7. Grab some dice, sit everyone down, and let it roll.

Note, when I say I “sketch out” ideas, that can be literally true. A page of game notes for me is often a series of doodles meant to jog my memory for key people, places, and events.

When I do more prep than this, I tend to lose sight of the end goal of actually getting everyone together to play, and it becomes strictly design for design’s sake. And if I actually do get players to the table, I’m so involved in the creation that I overthink the action, and play begins to drag.

By: Loz

Loz — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 09:33:26 +0000

Since I know my players (e.g. have listen carefully to their comments/ wishes during the PC creation) I usually already have a good idea of what would make a good session for them. If I’ve gone the questionnaire route I’ve got maybe too much info :)
With this information, I can adapt the intro scenario (cameoing in NPCs mentioned in the Pcs backgrounds/concepts, for example).
The basic goal of the intro is to present the campaign initial thread to hook the players interest, so I’ll always look to emphasize threads of particular interest to them during the obligatory first step of briefly recapping of the world (two minutes of capsule history of the world, one minute of local history), then I briefly tell every player why their Pcs are at the initial gaming site (public info out loud, sneaky private stuff linked to their secret identities briefly by written note I had time to write during the creation process). Linking the PCs into a “living” world is *very* important.
Intro scenarios are generally one or two encounters to “federate” the PCs together, leading to an intrigue of some kind (where I include implications relevant to the PCs lives/secrets) and a whopping “cliff-hanger” to hook them into the fully-blown second scenario and give them that “Wow” feeling towards the end of play.
Minor XP award so that players can tweak the PCs (with me paying attention to the use of XP : signposts about Players worries / desires), and we’re off to the races….

Note the key thread of engaging the players emotions, giving them links to the campaign they should wish to explore, generating the feeling that the world lives and moves around them, and they can influence it. Positive emotions (e.g. That “Wow” feeling) for all. In short : *fun* gaming.