How do you create a campaign that gives the players absolute freedom but still leaves the GM in control?

Recently, Campaign Mastery was asked, Is it possible to create a truly player-choice driven campaign (within reason)? I’m trying to create a campaign that’s anywhere from 75 – 90% roleplaying (there will be dice, but not battle so much). I’ve been developing the campaign for some time now and have a list of interconnected rumors which, if followed in the right order, will lead the PCs to bigger and bigger discoveries. There are even totally different directions in which to take the campaign if another set of rumors is followed…. The problem is that, even though I’ve not had any of the rumors be false, if connected in the PCs’ minds in the wrong manner, the rumors could lead them to believe the wrong thing. (In trying to start this particular campaign, I had just that very thing happen.) This can be problematic when trying to have the players wrap their minds around the plot. Also, to keep things interesting (since I’m using rumors as a starting point from the game), should I give out red herrings as well? Any advice would be appreciated.

Mike’s Answer:

The good news is that it IS possible. In fact, it sounds like you are well on your way to achieving your objectives. However, it also sounds like you are well on your way to running a plot train (with limited switching points) and are concerned about it running off the rails. This would make it no more character-driven than a colouring book; but again, you seem to have escaped this particular trap fairly adroitly, letting the characters believe whatever conclusions the players have reached, regardless of whether or not that is what is actually taking place.

You should never force the players to wrap their heads around the plot – in a truly character-driven campaign, they will make mistakes and wrong assumptions, and reach faulty conclusions. But they will also learn from these.

So here’s my recipe for making your campaign truly character-diven, regardless of the amount of combat that you want to take place, based on the process that I am using in my Shards Of Divinity campaign:

Prerequisite: Active Players with Motivated Characters

The first thing to note is that none of this will work if your players are the types who need their scenarios served up to them on a plate. And the second thing to note is that it won’t work unless the PCs come pre-loaded with back stories that motivate them to be interested. A little personal stake in the outcome makes a big difference.

The key to achieving the first is something that’s eluded me for decades, so I can’t help you there, but it sounds like you’ve got that aspect of things cooking along quite nicely anyway (I’m moderately jealous, but wouldn’t trade in the players I’ve got anyway).

The key to achieving the second is to ensure that much of the character backgrounds are open-ended, unresolved, or otherwise unexplained. Even if the character thinks he knows why the Warlord slew his parents, and that the Warlord was captured and hung for his attempted revolution, and has written as much in his background, you can still place a hidden shadowy figure behind the known villain that the character knows nothing about – in which case, the revolution may have gone underground, but the wheels are still in motion, and rumours of distant events deriving from the revolutionary activities should resonate with this element of the character’s background.

Establish the big picture

The first step to achieving a truly character-driven campaign is to determine the big picture – who are the various vested interests, and who are the opposition (in general terms). Note that there will be many of these, and most of them will be side-issues to the real plot. Power brings power-struggles with it, almost by definition. It doesn’t matter what someone has, someone else will want it. Every significant power bloc should have a defined opposing power bloc, and the drive of the campaign should emerge from the tension, the move-and-countermove, between these groups. And don’t neglect the potential of groups that are being blackmailed into activities they would not normally countenance, or of groups targeting the wrong enemies, etc!

These opposing groups, and the current state of play between them, should be part of your campaign briefing materials, the springboards from which the players generate their character backgrounds.

But it is always possible to reverse-engineer the information from existing character backgrounds. In fact, I would go further than that, and state that the GM should re-engineer his campaign background after the PCs have been generated, just to make sure that everything fits.

One of the best techniques is to treat the character background generation process as a series of mini one-on-one roleplaying sessions. Take an hour with each player to work through the past history of the character and how the different factions and campaign history have influenced them. This can either be done in place of a day’s play, or can be done away from the table.

Generate rumours

There’s usually a vast gulf between what is actually happening and what the general public thinks is happening. Generate rumours that describe the latter, and pre-load your characters with them. These are usually the mere tip of the iceberg in comparison to the real story, but these breadcrumbs are starting points. Some of these will never become relevant to the campaign, some should be out-and-out wrong, and some should hold a nugget of truth. Some should directly conflict with the rumours given to other players. Some should be wildly improbable. It’s up to the character to assess how credible he finds them.

To generate these, I usually start with a true statement describing an event and break it into short, declarative sentences. I then wash each sentence through a “Chinese Whispers” process – rephrasing and restating the message, changing factual information slightly, occasionally inverting or distorting the meaning. I’ll generally roll a d6+2 for the number of times each sentence should be ‘processed’ – what comes out is a bunch of rumours describing the incident.

Most of these changes will be in the direction of heightened drama, even of melodrama. Exaggeration, hyperbole, and rumours go hand in hand! Sometimes I will like the ‘amped up’ version so much that I’ll make it the literal truth and start the process over!

Generate propaganda

Every power bloc will generate propaganda of some kind. This might be to play up or play down their activities and motivations, or to assign blame for something to their enemies (however big a stretch it is). Each PC, by virtue of who they are and who they have had contact with, will be ‘exposed’ to this propaganda, which can also be stated in the form of rumours; their relationship with the source will dictate the level of credibility.

If a rumour will not be believed by the character because their opinion is coloured by their existing relationship with the source, that rumour should be rephrased as a ‘conspiracy theory’ element before it is given to the character; instead of a rumour that “X did Y,” tell the character that “The [prejudice target] is trying to make people think that X did Y,” where the ‘prejudice target’ is someone that the character already thinks the worst of. I will often run the results through the “Chinese Whispers” process a couple of times before doing so. Exaggeration and Hyperbole, always!

This is usually impossible to decide until the character histories are known, and hence what rumoured actions the character will find credible. And the resulting rumours should be interspersed with those from the previous section, more or less at random, so that players can’t block-assign credibility assessments.

Determine next actions

Once you know who the power blocs are, and how they operate, you can also decide what each faction’s next step is going to be, even if the answer is “lie low until the heat dies down”. Have any recent events in the campaign background presented an opportunity that is too good to resist? Have a faction take action accordingly. Have any recent events left a faction vulnerable? Alliances may be formed or broken, leopards may change their spots, etc. Every faction should always be doing something to bring advantage to themselves and disadvantage (or discomfort) to their enemies – even if they are nominally on the same side!

Generate rumours of the results

You don’t have to decide on the outcome just yet – these are events that are taking place concurrently with the PCs adventures, and in which they may take a passing interest or even an active involvement. You should always scale these broad actions down to determine what the local events are that the PCs will see, first-hand, based on where they are and where they intend to go next.

The other thing that needs to be done is to note when these actions will become apparent to the faction’s opposition, and how long they will actually take to complete.

Generate rumours of impending enemy responses

Every action has an unequal and opposing reaction, to misstate one of the most famous laws of physics. This misstatement is literally true when it comes to the maneuverings of factions – their enemies will always take an opposing position, i.e. will react in some manner, and the strength of this reaction will always be greater or less than the original action, depending on the level of threat perceived in the original action. The smarter the heads of each faction, the more appropriate their response will be. Some of these reactions will be covert, some will be overt, and many will have a secondary reaction designed to act as a ‘cover story’ or misinformation to distract the enemy while the real move is being made.

Of course, no reaction can take place until the target faction knows there is something to react to, and by the time an action is complete, it’s usually too late to undo the effects. The numbers assigned to these two time-frames in the previous section dictate the window of opportunity for a counter-operation by the target faction, and the later into that window a reaction comes, the more likely it is that it will need to be some overt response.

Determine actual enemy responses

It’s my preference to come up with half-a-dozen possible reactions in the form of rumours, ranging from the improbable to the near-certain, wash these through the “Chinese Whispers” technique a few times, then pick the actual reaction that will take place.

None of these reactions will take place in a vacuum – all the moves being made by other factions, against other targets, will change the environment just a little. Other, presently uninvolved, factions may also get involved because they perceive an opportunity or a threat.

Each reaction then becomes a new action in this never-ending game of chess.

Update ‘The Big Picture’ regularly

These ‘boxing matches’ may be economic, or political, or social, or related to intelligence-gathering, or propagandist, in nature. A major side-benefit is that the campaign background is never static; it is always evolving, and introducing new plotlines that the PCs can get involved in. This obviates any need for plot trains at the same time as it brings the world to life for the players.

The downside is that as each action matures, the campaign background needs to be updated. For this reason, I like to stagger the outcomes of actions, making some brief and opportunist, and others subtle, preplanned, and long-term. The nature of the faction clearly needs to be a factor in these determinations. As a rule of thumb, I like no more than two factions to have acted or reacted in any given post-session update; this keeps the campaign admin at a manageable level.

Another advantage of this approach is that the material that can be given to new players, or new characters, is always pretty much ready-to-go. And if you take a holiday it’s relatively easy to get back into the swing of things by reading through your updated background.

Listen to your players’s ideas

Your players will put 2+2 together and come out with 7 on a regular basis. Sometimes, their ideas will be better than yours; sometimes, you will have a grand plan that their ideas don’t fit. You should always take the player’s theories and consider them carefully to decide whether or not they are better than your own. And if they are, you smile, give them a metaphoric pat on the back, and never admit the truth! They will not only think of themselves as brilliant (and pride goeth before a fall), but because you agree with them, they will see you as brilliantly Machiavellian to boot.

Make an INT check for the speaker

One approach is to secretly make an INT roll for the character whose player announces the theory. Succeed, and their theory is correct; fail and they’ve got it wrong. All game systems have some sort of mechanism that addresses this need, or can be adapted to it. The result is that no matter how brilliant the player might be, it’s the character whose brilliance or lack thereof that is reflected in the campaign events. Of course, if you really like the idea, you can ignore or even fudge this roll!

Even if there are some plot holes or logic errors to be filled in, this can still be a powerful weapon in making the campaign credible.

Red Herrings

These should be part and parcel of any set of rumours. In fact, many of the results of the steps described above won’t be characterised as anything else by most DMs. The alternative is for the rumours to give a roadmap to the overall plot, once a few side-roads created by mistakes in logic (or simple misjudgements by the players) are eliminated. Nothing kills game-play quicker than being able to predict with certainty every step of the rest of the campaign; it kills the suspense.

I have seen suggestions that red herrings should outweigh true rumours by 5-to-1 or more. I don’t agree with that; much of this quota will be met by rumours that are related to the truth, but heavily distorted, and I don’t consider those to be true “red herrings” as they still advance the plot.

A genuine Red Herring is a deliberately-false rumour that is inserted into the mix for the express purposes of deception. The problem is that if there are too many of these, players will never be able to sort the wheat from the chaff and, as you put it, “get their heads around the plot”. Worse still, the players may come to feel that the DM is deliberately trying to deceive them. That’s why the majority of false rumours are not red herrings per se, just propaganda from one faction or another; that then becomes something that illuminates the nature of that faction, and something that is “their” fault, not something that is “you vs the players”.

I think that a ratio of one-in-five or even one-in-ten is about right, representing people who invent wild stories out of thin air for the pleasure of hearing themselves speak (and to make themselves, however briefly, the centre of attention).

Pink Salmon

I am especially fond of rumours that can be easily dismissed as Red Herrings – but aren’t. A few pieces of “Pink Salmon” – to extend the metaphore – makes everything more credible. It’s always possible that some of the wild stories invented by these local wits and spread far and wide by the gossip of passing travellers actually hit the nail on the head.

Be selective, though; you don’t want to introduce a “the more improbable it sounds, the more likely it is to be true” dynamic into your rumours, because that also kills the mystery and suspense of the campaign. As a rule of thumb, 1-in-5 or 1-in-10 “Red Herrings” should actually be Pink Salmon.

White Salmon

PT Barnum could sell just about anything. The story is that he once came into possession of a truckload of grey salmon, which are neither especially popular nor tasty. He relabelled them “White Salmon,” (there’s no such thing) “Guaranteed never to have been pink”. And sold the lot at premium prices.

Perception and salesmanship counts for a lot. Rumours are no good if you don’t sell them to the players through roleplay. Any tavern scene should involve a chat with the local gossip to get the latest unofficial news and a sense of local affairs. These should be two-way conversations, in which the players get to pass on rumours they’ve heard as well as receive new ones. In essence, you have to label your rumours as “White Salmon” and sell them to the players.

It might seem that it’s enough to convince the characters of the validity of rumour #112, but it’s not. The players may have their characters act as though deceived, but it’s not very satisfying when the players know better. So make no mistake, this is an essential application of metagaming that can have a major influence on the entertainment value of your game – you might be pitching your rumours at the characters, but it’s the players you have to convince.

Maintain an atmosphere of uncertainty

This is so important that, even though I’ve mentioned the maintenance of suspense a couple of times, it bears repeating again. Some GMs suggest that every time the players figure out what is really going on, the universe should be torn down and replaced with something even stranger (shades of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy!).

Personally, I wouldn’t go that far; you risk a complete loss of credibility and of the players losing all confidence in their ability to actively decide their own fates. In effect, you can convince the players they are on a plot train even when they aren’t, if you go too far – I speak from personal experience.

This requires a judgement call or two on the part of the GM. Will the player’s knowledge of the truth impact their immediate activities? Then they’ve got it right, and should be congratulated. Will their knowledge of the truth have a negative impact on the entertainment value of future scenarios, or will it enhance it by offering a glimpse behind the curtains? If the first, then they’ve got it wrong and the GM needs to introduce a new explanation for what’s happened; if the second, then they have it right.

