A book on the structures and natures of different governments within our world got me to thinking anew about perhaps the most seminal creation within the background of the Hero System – U.N.T.I.L.

Specifically, thinking about who the organization is; how they fit into the policies, principles and charter of the United Nations; what’s wrong with the “official” version of the organization; how the organization is depicted in the Zenith-3 campaign and the Hero Systems campaigns – and a new take on the answers to some of these questions.

The Official Position

When I first read the Champions sourcebooks, I was still relatively naive as a writer and GM. Conceptually, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the idea, and the acronym is excellent – but I shuddered then, and still do, at the organization’s actual name.

The Name Problem

Brace yourself: “The United Nations Tribunal on International Law”.

Where does one begin? “The United Nations” part of the name is fine. But then it starts to fall apart.

A “Tribunal”? Isn’t that what you convene when you want to hold an enquiry into something – sort of like Congressional Hearings? Well, that’s close – it actually means a “Court Of Justice, or a local board hearing claims for exemption from military service during World War I” according to the Pocket Oxford Dictionary. The name, applied in this context, makes U.N.T.I.L. closer in concept to Judge Dredd than to the organization described in sourcebooks such as “Champions Universe”. Nothing wrong with that as a concept, but it is not what is described.

Second Problem: “International Law”. It isn’t what most people think it is. And it certainly isn’t what U.N.T.I.L. concern themselves with. International Law has nothing to do with criminal acts by individuals or even rogue/terrorist organizations, it concerns relations between nations. Even International Criminal Law deals with things like war crimes, acts of genocide, and ‘crimes against humanity’. Anti-piracy measures and the law of the sea are as close as International Law comes to acts by individuals and they are covered by a completely separate field within International Law.

Which leaves a Champions GM with three choices:

• Reinvent the organization;
• Rename the organization;
• or have an organization whose actions are at odds with their mandate and mission, and which are actually just as illegal as the criminals they pursue.

That’s right – since adherence to International Law is voluntary, and not an obligation, even if International Law was far more encompassing than it actually is, U.N.T.I.L. would have no authority to enforce it. Their every act is therefore just as criminal as the acts of an organization like VIPER, or S.P.E.C.T.R.E.

Renaming The Organization

The easiest option, on the face of it, is to rename the organization, and keep right on trucking with them as an established campaign element, fighting villainous organizations and supervillains. But this proves a little trickier in practice than it appears.

My reasoning, back in the early 80s when my campaign was just getting started, carried me that far; but in-game events modified the central concept way beyond the standard, so I won’t go into that just now. Instead, here’s a brand new meaning for the acronym that solves the problem for those looking for the simplest solution: the United Nations Terrorism, Intervention, and Law-enforcement Agency.

Doctrinal Relevance
This title gives U.N.T.I.L. three responsibilities or doctrines:

• Terrorism – mandates opposition to villainous and terrorist organizations such as Viper and Genocide;
• Law-enforcement – mandates assisting the national and/or local authorities in enforcing local laws when the criminals have superpowers or supertech or some other ability that puts them beyond the capabilities of ordinary police forces; and,
• Intervention – mandates prevention of attempted invasions from beyond the earth (aliens and/or other dimensions) as well as operations relevant under International Law such as the pursuit and capture of those wanted for trial on charges of War Crimes, acts of Genocide, etc.

Between them, this gives U.N.T.I.L. the authority and the mandate to do everything that they do in most Champions campaigns, but it also throws some interesting ramifications into the mix.

International Law doesn’t even get a direct mention in the title, though it does get mentioned indirectly under the heading of Intervention, simply because there are some fun plotlines (chasing Nazis, helping against alien invaders, etc) that otherwise would fall outside the range of what U.N.T.I.L. is permitted to do. (I have sudden visions of U.N.T.I.L. trying to prosecute Dormammu for Crimes Against Humanity…)

Since International Law has an extremely limited criminal code, it becomes necessary to use some other criminal code to sanction U.N.T.I.L. operations against Supervillains. The obvious choice is the domestic law of the country in which they are operating – having been authorized to do so by the nation in question either as a blanket permission or on a case-by-case basis. That means that they may be forced to persue ‘super-criminals’ for activities that the agents don’t consider crimes – or look the other way because the things the criminals are doing aren’t actually crimes under local laws. Conflict is at the heart of storytelling, and this throws a whole new internal conflict onto the pile for the PCs to explore.

There’s still scope for operational fine-tuning; for example, how proactive are U.N.T.I.L. permitted to be? Does the doctrine of ‘hot pursuit’ apply? Must U.N.T.I.L. apply formally for permission to operate in a country on a case-by-case basis, or are there specific organizations they have a blanket authorization to pursue? Are U.N.T.I.L. agents required to respect procedures and authorization requirements for specific activities – ie do they have to read miranda rights while operating in the US, do they have to go to court for permission to wiretap a phone, etc? Subordinating U.N.T.I.L. to local laws can have a number of repercussions!

The Law-enforcement responsibility also authorizes U.N.T.I.L. to operate Stronghold (or some equivalent) for those criminals that the local penal institutions cannot hold. But that also brings into view the question of the proper treatment of criminals – as anyone who has read ‘Catch Me If You Can‘ knows that different countries have very different attitudes to criminal rehabilitation and punishment (it’s not made quite as clear in the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks).

Finally, notice that drugs are not mentioned anywhere directly. Unless they are locally illegal, or are being used to fund terrorist activities, they are none of U.N.T.I.L.’s business.

Reinventing The Organization

The second solution is to reinvent the organization to fit within the parameters of what International Law actually covers. Like any large organization with a chain-of-command whose commander-in-chief changes periodically, what is permitted – both officially and unofficially – will change from time-to-time, anyway. Put some proactive go-getter in charge and it is likely to exceed its mandate regularly and egregiously – and until they actually tick somebody off, he will probably get away with it. But International Relations is a prickly subject, and delicacy is often required to prevent extreme positions from producing extreme reactions to events – and that means that a go-getter is likely to be viewed, at best, as a “loose cannon”.

Leaving the name “as it is, officially,” and remaking the organization to suit, leaves each individual nation to come up with its own solutions – something that would undoubtedly suit the USA in the Champions game universe, but would leave many smaller nations relatively helpless. But that’s where the new thoughts that I mentioned come in.

These days, the growing trend is termed supranationalism. The difference between a supranational union or confederation such as the European Union and the United Nations is the agreement to confer on the supranational union authority within and – to a strictly limited extent – over, the member nations. If each of the “continental divisions” of U.N.T.I.L. was in fact a locally-authorized organization answering to such a union, with a general administration coordinating relations between them, you end up with a quasi-UN organization that can collectively be referred to as U.N.T.I.L. but which is actually six separate organizations, with the authority to act within their divisional jurisdiction. Each would thus fall into a middle ground between an independent supranational law-enforcement operation and a full UN operation.

Does this seem like it’s splitting hairs? It isn’t, and the difference lies in one key word: sovereignty. Nations routinely delegate and authorize supranational organizations to act on behalf of the collective, yielding a little of their sovereignty; they yield no such authority to the United Nations. At the same time, the UN quite happily functions as a coordinating and administrative body between individual nations and hence between supranational organizations, so this “umbrella” role is in keeping with their usual practices and policies.

This is very much a case of being able to have your cake and eating it, too – a perfect solution. What’s more, the quasi-autonomy of the resulting supranational organizations leaves room for disagreements and conflicts between them, which U.N.T.I.L. Command can mediate in the medium or long-term but which provide additional plot potentials in the meantime.

U.N.T.I.L. as the enforcement arm of a nascent world government

If that sounds very specific, it’s because that is the niche that U.N.T.I.L. – The United Nations Tactical / Intelligence / Legal Corps – occupies in my game world. This is a quite different take on the organization from that of the “Official” mould due to behind-the-scenes manipulation and intervention in the creation of the organization by an alien from a completely different culture, in my game world.

Ullar came from a world with a strict meritocratic caste system. It was not only possible but routine for qualified individuals to move from one caste or sub-caste to another. Mapping of genetic potentials at birth and evaluations during the educational period of how much of that potential had been actualized by the individual determined what caste(s) and sub-castes were open to the individual, and free choice was restricted to those options the state adjudged as suitable for the individual. In many ways, it drew elements from a dystopian view of our future, but it remapped them into a functional – if fragile – utopia. At the very pinnacle of that society, above even the administrative powers of the planetary governments, was a group of troubleshooters called The Order, who were freed of all restraints of law – but were enjoined to obey the maxim of “The Greatest Good For All,” and mentally restructured to enforce compliance. That was the key to this society: something very akin to utopia was achieved by the sacrifice of virtually all personal liberty, but that utopia was inherently unstable; it was the constant corrective actions of the Order that kept it all from falling apart. Although it predates the publication of Magician by some months, there are few organizations more reminiscent of this society than that of Kelewan under the Great Ones, shorn of the Oriental societal influences and recast as a high-tech society rather than a fantasy one. When the Csoltaran Federation finally fell – and the details are not especially relevant to this analysis – he escaped in suspended animation while his ship’s computer searched for a planet inhabited by suitable life forms. After 1900 million years – or so – it found Earth.

Ullar’s initial thoughts were to remake the society of the world to what he “knew” was a better system, but his arrival coincided with the first nuclear weapons test in 1945, and his compassion forced him to assist in relief efforts following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which set him on the path to becoming Earth’s first hero instead of it’s first supervillain. He parlayed the gratitude of a pair of Japanese officials and his analytic resources into an even more rapid Japanese resurgence following the conclusion to World War II, in the process elevating those allies to key positions within the new government; then used that influence to have Japan join the United Nations years earlier than would have been the case. Along the way, he carefully recruited a few others. Step by step, he bootstrapped his supporters into key positions and had them subtly nuance the opinions of political leaders and the general public. In particular, he persuaded the United Nations of three key ‘facts’:

• that League Of Nations failed to prevent World War because they granted certain states unlimited sovereignty without reserving the collective right to intervene before a sovereign state threatened others;
• that without a multinational enforcement arm to carry out such interventions, their decrees were toothless and irrelevant;
• and that without a guaranteed autonomy from political shackles, such an authority’s purpose could too easily be perverted.

Ultimately, Ullar’s true goal was to create an organization of “political troubleshooters” to deal with problems that were too big for any one nation to deal with. U.N.T.I.L.’s task was not to fight wars, but to intervene strategically to confine wars and to target the causes of war – an earth equivalent of The Order. Its commander was to advise the UN in the deliberations, and was answerable directly to the security council – but after the fact. One of the terms of membership in the United Nations was acceptance of the authority of U.N.T.I.L. – but with it came a clean slate, and full pardon for past ‘misdeeds’. In due course, he announced his presence to the world, and became the first individual to petition the UN for global citizenship. The question of life beyond earth was immediately resolved, and the intentions of that life was clearly a subject beyond the jurisdiction of any one nation – exactly as he had intended, U.N.T.I.L. was placed under the jurisdiction of the agency that he had helped to create.

Superheroes breed supervillains

Ullar’s reform agenda had barely gotten started when he was required to set it aside when the world’s first supervillain arose. The conflict between the two was to reshape U.N.T.I.L.’s mandate forever, so much so that the public largely forgot that it had any other function. Supervillains, by their nature, were deemed to be squarely within U.N.T.I.L.’s mandate, but they went further and claimed jurisdiction over dealing with the causes of supervillain creation. Aliens, super-tech, so-called “sorcery”, psionics, superheroes and villains of all sorts became their province. This didn’t happen overnight; it was a gradual process. In game terms, it is now about 40 years since Ullar first arrived (he’s been killed twice in the line of duty and resurrected once), and U.N.T.I.L. has become an umbrella with fingers in a great many pies. At the same time, they have accelerated the technological profile of the world by 10-15 years – personal computers are now common-place (in 1986!) and the internet is about to explode.