If both these judgement calls leave the question in a gray area in between, then the rule of thumb I use is that the players are probably right, but something prevents them confirming it – for now. It becomes a deeply-held suspicion of the characters, nothing more.

It is also important to note that juicy rumours don’t stop just because the PCs have proved or disproved them, and resolved the source upon which they were based; rumours should linger, and occasionally raise doubts about whether or not the problem really WAS resolved!

Imminence brings revelation and certainty

The more involved in any given faction-fight the characters get, the more reliable should be the information they receive. The closer to fruition a faction’s plan becomes, the more blatantly obvious it should become – though this is always a relative value.

Consider the land invasion of the allies in World War II: at first, it was just speculation when and where it would occur; then it became inevitable that sooner or later it would occur, but where and when were still no more than guesswork; then preparations for doing so got underway and deception and misdirection were employed to make sure that the enemy didn’t know where and when it would take place; and then finally it actually happened, at which point it quickly became certain where and when it had taken place.

Example of the “Chinese rumours” technique:

1. Bishop Luabird spent $100 on lady’s underwear.

2. A Bishop in good standing spent $100 on exotic lingerie.

3. A disreputable bishop in the south regularly buys exotic lingerie.

4. A disreputable bishop in the south wears exotic lingerie.

5. A disreputable bishop in the south wears the skin of a devil as underclothes.

6. A bishop in the west wears the skin of a devil.

7. A disreputable bishop in the northeast is controlled by the skin of a devil that he wears under his clothes.

Now feed the last three to the PCs! Notice that even if the original rumour is true, there is no explanation of why the Bishop needed the underclothes!

Summary:

The key to running a completely character-driven campaign is to work out what the opposition is doing, generate rumours accordingly (including exaggerations and red herrings), and then let the players interpret these as they will. Rumours will often persist long after the cause of the rumour has been resolved – which should leave your PCs always wondering whether or not they have really solved “The Riddle Of The Headless Horse Thief” or whatever. Then let the players decide what their characters deem interesting enough, or important enough, or even simply credible enough, to get involved in. And when they make that decision, the first thing they are going to have to do is find out what’s really going on – which means roleplay.

Johnn’s answer:

Great process, Mike! I especially like the rumour washing. That’s a nifty little engine GMs should master because they can get so much value from constant use of it.

I don’t have anything to add to Mike’s process. So instead, I’ve distilled this post into a series of steps and created a short PDF game master checklist everyone can download and use in conjunction with this post.

Grab the checklist. Then use it along with referencing this post to help guide you along.

Ask The GMs is a service being offered by Campaign Mastery. More info >

Some GMs read nothing but official gaming product. Others expand their horizons to include Game Supplements from other sources, both officially-sanctioned and homebrew. A few go further, and seek out genre-related works and referances from which they can seek out inspiration and detail. Very few are what I would describe as “Literary GMs”, who read just about anything and actively seek ways to make their reading relevant.

Here’s a quick rundown on just some of the referances that I currently have close at hand for use in gaming prep (in no particular order):

• Two copies of Roget’s Thesaurus;
• Three Dictionaries – one modern, one from about 40 years ago that I bought second-hand, and one that’s now 60 years old and far more substantial than either of the other two;
• A history book on the rise and fall of the third reich;
• An old yellow pages for the city I’m now living in (random business names!);
• An old white pages for a small town in Australia (random surnames);
• Two books of baby names (one gives the meaning of popular names, the other has equivalent names from multiple languages and nations);
• The History Of The 20th century;
• The Right Word At The Right Time, a hard-to-get but excellent book on comparative english and correct usage put out by Reader’s Digest;
• A Dictionary Of Mythology;
• A book on African Mythology;
• A two-volume encyclopedia;
• A dictionary of mathematics;
• A dictionary of engineering;
• A textbook on introductory psychology;
• A high-school textbook on politics;
• Three Atlases;
• Four Almanacs;
• Two books on writing novels;
• A careers guide;
• An (out-of-date) breakdown of the science and engineering courses offered by a local university showing the specific subjects covered in each course and which other courses are prerequisite requirements;
• A book on writing screenplays;
• SI Chemical Data;
• A high-school summary/study guide of higher mathematics;
• A textbook on Statics (the study of stresses in engineering design;
• Guiness’ Book Of World Records (1980 edition – it was cheap);
• The Intelligent Man’s Guide To Science by Isaac Asimov (even decades out of date it’s invaluable);
• Two books on life in the middle ages;
• A complete history of the world;
• A Dictionary Of Electronics put out in the 1970s by Tandy Electronics;
• An introductory textbook on Geology;
• An introductory textbook on Archeology;
• A manual on first aid
• How To Lose A Battle – Foolish Plans and Great Military Blunders by Bill Fawcett, plus a couple of his other books like It Seemed Like A Good Idea and You Did What To Whom?
• The Writer’s Guide To Everyday Life in the Middle Ages by Sherrilyn Kenyon
• Day Of The Bomb, a history of the creation of the first Atomic Bombs and their use on Hiroshima
• World-Building – A Writer’s Guide to constructing star systems and life-supporting planets by Stephen L Gillett
• The Giant Book Of Facts & Trivia
• Elements Of Materials Science & Engineering
• Tourist guides to a number of different cities and countries;
• The Writer’s Guide To Character Traits which is the book that I’m reading at the moment;

….and the list just goes on and on.

And these are just (some of) the books that I have at hand, never mind tucked away on my main bookshelves. And that doesn’t count the hundred or more game supplements and game magazines that are also not far away.

Every one of these has been useful on multiple occasions, for multiple purposes.

Gathering The Collection

I visit second hand bookstores frequently, check out any book sale or garage sale that I happen to pass, and have slowly amassed this collection. Some are texts from my university studies.

As a result of having these at hand, if I place a wooden suspension bridge in a campaign, I can at least glance at the textbook on Statics and get some idea of roughly how much weight it could theoretically carry in just a second or two, and what events might affect that amount, during play.

If I need to know the surface area of the Earth, or to know something about the 18th President of the United States, or the Prime Minister of Canada in 1962, or whatever, I have those details at hand as well.

The Internet

The internet can replace many of these, but there’s a limited amount of screen real estate, and I need most of it for the document – whether it’s a scenario or a blog post or an article – that I happen to be working on at the time. There are also, always, questions about the accuracy of net-derived information. Wikipedia is a wonderful resource, but it’s not always accurate; and if it is sometimes wrong, what hope is there for the rest of the internet? I always take info gleaned from the net with a grain of salt, unless I can confirm it at two or more reputable sites.

Using the collection

As a rule of thumb, I either have to be an expert in anything the players know, or might need to know; or (more practically), I have to be able to fake it by at least sounding like I know what I’m talking about – something that is a lot easier if I at least understand the basics!

Fantasy vs SciFi and Modern-Day

It might seem that a fantasy game setting is a lot less work than a modern-day or science-fiction one, but the reality is slightly different – at least in the latter two cases, you can take your normal education and apply it directly. With a fantasy setting, you have to understand the mythos and superstitions and misperceptions and false apprehensions that abounded and then translate those into your game environment.

Not only does that make you responsible for creating more of the content, it makes it harder to keep everything internally consistant.

The Value of Gifts

What’s more, referance books make great Christmas and Birthday presents – if I know one of my players is running a Halfling Gardener, a second-hand book on gardening, or hobby farming, or traditional recipes, can all be given as gifts that supplement the knowledge that the player brings to the character. In effect, you make it less work to be more believable.

The most valuable referances

Perhaps the most valuable, though least-referanced, are the books on How To Write.

Communication is one of those essential game master skills – you have to know how to describe what you are seeing in your mind’s eye, be it the result of an in-game action or the landscape unfolding before the PCs, or whatever, in such a way that your PLAYERS can also see it in their mind’s eye. And you have to be able to do it clearly and succinctly and decisively.

A roleplaying game scenario is something of a cross between a screenplay, an improvised radio play, and a novel. There are tracts of exposition and description, there are prepared passages of dialogue, and there are improvised conversations. Each scenario can also be likened to an episode of a TV serial.

Learning how to write more effectively makes your communications to the Players more comprehensible and concrete, while giving you more time to spend on clever content. Learning how to construct great characters for a TV show will help you construct great NPCs.

The more effectively you can translate your ideas to the page, the better your game becomes. And the more you read, the better you get at communications, and the better your game becomes.

What are the best ways to handle splitting the party up – especially over the long term?

An interesting question was asked of us recently: I’m planning a pretty good science fiction game that will most likely involve party splits during a good percentage of the game. While this seems like it may be a bad idea, is there any way to make party splits work without ruining the game for the players?

Mike’s Answer

The Ghostbusters (who the title of this ATGMs misqoutes*) were right – splitting the party can do more damage – to the campaign, to the GM, and to incidental nerves. But, if handled properly, it can be a definite aid to gameplay, and practically indispensible.

There are different answers to the best techniques to employ, depending on two major factors: the frequency and duration of splits. Our enquiring GM has described a situation in which either or both will be high, but because we like to be thorough here at CM when we look at a question, we’re going to cover the whole range of possible situations and the solutions that best fit them.

Side-note: I titled this blog as I did because, for many years after the movie first came out, and even today on occasion, these are the first words out of someone’s mouth whenever the party decides to split up….

Occasional, Short Duration, Seperations

If the party is only going to be apart for a couple of minutes – long enough for one conversation, say – there’s no problem. Take them aside. Go outside for a cigarette, go upstairs for a cup of coffee, or whatever. There’s no problem making the other players wait under these circumstances.

Periodic, Short Duration, Seperations

Things get a little more serious when you have to keep taking the same player or players aside for a few minutes in scenario after scenario. When this happens, it’s better to deal with events at the table most of the time, even if it means secrecy is lost. Notes might preserve some measure of privacy but they are generally a short-term solution.

Regular, Short Duration, Seperations

…And when it starts happening several times a game session, every game session, there is no serious option but to handle it at the table. Notes between players and GM may also work here, but are even less likely to be good enough in the longer term.

Occasional, Medium Duration, Seperations

So much for the easy answers; now it starts getting trickier. Medium duration means up to an hour or two.

When it’s a rare event, it’s my preference to time the events to occur between game sessions, or over a meal break, so \I can take the affected player(s) aside and deal with the situation. If that means \things have to be a little more abstracted than usual – no miniatures or props – well, that’s just bad luck, we have to put up with that.

Periodic, Medium Duration, Seperation

It’s when it starts happening more frequently that real problems set in. When this is the case, I’ll make sure the seperation is at the end of a game session, and I’ll also make sure there is something for the other group of characters to be doing at the same time. At the end of one session, I’ll deal with one group of players, and before the start of the next, with the other, keeping both game-time and real-time as closely-matched as possible. This ensures I’m not singling out or demonstrating any kind of favoritism for either group of players. What’s more, I’ll also try to ensure that the opportunities to earn any sort of rewards are also equal on both sides of the game; little poisons a game faster than one or two characters who not only earn a full share of the party’s rewards, but also gets rewarded for gaming on the side.

This mandates planning specifically to accommodate these needs during game prep. You not only need to prepare for the side-quest, you need to prepare something for those who are not involved – and that’s often the harder task.

It’s also worth noting that combat chews up a LOT more playing time than in-game time, and that needs to be planned for as well.

Regular, Medium Duration, Seperations

This escalates the problems, and solution, identified in the previous category into a structural component of the game, and I would actually define it as part of the standard pattern of play for the campaign: group one plays for the first two hours (or whatever), plus the party section of play; group two plays the party section of play, and gets the last two hours of play (or whatever), (in theory) taking place simultaneously with the opening passage of the next session of play. This is not dissimilar, in many respects, to the approach taken by the long-running Law & Order series – the first half is police work, featuring the detectives, and the second part is the courtroom, featuring the lawyers, and only when you put the two halves together do you have the whole story. However, where that series has very little overlap, in this case the overlapping game time would be the dominant feature.

This graphic illustrates what I'm suggesting

This is the first category of answer which I think might fit the circumstances of our enquiring GM. I must emphasise that I’ve never found myself in this situation, so I can’t state as a fact that this will work; but I see no reason why it wouldn’t – provided that the arriving members of Group 2 don’t disrupt play with side chatter. (If they do, the departing members of Group 1 can get their revenge at the end of the day’s play!)

Occasional, Long Duration, Seperations

Now matters are getting serious indeed. By long duration, I mean a full day’s play or more – sometimes a little less, sometimes a lot more.

I’m actually going to be facing this situation in the near future in my “Fumanor: One Faith” campaign, simply because it’s been designed around one PC and others have joined in since. The solution I’ve come up with is for the players who own a PC who is not present to take on another role in the affected scenarios – in effect, taking over an NPC who has been built into the plotline.

Any experience they earn stays with the NPC, but (as a reward), half of it also goes back to their “real” characters – if I judge that they’ve played the NPCs sincerely.

Furthermore, after each scenario revolving around Group 1 (in which the members of Group 2 are playing other characters as PCs), I will turn the tables and run a scenario detailing what the members of Group 2 were up to at the same time as the first scenario was taking place; the players whose characters were tied up in scenario 1 now have to take their turns at running secondary characters. (It is also my intention to permit the players to contribute to the design of the secondary characters that they will be playing).

This approach works in any case involving covert missions, and in fantasy games where communications technology is fairly primitive; it is harder to implement successfully in modern games where one group of characters can “get in touch” with those who have been left behind at the push of a button or the dialling of a number. When I don’t think this technique will work, for this (or any other) reason, I will implement a more extreme solution. Stick around, things are going to get interesting!

Periodic, Long Duration, Seperations

Now that we’re surmising a repeated pattern, it’s time to take the next step, with a technique stolen wholesale from Ars Magica: In addition to each primary character, every player also puts together a secondary character. It’s up to the player to nominate which of his characters goes with which group when they seperate. This is the best technique when characters are apart more often than they are together, as not every player can cope with playing multiple characters at once.

For this to work, it’s best if the GM lays down some ground rules – the two characters must be different in class (if the system has them) or in function within the group (if it does not); they should have clearly different social standings, goals, and so on. Each group should have some reason to be cohesive – perhaps all the members of group 2 (bar one) are vassals or henchmen of the lone exception.

Once you have the characters sorted, it’s time to make another decision: you can either alternate play between the two groups, either game-session-by-game-session, hour-by-hour, or whatever; or you can run temporarily completely seperate campaigns. Or perhaps 4 hours of one group followed by 4 hours of the other (assuming an 8-hour playing session). The objective is to try and keep the two groups somewhere close to synchronised.

Another approach is one-game-day-at-a-time – and if that means one hour with group 1 and seven with group 2, then that’s the way it is. Since every player has a character to run, regardless, it doesn’t matter.

This approach was used fairly successfully by another GM I know for his “Star Trek” game – everyone had a member of the bridge crew, and a member of the ship’s security detail. Most of the bridge crew stayed put on away missions, leaving everyone except the exceptions to fill out the landing party with generic red-shirts.

I would solicit opinions from my players as to their preference, and then vary from that baseline to fit the needs of the plot, so as to avoid anticlimax. If you can handle it, ending each group’s activities on a cliffhanger is always an excellent approach, but it doesn’t always fit a GM’s style or the circumstances – and if it doesn’t, don’t try to force it, as it will come across as melodrama for the sake of melodrama.

Regular, Long Duration, Seperations

Now we’re into a situation in which it is going to be quite rare for the entire party to be together. In which case, I would seriously contemplate a more-or-less permanent seperation into two entirely different campaigns. This has happened to me – it’s the reason why I’m running two different Fumanor campaigns at the moment. The characters in each have never met, though the two have several players in common. But it is planned that the two groups will be tackling different aspects of the same problem at the same time in the big finale (years away).

There are some serious advantages to this approach – so many so that it’s worth saving the details for another blog post (makes note on list of future blog topics). For example, you can start plot threads in one as a minor subplot that goes nowhere – but that turns up in the other campaign as a featured plotline. You can have mysteries in one campaign that are solved in the other (why did that happen?). You can induce paranoia by having different NPCs in each of the campaigns give the players two different answers to the same question in an authoritative manner (“The master villain behind it all is ‘X’, and ‘Y’ is our only hope…” Sure, they know one of them is lying, but which one?

I’ve even seen games like this run in which the two factions ended up on different sides of the same war!

The objective with this solution is to transform a liability into an asset.

Concluding thoughts

That’s the whole secret to coping with the situation asked by our Enquiring GM, really – if you’re faced with a situation that could harm the campaign, either find a way to turn it into an asset instead of a liability, or find a way not to do it, even if it means some players can’t have the character they want.

Don’t think of it as a problem: look at it as an opportunity, and then ask yourself, “an opportunity to do what?”

Answer that question, and the optimum approach from amongst those I’ve listed – or one of your own devising – should become obvious.

Johnn’s Answer

I have a couple tips to add to Mike’s usual thorough analysis. I’ve done the same things as Mike, except my branched campaign didn’t get off the ground the one time we opted to give a split party their own campaign, so thumbs up on all his advice. In addition:

Round robin with a timer

This is my preferred tactic based on the situation you’ve described, Enquiring GM. I go around the table, one player at a time, and give them the spotlight for X minutes. The length of time is based on two parameters: number of PCs in the split group and pacing.

Group numbers

Sometimes every PC will be apart. In this case each player gets X minutes. I GM them based on what they want to do. When time is up I switch to the next player.

Other times the party won’t be split evenly. Three PCs might be in one sub group, two in another, and a single in a third, for example. For short splits we carry on with the table seating as-is. For longer splits players change seating so they’re beside each other.

For timing, I’ll cut time by 50% for each player in a sub-group.

For example, a single player will get the full X minutes. Two players will get X + 1/2X minutes. Three players will get X + 1/2X + 1/4X minutes, and so on. This is because each group represents one scene and current timeline, and this keeps game timeline simple and roughly concurrent. It also encourages players in sub-groups to coordinate, communicate, and act as a team during their time slot.

Pacing

The other factor is how fast do you want the game to feel to players? A good pattern is fast for when stakes are highest or the situations are the least interesting. Other times you can slow pacing down, especially if there are moments to relish.

With a countdown timer on the table there’s already pressure on players, which adds additional drama and tension, even if there’s none in the situation. (Note, if this becomes bothersome, relax on the timing and put the timer behind your screen.)

If you want slow pacing make X 2-5 minutes. For fast pacing make X 2 minutes or less.

These are general figures and should be modified based on game complexity, your GMing style, and player styles. For example, you might make X 15 minutes, so a full turn for a group of four players is one hour. We like fast and choppy, but that’s a preference, not a rule. (Fast and choppy is our combat preference too, lol.)

Use a public timer

I’ll put a timer on the game table so everyone can see their countdown clock. I purchased a set of three sand timers that have different times, so I can just pick the timer based on X. I also have a digital timer for other timing needs. I’ve often wondered about getting a bunch of chess clocks and running split games that way, but those are expensive and I’m not sure how I’d even out faster times.

I’ll allow time overage if it would help logistics or gameplay out, but not much.

While waiting, as players normally would in games, they can plan their next questions and moves so they make maximum use of their allotted time. This is where seating players next to each other comes in handy – less noise at the table. alternatively, I’ve had groups go into other rooms and them comes back to the table when it’s their turn each time.

I don’t use this method with my current group, as we are playing a beer & pretzels style of gaming right now, and the party sticks together based on tacit player agreement, as split groups are generally deemed less fun. It’s less realistic, but realism is a spectrum and we’ve found our happy niche.

Leverage skills

Something else I’d like to add to Mike’s great advice is plan to make good use of PC knowledge and skills. In a sci-fi environment comms should be plentiful unless you have FTL lag or some other issue. PCs should be able to patch into other PCs with ease to get advice, bounce ideas off of, and tap unique PC abilities without disrupting players’ own turns. This helps everyone participate in each other’s scenes.

Virtual should give PCs another avenue to join in on the action during split times. Perhaps while the physical reality PCs are doing their thing another PC is querying databases and hacking foes’ smart equipment, another PC is controlling a virtual-enabled piece of equipment, and the remaining player is doing tactical or trying to communicate with foes or hacking environmental, etc. Due to the extremely short length these actions can take, this won’t interrupt a player’s true turn during split situations.

Play NPCs

If Mike’s solution of multiple PCs per player isn’t possible or doesn’t suit your tastes (some players prefer to only play one PC), then allow PCs to play NPCs. In sci-fi you have even more opportunities to add NPCs into the fray, such as smart equipment, AIs, remotes, etc. Allow technology to have personalities and you have fun NPCs to play.

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Some mistakes you (hopefully) only make once; the mistakes that I’ve blogged about so far as part of this month’s carnival fall into that category. But some mistakes are bound to recur by their nature, and it is just as important to know how to recover from those. These mistakes might derive from a flawed scenario or campaign preperation regime, or from a recurring failure of imagination in a particular area (E.E.”Doc” Smith used to have trouble writing romance scenes; if these sound like they were written by someone else when you read this classic author’s Space Operas, it’s because they were)!

Or it might be inherant in the nature of house rules, and it is from this last source that I have extracted a pair of examples of a mistake that I have made time and time again, and fully expect to make again in the future.

Removing A House Rule

At first glance, this seems like a simple process. You simply announce, “this isn’t working, I’m scrapping it”. But there are some deeper issues to be pondered. If the rule is being removed because it was broken, giving PCs too much power or xp or whatever, do they lose whatever advantage they had gained from it? Even if their characters had made personal sacrifices to achieve those advantages along the way, acted in ways that the character didn’t like in the short-term in order to gain a long-term advantage? Or, on the other side of the coin, is it right to disadvantage the PCs because the GM, as administrator of the rules, stuffed it up?

I operate on three general rules of thumb:

• if the players gain an advantage because the GM stuffs up, they get to keep that advantage or some equivalent, though the size of the advantage may be scaled back if it was big enough to break the game;
• if the players were disadvantaged because the GM stuffs up, they get to keep that disadvantage or some equivalent, though the size might be scaled back if it was system-breaking. However, they will also receive an advantage in compensation;
• Game history will be retconned as necessary to maintain the overall outcomes, and the changes will be communicated to the players. Where necessary, the players will be consulted in determining what changes need to be made, eg finding alternative reasons for PC choices of action.

This system isn’t perfect. In general, it means that if the GM introduces a broken house rule, the players benefit from it, one way or another. But it keeps the campaign alive, and keeps the players happy – and without the players, there is no campaign.

The Woes Of Piety

The first example derives from my Fantasy campaign, “Fumanor: The Last Deity”. This underwent a very turbulant history – designed for AD&D, adapted to D&D 2nd Ed, A brief flirtation with Rolemaster, and then into D&D 3.0. All of them representing a lot of effort in updating characters, in House Rules, and in adapting the rules to suit both the campaign history and the overall campaign conceptual framework. Along the way, because I’m the creative type, I had rules ideas; some of them worked, and some of them failed to work.

The ones that worked posed no problems, and remain in force to this day; I’ve blogged about them from time to time and will continue to do so for quite a long time to come. The ones that simply didn’t work are a different story.

I had looked at the reputation rules in Hackmaster – which is another system that had been contemplated for the campaign, prior to my players persuading me to go with 2nd Ed D&D – and thought to myself that reputation was a fairly trivial application of a good idea. A better use of the system would be as a means of tracking a character’s piety – characters would accrue points by doing things their deities approved of, and lose points for doing things disapproved of, which could then be redeemed for divine favours like being granted new spells, one-off bonuses to effect levels, etc. Right now, you’re probably thinking the same thing I was – it sounds great, in principle.

In practice, it was a nightmare. Perpetually looking up everything the character did to determine the modifiers to piety took ages; it meant that there was another hit-point-like stat that had to be perpetually tracked, but instead of being the target of just one process at a time, almost everything fed into it, so it slowed gameplay to a crawl. Furthermore, the fundamental premise was broken – when the rules were trialled, one of my players (who excels at finding system weak points and pushing them) asked himself what the effect would be if he found ways of accumulating piety while never redeeming them – then called them all in at once….

The result was an epic deux-ex-machina that was at the PCs beck and call when it really mattered.

Recovering from this mess was fairly easy; the player involved was more concerned with not destroying the campaign than in wringing as much advantage out of the flaw, and in fact it was he who proposed scrapping the system before it did permanent harm to the campaign. I gave him some one-off advantages and a couple of minor magic items that the character had always wanted, and everyone was happy.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water

Another thing that I do whenever a house rule gets tossed onto the scrap heap is to look through it to see if there is anything that is worth salvaging, if reconceptualised. In this particular case, the general principle of having some measure of a character’s piety against which they could roll when making requests of the Gods, seperate to their Knowledge of abstruse theological referances, seemed worthwhile. After all, someone can be an expert in the Roman Gods and their mythology without believing in them, never mind being faithful to them. Preists can be both learned in religious doctrine and yet break the tenets of their faith with apalling frequency – witness the number of priests who have been sheltered from charges of pedophilia over the years. One estimate that I have seen puts the number of such clergymen who were active, worldwide, during the 20th century at 100,000…

In this case, I decided that maintaining piety required time that could be spent doing other things, so I made it a skill like any other, improved by funnelling skill points into it. A slight adjustment to the number of skill points awarded – increasing the starting allocation by +1, and conferring +1 skill points for every 2nd level in a theological class – completed the picture. I then simply converted the list of things the character could request to an XP penalty and a DC target – in other words, if the priest took 100xp less from the encounter, and made a Piety check of 16 or better, he could give himself a +1 to hit for the battle. If the fight was with a known enemy of the deity, the xp cost could even be waived. 200xp less, and a spell could gain an additional dice of pious damage, and so on. 500xp per level conferred a 1-off casting of a spell normally beyond the characters level – that’s 500 per spell level higher than they can currently cast. Existing xp costs for certain spells like Miracle gave guidelines for Divine Intervention, and the xp costs prevent abuse of the system. Communities can call for miracles like rain in a draught – take the lowest piety of the group making the request, count up the number of people of greater piety. If there’s 1 higher, add +1; two more, add a second +1; four more than that, add a third +1; and so on, until everyone is counted.

What’s more, it gave a mechanism for the Gods to demand that a cleric pay the piper – each time the player called for Pious Aid of some sort, the god notes the call (even if the answer is no) and eventually comes calling, saying “I’ve done all these things for you – now I want you to do this for me,” which puts the character in a difficult position. He either accepts a potential suicide mission, or at least an extreme inconvenience, or his piety gets knocked down massively.

Ultimately, this version of the piety system does more good than harm in terms of the campaign, and that’s why it’s still in the Fumanor House Rules.