Divisional Structure

U.N.T.I.L. has 10 divisions in my game world:

1. Command Division – Admin & Policy setting
2. Security Division – Responsible for the security of U.N.T.I.L. bases, UN Facilities, Missions & Envoys, for counter-intelligence activities and for the confinement of supervillains.
3. Legal & Economic Division – Super-tech can produce economic disruptions on a massive scale; aside from legal reforms and legal analyses, and handling U.N.T.I.L.’s overall budget, this division forecasts and attempts to keep control of these disruptions, keeping them to a manageable level. A particular challenge to this group are the legal ramifications of superheroes.
4. Science & Technology Division – At the same time, U.N.T.I.L. has some of the most brilliant research scientists on the planet working for it, analyzing both captured goodies and conducting pure research.
5. Intelligence Division – Before you can intervene, you need to know where intervention is necessary. This division not only analyzes the inner workings of organizations like Viper and Demon, it plants double-agents, keeps an eye on the intelligence apparatus of key national governments and organizations, and in general tries to be the first to know everything that happens.
6. Resources Division – Bases, vehicles, field equipment, etc.
7. Training Division – Trains, recruits, and vets new agents – the latter in consultation with the Security Division.
8. Political Division – The intelligence division is about knowing, the political division is about doing. Their mandate is to settle disputes equitably and peacefully by providing a third, neutral party. Also known as the diplomatic wing of U.N.T.I.L.. They are also responsible for speaking on behalf of the planet to representatives from other worlds.
9. Operations Division – Chase after supervillains and terrorists and rogue aliens and so on. The division that most people think of when they think of U.N.T.I.L..
10. Superhero Liaison Division – In recent times, it has become fashionable to provide a liaison to superhero teams operating in U.N.T.I.L. jurisdiction and under the auspices of U.N.T.I.L.. The Liaison Division grants superhero teams a mandate to operate as independent field units within U.N.T.I.L., and pays the members accordingly, and even helps fund the team’s activities – but insists on hands-on oversight. The difference between a Sanctioned Team and a group of Vigilantes. Originally constituted as part of the Operations Division.

Further Evolution

U.N.T.I.L. has continued to evolve within the campaign world. They get some things right and some things wrong; they are sometimes slow and occasionally hamstrung by UN regulations and motions. When the US left the UN in my campaign, it deprived U.N.T.I.L. of about 55% of its operating budget and several of its key operatives and bases. Political developments such as the rise of the 4th Reich in Central Europe and the 5th Reich in South America have further hampered their effectiveness.

An organization like U.N.T.I.L. can never be completely ineffective or helpless within a campaign, or it might as well not exist; and won’t be worth the trouble it poses for the PCs – but it also can’t be the solution to every problem, or the PCs become unnecessary instead of in the spotlight. This metagame conflict is a juggling act that every GM has to cope with.

In general, from a metagame perspective, things are unlikely to get better in the short-term; I want problems to be solved by the PCs, not some ubiquitous superagency. At the same time, U.N.T.I.L. is working slowly but doggedly to minimize the impact of those problems until the PCs discover the solution to the problems – once the critical problem is solved, U.N.T.I.L. will handle the cleanup, leaving the PCs to move on to the next problem on their plates. And that’s the real purpose of U.N.T.I.L. within my campaign.

The Measure of Progress

U.N.T.I.L. has one further function – because it will always prioritize the most urgent problems at hand, no matter how insoluble they might appear, a quick glance at the problems they are dealing with provides an effective yardstick for the PCs to measure their success and the impact they are having on the game world. But, in general, they are just a part of the general background. They pop up when the plot is something they would have knowledge and jurisdiction over, and stay out of the way the rest of the time. That’s why it is so important to know who and what they – or any equivalent global or national organization – are – so that you know when they should be involved and when they should not. You want organizations like U.N.T.I.L. to be exactly what it says on the tin.

Right now, in-game, the era of Japanese Management Techniques is beginning, with the economic and bureaucratic convolutions that comes with it. This is going to have the effect of saddling the PCs with a number of bureaucratic hurdles to overcome that are humorous (at a player level) while annoying at a character level. In particular, there’s a Field Marshall Tomkins who the PCs will come to loathe, because he’s fighting the change by insisting on every administrative ‘i’ being dotted and every bureaucratic ‘t’ being crossed. Over time, it means that important policy decisions that might once have been made from On High will get handed to the grassroots level – including the PCs. And neither that, nor the likelyhood of trouble from the left hand not knowing what the right is doing, are coincidence (insert evil laugh here).

What will U.N.T.I.L. ultimately become? I have no idea, that will be directly up to the players – but it will be fun to watch!

Having given Campaign Mastery’s readers (and myself) a break from the series, today’s article contains another Kingdom write-up from my Shards Of Divinity Campaign, once again in more detail than even the players have seen it before…

Metagame Origins

A ‘Hinterland’ is technically a region behind a coast or rivers, i.e. separated from the main political region by water. I didn’t know that when I created the Longex Dextora, using the term in its more metaphoric interpretation of “Outlying Region”. As geographic relationships changed during campaign development, the concept of Longex Dextora changed with them, extruding a long finger into the central regions of the shared kingdoms, though the bulk of the Realm continued to form the south-eastern and southern sides of the Shared Kingdoms. Ironically, the upshot is that The Hinterlands are no longer hinterlands in any way, or at least, not exclusively.

Conceptually, the Hinterlands were created as a place for dominance-and-independence games between Orcs, Giants, Gnolls, and Goblins, and Byzantine politics between Humans. When the geography was redrawn for the umpteenth time, a large chunk of the former aspect of the conceptual origins was lost, and for a while I thought I had painted myself into a corner as a result of a somewhat piecemeal development process. It was only when the blindingly obvious – that these non-human races didn’t need to respect later, Human-imposed borders and boundaries – occurred to me that it all started to make sense once again.

Other elements of my original concepts remained. The heart of the Kingdom remains a series of hills of various sizes in a slightly marshy river delta. Each of these almost-islands has its own political independence and a blend of unique traditions and customs held in common with most of the others – so much so that I didn’t bother trying to enumerate specific variations. Each would have a slightly different population blend, slightly different land use requirements, and so on.

A trouble hot-spot

Above all, I wanted this to be a region where trouble was always brewing, and threatening to spill out into the rest of the Shared Kingdoms, which (up to this point) were generally looking far too stable.

I achieved this by postulating that some island areas had a regional strategic importance far in excess of their capacity to maintain the level of population required to support them as independent entities. These would serve as keystones to a temporary regional dominance; capture one or more and you became the dominant force in that part of the realm, but the need to maintain adequate defenses would soon drain the vitality of the conquering army to the point where a rival could (and would) relieve them of possession of that strategic keystone. The new conquerors would then hold it for a while, even as it sapped their strength, until yet another rival would grow strong enough to take possession.

Alliances of instability

This sort of anarchy only really exists in isolation, of course – as soon as one Kingdom allies itself with a stronger neighbor, the equality of balance required to keep everything on a knife-edge is disrupted. Perpetuating the cycle of anarchy in the face of this dampening presence made it necessary for one political alliance to be balanced with a second, and a third, and a fourth.

Lurking in the back of my mind was a vision of World War I, where a series of political entanglements forced one European Power after another into the conflict like a series of falling dominos. I was also rather inspired by the images of the brawl in the Taiwan Parliament in 2007 (Youtube video) who nevertheless had to come together every year or two to send a “unified representative” to the Council of Kings. It seemed to me that after getting swept up in the anarchy a time or two, the “allies” of the different factions would get together and actively conspire to lock the loonies up in their asylum, controlling the situation to prevent a WWI-style scenario. The “allies,” in other words, would act as firemen trying to keep this sputtering fuse from triggering an explosion.

Finally, I needed a reason for all this to matter. Setting the Capital of the shared Kingdoms at the northern end of the temperate zone, and having the Longex Dextora principally stretching from that point to the south and south-east placed it squarely in temperate and subtropical climatic zones (I had some other ideas for the tropics, so that was as fair as it went). That means that ultimately, even a smallish area could sustain a fairly large population. The region was now the equivalent of France and the Iberian Peninsula – while being mostly land-locked, and the grafting of the legendary passion of the Spanish completed the concept.

In-Game Origins

The Longex Dextora was, prior to the arrival of refugees from the Fall Of Paradise, part of a considerably larger region with a rich – if barbaric – history. In the temperate regions, Orcs had been subjugated by Giants from the northern mountain regions, while the Goblins living in the subtropics had been enslaved by Gnolls from the tropics. The dividing line between the two territories was the marshy river ‘delta’ that would ultimately become the Longex Dextora.

A series of border skirmishes resulted between the two forces with the border shifting from one side of the disputed region to the other depending on the season and the winds of fortune. Neither band of conquerors were entirely at home in the climates of the peoples they had subjugated; the Giants could only come south during the winter months, while the Gnolls could only come North during the summers. To rule their territories on their behalf during the “inclement seasons”, they appointed and educated selected proxies from amongst the conquered subjects. A striking pattern of semi-instability evolved as a result.

The Seasonal Conquests

At the start of an arbitrary year, one group – let us say it is the Gnolls – are dominant, and mount probing military expeditions into the North, capturing many of the Keystone “Islands” and becoming dominant in the region of the future Longex Dextora. As summer wanes, the Gnolls retreat from these territorial gains, leaving them under the control of their “trusted” Goblin proxies. The Goblins spend the autumn months building up their defenses using whatever materials come to hand, while in the north, the Orcs are similarly being driven to prepare for War by their Giant masters. As winter falls over the temperate regions, the Giants emerge to lead their Orcish fighting forces in a winter campaign against the Goblins. By the time the winter is ending, they have overrun the majority of the keystone “islands” and dispossessed the Goblins, who flee back to the south. Now is the time for the Giants to press their advantage, but the climate is opposed and the season is turning against them, and they are forced to retreat back into the mountains, leaving Orcish Proxies to loot the former Goblin settlements. Throughout the spring, they would strive to prepare fortifications, ready for the late-spring/early-summer return of the Goblins and their Gnollish masters.

A strange social symbiosis evolved. The Goblins would plant winter crops before departing for harvesting by the Orcs and the Orcs would plant summer crops for their Goblin enemies – actually, both sides were planting against the off-chance that this particular piece of territory would be held, this particular year. Sometimes, one side would decide they had no chance of retaining the territory and fail to plant these crops; when they were inevitably displaced, they would learn that their opposition had “punished” them by failing to plant their equivalent crops. The result was famine for both sides equally, and no real change in the balance of power.

Inevitably, and regularly, the “overseers” left behind would contemplate a revolt against their masters, perhaps even an alliance with their rivals on the other side, but these were always quickly settled by the simple tactic of not sending reinforcements, leaving the rebels to face an assured defeat at the hands of that “other side”.

Quasi-stability lost

It is not known how long this situation persisted. It may have been centuries, it may have been millennia. But eventually, a wild card brought this oscillating stability crashing down. Dwarves emerged from their mining tunnels – a force that neither Giants nor Orcs had known the existence of – and cut the supply and communications lines of the Giant commands. Sensing that the moment to overthrow their giant masters had come, the Orcs rose in general rebellion, trapping the Giants and their sycophants between hammer (Orcs) and Anvil (Dwarves).

Over the next several Winters, the Giants strove to reestablish their conquest of the Orcs, but were ultimately driven completely out of their former territories by Orcish Death-squads who were completely satisfied to trade their lives for another kilometer of territorial gain. Twenty Orc lives were traded for every Giant slain – which was a net victory for the Orcs. Meanwhile, the Goblins and their Gnollish masters were left in virtually undisputed control of the formerly disputed lands. The Orcish territories effectively contracted northwards.

The Giants then attempted to travel south through the Thunder Mountains which stretched almost all the way to the formerly disputed territory, thinking that they might be able to dislodge the Gnolls and conquer the Goblins as a replacement army, bypassing the Orcs and ultimately trapping the rebel Orcs in a pincer movement, for the Dwarves had proven no more receptive to Orcish types than they had the Giants.

Forced into the Gnoll territories, the Giants did their best to carve out a new realm, but were no match for the cunning and cruelty of the Gnolls, and were eventually forced back north into the frozen wastes. But they did enough damage to the Gnoll gangs that the Goblins were able to mount an insurrection against their masters, having built up their numbers during the years that they had been free of the annual Orcish invasion. The Gnoll flanks were overexposed by their pursuit of the Giants and the Goblins, despite horrendous losses, succeeded in dispossessing all Gnoll claims north of the tropic line.

A war of attrition

But this had given the Orcs time to regroup and rebuild their numbers, even as it diminished the Goblin ability to resist; an Orcish army came south, intent on subjugating the Goblins for themselves while they were weakened by their struggle with the Gnolls, just as they themselves had been dominated by the Giants, but the Goblins were not eager to trade one set of masters for another, and the old patterns were reestablished – without their former masters in command.

Slowly the Orcs – who could function in the subtropical regions – began to eat into the lands claimed by the Goblins, but each gain was difficult and Goblins proved adept at guerilla attacks behind the Orcish front lines. Keeping a region pacified frequently tied up as many troops as it had taken to conquer it, and both sides were bleeding each other to a standstill.

That was when the first human settlers arrived, moving into the No-mans-land between the two factions, renaming it the Longex Dextora, and forcing both factions to retreat. Captured humans quickly became the political ‘currency’ of the two adjacent hereditary enemies, the one thing they agreed on, and an already-messy two-way conflict became a three-way political minefield of shifting loyalties and temporary alliances, complicated by the occasional attempted Resurgence of Gnolls or Giants. As the human presence slowly expanded and ate away at the Orcish territories to the north and the Goblin territories to the south, the former occupants of the myriad of island forts found their regions of influence contracting.

The last gasp of the Orcish Empire

Blocked to the south once and for all, the Orcs began exploring west, and a cluster of small valleys containing Gnomish Settlements was discovered. Deprived of their chance of empire through conquest of the Goblins, the Orcs sought to turn their will apon the seemingly-vulnerable Gnomes. The result was an almost-stable condition of anarchy, with no group strong enough to dominate. But the Gnomes proved to be naturally-gifted at the Byzantine politics that emerged and were able to trade alliances with Goblins, rival Orc tribes, Human tribes, Gnolls, Giants, Fey, and Dwarves as necessary to always maintain enough strength to resist and those who would conquer them.

Eventually a wave of human settlers from the west reached the Gnomish valleys and before long the Gnomes were completely surrounded by men, the Orcs driven back to the east into the Thunderhell. The Gnomish Monarchy then rose to power in response to the human settlements around them, and the Parumveneaora joined the Shared Kingdoms, giving the Gnomes enough military backing that they no longer need fear Orcish conquest.

At much the same time, the Elves began to push south and west from their forest, pushing the Goblins still further south and even driving the Gnolls out from their subtropical domains in response to their own internal problems. The elves were not interested in conquest per se, but nevertheless cleared the way for new human settlements as a byproduct of the conflict between the newly-emergent Drow and the traditional Elven monarchy. When the Dwarves and Elves joined the Shared Kingdoms, the Longex Dextora was largely secured – only for the locals to fall victim to the tyranny of geography, which encouraged independent city-states and internal instability.

The Geography

The Longex Dextora is a somewhat lumpy and slightly wedge-shaped ribbon that runs from the western desert line to the coast of the continental landmass (which has never been given a name – there is not enough of it explored for it to be viewed as a continent yet). It spans five different geographic regions in the process, each with its own character.

The western region runs south from the capital along the desert line. The most habitable regions are to the temperate north, the east which encompasses both temperate and subtropical zones, and the south which is solidly subtropical. Much of it is relatively sparsely populated save for clusters of dwellings located around ancient wells that have yielded potable water for centuries, thanks to an underlying artesian water basin. This area is as flat as a pancake except at its northern extremity.

The central region runs from west of the Elven Forests to east of that area and to the south. Prime farmland, this is the food basket of the Realm, varying from temperate to subtropical. The climate and geography are similar to that of inland Texas, and more meat animals are raised here than anywhere else in the Shared Kingdoms. The region is also very reminiscent of the wild west in other respects!

East of the central region is the area surrounding the central river delta to the north, south, and west. Subject to periodic flooding, this region is the most fertile of the Realm, and the subject of intensive farming of cotton and grain. To the north are Orcs and Giants and the Thunderhell; to the south are Goblins.

The delta forms a wedge to the coast that is fully embedded within the Eastern region. A number of hills of varying sizes and heights surrounded by water, some connected by fords and others by bridges, while others are accessible only by boat. This is the dominant region, politically – not that the Longex Dextora has a capital city to speak of. South of this wedge is another, a swampland which is essentially a continuation of the delta without the higher lands. Think Louisiana bayou. While settled around the fringes, this area is still the native territory of Gnolls.

Finally, to the north and east of the coast, a number of small settlements nestle against the range of mountains that run north-south and on various islands. Each of these is essentially independent but lacking the resources of the delta “islands”, making them relatively minor members of the broader society.

Borders

For most of its length, the Lihume Magnusortali (Great Eastern River) forms the northern border of the Longex Dextora.

The only exceptions are where the Iriduserde Foliumprasi (Vivid Green-Leaf Forest), (Home of the Elves) runs along the river (taking a bite out of the Longex Dextora); and East of that point where the territorial claims of the realm expand to form a border fringe to the north (nominally with the Ineodolus Imperascora, but this is the Thunderhell where borders are ill-defined at best).

The eastern border is the Undus Verdestus (Green Ocean), while to the south lie the Jungle lands of the Tawnton Dieltriporprasi a collection of independent primitive Tribes. Although the Shared Kingdoms consider them collectively and don’t distinguish one tribe from the next, they are actually separate political entities with minimal connections to one another. In a state of near-perpetual war with each other are rogue Kingdom colonies, barbarian Orcs, and all manner of other strange creatures. It is often said that no good comes from the Tawnton, only varying degrees of trouble and strife. Serving as a semi-civilized fringe society between the Jungle and the Longex Dextora are a number of independent Goblin settlements, at their most numerous due south of the Elven Forest. These are technically part of the Longex Dextora but are not officially recognized as such. The geographic proximity leads some to speculate that Elves and Goblins are both varieties of Fey who achieved an independent existence during Fey prehistory; none of the races named will comment on this speculation.

Like several of the Shared Kingdoms, the Longex Dextora has one border that is (at best) a little fuzzy. To the west lies the Diabolectus Pectusora (The Devil’s Heart), a vast desert of blistering heat and ancient ruins and monuments, the origins of which are long-forgotten and which are the favorite targets of adventurers. While theoretically the Longex Dextora employs the desert line as its border, the reality is that the boundary is not so clear-cut and the realm gradually peters out as habitation becomes unsustainable.

Neighbors

The most significant neighbors of the Longex Dextora (politically) are therefore the Elves of the Iriduserde Foliumprasi, and the Traders and Guilds of the Ineodolus Imperascora. However, one would be foolish to ignore the Gnolls, Goblins, wild tribes, and desert-dwellers even though they have no political affiliation with the realm.

The Society

There’s little point in getting too specific about the society within the Longex Dextora – it changes all too frequently. Instability is the watchword in these parts, and impermanence a way of life. City-states change their names and affiliations frequently and unpredictably. Politically, it could be summed up as chaos within anarchy wrapped in confusions.

Nevertheless, there are some common features to the collective societies of the Longex Dextora, and while there are exceptions to every one of those common features, the starting point can be summed up fairly simply: A feudal structure overlayed on the top of something else, with byzantine politics as the cherry on top.

For example, the towns in the central regions can be considered large cattle ranches complete with cowboys, goblin “Indians”, and crossbows instead of pistols. The ranch houses are fortified small towns, often with a castle for the “ranch owner”. Sheriffs and outlaws and cattle rustlers – but the sheriff is appointed by the Nobleman (titles vary and are largely self-appointed).

Similarly, the settlements in the eastern Delta can be viewed as isolated Kingdoms or city-states, each with its share of serfs, villeins, craftsmen, farmers, tax collectors, its own city watch, and so on – but there is a neighboring kingdom, usually hostile, half a mile in this direction, and another in that direction, and one even close over there, and one a mile away in still another direction – none of which are fully able to support their populations without food and trade goods from outside their boundaries.

The western portion of the realm is a blend of Medieval Spain (without the seagoing aspects) and the middle east – again, overlaid with a ‘traditional’ feudal society.

The Noble Clans

Ultimately, the nobility of the Longex Dextora can be traced back to five distinct families – the Gaviota (Seagull), Lobiota (Wolf), Bueynte (Ox), Halconte (Hawk) and Serpienza (Snake) clans. While there has been some attempt to retain bloodline purity, this principle has been ignored often enough in attempts to create a temporary alliance that every member can trace some circuitous route to each of the five.

Nobles & Nobility within the Longex Dextora

While the City-states themselves are independents, they have adapted a republican political system for choosing their representative to the Shared Kingdoms. Each City-state nominates a Senator to represent their interests; the senators choose a member amongst themselves to be the Speaker Of The Republic, who in turn takes his place in the Council Of Kings. They use the standard Titles, and hence have no King. Most don’t place much importance on titles, anyway.

Education

Children from the age of 3 are rotated amongst the different craftsmasters of the settlement performing novice apprenticeships for a period of at least three months. At the age of eight, in an order of priority dictated by the local noble, the craftsmasters select a promising apprentice for more advanced training. Some horse-trading has been known to take place to ensure that a master will get a specific apprentice for whom he has a special fondness. If no craft has been identified to which the child is especially suited, the child becomes a serf, responsible for the maintenance and farming of a specific tract of land. If a child is deemed suitable for a craft but there are no vacancies within that craft, he will normally be traded to some other city-state for goods, wealth, or a suitably-skilled apprentice for whom the city-state has a need.

For the next eight years, apprentices serve under the tutelage of the master or his designated proxies. After each two year period, the master can deem the apprentice unsuitable and terminate the relationship or trade the apprentice with a master of the same craft from another city-state. At the end of this period, the child is deemed both an adult and receives the title of Journeyman. He is now expected to find his own opportunities to advance his craft (while paying 40% of his income in taxes to his parent city-state and 20% to the Master who educated him). When a master of his craft dies or retires (with the permission of the noble), journeyman have a year-and-a-day to present themselves to the ruler of the city-state as a prospective new Master. A panel of Masters – each of whom receives a fee set by the ruler of the city state for the task – examines the professional workmanship, character, and skill of the proposed new master. A year-and-a-day after the death/retirement of the old master, the panel may affirm one of the applicants as the new master, or declare the office vacant for the next five years as there are no suitable candidates.