The Woes Of Magic

The Hero system doesn’t do AD&D-style spellcasting any favours. It’s designed for characters who have only a few abilities, not a vast repetoire of spells. Designing a magic subsystem for my superhero game was high on my list of things to do after exhausting most of the possibilities offered in the 4th Ed rules.

I wanted a system where each spell was designed like a formula – plug in values for range, character points of effect, etc, multiply them all together, and what pumped out the end was a cost in “Mana” – effectively a points pool of available magic, similar to Endurance; look that value up on a table and you got the skill roll needed to successfully cast the spell. The virtue of this approach was that if you wanted to double the range, you could double the mana cost, or halve the number of dice of effect, or halve the area of effect, or whatever, and the rest was unchanged – it was universally flexible while remaining balanced.

In theory, it worked brilliantly. In private testing, the few spells I tried out also worked exquisitely well. In practice…

I’m at home working with formulas and mathematics. Others are not, and found the design subsystem for spells to be very difficult to follow, and the casting system for spells to be impossible to use in play. So much so that the first player to try the system ended up as a mage who refused to cast spells – when the ultimate design objective was a system that permitted a mage to use magic casually (Want the coffee from across the room? Cast a spell to fetch it).

And the second player to try the system became obsessed with the penalties for spell failure, which were modelled on the “side effects” rules, to the point where, once again, the character also refused to cast spells.

It needed to be replaced, and so it was, by a system modelled in part on early Elemental Controls, and which is far closer to the standard powers description. It’s actually less flexible and less elegant from my perspective, requiring more work in designing spells; but it makes designing spells and casting spells easier for every player who’s tried it, and they are the final arbiters. If anything, the revised system was too powerful and too flexible, requiring a number of additional tweaks and restrictions on ad-hoc spellcasting to maintain game balance; but these have been minor adjustments; on the whole, the system works. You no longer have the ultimate flexibility of the original system – if you want a different range, or area of effect, you need a new spell design – but overall, it works.

Playability vs Simulation

Every rule is a compromise between the playability of the game and the flexibility and accuracy of the simulation of reality that results. That, quite naturally, means that anyone who writes house rules will, from time to time, trip over the playability line in his quest for a better simulation.

It is my belief that every campaign needs House Rules to improve the fit between the game system and the campaign that is to take place – even if those rules are just documenting the choices in effect amongst the optional rules offered in the official books.

Both the examples offered in this blog post broke the game system, and could have irretrievably damaged the respective campaigns in which they occured. That, too, is part of the risk with House Rules. As always, the secret to success when life hands you a lemon is to make lemonade.

In other words, salvage what you can; ask yourself if you really need a house rule to achieve ‘X’; and, if you do, try again from a different angle that deliberately avoids the weaknesses of the previous approach.

It’s all part of being a GM.

There came a time when I had to move out of the city (where my players were), and back to the small town in which I had grown up, for financial reasons.

That would spell the end of most campaigns, but I had willing players and exceptional determination. I would write a scenario each week while saving up for months to be able to afford to visit my old haunts for a single week. I would usually stay with one of my players (who’s still a friend I can count on – Hi, Ian!) for that week, and everyone would come around after work, or even take time off, and in one massive blast of gaming, we would play through the eight or ten scenarios that I had written.

There were many advantages to this arrangement; the spontaneity and ability to react to what the PCs chose to do if it was unexpected may have been compromised, but I compensated by both getting better at predicting what the players would choose to do, and by writing my scenarios in a more open-ended manner, a technique that I still use to this day. In return, I had a more flexible timetable; if I needed an additional couple of days or even an extra week or two to work on a tricky scenario, I could take the time. And therein lay the trap…

The Campaign

Once again, the venue for this mistake was my long-running superhero campaign. At this point, I was down to only 2 or 3 players, which (in its own way) was fortunate, as it made these gaming marathons practical; more players would have made it that much harder to get everyone together for the whole period.

Stephen had two characters in the campaign, a superspeedster (named Swift) and a genius / brick (named Behemoth). Ian’s character was named Backlash, and the number of anecdotes that could be told about these last two characters is virtually endless. Backlash was an energy battery / projector, and was (aparrantly) able to zip through electrical and telephone circuits in energy form (I came up with a more rational description of the power in terms of game physics at a later date).

On the first anniversary of the campaign, the team had taken down the master villain (who I’ve talked about in previous posts), the Mandarin, by finding a parallel world where conquest by the arch-villain would be the lesser of two evils, effectively converting their arch-enemy into a sometime ally. The second anniversary of twice-weekly play had seen the introduction of a spin-off campaign of superpowered trainees who were being mentored by a refugee from another space-time, Ben Grimm (Marvel Comic’s The Thing of the Fantastic Four), who had been dislocated in space-time and aged about 50 years by the journey, and who would be unable to return without possibly aging another 50 years (a risk he was unwilling to take), and had also seen the wedding of Backlash’s sister to The Mandarin. The third anniversary was now approaching, and the players knew that I would have something special in the works, as I liked to acknowledge the anniversaries and special sessions (50th session, 100th, etc) by upping the ante in some dramatic way, as though the game were actually taking place in a comic book somewhere. This was an expectation that I was quite happy to satisfy, and had spent considerable time carefully planning the events that would unfold.

The scenario I had come up with revolved around a trio of paranormals, who turned out to be the descendants of the PCs and ex-PCs of the team, courtesy of a gene bank that had been secretly established by Behemoth, and who had been created in the far future by a band of rebels who were seeking to change the past and prevent the conquest of the Milky Way Galaxy by an oppressive bunch known generically as The Empire. It not only drew apon the history of the campaign, it drew apon its future, it revealed secrets and had multiple plot twists for everyone, and looked like it would be a lot of fun.

The Circumstances

The PCs had known for some time that the Empire were on their way; they, and their arch-enemies, “The Technocracy,” had been meddling in Earth’s affairs for quite a while. The scenario was a complicated and convoluted series of overlapping and entwining plots that eventually simplified down to the existance of a traitor to the planet somewhere on Earth who was setting himself up to be the planetary regent (or better, knowing him) – another refugee from a different space-time, Marvel Comic’s Magneto. But this was a Magneto who had been rejuvenated; he had fought the current super-team’s 1950s antecedants and was, seemingly, killed. In reality, he had survived and spent the last 20+ years in a comfortable semi-retirement, plotting and scheming and preparing and building. The PCs tracked him down to a hidden fortress in the South Pole by momentarily twisting the Earth’s magnetic field to reveal a magnetic “dead spot” which was usually hidden by the natural one that occurred above the south Magnetic Pole.

Penetrating this fortress was to be the high-water mark of the whole anniversary scenario. It had overlapping defences, an intricate three-dimensional maze that perpetually reshaped itself, traps in every room, illustrations and maps and diagrams, and a rubic’s cube with which to simulate the reshaping; every space had been fully detailed, and moments both comic and dramatic inserted along the way. This was to be a dungeon-crawl of superheroic proportions, all designed to wear the PCs down before a face-to-face confrontation with the biggest, baddest dude still operating. I’d spent about 120 hours in preperation for this dungeoncrawl.

I would surmise that you can guess what happened, from what I’ve told you already, in combination with the title of this blog post…

The Mistake

The mistake itself was quite simple, and quite unforgiveable, to be honest: I had somehow contrived to forget what one of my feature players could do. Not just a minor side ability that was rarely used, mind you; but one of the Signature Moves of the character in question.

Even worse, since I had forgotten about it, I had forgotten to have the villain prepare for it.

Backlash stuck his fingers into the first wall socket they came to, zipped through the base completely unmolested, popped out of the security monitor directly in front of an arrogantly casual Magneto and popped him one on his unprotected puss before the Villain knew what had hit him! And then got a critical hit, while pushing his attack for all he was worth, and succeeded in achieving a KO with his surprise punch!! And then, as a coup-de-grace, fired his electrical blast at the controls and fried the PDP-11 mainframe that was running the villain’s defences, allowing the others to simply stroll in!!!

Recovery

I’d like to say that I recovered gamely, and soldiered on.

I can’t.

I’d like to claim that I took it in my stride and delivered a great game, and to some extent I can – but doing so had to wait for about ten minutes of which I have absolutely no memory, I was so stunned by this turn of events. I think Ian tried to offer some sort of explanation for his character’s thinking, and I seem to have a vague impression of high-fives and people wishing they had a camera… but I was just sitting there, my mind reeling, my jaw dropped, and my eyes like dinnerplates.

I can say that it’s the only time that I’ve ever been so completely taken by surprise! It wasn’t a mistake that you tend to forget.

When I (eventually) recovered, Ian apologised for ruining all my hard work, as sincerely as he could through the *incredibly* wide grin that he couldn’t entirely supress for the next 24 hours (and which he still recalls fondly from time to time even today, 25 years later). He then suggested that we might want to call it a day – we had been playing since 9AM and it was now 3:22PM – so that I could completely re-jig my plans for the rest of the scenario.

Fortunately (for my reputation), I didn’t need to. I had always expected the Heroes to win the fight eventually, I just expected them to have to work a little harder to achieve it! The open-planning approach that I had employed allowed me to get back on the GMing horse almost immediatly, and my habit of having more material prepped than we usually had time to play through meant that the game could go on.

This became a pivotal moment in the entire campaign over the next 6 years of play. I started by admitting the blindingly obvious – that I had been caught out, well and truly, and that Ian had earned fully his victory dance. Then I played my masterstroke: since it fitted with the character’s personality and history, I made the decision that my blind spot had in fact been The Villain’s blind spot. The PCs took the information they needed on the rendezvous point where the Imperial Invasion Fleet was waiting for the Villain’s signal, left a rather insulting message on his computer, tied him up in his own silk bedsheets, and went out to save the day.

In later years, a strange sort of corrospondance would be struck up between another character, Tempest, and Magneto. The villain would write up fanciful plans for world conquest and email them to Tempest, who would point out all the reasons why it wouldn’t work… always keeping an extra flaw up his sleeve in case the plan was ever dusted off and put into action for real.

Eventually, Magneto was convinced that world-conquering was a lot harder than it looked, and not worth the effort, and became an undercover operative for the team in the leadup to Ragnerok within the ranks of another villainous organisation, and then a full member of the team. Only when a couple of Houses of Demon brought the 4th Reich (Germany) and 5th Reich (South America) to power in the post-Ragnerok campaign world did he ‘revert’ to his more villainous ways – understandable, given his Jewish origins and history. He’s still a “Hero”, but now he’s a Vigilante – and he took several members of the team roster (NPCs) with him when he left.

Lessons Learnt

Before ANY scenario is considered complete these days, I mentally review what the PCs can do and whether or not the scenario can cope with it. That’s lesson number one, and that’s why I’ve never been so completely surprised since.

Number Two lesson is to try and justify your mistakes – and everyone makes them – in terms of a character’s flaws; maintaining consistant characterisation is always more beneficial to the campaign than scrambling to cover your ass, or having a scenario blow up in your face because of a basic oversight.

Lesson number Three was a confirmation of the basic scenario design approach that I have used ever since, and which consists of six basic rules:

• 1. Keep characterisation and capabilities consistant;
• 2. NPCs learn from the past just like PCs;
• 3. NPCs prepare as well as they can, given their intelligence, time available, and resources;
• 4. NPC plots get the PCs in trouble;
• 5. If there’s one solution to any given mess the PCs get into, there will be a second, and a third, and probably a fourth, fifth and sixth. So don’t waste time preparing for any of them, beyond making sure that there is at least one; instead, detail the villains and their plans and so on and do what they do when their plans go awry: make it up as you go.
• 6. Superintelligent characters will always pick the best choice available to them, based on what they know; so make sure that events always make whatever choice they make, the best one available to them. Use an INT roll if necessary – and then fudge outcomes appropriately.

One thing’s for sure: the players will never forget the third anniversary scenario of the Champions Campaign! Which was kind of what I was trying to achieve, I guess…

Campaign Qualities Are Like Feats For Game Worlds

FantasyCraft Cover

I’m flipping through FantasyCraft, a new d20 OGL RPG from Crafty Games. The first place I always go to in such books is the game master section. And amongst the 80 pages or so that brim with great tips and advice in FantasyCraft, I home in on the world building section.

There I stumble on Campaign Qualities, which are like feats but for game worlds and campaigns. These are great! I love this idea. Here’s the section introduction from the game:

“No two fantasy worlds are the same — some are dominated by evil powers, others feature wild and terrible magic, and still others feature god-forsaken populations living and dying in brutal strife. The default Fantasy Craft rules are perfect for most fantasy gaming “out of the box” but when you’re looking for something a little different, or if your world diverges from traditional fantasy gaming, consider adding campaign qualities. These optional rules alter the system in small or dramatic ways to fit your world and vision. Everything from character creation to combat to magic and Alignment can be tweaked, granting absolute control over your game.”

This reminds me of a campaign I created one time where evil received +1 during darkness and good received +1 during daylight. There was backstory to all this, but that’s what it all boiled down to.

Examples of Campaign Qualities are:

• Code of Honor – PCs have some behavior rules to abide by (“never strike an unarmed foe”) or risk losing points off the game’s Reputation mechanic. This is great for world builders as it allows GMs to bring their fluff into the realm of crunch when desired.
• Miracles – Alignments grant fantastic powers.
• Non-Scaling NPCs – The world has a set pecking order and if the heroes survive long enough, they’ll eventually reach the top. Every NPC and monster’s Threat Level is set when it’s introduced and never changes.