A master receives remuneration and rewards from the ruling noble at a rate decreed every 5 years by the noble. In return, the noble is entitled to the full production of the master for that period of time. If the master is not paid the promised sum, he is entitled to sell some or all of his production to other city-states or members of the public to make up the shortfall, so nobles rarely fail to meet their promised obligations. While the master has no choice but to accept the offer of his patron, he retains control over how efficiently and effectively he works – so if the noble offers a pittance of what the master considers his skills to be worth, the master can produce a mere pittance of the total production he might have been capable of achieving, spending the balance of his time planning more elaborate works or simply relaxing. More honorable nobles will release a Master from obligations to his throne if they find they lack the resources to keep him productive much of the time. When seeking a new Master, the noble must publish his promises of rewards in advance – with the consequence that if he is too tight-fisted, he will fail to attract candidates of sufficient quality.

Upward Social Mobility

Some of the city-states have changed owner so frequently that the social system itself has adapted to take the circumstance into account. The principles that have resulted have, in turn, become generalized and applied to other situations, producing the opportunity of upward social mobility if they are willing to risk enough to claim that opportunity.

In a nutshell, once removed from the direct authority of a member of the nobility, a runaway of whatever social rank must be taken at face value by any other city state. If he can demonstrate sufficient skill, expertise, or simple willingness to serve, he can be accepted by his new patron as a legitimate member of the new social class he has defined for himself. Of course, no-one fully trusts a runaway on general principles, but there is a big difference between the childhood oath that new apprentices are required to swear and the informed oath of personal loyalty that must be sworn as an adult. Expectations of fidelity are much higher, and so are the punishments for the betrayal of that trust.

There have been a number of secondary consequences that have resulted to the general betterment of society. In most historical feudal societies, the serfs were considered expendable, cannon fodder at best, something to be trampled if they get underfoot at worst. They have been uniformly ill-treated by the majority of feudal nobles. Neither of these facts are true in the Longex Dextora; most conquests treat the serfs as part of the land, and harming them ultimately reduces the value of the ground conquered. They are not even forced to fight on behalf of the noble, and are left in peace by invading armies. And, of course, if a noble habitually mistreats his serfs and servants, they will all migrate to rival city-states – which means the noble and his supporters will start getting hungry by-and-by if they don’t pick up rake and hoe themselves – never mind that the desertions will weaken their ability to retain control of the city-state, whose vulnerability has just been advertised in all directions by the runaways. The occasional loss can be tolerated, especially since this is often a two-way street; mass migrations are to be avoided.

Spies

Of course, it doesn’t take much imagination for a noble to see in this social practice an opportunity to infiltrate friends, enemies, and neighbors with spies. Intelligence networks are an inevitability.

The thing with such networks is that they spiral, in costs and manpower, out of control at exponential rates. First you have the spies, and then the communications channels, and then the counterspies, and then the security officers, and then the backups for all of the above, and then the analysts and strategists, and then you need the resources to actually use the acquired intelligence to your benefit.

It is very easy to overextend your resources, leaving you more vulnerable than had you remained in ignorance.

The Politics

The independent city-states don’t agree on much, but one of the things they DO agree on is that they will not let themselves be steamrollered by larger alliances of communities. In many ways, the laws of Longex Destora are lowest common denominator with regional and municipal extensions. Even so, there are some communities that won’t even go along with the bare minimum laws of The Hinterlands, and these have broken away to form their own communities. Groups like the Solvo Mondibanus refuse to accept the conditions of the Shared Kingdom, unwilling to surrender one iota of their sovereignty.

Theory is one thing, reality another. None of the independent city-states is completely independent. They all have treaties and trade links both with other independent city-states and with the rest of the Shared Kingdoms. The result is that together they have formed four major political alliances within the Senate, and the balance of power between these groups is constantly shifting. The situation is made still more anarchic by the continual coming and going of members from each alliance, both with changing circumstances and through generational changes in rule within each City-State. Adding to the noise level are a number of truly independent states who will ally with, and bolster the numbers of, whichever group is most advantageous for them at the time.

From A PC Perspective

The Longex Dextora works brilliantly as the background for a character of almost any class. The combination of the Apprentice/Journeyman/Master hierarchy and the upward mobility permit a character to have a background of any social level the player might desire and still be a cleric, or paladin, or whatever the character’s chosen class is. There are combinations possible here that are simply unworkable anywhere else. Adding to the potential is the capacity for a variety of interesting events in the character’s past – betrayal, ambition, treachery, manipulation, seduction by a lady of noble birth – ingredients that propel the character into whatever personality profile wants to have.

From A GMs Perspective

That same potential makes this a fun place from the GMs perspective. Adding the potential for enemy incursions both foreign (Goblins, Gnolls, Orcs, Giants, Drow) and Domestic (another city state) to the variety of less widespread plotlines and the inherent political instability of the area means that almost any plot can be set here. It’s even possible for a long-forgotten Dungeon to be uncovered in the western realm (even though ‘in theory’ they lie beyond the borders of the Longex Dextora, that border is intentionally blurry). An entire campaign could be set here with some additional work specifying the key city-states. Even more useful is that the geography naturally sandboxes adventures here to whatever extent the GM might require.

Virtually any city or castle or ruin from any game supplement can be relocated to one of the islands of the delta.

And on top of that, there’s an entire genre-with-a-twist waiting in the central regions!

The Language Relationships Table: The Obscure Languages

There are 26 spoken languages in Shards Of Divinity, divided into four groups: Common, Unusual, Rare, and Obscure. As mentioned in the previous part of this series, if a character has more ranks in a language than its relatedness relative to the language he is trying to speak, he gains a +1 synergy bonus on his attempts to use the language.

For example, an elf would have Elvish (aka Elven) as his native language. If he was trying to speak Dwarven, he would get +1 if he had 8 ranks in his native language – or if he had 4 ranks in Draconian, Giant, or Terran, or 6 ranks in Trade Tongue or Abyssal or… well, the list goes on. He can qualify for multiple +1 bonuses if he meets multiple targets but only one per row on the chart – so he might get +1 for 4 ranks in Giant, +1 for 6 ranks in Trade Tongue, and +1 for 8 ranks in Elvish.

Twenty-six languages won’t fit all in one reasonable-length table, even though that’s how they were presented in the original house rules, so they have been broken down into a series of smaller tables. In this part of the article, we’re going to look at the Obscure Languages. Note that this table includes languages that are currently not known to exist in the campaign world.

Obscure Languages	Relatedness
	Ranks	Related Languages
Pious¹ Notes: ¹Language is: Common for Human Clerics and Priests, Rare for other humans, Obscure for non-humans.	2 ranks	City-State, Celestial
	4 ranks	Original, Draconic
	6 ranks	Kingdom, Gypsy, Abyssal, Infernal
	8 ranks	Trade Tongue, Sylvan, Orc, Old Kingdom, Elvish, Draconian
	10 ranks	Druidic, Terran, Gnoll, Halfling, Undercommon, Dwarven
	12 ranks	Aquan, Ignan, Goblin, Tribal, Gnome
	14 ranks	Giant
Druidic² Notes: ²Language is: Unusual for Druids only, Rare for Gypsies, Elves & Fey, Obscure for all others	2 ranks	Gypsy, Elvish, Sylvan, Aquan, Old Kingdom
	4 ranks	Halfling, City-State, Draconic
	6 ranks	Undercommon, Gnome, Trade Tongue, Original
	8 ranks	Kingdom, Draconian, Celestial, Orc, Giant, Tribal, Pious
	10 ranks	Goblin, Dwarven, Terran, Abyssal, Ignan
	12 ranks	Infernal, Gnoll
Undercommon³ Notes: ³Language is: Unusual for Elves, Dwarves, and Demons, Obscure for all others	2 ranks	Abyssal, Elvish
	4 ranks	Draconic, Terran, Celestial, Infernal
	6 ranks	Sylvan, Aquan, Druidic, Dwarven, Draconian
	8 ranks	Pious, Gypsy, Old Kingdom, Original, Ignan, Orc, Gnoll
	10 ranks	Gnome, Halfling, City-State, Giant
	12 ranks	Kingdom, Goblin, Tribal, Trade Tongue
Terran	2 ranks	Dwarven, Infernal, Draconian, Undercommon
	4 ranks	Draconic, Celestial, Abyssal, Ignan
	6 ranks	Giant, Gnoll
	8 ranks	Orc, Pious, Trade Tongue, Original, Elvish
	10 ranks	Goblin, Tribal, Gnome, Old Kingdom, City-State, Gypsy
	12 ranks	Sylvan, Aquan, Druidic, Kingdom
	14 ranks	Halfling
Ignan	2 ranks	Infernal, Terran, Draconian
	4 ranks	Dwarven, Draconic, Undercommon, Celestial, Abyssal, Giant
	6 ranks	Elvish, Gnoll
	8 ranks	Original, Pious, Gnome, Orc
	10 ranks	Sylvan, Aquan, Druidic, City-State, Trade Tongue, Goblin
	12 ranks	Tribal, Old Kingdom, Halfling
	14 ranks	Kingdom, Gypsy
Aquan	2 ranks	Sylvan, Elvish
	4 ranks	Draconic, Druidic
	6 ranks	Old Kingdom, Gypsy, Undercommon
	8 ranks	City-State, Original, Halfling, Orc, Celestial, Draconian
	10 ranks	Trade Tongue, Gnome, Abyssal, Terran, Dwarven
	12 ranks	Kingdom, Pious, Giant, Tribal, Ignan, Infernal
	14 ranks	Goblin
	16 ranks	Gnoll
Draconic	4 ranks	Elvish, Draconian, Celestial, Orc, Original
	6 ranks	Dwarven, Abyssal, Giant
	8 ranks	City-State, Aquan, Sylvan, Undercommon, Terran, Infernal, Ignan, Goblin, Tribal, Gnome, Pious, Druidic
	10 ranks	Gypsy, Old Kingdom, Gnoll
	12 ranks	Trade Tongue, Halfling
	14 ranks	Kingdom
Abyssal	2 ranks	Celestial, Inferna
	4 ranks	Draconic, Undercommon
	6 ranks	Gnoll, Terran, Dwarven, Elvish, Pious
	8 ranks	Orc, City-State, Original, Giant
	10 ranks	Goblin, Sylvan, Aquan, Druidic
	12 ranks	Gypsy, Old Kingdom, Kingdom, Trade Tongue, Gnome, Tribal
	14 ranks	Halfling
Infernal	2 ranks	Celestial
	4 ranks	Abyssal, Terran, Draconic, Ignan, Gnoll
	6 ranks	Draconian, Undercommon, Pious
	8 ranks	City-State, Original, Elvish, Orc, Goblin
	10 ranks	none
	12 ranks	Kingdom, Druidic, Gypsy, Aquan, Sylvan, Tribal, Gnome, Trade Tongue
	14 ranks	Old Kingdom
	16 ranks	Halfling
Celestial	2 ranks	Draconic
	4 ranks	Pious, Abyssal, Infernal
	6 ranks	Orc, Draconian, Elvish, Original, City-State
	8 ranks	Gnoll, Ignan, Terran, Dwarven, Giant, Undercommon
	10 ranks	Sylvan, Aquan, Gypsy, Goblin, Tribal, Gnome, Kingdom
	12 ranks	Old Kingdom
	14 ranks	Halfling, Trade Tongue, Druidic
Original	2 ranks	Draconic
	4 ranks	City-State
	6 ranks	Elvish, Draconian, Celestial, Orc
	8 ranks	Gypsy, Dwarven, Abyssal, Giant, Tribal, Pious
	10 ranks	Old Kingdom, Druidic, Aquan, Sylvan, Undercommon, Terran, Ignan, Goblin, Gnome
	12 ranks	Trade Tongue, Gnoll
	14 ranks	Kingdom, Halfling

Language Descriptions & Notes: The Obscure Languages

The following language descriptions frequently mention rendering text using particular fonts that I have in my collection. Some of these may have unrestricted licenses, some may be free only for non-commercial use, and a few may even have come with collections or software that is only available to paying customers. In the seventh section on Languages,, I’ll include a brief sample of text rendered into each language and displayed using the relevant font. For now, all that really needs to be noted is that I have chosen fonts that ‘look right’ for the language as I envisaged it for this campaign.

Similarly, a number of modified modern languages have been used as a shortcut for simulating the various fantasy tongues. The goal was not to create a genuine language, not even to be consistent, but simply to create an appropriately non-English “sound” with the right sort of accents and noises. I hope no speaker of any named language takes offense – or undue compliment – from the use of their native tongue. Such usage says nothing about the language itself, and even less about the people who actually use it; at most it is a commentary on the sounds and flow of syllables that result to English-speaking ears.

Some of the languages fall into multiple categories. While it might be redundant, each language description is included in all relevant categories.

Pious:

Also known as ‘Divine Speech’. Used exclusively for the conducting of human religious services and ceremonies, the way churches used to use Latin. It derives from one of the City-State languages (described seperately elsewhere), making it the most ancient human tongue still in regular use. As such, it uses a lot of generic terms for more recent innovations; it has no descriptive terms or proper names for different non-human species, for example. Instead, it has a number of terms for describing an individual’s state of Grace, from “Irredeemable” through to “Most Holy”, which are applied to whole classes of non-human. “Heretics” might be Orcs or Elves or Fey or Wizards.

Pious is used for all formal church doctrines and holy books, and this blanket terminology shapes theological attitudes to non-human species. For example, the title ‘Paladin’ literally translates as Protector or Defender. As such, anyone who takes up arms to defend a Church may be blessed as a paladin by the church, and treated in the same way as would a Paladin, giving rise to such phrasing as ‘The Paladin then gathered to him paladins to oppose the heretic’.

This sample phrase also shows other aspects of Pious deriving from it’s age: (1) a stilted, almost pretentious, phraseology; and (2) collective nouns are used only for the subject, not the object; ‘The Heretic’ might be one or it might be a besieging army. The next phrase in this story might well be ‘And the Heretic were layed low by the holy might of the paladin.” Sentences tend to be short and declarative, with full stops used where commas might be expected. It is also normal practice to number each statement.

Note that this language is not taught to non-priests, though many laymen will gradually pick up phrases here and there. To render text into Pious, translate into Greek without font change, then add or subtract vowels as necessary to permit a smooth flow.

Pious is considered a Common tongue for Human Clerics and Priests, a Rare language for other humans, and an Obscure language for non-humans.

Written form: display translated text using a Greek language or appropriate mathematical Symbols Font.

Druidic:

The first release of the Shards Of Divinity House Rules asserted that “Druids do not have a separate language’. Further examination of the campaign concepts have shown that this is both true and misleading; there IS a language called “Druidic”, but it is NOT a language that can be used to communicate effectively with anyone else that knows the language. Rather, it is a learned ability to communicate with nature, to hear what the surroundings have to say about the weather that is coming, the local conditions, any threats within the region, any sites with peculiarities nearby, where the nearest spring is, and so on. It is also employed to tell the spirits of nature that inhabit every geographic feature, that shelter and nurture every species of animal and plant, that bring the rain and the storms and the weather, exactly what the Druid would like them to do. They may not listen (they often don’t) and may not answer the request in a timely fashion (they don’t have the same concept of time as mortals, but neither do Druids, so that’s all right).

This “Druidic” language has evolved from little bits of a number of different languages, predominantly Elvish and Sylvan, but with a slight tinge of more human languages such as Gypsy and Old Kingdom. Each Druid’s Circle – and, in fact, each Druid – develops his own Druid’s Tongue. As initiates, this essentially comprises parts of the lowest common denominator amongst the “Druidic” of the Druid’s Circle that has accepted the initiate; as a character grows in understanding, so his version of “Druidic” becomes more and more unique, and more and more dedicated to the terrain in which he spends most of his time. It also, therefore, becomes less and less useful generically, ie when the Druid is outside his own terrain. Druids who adventure will often need to select companion species to accompany him; while they may be useful for other reasons, the dominant reason for their presence is to translate the Druid’s requests into the local dialect. Of course, the less native they are to the local environment, the less help they can be.

Druidic is considered an Unusual language for Druids, a Rare language for Gypsies, Elves & Fey, and an Obscure language for all others.

Translating into Druidic is an ‘entertaining’ exercise. Extract and translate proper nouns other than animal and plant species using a random choice of Sylvan, Elvish, or Kingdom. Translate the remaining nouns into sounds and/or actions that are characteristic of the creature. Reformat the rest of the text using Alphabet Of The Magi – then interpret loosely into animal noises, weather sound effects, hand gestures, and anything else that comes to mind.

There is no written form of this ‘Language’.

Undercommon:

This is a “perversion” of Elvish, according to the Elves, that is spoken only by Drow and a few subterranean races that they have manipulated into attacking other species.

Undercommon is considered Unusual for Elves, Dwarves, and Demons and Obscure for all others.

To translate into Undercommon, first translate into Elvish as per the notes on Elvish Names and then apply the following transformations: replace c with z, replace ch with gh, replace p with k, and q with t. Then tweak for a flowing pronunciation.

To render Undercommon text, display the result using the appropriate Elvish variant by tongue.

Terran:

Terran is used by a number of underground-dwelling species such as Xorn. It is a blend of influences from a number of different languages, primarily Draconian and Dwarven.

Grammatically, it has been influenced by the Elvish dialect known as Undercommon. However, most of the simplest (and probably the oldest) terms derive from a fourth source – the same “other” that influenced Gnoll, and which theologians associate (rightly or wrongly) with Devils (Knowledge Religion, 20 ranks, is required to know of this association). Since Draconian contains elements that the same theologians associate with Demons (Knowledge: Religion 15 ranks is required to know this), the implication drawn by theology is that these anti-social elements abide in an underground environment, and have most strongly influenced the development of those who live beneath the earth. These theologians claim (with absolutely no evidence) that Giants and Gnolls were emissaries of these fell forces who were driven to the surface by primitive Dwarves, or in order to carry out the will of their hidden masters.

To translate into Terran, start by translating all 1-syllable words of 4 letters or less into Filipino, then modify the result as per the Naming rules for Gnomes. Translate everything else as per the rules for Dwarven names. Then modify to give a flowing speech.

To render Terran, use Dwarven runes.

Ignan:

Ignan derives from virtually the same sources as Terran, but has even less Dwarven and virtually no Undercommon influences. To theologians (Knowledge: Religion 20 ranks), this is obviously because those who speak Ignan are closer to the dwelling-places of Devils and Demons, and hence the conditions of The Hells (from whence Devils and Demons derive) must resemble those of Ignan speakers – underground, hot beyond belief, sulphurous atmosphere, etc.

To translate into Ignan, start by translating all 1-syllable words of 4 letters or less, and all verbs, into Filipino. Translate everything else into Greek, phoneticise, and then reverse the sequence of syllables. Then apply the character substitutions specified for Gnomish names.

To render Ignan, display the results in Autorealm Phoenician.

Aquan:

Aquan is a blend of Sylvan and Elvish, as heard underwater.

To translate into Aquan, first translate into Gaelic, then apply the substitutions specified for Elvish character names. Finally, replace all ‘a’ with ‘u’, all ‘e’ with ‘o’, all ‘i’ with ‘uo’, and all ‘m’ and ‘n’ with ‘b’.

To display Aquan script (very rarely encountered), display the results using Tengwar Sindarin.

Draconic:

This language is known only to Elves, Dwarves, and Fey, and then only to well-educated individuals (Ask the referee if you think you might qualify). Well-educated humans may have been taught a ‘reconstructed’ version derived from its influence on other tongues, but this is not true Draconic any more than pidgin English is James Joyce. Since no human in living memory can prove to have communicated with Dragons, despite the occasional rumors and claims to the contrary, and the other species don’t talk about Dragons, the language can be considered dead. There are legends that dragons taught elves advanced spellcasting, and that they had been taught to write by Dwarves, but these might by myth.

To translate into Draconic, use Russian and then phoneticise, rephrasing any terms that do not translate into literal phrases. Draconic mouths cannot distinguish between p and b, or between u and w, so replace the latter with the former.

To render Draconic – according to legend – use Dwarven Runes.

Abyssal:

The public at large don’t even know this language exists. This is the mythical ‘native tongue’ of Demons, and merely speaking it is grounds for the harshest of punishments and implicit proof of irredeemable corruption. Theologians of sufficient education (Knowledge Religion 15 ranks) may be taught to recognize its grammar, syntax, and parts of its vocabulary. However, some characters have an ‘effective’ ability in Abyssal due to the influence of the language on other languages used by species considered “fallen” or “corrupt” by the Pious, notably the users of Undercommon and Draconian.

Theological doctrine restricts this knowledge on the grounds that it could be confusing, as this language contains elements that bear a strong resemblance to the mythic language of Heaven, of which Pious is a simplified and imperfect child (much like humanity itself). It is felt by the church hierarchy that this would be too confusing for lay preachers and ordinary priests, not to mention the public. Again, unless you have sufficient Knowledge Religion to know about the language, you will not know about the controversy.

To translate into Abyssal, use Greek and phoneticise for nouns, then Russian for everything else.

To render it, display the results in Autorealm Phoenician without spaces between words except on either side of a Proper Noun, and without other punctuation except at the end of a complete passage of text. Then insert spaces at the end of every 1d4 syllables.

Infernal:

This language is also a secret from the general public, for much the same reasons as Abyssal. This is the mythical ‘native tongue’ of Devils, and merely speaking it aloud is believed by theologians to be an open invitation for the theft of the soul. Theologians of sufficient education (Knowledge Religion 20 ranks) may be taught to recognize its grammar, syntax, and parts of its vocabulary, and some characters have an ‘effective’ ability in Infernal through the influence of the language on the tongues of other species considered “evil” or “diabolical” by the Pious, notably the use of Terran, Ignan, and Gnoll.

To translate into Infernal, use Filipino. Rephrase anything that doesn’t translate.

To render it, use Autorealm Phoenician.

Celestial:

The existence of this language is widely-known to the religious, but no-one can actually speak it. Many characters have the equivalent or a marginal smattering of it through the impact it has had – according to theological doctrine – on other languages. Those with sufficient Knowledge Religion (20 ranks) will know that both Abyssal, Draconic, and Infernal are all purported to be corruptions of the language. The language most closely related to Celestial that is in modern usage is Pious.

To translate into Celestial, translate into Filipino.

To render Celestial, display the results using Symbol (a Greek-like font).

Original:

This is the mother tongue of humans, and is both dead and lost. The families of Paradise split this language into the Nine City-State languages. It would seem that with such a wealth of lingual structure, reconstructing the original language would be easy; even the fact that the City-State languages are themselves now dead and obscure would seem little more than an added complication. The problem is that the city-state languages are internally contradictory in grammar, syntax, and vocabulary; clearly there has been wholesale language cross-contamination and creation.

To translate into Original, use a random selection, syllable-by-syllable, of Dutch, Portuguese, Greek, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Latin, and Icelandic.

To render Original, display the resulting text in Czar, with the occasional syllable in Symbol (i.e., Greek Characters).

Choosing modifying adjustments to your source language

Okay, so using the tips that I provided in The Ineodolus Imperascora, you’ve chosen your language and even identified a few recurring character groups that you think will sufficiently transform the sound of the spoken language into something new. The next thing to think about is what you are going to actually do with each of those character groups.