What makes one fantasy milieu different than another?

Think about the books you read and movies you watch. Sometimes the settings in them seem to suffer from Star Trek knuckle forehead syndrome – the worlds have a couple of differences but they’re just cosmetic.

Other times though, you feel like you’ve travelled to and experienced a wonderfully different place.

Part of the reason is detail. But another part of the equation is the meta rules, or qualities, of the milieu. A few basic qualities are different from other fictional universes, and when you extrapolate these into ramifications of game world, daily life, stories told, and encounters run, you get a strong feeling you’re in a fresh, new and interesting game environment.

For example, if being good or evil grants fantastic powers under certain conditions, then it makes life difficult for the fence sitters and ambivalent. Competition for survival would squeeze neutrals to the edge because they are at a disadvantage. So what would a world be like where strong faith of one sort or another is regularly rewarded with miracles?

Grow your own list of world feats

After you finish your next fantasy book or movie, take a few minutes to reflect on the setting and what made it different. Make notes on the meta rules you perceive operated in that universe. Grow this list over time and then tap it next game world you design or campaign environment you build.

Temporary Qualities bend reality

Another neat thing FantasyCraft does with Campaign Qualities is offer permanent and temporary varieties. The temporary Qualities are excellent tools for making encounters, locations, and sequences feel and play different. You’re doing more here than just making trees purple or running water uphill. You’re changing gameplay at the character level. You’re changing the in-game reality for characters and how they interface with the rules and giving them new options and conequences to weigh.

A classic example is the old D&D module Dungeonland. The PCs are shrunk down to smurf size. Suddenly everything old and boring is new and challenging for awhile. Temporary Qualities can help you bring wonder back into your games.

6 ways to use world feats or Campaign Qualities

1. Change the rules of engagement. Switch up standard employer quests by using temporary world feats to make old challenges seem new again. For example, stake the heroes’ reputation on the outcome or in the way they achieve their goal.
2. City building. A tricky part of world building is making cities feel unique. Solve this by using Campaign Qualities to create special local realities that impact all aspects of your cities.
3. Relics. What more could a relic ask for than to change reality? Give magic items new meta-level powers and ditch the +1.
4. Outer planes. Make the esoteric corners of your universe different by operating with different rules.
5. Holidays. Instead of a parade, layer on a world feat to give these events more meaning and get the players asking you if it’s Christmas yet.
6. Gods. Next time a god walks the earth you can change the nature of reality for awhile to make the event epic.

Want to learn more about Fantasy Craft? Read on…

• Atomic Array: Fantasy Craft (Atomic Array 032)
• Game Cryer: Review by Chris Perrin
• Questing GM: Questing with Fantasy Craft
• allgeektout: What Fantasy Craft Has to Offer
• Campaign Mastery: Mine Fiction for Campaign Qualities
• Emerson’s Bookshelf: Fantasy Just Got Crafty
• Critical Hits: Critical Review
• Fear the Boot: Fear the Review
• Gnome Stew: What Fantasy Craft Brings to the Table
• Uncle Bear: Fantasy Craft Chargen
• Flames Rising: Dark FantasyCraft Review

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How do you extrapolate from existing rules to cover new situations?

Recently, Campaign Mastery was asked, If a giant has rapid shot can he throw 2 rocks in a full round action? (d&d 3.5) This sparked some debate over whether Campaign Mastery should answer rules questions of this sort; we aim to deal with big-picture and comprehensive situations where our experience can be of benefit to others, not rules lawyers. The question itself is a minor rules interpretation, but it’s suggestive of a bigger issue: how to extrapolate from the official rules to cover more unusual situations. This is a skill that’s an essential tool in every GM’s armoury, and very much something Campaign Mastery should deal with. So that’s what this Ask The GMs post is about.

Mike’s answer:

There are 9 steps that I got through when seeking to answer a question of the sort that’s been asked here.

1. Identify an analagous question

This determines where you should look for past rulings that might shed light on the question at hand. If it’s a task, the analogy would be skills rules. If it’s repelling a creature with some force that is anathema to it, the analogy would be clerical turning. If it’s a question of whether or not a combat modifier applies, look at other combat modifiers that only apply at certain times, if a saving throw, look at other saving throws, and so on. Here, the question is exactly what the rocks are to a giant – are they like sling bullets or are they improvised missiles; and whether or not the “rapid shot” feat can be applied to them.

There are big differences between sling bullets and thrown rocks of any size, especially the absence of a sling! If the rocks are considered a weapon, perhaps a spear would be a more appropriate analogy. If they are not, are there any other instances of rapid shot being valid with other improvised missiles like vials of holy water?

2. Review the relevant official rules

Having identified the relevant areas of the rules, the next step is to take a look at what is actually written about them. Here the relevant sections are the Monster Manual, where it talks about Giants’ rock-throwing abilities; the Player’s handbook for the rules on Rapid Shot; and the DMG for anything on improvised missiles.

(Later) The Monster Manual describes the rock throwing ability as an Extraordinary Ability, which (according to the DMG) is a non-magical ability that requires a character to take a new class to achieve. Examples include a Monk’s ability to evade attacks and a Barbarian’s uncanny dodge.

The DMG only mentions thrown items in conjunction with ‘Splash Weapons’, which are explicitly defined in such a way that rocks are definitely not included. And the Player’s Handbook states explicitly that Rapid Shot permits a ranged weapon to be used with exceptional speed.

Since using extraordinary abilities is not the same thing as using a weapon, I would be immediately predisposed to say ‘no, rapid shot can’t be used with giants rock-throwing.’ Considering the analagous situations of a Monk using rapid shot with his ‘evade attacks’ – does this make sense to anyone? It sounds pretty nonsensical to me. Normally, this would be the end of the process, since I seem to have immediately skipped to the last step, of making a ruling.

Side-Note: Flavour Text is rules, too
This example clearly demonstrates a point that needs to be made to every D&D GM: Don’t ignore the flavour text! Looking at the game mechanics for “Rapid Shot” doesn’t answer the question asked, and the same is even more true of many other feats, not to mention prestige classes and spells!

3. Review the relevant house rules

The next step is to check the house rules. Every campaign has these, whether they realise it or not; the DMG lists a number of optional rules, usually in sidebars. Each decision about whether or not one applies to a campaign defines a specific house rule for a campaign!

When I first come up with a concept for a new campaign or a strange game setting within an existing campaign, and have considered the big-picture implications for questions such as ‘How does magic work’ and ‘What are the gods’ (not who are the gods!), I also review the standard rules, looking for any hidden assumptions that might conflict with the game setting, to generate more specific house rules. Add to these any precedents and rules interpretations made on-the-fly at the gaming table.

Furthermore, some house rules are applied to many campaigns by the same referee, making them ‘global’ instead of campaign-‘specific’, and some might be applied by multiple GMs within the same gaming group, making them ‘universal’. So there are many sources of house rules, and they all have to be considered.

Yet another source of House Rules is the decision of which supplements (or parts thereof) are to be accepted within the campaign, and which are not. For example, I don’t permit much from The Book Of Exalted Deeds and it’s counterpart, The Book Of Vile Darkness; too much of the contents look to be game-unbalancing or too extreme for my taste.

Any serious GM will keep some form of written record of these house rules so that they are all in one place for easy referance, and are usually organised in some manner that makes sense to the GM – usually, but not always, in the subject order of the official rule books. So far, we have five subjects to look up: Giants, Feats, Rapid Shot, and Extraordinary Abilities.

In this case, a quick glance at one of my favorite supplements, The Monster’s Handbook by Fantasy Flight Games, locates chapter 7, ‘Giants’, and a subsection, ‘Feats’, and a paragraph that reads (in part):

While rock throwing is not a giant’s most potent attack, feats such as Rapid Shot and Precise Shot make giants much more effective with their missile weapons without harming their melee abilities. Stone Giants, in particular, gain a lot from this change.

This is a book that tells GMs how to customise and up-scale a given encounter. So I have a house rule that explicitly permits a Giant to take and apply the Rapid Shot feat to its rock-throwing ability, but which requires a reassessment of the CR of the encounter.

4. Examine the underlying assumptions

Just because a supplement I usually take at face value says it’s ok, that isn’t an automatic ‘yes’. What exactly is involved for a giant to throw a rock, anyway? What could make that process more rapid?

Well, if the rocks are piled up at the giant’s feet, they would have to bend over, pick up a rock, and then throw it. That probably requires both hands, not because of the weight, but in order to get a grip on a more-or-less round surface. Or perhaps they are hurling them like shot puts, which requires the giant to spin around more-or-less in place. Neither of these visualisations makes the case for permitting rapid shot to be very persuasive; but perhaps, if the giant had someone else picking up the rocks and dropping them in their hands, or perhaps if they weren’t using the shot-put method and had the rocks in easy reach, with holes in them for a grip, like bowling balls.

All of these convey the feeling of scrambling to justify something. Furthermore, there’s nothing in the monster manual to suggest that there’s some limit to the rocks that Giants have available – what, do they just magically appear, ready to throw? But wouldn’t that make it a supernatural ability and not an extraordinary one?

That suggests that the giant has to have a supply of rocks that they carry with them, or they can’t throw them – the giant-sized equivalent of sling bullets. And if that’s the case, there is no reason why they can’t be worked to permit a one-handed grip, and that in turn would justify a giant using rapid shot. Rocks that are more cylindrical in shape than round would certainly solve the grip issue, for example.

Getting extra value from the process
Aside from its value in terms of assessing a proposed rules interpretation for common sense and hidden assumptions, this step of the process often yields additional value for the referee. In this case, there are four benefits that come to mind:

• Evidence Of Stoneworking: Finding a lot of stone chips can be used to forewarn characters of the presence of Giants in the vicinity. Even if no encounter with the Giants eventuates, the paranoia and caution that results can be extremely useful to the GM.
• Encounter Signature: When a rock comes sailing out of the darkness, or off the edge of a cliff, just about anything from any strong creature to a mechanical rock-thrower can be responsible. Having a shaped rock gives the attack an immediately-recognisable signature, and it might also be accompanied with a signature sound – all effects that help make the encounter memorable for the players and help with the believability of the game world by engaging the character’s other senses.
• Societal Impact: As background to an encounter setting, having Giants sitting around teaching the young how to shape rocks for throwing helps make a village setting dynamic for the PCs by giving the NPCs something to do. There will be some who are better than others, and perhaps even a unique industry. There might be slight differences to how different subtypes of giant approach the task; Stone Giants might buff and smooth and polish and grind their rocks and carve elaborate decorations into them, while Hill Giants adopt a more jagged, rough-hewn approach. These trivial distinctions add to the atmosphere and uniqueness of encounters with Giants.
• Unique Tools: It would not be surprising for the more intelligent giants to evolve unique tools for this particular purpose. What else can the tools that result be useful for? Perhaps a sculpter adopts a particular set of tools and arrives at a distinctive style. Perhaps Giants can contribute to a broader economy by being able to produce more effective millstones, or cheaper ones. And counterweights. And anything else that can be carved from stone. These would also influence the architectural style of a Giant settlement. More on this sort of interpretation can be found in one of my prior blogs for Campaign Mastery: Distilled Cultural Essence Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

5. Dissect the proposed action

So there have been reasons found within the rules to say that the answer to the question is “no”, but there have been solid advantages found in campaign terms to justify a house rule permitting it, and a precedent in a game supplement that forms a fundamental part of my campaign structure.

So what exactly is being proposed? That the culture of ‘Giants’ within the campaign be extended to include ‘rock carving’ as a key component, and used to differentiate between Giant subcultures; that the Extraordinary Ability to throw these rocks be defined as a form of weapons use, and that the ability be eligible for the Rapid Shot feat provided that these prepared missiles are used. Giants would be able to utilise any rock they happened to pick up for throwing, but would not be able to apply the “Rapid Shot” feat (even if the character had taken it) except to the prepared weapons. This would also necessitate adding a line to the racial profiles describing how many prepared weapons a Giant normally carries, ie how much ammunition they had available.

6. Assess the campaign

The next step is to look at the campaign itself, at its background and history, and to determine whether or not there have been any precedents set. Would introducing these house rules violate any historical element? Would any encounters with the PCs have played out differently, either directly (because Giants who should have taken ‘Rapid Shot’ did not) or indirectly because there was no sign of these cultural and industrial activities when the PCs visited a Giant village or encountered Giants on a prior occasion? If yes to any of these questions, is there a workable explanation, if one is needed (i.e. if I decide to incorporate the proposed house rules)? Finally, do I have any planned encounters or plots that would be damaged or derailed by incorporating the rules?

The answers are different, according to which of my campaigns I am considering. In the Shards Of Divinity campaign, the PCs have encountered (and were temporarily enslaved by) Hill Giants who had no such industrial activities. The encounter described the Giants as very primitive, culturally, and they did not throw rocks at all. It would not be inappropriate to give them a better level of adaption to the desert and describe them as a new subculture, or to simply exclude Hill Giants completely from the house rules (they are just too primitive). In the Fumanor campaign, no Giant settlements have been discovered by the PCs, and there is no historical reason in the campaign background to say ‘no’ to the proposal.