After all, you have hundreds of choices. If your letter group is one particular consonant, you have 21 others to choose from – and that’s just replacing one for one. Instead, you could replace your chosen consonant with another plus a vowel – or even a vowel and a consonant, or a vowel wrapped between two consonants. You could even go “consonant – vowel – consonant – space – consonant” – padding out the original part-word and splitting the resulting word into two at that point.

For me, the best approach is to look (briefly) at the incidence of the character group being replaced. The higher it is, the greater the impact that the change will have. Then I plan my global search-and-replace sequences based on the resulting level of dominance that I expect the new sounds to have.

Here are a few relevant sites:

• English text frequencies
• Cryptography Hints
• Monogram, Bigram and Trigram frequency counts

That last link is especially useful as you can copy and paste a body of text and have it analyzed for you. For example, if I copy this article up to and including this point here ·, I find that the most common letter pairing is th (by some considerable margin) followed by he, an, in, er, and then a number of pairs that are just about equal in frequency: ny, re, on, al. But that’s no real surprise; a check of the trigram frequency count shows that the most common trio of letters is “the” by a margin of three-to-one relative to the next highest – which is roughly a tie between the considerably less likely “bsp” and “nbs” – with “and” and “ing” just behind in fourth and fifth place. Changing “the-and-a-space” in a body of text would therefore have a huge impact.

In the preceding paragraph alone, just replacing “the-plus-space” with “AG”, “the-without-a-space” with “BO”, “bsp” with “ZOO”, “nbs” with “VHA” and “ing” with “RUE” gives:

That last link is especially useful as you can copy and paste a body of text and have it analyzed for you. For example, if I copy this article up to and includRUE this point here ·, I find that AGmost common letter pairRUE is th (by some considerable margin) followed by he, an, in, er, and BOn a number of pairs that are just about equal in frequency: ny, re, on, al. But that’s no real surprise; a check of AGtrigram frequency count shows that AGmost common trio of letters is “BO” by a margin of three-to-one relative to AGnext highest – which is roughly a tie between AGconsiderably less likely “ZOO” and “VHA” – with “and” and “RUE” just behind in fourth and fifth place. ChangRUE “BO-and-a-space” in a body of text would BOrefore have a huge impact.

But most of the English is still there and recognizable. That’s why I prefer to work with two-character pairs, or less.

Here’s the same paragraph again, but this time replacing the six most common letter pairs with “AG”, “BO”, “ZO”, “VHA”, “RUE” and “HUL” respectively, then replacing the most common pair of vowels with “EY” and the most common single vowel with “STY”:

AGat last lBOk is STYspSTYcially usSTYful as yEY cVHA copy VHAd pastSTY a body of tSTYxt VHAd havSTY it VHAalyzSTYd for yEY. For STYxamplSTY, if I copy AGis articlSTY up to VHAd BOcludBOg AGis poBOt ZOHUL ·, I fBOd AGat AGSTY most common lSTYttSTYr pairBOg is AG (by somSTY considSTYrablSTY margBO) followSTYd by ZO, VHA, BO, STYr, VHAd AGSTYn a numbSTYr of pairs AGat aHUL just abEYt STYqual BO fHULquSTYncy: ny, HUL, on, al. But AGat’s no HULal surprisSTY; a cZOck of AGSTY trigram fHULquSTYncy cEYnt shows AGat AGSTY most common trio of lSTYttSTYrs is “AGSTY” by a margBO of AGHULSTY-to-onSTY HULlativSTY to AGSTY nSTYxt higZOst – which is rEYghly a tiSTY bSTYtwSTYSTYn AGSTY considSTYrably lSTYss likSTYly “bsp” VHAd “nbs” – wiAG “VHAd” VHAd “BOg” just bSTYhBOd BO fEYrAG VHAd fifAG placSTY. ChVHAgBOg “AGSTY-VHAd-a-spacSTY” BO a body of tSTYxt wEYld AGSTYHULfoHUL havSTY a hugSTY impact.

Suddenly, most of the English is gone, aside from the occasionally recognizable word. But as I read over the results, I found myself changing the pronunciation of even those familiar words in response to a natural rhythm from the changes – “EYES” for “is”, “AYS” (rhymes with haze” for “as”, and so on.

So how did I choose that particular set of replacements? Well, to be honest, I made them up off the top of my head. If I were doing this “for real”, though, I would try to use phonetics to characterize the race in question. Elves, for example, should have a lyrical, melodic, even lilting quality to their speech. Sounds should all be relatively soft – lose anything harsh or hard. And stick a vowel in between every second or third word instead of a space – then replace all prior instances of that vowel with a space. Those are the sort of changes that immediately come to mind for converting English into a (non-Tolkien) Elvish. Thinking on it even further, I would realize that every “forbidden sound” involves moving the tongue to the roof of the mouth – “t”, “d”, “z” – or popping the lips – “p” – or a “k” sound (including some “c” and “ch” sounds. So my second draft of such a process would be to replace “t” with “th”, “p” with “f”, and every “k” or “c” with “ss”; then get rid of every “d” or “z” completely.

But it gets a lot easier when you aren’t starting from English in the first place. There are a number of languages with that lyrical, lilting quality already – Welsh, French, Spanish – so if you start from one of those, you not only have eliminated virtually all of those familiar words from the outset but achieved half your goals.

Using Accents

One final trick – no matter how bad you are at accents, reading words made up from a foreign language in a false accent adds yet another color to the language that helps make it distinctive!

Next: Parumveneaora (The Vale Of Dreams); The Language Map; And some discussion of the reasons for this approach to languages.

Earlier this week I received an email from Richard Hetley, a writer & game designer from Megara Entertainment. Magara have a new kickstarter-funded project, and Richard was inviting me to write an article about that project.

I’ve received a number of such invitations in the past, and turned them down (politely and with words of encouragement where appropriate) (and sincere well-wishes, regardless) for a variety of reasons – most frequently because there did not seem to be enough appeal to our readership, and/or because by the time the article was written and posted online, the funding window would have closed.

Richard managed to avoid the first of those opportunities to roll a catastrophic “1”, and the product itself interested me enough to avoid the second – not for what the project is, per se, but for what gaming value I could get from it.

The latter is what I’m going to be writing about, but the proper place to start is by introducing the project itself.

Arcana Agency: The Thief of Memories

Here’s the press release describing the project and a couple of links to both the kickstarter page and a free preview adventure:

Arcana Agency: The Thief of Memories is a full-color print gamebook now on Kickstarter

“Gamebooks” are a type of RPG more commonly known as “Choose Your Own Adventure” books in years past: stories where you control the plot yourself, deciding what a character does in each scene and turning to some other indicated page to see what happens next. Arcana Agency puts the reader in control of a team of paranormal investigators in 1930’s New York City. It’s written in third person (“he,” “she”) instead of second person (“you”), which is a departure from other gamebooks, and allows you to control multiple characters at once (like an adventuring party in print book form). It also does those little stunts that you can only manage in a book, like “Go to the page number that matches the combination on this lock,” making play more interesting and challenging than just a series of paths (and avoiding “Darn, wrong path, I’ll cheat and take the other one”).

There is a free “demo” available (both links are to the same file):

Arcana Agency: The Case of the Unghostly Ghost (link 1)

Arcana Agency: The Case of the Unghostly Ghost (link 2)

This download, The Case of the Unghostly Ghost, is a playable prequel that links up to the Kickstarter gamebook at the end. The last full day to pledge to Arcana Agency and help bring The Thief of Memories into the world is 12/12/12.

Gamebooks In General

Most “gamebooks” don’t excite me all that much, I’ll be honest. The choices of action are frequently confining and limited, and sometimes ridiculously stupid or shortsighted. At other times, you are forced to make a choice on too little information. You are often in the roleplaying guise of a character that is insufficiently defined, up front, for you to make the decisions required. I often want to make a different choice mid-paragraph to the railroad tracks laid down by the authors. And sometimes these products just seem horribly capricious and random (and I’m thinking specifically of some of the TSR “Choose Your Own Adventure” products here).

Frankly, in general, if given the choice between an “gamebook” of this sort or a game supplement or module, I would choose the supplement/module any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

What’s Different about Arcana Agency:

In a nutshell: The eye candy. The kickstarter project describes the book as “richly illustrated” and folks, they aren’t kidding.

At the top of each page is a relatively small panel containing an illustration:

like the one above from paragraph 48 (near the start of the adventure, I think), or the one below from paragraph 540.

A clarification courtesy of Richard, who commented below, and is part of the project team: The illustrations at the head of each page are a consistent banner used for an entire adventure and not different on each page. It seems the two that I have presented above are from the Thief Of Memory and the Case Of The Unghostly Ghost. Each banner is also an excerpt from a larger image within the adventure. We don’t want people to expect more than they are getting – but at the same time, what they are getting is so tremendous that it’s a minor point.

Beneath that is a section of text – over a full-color textured panel, mind – and then the real reason for the size of those smaller upper illustrations becomes clear. Half the page or thereabouts is a glorious full color illustration – and, to judge by the examples proffered, an illustration not so much of the action but of the setting.

Check out the above excerpt from pararaph? section? 48 – the Brooklyn Museum, or the one below for an alleyway scene.

The Game Value

So, the reason I am so enthusiastic about this project is because even if the adventure totally blows (and I have no indication that it does fit that worst-case description), I can use these illustrations in my pulp campaign or my supers campaign, I can just add anything unusual or distinctive to the scene verbally.

I once advised that ‘One picture should be worth 1,000 words’. Using The Thief Of Memories as a game resource, over and above any enjoyment that can be derived from the adventure itself saves me 1,000 words of flavor text, enabling me to focus on distinctive features. I could use that “Brooklyn Museum” illustration for any museum or the study of any wealthy individual just by describing some changes to the window dressing:

• “The painting is a gothic castle backed by storm clouds. As you watch, lightning flashes from the painted clouds and you hear the rumble of distant thunder.”
• “At the end of the corridor is a polished suit of plate mail with brightly-colored enamel on the breastplate. The crest is that of the Family Plantagenet.”
• “The painting is surprisingly cheap and tacky, heavily faded, and looks out of place.”
• “The walls and floor are painted an antiseptic green, now stained with wild splatters of blood.”
• “The mysterious woman in scarlet turns the corner, but when you reach the corridor down which she fled but a moment earlier, all you see is this…”

Similarly, the alley setting can be used as any alley, anywhere, enabling me to get straight to the point:

• “As you pass the drunken beggar, his eyes glow a bright green.”
• “You are just in time to see the caped and hooded figure slipping into the shadowed doorway down the alley.”
• “The water in the dingy back alley appears – mysteriously – to be running uphill.”
• “Completely out of place in this era of steamships comes the distant sound of an electronic whine.”
• “The painting of an alley is breathtakingly realistic, and you almost feel like you could step through the frame and into that past era. Unexpectedly, the beggar raises his hand toward you in a pitiful gesture of need, his outstretched hand emerging from the canvas…”

You don’t need to know what any of these examples means – the visual and the narrative alone are enough to hook you into whatever the adventure is going to be.

I could have written a lot more on this subject, but I rather think that the visuals speak for themselves. The ability to frame your own explanations around whatever is illustrated there makes this a lavish collection of top-quality game resources – and well worth the admission fee. So if you’re the GM of a Pulp-era game, or a Steampunk game, or a Modern-era game of any sort, or any of several other genres – check out this Kickstarter and consider backing the project. The rewards make it definitely worthwhile. So check out the fundraising page at kickstarter and consider backing the project. Here’s that link again…

With contributions from Ian Mackinder, Ian Gray, Steven Beekon, Saxon Brenton, & Blair Ramage

This article has been sitting around in my to-do stack for a little over three years. I simply never got around to finishing it – until now. I do find myself wondering if the additional experience has given the contributors any changed opinions or anything more to add, though.

Every DM would like to think that they make every PC unforgettable to the players who operate it. Sadly, even the best of us don’t always succeed, though it happens more often than not. But what can we do to help players take the next step, and make a given PC a favorite character – the type of character that they will bring up as a reference over and over again, and always recall with fondness?

I got to thinking about this when, in my reply to a comment about an article here at Campaign Mastery, I referenced one of my player’s favorite characters from a long-moribund campaign (you can read about Tetsura here).

While I had some personal opinions on the subject, I decided on this occasion to go to the horse’s mouth and solicit additional suggestions from my players, many of whom are GMs in their own right. They all immediately agreed that (i) it was a very tricky question, (ii) that it was a very interesting question, and one worth an attempt to answer!

As I see it, the GMs role achieving this goal comes in three varieties: Things they should encourage, Things they should actively Do,, and Things they should avoid doing at all costs.

Things to encourage

Okay, with 34 ‘rules’ to get through, there’s not going to be much room for fluff; explanations will be short and succinct, or we’ll be here all day! The first 14 ‘rules’ are all things that the GM has no direct control over, but has the capacity to encourage and assist in developing. Some are, at least superficially, in direct contradiction; it’s in finding a way through those contradictions that the GM can directly influence the process of a character becoming one of the player’s favorites. This also explains just why this is so difficult to achieve – it’s capturing lightning in a bottle, it won’t happen every time, or even often; but if you know what to try and achieve, you can’t help but better your chances.

1. Favorite Characters are easy to play

If a player has to stop and think about the personality of the character all the time, the effort gets in the way of it becoming a favorite. That means that the personality has to emerge naturally from some aspect of the personality of the player.

2. Favorite Characters have depth

Cardboard cutouts taste like processed wood pulp – cockroaches and mice might like it, but that’s where the list ends. Achieving depth requires the character to have an original perspective that makes the player aware of subtexts to situations that would otherwise have either passed them by completely or been force-fed to them by the referee.

3. Favorite Characters invest in the campaign

Characters have to act as though they have lived through the campaign background and the events experienced in play prior to the character joining the campaign. The adventures within the campaign are the stories of the characters’ lives, and they have to have sufficient involvement that the player can recall those stories intimately and immediately.

4. Favorite Characters are invested

It’s not enough for the players or the GM to care about what happens in the campaign, the character has to care – and I don’t mean that the player has to pretend that their character cares, I mean that it has to actually make a difference to the character and his future plans and ambitions.

5. Favorite Characters can do something the player finds “cool”

A double-barreled one, this. Every character can do something, and most have at least one trick in their repertoire that someone will find “cool”, but finding something that this player considers “cool” is a bit trickier, involving both game system, character capabilities, player personality and expectations, and what the GM puts on the menu for the game. But there’s even more to it than that; a “cool” gimmick is one that can be used in a variety of situations, and never grows stale as a result – and that’s another very tricky requirement to negotiate.

6. Favorite Characters fit an archetype that matches the player’s preferred playstyle

There are innumerable articles around the net and in old magazines which attempt to shoebox players into different categories. Every time I read one of those articles, I found that I fitted into multiple ‘shoeboxes’, which to me always suggested that the categories were too specific. For my money, there are only two real character types: Roleplayers and Rollplayers, but they each have different requirements; and even within those broad categories, some roles come easier than others.

7. Favorite Characters are unique

Each and every character should be an original in some respect, and not a trivial variation. The longer you play, the harder that is; once a player has tried his hand at all the archetypes, he is reduced to nuancing variations – or to discovering/creating a new archetype. The first is harder to make distinctive, the second is just plain harder – but potentially more rewarding.

8. Favorite Characters entertain

Another multipronged statement – because I’m not just suggesting that they be fun for the player, but also for the GM, and for the other players to interact with (or just to observe in action!). But with the mix of personalities – players and GM and characters – this can be as elusive as a will-o-the-wisp.

9. Favorite Characters become a touchstone of the campaign

There are some characters that become favorites during active play, but most don’t achieve that ultimate accolade until after they retire or are retired, with the benefit of hindsight and fond memories. It always seems, though, that a character who becomes a favorite is one who is constantly being remembered and referred to by other players in the campaign years later.

10. Favorite Characters are more than their statistics

This is a subject for a series of blog posts, but they take a long time to research and write – I know, I’ve tried! This is actually two separate items under the one heading; the best characters reflect their statistics and abilities from root to tip, producing a perfect synergy that enables the personality to shine through in everything that the character attempts; and the best characters also go beyond the game mechanics to capture a concept in play – the statistics are like a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object, they can specify it, but cannot completely capture the essence of the character. That requires words, and imagery, and action, and emotion.

11. Favorite Characters are neither under- nor over-powered

Another big topic. Characters should always be able to make a significant contribution to the problem at hand, but should never be able to solve those problems on their own. Underpowered characters make the player feel like a victim of events; overpowered characters make the GM feel like a victim of the players, to which he usually responds with negative behavior – grudge-monsters, intentional targeting of PCs, ramping up encounter difficulties.

12. Favorite Characters should be strong personalities

They don’t have to be boisterous and shouty, but favorite characters should have a personality that oozes out of every word they say and every move they make. It doesn’t matter how interesting a character is at an intellectual level if they don’t have visceral appeal.

13. Favorite Characters don’t overwhelm the player, GM, gameplay, or campaign

A triple-header, and another subject with room for whole articles under its umbrella. If the character is too complicated for the player, sometimes they will get it exactly right and other times they will find themselves lost in confusion, with the ratio of one to another the only variation. A favorite character is one that 99% of the time, the player can put on like a pair of comfortable shoes and just “wear”.

Sometimes players attempt to achieve this by shunting the harder parts of a character onto the GM, especially true in the case of a roll-player; but conceding that much control over the character means that the character’s personal style is at least partially that of the GM, and that alone is enough to get in the way of that character becoming a favorite of the player – though it may seem for a while that they are, if doing so enables the player to hit that “comfortable shoe” standard. The satisfaction that comes from a character that is completely your own, when you get everything right, makes a ‘shared’ favorite pale in comparison.

Finally, if your character becomes the central focus of the entire campaign, and even trivial choices manifest in horrendous difficulties and committee meetings and loads of angst about the long-term consequences of the decision, it keeps the character from becoming a favorite. Sure, the power and authority can be heady, and even enough to make this character a short-term favorite; but in the long run, this will pale and the character will come to be more work than fun.

14. Emotional Investment occurs in character development as well as in play

A very subtle point with which to conclude this section. The emotional investment is that of the player, who has to care about the character. Characters who have a personal shortcoming and mature beyond it, players who care about how the character will develop and who actively seek out situations in which the player will be forced to grow, are both central to a character becoming a favorite.

This suggests that a positive-feedback loop is at least part of the process of a character becoming a favorite – the players cares enough about the character for his personal development to matter, so that when the character begins to rise above, and/or to make progress in solving or overcoming a (real or perceived) shortcoming, the player becomes even more emotionally invested in the character.

But there is also a danger – solving a character’s problems leaves a vacuum in their wake. Characters can lose the depth that made them interesting to play as their problems are solved. Ideally, every solution will bring with it fresh problems, new perspectives, and fresh emotional landscape for the player to explore. Angst may not be a central requirement of a favorite character, but the ongoing capacity for angst is.

Things the GM should do

Part two of the list consists of a baker’s dozen things that the GM who runs the campaign should be actively doing if the character is to become one of your favorites. A lot of these are simply dramatic storytelling techniques that are to be encouraged in any GM, but we (the contributors and I) want to go beyond simply saying that these should be on the list of things good GMs do and encourage GMs to actively put time into thinking about these on a regular basis, and looking for ways to improve their performance in these 13 key areas.

15. Favorite Characters snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, even when they fail

Temporary setbacks and dramatic reversals are part of any good drama. Every adventure should take PCs up to or even beyond the point where all seems lost – but the good guys should always win in the end, be it in the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth hour. Adventures in which the PCs can plod from the beginning to an inevitable victory should be few and far between; they leave characters feeling empty and lost. At the same time, these victories should never be the results of a die roll – even if the final die roll is a failure, the PCs should be able to rescue the situation.

16. Favorite Characters engage in the campaign

There is a difference between characters investing in the campaign (rule 3) and characters engaging in the campaign. The actions that a PC takes should have an impact on the campaign, the decisions and choices even more so. The character should never be indifferent to what is happening around them, they should be involved. I’ve lost count of the number of plot ideas that I have had, and set aside, simply because there was no way for the characters to engage in the plotline. If it’s not going to matter to them, it’s not worth getting involved in.

17. Favorite Characters show what they can do

I’ve twice had characters in other campaigns in which those characters were never given an opportunity by the GM to demonstrate what they could do. One GM was overwhelmed by the combination of laziness and the scope of the background that I had presented – returning it to me after the year-long campaign folded due to his lack of interest, he admitted that he had never gotten around to reading it. His theory was that he could force-fit each PC into a different compartment and treat them as generic cogs in the plot. For some reason, none of the players count their characters in that campaign as their favorites, and none of them count that campaign as a favorite, either.

Some plotlines should be deliberate star vehicles for a character, and each PC should get their share on this spotlight merry-go-round. It’s not enough for the Player to understand what makes a character unique, the GM has to understand it too – and then has to deliberately play to it from time to time. Unless both of these occur, the character will never be a favorite of the player.

18. Favorite Characters change the campaign

NPCs should react to the character’s deeds, words, and philosophies. A great PC changes a campaign with his very presence.

That doesn’t happen by accident, or not very often.

Every well-designed character has the potential to change the campaign in this way, so it is not the responsibility of the players to see that this happens. That means playing to the character’s strengths and to their weaknesses, giving them opportunities to manifest the uniqueness they contain, and if necessary, the GM should reinvent the campaign world or elements thereof to make that happen.

19. Favorite Characters are given an early “Moment of Awesome”

If a character has a cool shtick, the GM should look for ways to let them use it. Even if they don’t, the character should be put in a position where he can do something awesome – and not something that’s dependant on a successful die roll (what if the character fails?) Sometimes that can mean injecting the improbable into a situation. It often means playing to the strengths of the player, not just those of the character. Think of these as Hero Moments – each character should get them. The battle with the cave troll in The Fellowship Of The Ring is a good example.

Sometimes, when the sole purpose of an encounter is to permit one specific character to have a Hero Moment, I’ll prolong it even if strict game mechanics mean that the encounter should be long dead if the character in question hasn’t had his shot yet. That may be bad GMing from a purist standpoint; it’s great GMing from a narrative standpoint. And if I have to retcon an explanation into the encounter afterwards, so be it. On other occasions, when strict game mechanics would keep the encounter running, but this would overshadow the Hero Moment, I’ll have the encounter finish early (usually by a misjudgment resulting from the Hero Moment). So it all evens out in the end.

An example from long ago: The PCs were trying to stop some machinery on an engine of doom (a mechanical tank – wheels and cogs and steam-power). Standing between them and the mechanism was a hulking great warrior. Because this was a hero moment for the fighter with the engineering skill, even though he was overshadowed by another fighter in the team, the enemy warrior refused to fall as the more powerful fighter rained blow apon blow down on his back. Bleeding from a mass of cuts, one arm hanging uselessly, all that the better fighter really achieved was the shredding of the warrior’s armor. The better fighter asked, rhetorically, ‘why won’t he fall, I’ve done XXX points of damage!’ to which I answered, “He’s too stupid to know he’s dead.” Finally, the lesser fighter got his chance; one blow – delivered ineptly to a point completely different to the one at which he was aiming. It did no damage but it tripped the warrior, who fell through the blade of the better warrior, severing his head and sending it flying across the room, where it bounced off two walls and the ceiling and landed in the perfect position to jam two vital cogs. The improbability of the warrior surviving long enough to achieve this spectacular demise was forgotten as the table dissolved into helpless gales of laughter. It didn’t matter if the weaker fighter succeeded or failed in his roll – he failed in practice, but had he succeeded the warrior would have inadvertently deflected the blow so that it severed his head.