7. Assess personal preference

Having established the implications of the proposed house rule for the campaign and its background, I next consider my personal preferences. Sometimes I will simply not like a rule, or will consider it to impact too severely on game playability. Sometimes I will feel that it runs counter to the spirit of the rules, or of the campaign. In this case, none of this is a problem; because, in fact, it helps make Giants distinctive, I actually quite like it.

However, I don’t want every Giant to be able to do this. If a Giant with an appropriate character class level wants to expend a feat slot so earned, that’s one thing; giving standard Giants a free feat is quite another.

8. Make a ruling

At this point, I have decided to incorporate the potential for ‘Rapid Shot’ to Giant Rock throwing, having expanded the description of the creatures and their culture to accommodate it. It’s worth observing that my position on the question has completely reversed since I announced a finding of ‘No’ under the standard rules, back in Step 2.

9. Add ruling to the house rules

The final step is to actually write up the decision – whether it was ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – in the house rules, together with all the relevant rules and a one-sentence outline of the reasoning or justification, and insert the ruling into the collected body of house rules and campaign notes. This means that I don’t have to waste time revisiting the decision in the future, if the same question comes up; and it prompts me TO reconsider the ruling’s appropriateness when using those house rules as reference material for developing a new campaign.

(Sometimes I will deliberately say ‘no’ to a house rule imported from a previous campaign while developing the core concepts of a new one just to differentiate the two, and then see where the implications takes me).

In conclusion

A strict interpretation of the official rules answers the question, ‘Can Rapid Shot be applied to a Giant’s ability to Throw Rocks?’ with a fairly strong ‘no’. However, there is a lot of justification for permitting a ‘yes’ case – with restrictions – to be added to the House Rules of a campaign. Furthermore, some game supplements explicitly define a ‘yes’ case. The final choice will vary from campaign to campaign and from referee to referee. Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’? Well, maybe….

Johnn’s answer:

Thorough answer as usual Mike! I’m a bad GM in that I haven’t done a lot with rules in the past few years. Time is at a premium due to weekly production of the Roleplaying Tips e-zine, writing, and working on session planning, plus all the other things that fill life up.

Fortunately, my group lets me get away with it.

For D&D 3.5 and 4E I learned the basics and learn new rules each game session. Idle players do rules lookups for me and other players. For tricky situations, I make an arbitrary ruling pretty quick, open the floor up for comment for a minute, and then call it resolved. Group memory helps us keep the game consistent. Between sessions some sleuthing might be done, which can overturn previous rulings.

If a ruling gets overturned, we usually discuss it by email or while a session is starting up and people are unpacking their books, etc.

I should probably switch to a rules-light RPG, heh, butD&D is what we know and has never failed us for being a giant bucket of fun.

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Some expectations are made to be confounded if it’s at all possible. If someone expects a dull and boring campaign, that’s one you don’t want to live up to. If someone expects to get favourable treatment because you owe them money, I’m happy to dissapoint them – and to repay the debt as soon as possible. If someone expects plot trains, I’m only too pleased to derail that expectation.

There are other expectations that you should always try to live up to. That you’ll be interpret the rules fairly and even-handedly, for example, or that you always prepare fully for your game, or that the campaign will be interesting.

Lying somewhere in between these two extremes are a third group of expectations, implied promises that can be broken if you have a good enough reason – and can repair the damage afterwards. For example, your campaign background might suggest that Orcs will be the arch-villains of the campaign, when in fact you intend the PCs to discover relatively early on that there is a conspiracy of demons lurking in the shadows who are the real enemy; the Orcs just happen to be the current catspaws of this conspiracy. This kind of plot twist is fine if the campaign briefing material is written from the perspective that the contents are what is known or believed by the authorities and general public, from whom the PCs will be getting their initial information.

But sometimes, you can go too far. And that’s exactly what happened when I was first setting up the Zenith-3 campaign.

The Campaign

I’ve already described this to some extent in my previous blog post, and don’t want to go over old ground; so I’ll assume you’ve read “Information Overload in the Zenith-3 Campaign” already, and go on from there.

So the basic concept was to mirror the early days of the original campaign, in which the team found themselves out of their depth but gradually wore away at the lurking villain’s advantages; but the aparrant game circumstances were to be quite different. Supposedly, the alternate world in which these novice superheroes would start out would be a relatively “safe” place, in which they could make mistakes without stuffing things up too badly in the long term, and without getting themselves killed.

The Circumstances

In reality, a mole within the ranks of the existing team had covered up facts in an attempt to make the place less interesting to the parent team (because the villain he served was up to no good there and didn’t want the parent team to interfere). This had caused them to misread the place as “reasonably safe for novices” and the PCs would effectively be thrown in at the deep end, and would then be cut off from the parent team, and forced to scramble at first just to hold their own.

It was never my intent to run a 1950s ‘Superboy’ campaign in which the villain of the week would show up, get beaten, and be replaced by someone else the week after, with no lasting consequences to anyone. No, this was to be more “Giffen-Levitz-era Legion-Of-Superheros-like” than 1960s Teen Titans. Or, to phrase it another way, I wasn’t looking to do a ‘trainee superhero spinoff campaign,’ this was to be the PRIMARY superheros campaign, the one in which all the big threats to the universe were to show up.

It is my belief that without a certain level of danger to the characters, there is less emotional involvement by the players; the absence of danger and high-, life-and-death-, stakes produces a game that is more “hero high” than “superheros fighting for truth and justice”.

All these considerations went into making the decision to have the PCs expecting one thing, only to confront them with something entirely different, and entirely more serious.

The Mistake

There is a very subtle and profound distinction between what I decided to do, as described in the previous paragraph, and what I actually did, and therein lies the error, and the subject of this blog post.

It’s the difference between PCs and Players.

Somewhere along the line, I was saying “you will be trainee characters, out of your depth at first, but learning to handle it as the game progresses”, with “you” being shorthand for “Your characters”, while the players were hearing the words and interpreting them literally. That’s not a misjudgement on their part, it’s a failure of communication on my part; with the results that the players were expecting a radically-different style and tone of campaign than the one that I was intending to provide, and could reasonably argue that I had failed to deliver on the implicit promise.

One even commented afterwards that if he had known what the real campaign was going to be like, he would have designed a radically-different character for the game.

It’s also worth noting that to some extent, my decision to place the essential campaign briefing in the mouths of NPCs (as described last time) was inter-related to this problem; First, if it’s an NPC who is giving the PCs incorrect information, I consider that to be something very different to a GM lying to his players (especially if the NPC himself has been misled and doesn’t know what he’s saying to be untrue); and Second, so far as I was concerned, the campaign had started from the very first word (I even had a PC whose design wasn’t ready for play yet shot in the head three times in between in-game ‘briefing sessions’ to ram this point home). I wanted to create the feeling that the PCs had been expecting a summer holiday and were suddenly confronted with ‘Welcome to the real world, ladies and gentlemen’.

Unfortunately, what I succeeded in generating was a situation in which the Players had been expecting a summer holiday and were suddenly confronted with ‘Welcome to the real world!

Recovery

In terms of recovering from this mistake, which I only discovered after the fact, I had two choices: either radically reshape the entire campaign to match the expectations, or hold to my course with a heartfelt me culpa. Well, to be honest, I only had the latter choice.

You see, it was almost a year later that one of my players pointed out to me the communications breakdown. In the meantime, everyone had seemed to be having fun, and so I kept doing exactly what I had intended to do, unaware of the murmurs and rumblings behind the scenes, and behind my back. But even had I known, to be completely candid, I’m not sure I would have done anything differently; I’m not convinced that the other campaign would have sustained interest for all that long, and it certainly didn’t interest me all that much. But at least we could have all cleared the air.

The fallout from this mistake on my part was huge, perhaps even disproportionate. It poisoned the atmosphere of the game to some extent for years to come, and one-by-one all but one of those original players dropped out of the campaign. Because this occurred gradually, other players came in to replace them, and (in some cases), PCs acquired different owners – something I touched on in the last Ask The GMs answer Johnn and I posted, and a subject which I might go into in more detail some other time. While the reasons given by the departing players were all different, it remains my feeling to this day – confirmed in discussion with the players – that marginally-annoying or irritating situations, some of them temporary, were exacurbated by the memories of the original dissapointment. (Two of these players have subsequently returned, though, and one has joined a spinoff campaign).

But recovery remains incomplete; one player (who is still a long-time friend, to whom I can and do talk for hours) can no longer tolerate playing in my campaigns; it all comes flooding back to him when he tries, and he himself expresses surprise at the depth of the bitterness that he experiences when it happens. He has no problem with me playing in his campaigns, or both of us playing in someone else’s game; but he’s allergic to my GMing style. At least we can talk about it, these days.

The campaign somehow survived both this AND the simultanious mistake I described last time, and is now approaching it’s tenth anniversary in its current form; if you also count the original campaign, but not the years when that was shut down, it’s just passed it’s 21st year; and if you go by strict calandar dates, it’s the 28th anniversary that’s just around the corner.

Lessons Learnt

So much of the language that employ in RPGs is nuanced. We all speak of our characters in the First Person at times; we all refer to other characters as “You” now and then. And on most occasions, it’s not a problem; it can even help players get into their character’s headspace.

But I have learned that in terms of placing a campaign background into context for prospective players, it’s better to make your intentions crystal clear, even if it means throwing away the big surprise of your major plot twist. If you expect characters to be designed as though they were to participate in a different type of scenario, and have to adapt on the fly to new situations, tell your players exactly that.

You don’t have to give away all the details, but the campaign premise should be explicit in describing the intended campaign to come. For example, if I had described the campaign premise as “Trainee superheros unsuspectingly cut off from the main team and have to go it alone against threats far more dangerous than anyone was expecting when they set out”, I would have set up a very different expectation – one that would have been met in every game session we’ve played since.

Sure, some of the plot twists would have been anticlimactic, but there would still have been surprises. I would still have made the mistake of overloading the players in the initial briefing, but even though it seems superficially less trivial than the simple miscommunication between GM and players described in this post, recovery from that mistake was fairly straightforward and was virtually complete after the first couple of years; recovering from this mistake is still incomplete, and ongoing, and may never fully occur.

How can a campaign last for decades, and what does such longevity imply?

A question recently asked us, I remember Mike mentioning his decades-long superhero game a few times, and am currently planning my next campaign, so I was just wondering how y’all can extend a game so far. Even if the players are still having fun and there is interest, there has to be a point when everything just got done (at least if they stay with the same characters). After a long enough time, all of a character’s goals will be accomplished, the ultimate BBEG will be taken down, and there are only so many ancient evils that can return to haunt you. Once you are literally on top of the world, where do you go from there? I imagine that constantly increasing scope (threats from previously unknown planets / galaxies / planes / multiverses / (insert bigger thing here)) gets old after a while and there are only so many revolutions to squish before that gets old as well. Is the trick to make sure the players never make it to the very top? Or perhaps never give the campaign that large of a scope to begin with? Another issue with my group in particular is that they don’t have much interest in “endgame” content (specifically D&D 3.5, no epic levels) where most of what you do is manage your newly carved out empire. In that long superhero game, did at least some of the players have the same characters from the beginning, or were they perhaps made into NPC’s after a while and everyone started a new party? I guess it can be my lack of experience, but new characters in the same setting seems to be the only way I can think of to keep my group interested for that long.

Mike’s Answer

Our Inquiring GM has hit the nail squarely on the head. To survive for decades, the campaign has to be bigger than any one style of threat, single player, group of players, or individual character. The campaign, and even the game setting, has to continually reinvent itself. I have so many tips to offer on this subject that I could easily fill five, or ten, or even twenty posts examining each in detail -and will, eventually. But here are 14 specific things that can be done to enhance the durability of the game, in a necessarily-abbreviated form…

Subcampaigns

The first thing you have to do is to break up the campaign into Subcampaigns, each with their own set of goals and objectives. These could require anything from 2 years to 5 years of play to complete. Their outcome, one way or another, should radically and permanently alter the status quo of the campaign. One of the goals of each subsequent campaign is to explore these changes and deal with all the people who will try to take advantage of the circumstances.

Overarching Megaplots

Within each subcampaign, you should have multiple plots occurring in parallel, sometimes connecting, sometimes conflicting. Some of these should span subcampaigns. Each Megaplot should comprise several scenarios, complete stories in and of themselves, like episodes of a TV serial. Every time a new opportunity to gain power looms over the horizon, every enemy with the capability of knowing about it should react to it in some way.

Reinvent the Campaign Background

As GM, you should regularly go through the events within the campaign, and try to imagine circumstances in which the minor side events and subplots assume new significance. There was an encounter with a rambunctious janitor three years ago? Maybe he wasn’t really a janitor…

Let PC actions perpetually change circumstances

The campaign setting must continually react to the presence and actions of the PCs. Allies can become reluctant (or enthusiastic!) enemies, enemies can become sometimes-allies, good guys can be corrupted, bad guys can reform. In most campaigns, the campaign background dictates the behaviour and roles of the NPCs, and they don’t often change (and it’s a big deal when they do); in a megacampaign, the NPCs change to meet the needs of the next plotline-sequence. If you have to, throw in a subplot or scenario or even a series of them that explains the transformation (even if the PCs don’t know that’s what they are there for).

New Threats constantly arise

Every change in circumstances that results brings about domino effects. Some of those dominoes set chains of events in motion that bring new threats to the surface, or which reinvigorate old threats. Think of it as a chess game in which every time a piece is captured, you put a new one – with different abilities and aspirations and loyalties and flaws – on the game board.

PC-Centric Plot Threads

Every PC should have at least one plot thread running through each subcampaign that relates directly to their character, who should emerge transformed in some way from it. For example, one PC in the current champions campaign has just discovered that she inherits a lot of her spunky independence from her grandmother, who she never met (because the PCs mother was estranged from her mother, who was an intrepid go-anywhere-for-a-story-no-matter-how-dangerous reporter. I’ve only just introduced the NPC grandmother, the current subcampaign is about to end in a big finish, and the player has to be wondering whether or not the NPC will figure in that big finish…

Mix Up The Style

No campaign can achieve true longevity telling the same style of story week after week. You need action-adventure to mix with politics to mix with life-on-the-street to mix with… well, you get the idea. I’ve even had scenarios that consisted of the PCs sitting around a table arguing about their organisation’s charter and by-laws – with every word said required to be “in character” (out-of-character suggestions could be passed by note). One memorable scenario was a cooking contest… and then there was the time the paranoid ninja had to go to the supermarket for some tomatoes….

Even stranger concepts can come from placing familiar plot styles in an interesting setting and reinventing the plot accordingly. A wild-west inspired plotline becomes something quite different when you’re talking high-tech supercooled psychokinetic crystalline entities on Pluto…

Exit Strategies

The GM should have an exit strategy up his sleeve for every character and every player. Some way that they can be pulled from the campaign at relatively short notice – four or five sessions of play, at most. And there should be no hard feelings when someone moves on – they might come back, eventually. Of course, the campaign will evolve to accommodate the absence of the old character or player and their style, and the presence of the new character and style – sometimes in unexpected ways.

Retire Old Characters

Another key is to force players to retire their old characters whenever it is appropriate for that character to call it a day – or go independent, or whatever. These then become NPCs under the GM’s control, even if they were killed.

Recycle Characters as Players change

If a character’s plotlines are too tightly-woven into the overall plotline for them to be retired immediatly, you have two choices. The bad one is to make them an NPC – this risks stealing the spotlight away from the remaining PCs, and costs a lot of spontaneity.

The better option is to find a new player who is willing to take over the character. Whenever that happens, you should sit down with the new player and let him totally rebuild the character from the ground up, retaining only the central character concepts and established personality traits; you then need to write a campaign plotline in which this transformation takes place, either quickly or slowly over time. From the moment they take over the character, they are considered to be the owner of that character.

One of the PCs in my current campaign has had three owners; with the first, he was a somewhat happy-go-lucky strongman with a lot of shadows lurking in his closet; with the second, those shadows came out of the closet, and he became a feral killing machine; and with the third, he is struggling to control his inner demons and is slowly coming to terms with his past mistakes.

Be Prepared to change the rules

No rules system can survive for 10+ years unmodified. Cracks emerge, new versions of the system emerge, and so on; every now and then, you may need to insert an appropriate “cosmic event” to “explain” the changed rules in-game. The corollary is that you can change the rules anytime it seems appropriate. At one point, the campaign consisted (for about 2 years) as a series of solo “miniseries”, each starring a character from the core campaign. In theory, these were all taking place more-or-less concurrently – it actually took ten weeks, game time, to run all 16-or-so sub-campaigns. For one of them, the PC was translated into Call Of Cthulhu; not only was his miniseries run by a guest referee, it had a guest rules system! It worked…

To every NPC, a subplot

Every NPC should have something to contribute to the campaign. Not all at once, but every time they show up, they should do more than make up the numbers. And at least one of them should show up in every plotline.

Lessons from Soap Opera

If you can force yourself to do it, or you happen to enjoy that sort of thing, watch some TV soap operas. Characters continually coming and going, motivations and relationships perpetually changing, never-ending plotlines – they may be cliched, but they are also the most accurate paradigm for what you’re trying to achieve when you set out to create a megacampaign.

With great power comes great responsibility

In a long-duration campaign, everyone shoulders additional responsibilities. The GM has more work; he needs to take responsibility for keeping the campaign going and keeping it fresh. The players have greater powers over the long-term shape of the campaign than they realise, but they also have to accept that sometimes, their character may not be the centre of attention for a whole session of play; their turn will come, they have to be patient. And the characters? By definition, they have great power, and its up to ‘them’ what they do with it.

This barely scratches the surface of a huge subject, but hopefully it gives you the tools you need to create the megacampaign you’re dreaming of.

Johnn’s Answer

This is an interesting topic. It is a lucky GM who can keep a campaign going for so long. I like Mike’s advice. Below are a few tips that overlap with Mike’s but hopefully have new details for you.

Make evil diffuse

Avoid black and white in campaigns that will last for such a long time. When things become either/or, good/evil the structures and permutations become apparent, predictable, and stale after several re-tellings.

Instead, go with grey scale or spectrum thinking. Leave extremes to locations and situations, but keep NPCs and quests near the middle as unpredictable elements whose properties you’re never quite so of.

For example, as Mike mentioned, make alliances with enemies possible to achieve party objectives faster, easier, or cheaper. Generate quests that are dilemmas (there is a cost to completion no matter the solution).

Instead of having a clear villain the PCs must fight against each time, create three-way (or more) situations that involve relationships and resources and conflicting interests for the PCs to resolve. Just removing one group from the equation does not resolve the situation (i.e. the PCs can’t kill there way to victory). And resolving the situation just results in a new, dynamic configuration that needs rebalancing.

For example, a drought hits the land. To save millions, the three parts of an artifact that can control the weather must be assembled. The PCs must choose which part to go after first. Rivals and enemies will be pursuing the item pieces as well.

When the PCs finally retrieve the piece they’ve quested for they learn the other two pieces are in the hands of rivals. Each rival wants something before they hand their piece over to be united with the other pieces. The PCs can whack each rival, negotiate, compromise, etc.

If the PCs don’t want to do any of this, you can have higher agencies take care of the resolution, but the final results require more PC intervention and service.

The relic is finally assembled. It turns out that the drought is being caused by the actions of three nations far to the west. While the relic provides temporary succor, the PCs are charged with finding a permanent solution.

More quests later, involving the western nations who are at war with each other, result in the drought being solved, but at the cost of more troubles for the east. The PCs are brought in again….

Side quests

As Mike said, use side quests to fill out the campaign so it’s more than just about the current villain being fought. The best side quests will also add depth to the PCs as you mine their personalities, relationships and backstories for quest inspiration.

Make side quests about the PCs – not the plot or world or campaign. Feel free to tie things together, but be sure the primary focus is on one or more characters.

Run a meta-level side game

Have your players tried a well-run world builder, realm management, or resource management side game? Games like the D&D Companion Rules, Reign by Greg Stoltz, and Aria have rules for shepherding meta-level game elements such as kingdoms, setting development, god management, and warfare.

Surf around and co-op rules for this type of gameplay and run a short one-shot to give players a taste. They can’t pass judgement until they’ve actually tried it.

You also do not need to have all players participating at the meta-level. Run a side game by email or before/after games. As news, stories, and campaign consequences emerge from the side game you might get more players interested in joining.

Develop the characters deeper

This has been mentioned already, but to call it out again: do not always progress the story forward. Get some character development going as well. For example, while on a mission to steal plans from Villain HQ you let a character know his parent’s village is en route. You spend two or three encounters in the village, perhaps old friends of the PCs being amazed at how the PC has changed (will the player gloat or be humble?) plus a fun contest with the locals (will the PCs make new friends or enemies?) and then maybe a quick remedy quest for the sick grand daughter of the village elder (the remedy involves a PC having to overcome a fear or flaw).

What do the players want?

Ask your group what they want. They might get a lot of satisfaction from defeating ever-larger villains. They might not be bored with the recurring gameplay even after all this time. Some of my players, for example, love whacking things because it’s fun and stress relief – they want me to just point them in the right direct and put lots of monsters in the way.

Introduce new elements all the time

Keep the campaign, the world, and especially the PCs fresh by always adding new details. Make things change. Add new elements. Destroy old elements.

Keep good records

Record a lot of details so you can use them for inspiration and expand them into larger campaign elements. As Mike said, mine previous gameplay for inspiration and new challenges.

With such a long-running campaign, you have the rare advantage of drawing on living campaign history to spawn new quests and objectives. This means you cannot GM a scorch and burn style of game where every element gets trashed. You have to get into the habit of creating and leaving open loops.

For example, switch an NPC victim to a pregnant NPC victim. Months or years later you have the option now of using the child NPC as a future adventure device.

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As you should know by now if you’re a regular visitor here – and with 2 new articles every week, why aren’t you, if you’re not!? – this month’s blog carnival is on the subject of mistakes, how you recover from them, and what lessons you’ve learnt for the future.

I made a couple of doozies at the start of the Zenith-3 superhero campaign, which I’ll be discussing in both this blog post and my next.

The Campaign

Player interest eventually wears out in any campaign, and when it does, it’s time to start something fresh. In the leadup to Ragnerok in my superhero campaign, a series of seemingly-pointless superhero slugfests had exhausted my player’s patience, and the campaign folded just as the meaning behind the never-ending stream of challengers was about to start coming to light.

After a few months R&R, I started a Torg campaign, but seven years later, it too faltered, mostly because there were too many campaigns competing for playing time and not enough players to go around; those players who were available weren’t interested in that campaign. Which was fine; I simply dusted off my long-held plans for a D&D campaign for the players who weren’t already doing something that week of every month, and the “Fumanor: The Last Deity” campaign got underway.

But, in the meantime, I had spent time writing up the remaining plotlines of the original Champions campaign more-or-less in the form of a novel – mostly so that any remaining questions about who was doing what and why would be answered. This project not only renewed my interest in the campaign and the genre, it captured the interest of a whole bunch of new players, who urged my to restart the campaign. With the stars in obvious alignment, I extended the draft with appendices and events to fill a five-year gap between the two campaigns (purely to generate enough new plotlines to keep the new campaign humming along) and character generation got underway.

The Circumstances

The backstory was long and dense, and even with careful indexing and glossaries of people, places, and things, I was wary of inundating the players with too much written material. I had also conceived the notion of roleplaying the initial meeting of the characters and their collective briefing on the new campaign, for several reasons that seemed good at the time. It gave me the chance to establish the personalities of some of the big names of the existing team (of which the new campaign was to be an offshoot), for example. It gave me more time to prepare the new background material. It could also be interrupted by actual plot, which would serve to break it into more-digestable lumps – at least in theory.

The Mistake

Well, the mistake is pretty clear to see already, isn’t it? Instead of those easily-digestable lumps, there were brief interludes of distracting non-briefing which seperated page after page of lectures by NPCs – who were going to (at best) be background characters in the new campaign. In fact, the briefing totalled 46 printed pages of referee-delivered monologue with half a page or so of interludes!

After the first hour – which contained little information of immediate relevance – it was going in one ear and out the other. The first hour? – heck, “the first ten minutes” would be more accurate!

I would have been far better off if I had written the briefing up in prose format and given copies to the players a few weeks before play.

Recovery

How do you recover from the fact that the players havn’t assimilated 99% of the campaign briefing?

Answer: you write scenarios which build on the main elements of the briefing material, and make darned sure that you give the players the essential information within the course of the scenario, preferably before they need to know it.

But wait — that means that the entire, long, drawn-out, interminable introduction scenario was completely unneccessary.

Yep, I had bored the metaphoric pants off my players with no good reason for doing so!!

Fortunately, the scenarios that followed were enough fun that most of the players stayed with the campaign – at least until most left one-by-one for other reasons (which I’ll talk about in my next post), and were replaced by others, but the campaign itself survived and prospered.

Lessons Learnt: Preparing for Dimension-Regency

It had always been my intention that once the campaign’s initial premise had been completed – “Superhero trainees lob off to a ‘safe’ world to gain enough experience to survive the real thing only to find that it’s far more dangerous than advertised” – the characters would rejoin the main group. I had populated the game world with problems that were waiting around to be solved when they got there. (They are only now reaching this point!)

My players had other ideas. This group was, according to the campaign background, the third such group of trainees to be set up by the parent team, and the players loved the descriptions of the ‘training worlds’ to which I had sent the previous (NPC) groups. They wanted the “Grand Tour” – a 6-month stint in each of the other training timelines.

First cab off the rank was to be a parallel world called “Earth-Regency”, “A 22nd-century world in which the Sun had never set on the British Empire”. There wasn’t much more description than that to go on – so I had to once again craft an introduction/indoctrination/briefing for the team prior to their embarking on a voyage to their new home.

Once again, there was a new world for them to come to grips with, and an alternate history for them to understand, and a new political foundation to comprehend – plus, instead of 1950s technology, there were the complications of 22nd-century tech. If anything, this was going to be a bigger briefing than the previous one!

Accordingly, I was determined to make it as digestable as possible. Instead of a lecture, I wrote it as a prose history – and in smallish chunks, delivered a month or two (or more) apart:

• King John II & Robin Hood to the US War Of Independance
• Crime & Punishment In Dimension-Regency
• Colonial Times – 1782
• Science & Technology in Dimension-Regency
• Science & Technology in Dimension-Regency Part 2 (it was supposed to be one part, but it just got too long)
• Imperial History 1782 – 1945
• Imperial History 1945 – 1977
• Imperial History 1978 – 1986
• Imperial History 1987 – 2015
• Imperial History 2015 – 2055*
• Special Dates within the Empire*
• List of Rulers of the Empire*
• Adventures Of Zenith-1 in Dimension Regency*

* These have been partially written but not yet issued to the players.

The next stage will be to compile all of these into a single document.

Hopefully, this gradual approach will let the players get their heads around the background and enable us to hit the ground running, showing that the lessons of the past have been learned.

Mine your combats

Traps in some game systems are standalone elements. However, I consider them a hazard if they factor into a combat in any way. Encounters without combat that just have traps in them I would consider hazardous for your health, but not a combat hazard.

Traps have been around RPGs since day one. In my first D&D session in grade 5 we were playing Keep on the Borderlands and my rogue got nailed by a trap in the kobold lair. 5 points of damage! I begged the cleric for healing and continued onward, but more cautiously. And by more cautiously, I mean everyone else lead from that point on while I guarded the rear.

Traps on the battlefield are a ton of fun. They heighten drama, add risk, and provide new options to combatants. They should be more than just a damage dice roll. Minor traps can harass, impact movement (pun not intended), cause hesitation. Traps can change the course of battle.

A third foe

In typical battles there are two sides. Traps create a new enemy, usually unaligned. They open another front for foes to defend or strategise against. Consider traps as a third foe, or x+1 if there are multiple factions in a battle. This not only helps with encounter balancing, but ensures you champion the traps well in your planning – traps added as an afterthought often feel patched-on or are underperformers.

Envision the trap in battle

This is a fluffy tip but oh so important, and oft neglected. How do you see the trap working in the battle? What contribution do you envision it making? How do you imagine it will affect gameplay and make the combat more fun and interesting?

Busy game masters will be prone to just selecting a trap and placing it on the encounter map. This is fine some of the time. But you should celebrate traps as strange, dangerous, and unusual combat elements. Make them special.

Surprise trigger

Unexpectedly triggered traps are wonderful in combats. For example, you’ve heard of land minds? What about magic mines that detonate if a certain school of magic is cast? Proximity triggers work well too, especially if there are specific triggers so it becomes a bit of a puzzle.

Surprise location

Traps in unexpected locations are always good for a table laugh, such as traps to the sides of doors, traps in front of fake glowing objects, trapped treasure, and so on. Portable traps can help you work out a lot of inconsistency issues that pop up with surprise locations, such as when arming areas already swept by the party or locations dangerous to everyday life.

Controllable

One side or the other can control various settings on the trap to provide tactical combat advantage. Perhaps a trap can be aimed, suppressed, disabled, delayed or embiggened.

Chain reaction

The first trap merely starts a sequence with deadly consequences. The puff of air is shrugged off by the barbarian who watches in fascination as the air pushes a round rock that rolls over to a switch that cuts a rope which scuttles across the floor up to the falling ceiling block….

Shock and awe

Traps can contribute more than blood cell count on paving stones. They can release new hazards, such as smoke or glue, or loud noises to attract more combatants, or a massive magnet effect that slows all metal armoured foes.

At some point during encounter design or preparation, envision how the combat will run and what role the trap has in it. Likely you will spot deficiencies and opportunities you’ll still have time to tweak for.

For example, with their fly ability PCs might use air superiority to make battles against land-bound foes easier than expected, and low ceilings is getting tired in the game. Perhaps some airborne invisible mines will make the PCs cautious for this combat and the next few too.

Placement is key

Some spots are better than others when placing a trap on the battlemat. Think of it like a chess game or tactical board game. If X happens then what? If Y happens in response, then what?

Some of the many factors to consider:

• Where will the PCs enter or be placed on the battlefield?
• Where will the foes enter or be placed?
• What likely movement routes will be taken by either side?
• What battlefield features will draw combatants to inspect, engage with, or move toward?
• Do the PCs tend to spread out or clump together?
• What are the usual attack modes of the PCs? (i.e. potential trap trigger conditions)
• Who is likely to win initiative?
• How fast can the PCs move?

A lot depends on the nature of the trap. Once you have a trap selected, look for its strengths and weaknesses. And untriggered trap in combat is such an unfortunate waste. Look at what the trap needs for it to be triggered, the type and nature of damage it does, and what might increase its chances of success.

Be creative with effects

Look at every condition and damage type in your game and build traps for them. Same with spells and strange effects. Look at the special abilities of the PCs, equipment, and magic items. Apply the most interesting effects to traps.

For example, a trap that emits concussive bursts, dazing friend and foe alike, is much more fun to play than one that merely does 1d6 damage. A trap that causes allies to attack each other, or forces combatants to flee in a random direction, or makes victims attack by grapple makes combats memorable.

Do not forget about area effects. Smoke bombs, noise suppressors, or bursts of substances can catch everyone off guard, or at least affect multiple victims for greater combat chaos. A trap that causes a wave of magical effect to blow through the battlefield will get everyone excited, as would a tall building forced to collapse or long chain whip that whirls across a huge radius.

Make some traps obvious

Not every trap needs to be invisible or catch combatants by surprise. Sometimes the obvious ones are the most entertaining. Either one or both sides avoids the area of the trap, which could have consequences, or foes try to figure out how to use the trap against each other, or while the fighters fight, the rogues and bards get some investigation gameplay in.

Why is the battlefield trapped?

Be sure to make the situation believable. Justify the trap’s existence. “Previous owners” is often a good answer. Portable traps allow lots of utility. A large expense account is another plausible answer.

Watch out for tricky answers. You don’t want to spend much time on trap backstories. If you see your answer getting complex, that’s a flag to simplify your explanation about why the trap came to exist where it is. Another, er, trap, is having to create layers of new game elements to support your rationale.

“Just because” is a good answer too, but I don’t want you to get cornered by clever players who choose to investigate the trap looking for details, or who find a logical flaw with the trap selection or placement.

Hopefully your battle traps become part of post-session stories and the campaign’s lore. They are so versatile and offer so many options for changing combat strategy, atmosphere, or difficulty.

Here are two related articles you might find interesting:

10 Ways To Use Traps To Enhance An Adventure, Part I

10 Ways To Use Traps To Enhance An Adventure, Part II

We all make mistakes. Some are trivial – I mean, who really cares in the long run if that critter did d6+1 damage and not d6+2? But I’m talking about bigger mistakes, the kind that matter. I’ve got five of them, and as part of this month’s blog carnival, which we at Campaign Mastery are hosting, I’ll be making posts describing each. This is the first one, where I made a general knowledge mistake that had massive ramifications for the campaign. Ultimately, I was able to make lemonade from lemons in this particular case, ultimately strengthening the campaign – but it could just have easily gone in the other direction and weakened it massively.

The Campaign

In order to understand the circumstances, you need to know some history of the game. This was in the early days of my superhero campaign; Champions II had not yet made its appearance in the game stores. The villain was a would-be world conquerer modelled on the Marvel Comics villain, the Mandarin, but in my game, the character was an alchemist and wizard who had accidentally discovered a form of immortality: after his current host body was killed, any full-blooded chinese male who came into contact with one of the wizard’s arcane devices would be posessed by his spirit, which would then be magically reshaped to match the physical characteristics of the original. Of course, he tried to keep a few in circulation to ensure repeated comebacks.

The character had faced off against the protagonist that I had created to initially teach myself the system in solo play, and then starred in a sequel campaign that I had started for some friends the following weekend, both of which had formed part of the campaign background of the “real” campaign. I had created a detailed backstory in which he was as much victim as villain, but was also responsible for both a rewritten version of the legendary Ghenghis Kahn’s conquest of Asia and near-conquest of Europe (ie the known world) and also for the story of Vlad Tepes and the myths apon which Count Dracula was founded. I very deliberately wanted to infuse the character with some of the nobility of Marvels’ Doctor Doom – the man would have made a Good ruler, but the price to paid for achieving that goal was one that was unconscionable to anyone not ruthlessly driven – in this case, by a profound personal grief relating to the assassination of his wife and child at the hands of a warlord in ancient China that had left him with an impossible-to-overcome chip on his shoulder.

The campaign concept was for him to start out tough enough to trouble the combined might of the PCs, and to be embarked on a quest to gather his personal arcane weaponry and devices. In his second campaign appearance (now part of the campaign history even though it was being run concurrently) he had been able to recover Excalibur, and extract a chip of the sword (which he wore on his forehead), which he used to imbue his own body with the strength and resiliance of the mythic blade through the power of sympathetic magic. So he started with invulnerability, superstrength, teleportation, and flame-based force-fields and related effects. Each time he succeeded in regaining one of his artifacts, he would both reduce his opportunities for a future reincarnation, but would also increase his personal power by adding another “school opf magic” to his repetoire; his power would rise far more quickly than that of the PCs with every early success but these increases would progressively become smaller, enabling the PCs to catch up – eventually. In order to beat him, the players were going to have to think outside the box. It took them 6 months of weekly play, 14+ hours a week, before they achieved anything that could be described as a victory against him, having graduated from irrellevances to inconveniences to irritants in the meantime.

The Circumstances

Even while the primary campaign was ongoing, the secondary campaign – whose events were historical so far as the players of the primary campaign were concerned – was also ongoing. Essentially, I was working a full-time job and refereeing for about 30 hours straight, most weekends. This is an exhausting schedule, and it was starting to show.

Why was I so driven to roleplay? It’s not directly relevant, so I’ll simply state that a romance had failed catastrophically a few years earlier I realised later that it never had a snowball’s chance in Hell of success). The fallout was pretty much screwing up my life completely with angst and emotional wreckage, despite superficial appearances to the contrary. In the course of the year that followed (in which I was supposedly studying for a degree in computer science, but wasn’t really trying at all), I discovered RPGs. The experience of being able to step outside my skin and escape my personal calamity for a while gave me the emotional distance to start seeing things in perspective, and that enabled me to start recovering. So I had started to eat, breathe, and sleep RPGs for a while.

By the time of the Mistake that is the subject of this Blog, it had been a couple of years since those events, and I had mostly put the need for that level of involvement behind me. I was genuinely enjoying what I was doing – so I continued to squeeze in as much of it as humanly possible (and then some). Heck, to some extent, I still do!

The Mistake

So, anyway, one of the Players asked about the attitude of the Chinese Government toward this supervillain running around the world, while I was concentrating on the history of the villain in question, and I made an off-the-cuff remark that the Emperor Of China considered him a terrorist, a criminal, and a traitor to the Buddhist philosophy, or something along those lines. For a moment, my mind had hiccoughed and the entire Communist Revolution in China had completely escaped my recollection.

My players, of course, immediatly picked up on this, and I was immediatly inundated with questions about who and how and when and why this had taken place, and how it had affected the Korean War, and all sorts of other things that I hadn’t given any thought whatsoever.

It was my philosophy at the time (which I have since relaxed somewhat) that when speaking “ex cathedra”, ie giving the players crucial information about the game world, the GM should never admit to a mistake, or the players will lose faith in everything he says. So I made up on the spot, and inserted into the campaign history, a chapter of the second campaign that had never been played in real life. This was a crucial moment in the credibility of the entire campaign, and it had come about because of a simple slip of the tongue.

If my whole-cloth invented plotline was not completely plausible to the players, the central core of the campaign would collapse, and the campaign could quickly follow. As it spilled out, one impulsive plot twist after another (in fairly generalised form), I was acutely aware of the sensation of digging myself in deeper with every word, of investing my entire credibility as GM in this work of utter fiction. For an experienced GM, this might not have been all that difficult; but at the time, I had only been refereeing for about two-and-a-half years, and was not feeling all that secure in my credentials. In fact, I was as nervous at the time as I have ever been in the big chair!

Recovery

As it transpired, the notion that the Mandarin’s previous incarnation had succeeded in overthrowing the Communist Chinese Government, only to be defeated through the same sympathetic magic that he had used to give himself his invulnerability when the REST of Excalibur was wielded against him, rang so completely true to the players that when the truth came out (many years later), they were completely surprised. UNTIL, which I had recast as the military arm of the United Nations, had (according to my story) been left with the choice of complete anarchy in the region, or having someone step into, and take over, the administration and bureacracy that the villain had established – and so a new Imperial Dynasty was founded in China. The Vietnam War then became a case of ambitious military types attempting to carve mini-empires out for themselves in defiance of their government.

Through the years that followed, Chinese mythology and philosophy cropped up time and time again. Elements that would have been out of place when set against the background of a Communist Regime were utterly appropriate against a Modern Imperial backdrop. Ressurected Chinese Dragons, the attempted assassination by a mystic assassin of the aging ruler, a Taoist supervillain, and many other such plots, grew out of that simply slip of the tongue. That invented-on-the-spot-story was the first really MAJOR change in world history that the players of the primary campaign experienced, and its success gave me the confidence to make even bigger and more interesting changes in later years. The original story, somewhat embellished, was played out as the big finish to the secondary campaign, and is now considered canonical in the campaign history.

Lessons Learnt

There are lots of lessons to emerge from this little chapter of my roleplaying history. The first is to think before you speak! The second is not to be afraid to admit that you’ve misspoken when you have; but the third is that, before you do so, you should see if there’s any way possible that you can insert backstory into your campaign to explain your slip of the tongue; the richer you can make your campaign background, once play is underway and the characters and immediate circumstances are established, the more groundwork you lay for future years.

I became so adept at making up on the spot both scenarios, and scenario twists to accommodate whatever the players did, that I was (in later years) sometimes accused of running plot trains – when there WAS no plot preplanned! But that’s a subject for another time…