Such “Moments of Awesome” can seem contrived if you aren’t careful, mostly because they often are. Playing to a character’s unique strengths reduces the frequency and severity of contrivance. And they definitely don’t happen by accident – very often (I’ve seen it once*, though, so you can’t rule it out).

* Really want to know? Okay, in a nutshell: Ian Gray was playing Eubani, a PC who was originally created for an entirely different player and who became an NPC when that player changed his mind about joining the campaign. Eubani and his fellows encountered a civilization of people who seem to blend the races of Dwarves and Halflings. There was a big feast, everyone swilling beer, and the warriors of the clan telling boastful tales of their prowess. So Eubani got to his feet and told of some of the adventures of he and the other PCs – and got an exploding critical on his Perform: Storytelling check. And then rolled another 20, and then 20 again, and so on… he ended up with a total of 145 or something ridiculous like that. What he hadn’t recognized was that this was how the men of that culture attracted the women, a peacock strut being put on by the bachelors present in a bid to woo the hand of the somewhat hot-tempered and flighty princess, who promptly fell head over heels for this dashing figure…

The sooner in a character’s “life” such a moment of awesome occurs, the more it will become a hook for the player to hang his personality on, a touchstone moment for the character.

20. Favorite Characters are given the opportunity to do cool things

This one’s easy: put the characters somewhere where “interesting” things are happening – and then find ways for them to participate. The trick is not making them seem contrived.

The more spectacular something will be if it succeeds, the more the GM should encourage that success. But don’t make every success a spectacular one – you need the really spectacular moments to stand out.

21. Favorite Characters evolve throughout the campaign

Engagement (Rule 16) means that the characters change the course of events by getting involved in them. Character Evolution means that the events in which the character gets involved change the character.

We’re not just talking about mechanical changes, but about personality growth. Difficult decisions, things where the character’s moral judgments have unexpected results, philosophic and emotional conundrums of all sorts.

22. Favorite Characters grow as ‘virtual people’

This is not quite the same thing as rule 21. A character can be a collection of carefully-documented personality traits on the page, or they can live and breathe and extend themselves into areas beyond that documentation. Those personality traits might be generalized high points, but there’s more to them than that.

This is also especially true of characters in game systems that don’t even document personality traits. The Hero System gives characters psych lims, to describe personality traits so strong that the influence the character’s actions. These are at least a starting point. Pathfinder and D&D give no such starting point, instead furnishing racial and character class descriptions that are abstract manifestations of common personality traits – finding an individual amongst this statistical mélange is up to the player.

23. Favorite Characters are only as good as their enemies – but the line is razor-thin

If your opposition is powerful and you defeat them by force of arms, then you are more powerful. If you beat them by clever strategy, then you are more clever. If they have a cool gimmick, it makes your gimmicks even cooler. If the strongest person in the world fights only wimps, they will never have a reputation worth a damn. And unless they have something the players can boast about to each other, they will rarely come to occupy a special place in the players’ hearts – at least that’s the theory.

So a favorite character succeeds against tough opposition.

But never opposition so tough that they make the players feel helpless, or worse, feel that the GM is throwing the PCs victories they don’t deserve. No matter how superficially powerful, the PCs must always feel like they are making progress, that they have a fighting chance – if they can only stack the deck in their favor just right. There is a razor-thin sweet spot that takes time and experience and luck to hit consistently.

This is an especially difficult problem in superhero and pulp games, in which the “good guys” are required to win (at least in the long run), by the rules of the genre. In fantasy gaming, its more acceptable for one of the good guys to get killed by sufficient opposition, especially if their sacrifice leads to the final victory. You can’t have that happen regularly in the Pulp or Supers genre.

A favorite trick to help is to make the villains really tough – but vulnerable, directly or indirectly, to one or more of the ‘cool’ abilities of the characters. The trick is then to get that information into the hands of the PCs without them feeling that you’re throwing them answers from the back of the book. But you can’t do that all the time or it becomes stale. Another technique I’ve used to good effect from time-to-time is to make the villains immune to all the standard tricks of the PCs – but vulnerable to one or two of the less-frequently used abilities.

24. Favorite Characters have background elements which the GM infuses into the campaign

Every player likes to make his mark on the campaign. The more a PC contributes, not only to the present-day action, but also to the campaign background, the more special they become, and the more connected to that game world. If the character feels tacked onto the campaign world, they are exceptionally unlikely to feel achieve the depth of connection with the player required for them to become a favorite.

This is more than the villain-of-the-week being someone the character’s background name-checks. Plotlines and motivations and ambitions should all emerge from the character, and should reference not only what the character was doing then but what they are doing now. The adventures, in other words, should seem to emerge organically from the PCs being who they are.

But there is a caveat – the player must like that part of their character background. An encounter with a villain the player thinks sounds like ‘a cool idea’ who the GM can take to a whole other level? The PC (and that NPC!) are on the fast-track to becoming favorites. But if the GM’s interpretation falls short of the perceived ‘coolness’ of the concept, or the idea is not that great to start with, it can make the Hero feel as lame as the villain.

25. Favorite Characters have a non-mechanical interaction with the game

We’re starting to get into slightly slippery territory here, which is always where the most profound insights are likely to be found. This sounds like a simple thing to define at first – but if you try and put salt on the tail, it slips and wriggles loose very easily. In a way, this goes back to the character being more than just a collection of characteristics, but the catch is that they have to be that ‘more’ both in the eyes of the player and in those of the GM, and those perceptions have to manifest within the game. If both sides can perceive the character as more than just that block of numbers without trying then they have almost certainly achieved ‘favorite’ status.

It often helps if you can capture the essence of the character in a single line of description or two beyond a mere summary. But construction of such descriptions often takes the part of complex and convoluted compound sentences, and that puts them more into the province of a summary than a capturing of a character’s essence. There is a level of artistry, almost of poetry, in these summaries when they work right. For example, contemplate the following alternatives:

1. A sentient dimensional boundary in the form of a gargoyle who uses his tremendous strength and aggression to expiate his guilt over past failures.
2. A near-invulnerable brick with homicidal tendencies and the ability to change size and shape.
3. A man driven by guilt to find redemption for the sins and mistakes of his past.

All three of these are describing the same character, as players in my Zenith-3 campaign will immediately recognize. But in terms of this requirement of a favorite character, only the third one hits the nail on the head; the first is full of compound constructions and is an almost mechanical summary of the conceptual basis of the character; the second is blatantly superficial; but the third gets to the core of who this character is. It says nothing about what the character can do, but is all about what he will do and why. It transcends game mechanics – and, in this case, even transcends genre.

The real reason for the slipperiness of this ‘rule’ now stands revealed – it uses the vague term “game” when it should have used the specific term “campaign”.

Or should it have? Is there not a grain of truth in the first part of version A – “A sentient dimensional boundary” – to which this rule would also apply?

A unique character concept, provided that it is sufficiently tightly integrated with character background and abilities, can push beyond what the game mechanics can envisage to become “cool” in its own right. A fascinating idea may not be enough to carry the character all the way to favorite status, but it can certainly get the character part-way there. And that’s why I didn’t change the “rule” and rewrite these paragraphs.

26. Favorite Characters are in a game where another player is having fun

I’m sure most of you thought that this was going to read “a game where the player is having fun”. But that pretty much goes without saying, and is one of the motives behind this article in the first place.

Laughter is contagious. Smiles are contagious. This is also true of irritability and impatience and unhappiness, though the first two can often overcome the latter moods. It follows that if one player is having fun, the other players can viscerally enjoy that entertainment, and contribute to it, and are more likely to enjoy playing their characters as a consequence. If it happens regularly enough, the character will become associated with that sense of fun, of being entertained – and that gives the player the capacity to discover those elements of their character that can make them a favorite.

I have never found any player’s favorite character to derive from a campaign where someone else was not having a barrel-load of fun.

27. Favorite Characters belong to their player

Each player brings something different to their interpretation of a character. When that difference of expression achieves the point of a distinctive uniqueness, the character is usually a favorite.

I’ve referred to Blackwing as an example a number of times in this article, and the reason is simple: he’s been played by three different players, and each brought something radically different out of the character. Blackwing started out as a relatively ordinary brick in a magical suit of armor whose wearer ‘liberated’ it from a Demon stronghold during a police raid. Instead of turning it in, the character put on the armor and became a superhero. Because the player was new to constructing characters who were more than a collection of stats, his background, as synopsized, had several holes in it – where the armor came from, why the character would choose to essentially steal the suit from the evidence locker, how it gave him super strength and resilience, what Demon were doing with it in the first place, and so on. So I filled in the blanks, but the character was not really a favorite of his creator. Then something happened, and the character transformed into a gargoyle. This was intended to be a temporary situation, a consequence of the additional conceptual material I used to fill in the blanks – a “one ring” style of seduction, and the character’s reluctance to remove it completely, and the way it achieved that power-up. But Nick found the angst of the character appealing, and the concept of being trapped in gargoyle form interesting, and asked to keep the change. The character even changed his name from “Knight” to “Blackwing”. For completely unrelated reasons, a year or two later, he dropped out of the campaign (later to return with another character when the reasons for his departure no longer applied) and Blackwing became the plaything of a new owner. Blackwing version II was totally over the top, a hyper-exuberant shapechanger with wolverine-style morality. He had razor-sharp claws backed by super strength, and he wasn’t afraid to use them. Jonathon had so much fun playing the character that it had to be a favorite, but the time came (as is often the case in really long campaigns) when he had to drop out – and Blackwing was passed to a third player. At first, Saxon struggled to get a grip on the character, but Jonathon had carried it to the point where the real background story was beginning to emerge – the character had hit its lowest ebb and become everything that it hated, and was in a somewhat self-destructive frame of mind. Going through the entire character concept from top to bottom, a few unifying elements (the ‘guilt’ aspect, predominantly) were added and the third definition of the character given above began to emerge. Blackwing is now moody and angst-ridden a lot of the time, but now has complete control over his appearance – he no longer has to be a gargoyle, he just feels more comfortable looking like a monster because that is what he became, in his own eyes. One major plotline in the new campaign is the completion of the rehabilitation of the character in the character’s own eyes. Is Blackwing now one of his favorites? I don’t think he’s quite there yet – but that’s the trend at the moment. It will simply take the right circumstances for everything to ‘click’ to make that step – and another set of ‘right circumstances’ for it to be recognized by the player.

You may be wondering why this rule is in this section and not in the preceding one? What can the GM do to influence this factor?

There are two things. The first is to craft adventures and subplots that permit the player to really explore the character and find aspects of it that they like, to find ‘their own voice’ to use an acting metaphor. The second is to talk to the player about the character from time to time, to help the player get under the skin and inside the skull of the character – then use that information to shape opportunities for roleplay within the campaign.

The better the player understands the character, the more effortlessly he can step into the character’s shoes, and the more he will enjoy playing that character. The better the GM understands the character, the more opportunity he can provide for the character’s personality to find expression in campaign events. Both make the character more fun to play – and that helps make not only that character but every other character in the game, a favorite.

Things the GM should NOT do

If there are things that the GM should encourage the player to do, and things the GM should actively pursue himself, then equally there are things that the GM should not do – or, if they are necessary, at the very least should approach with extreme caution and trepitude.

28. Weaken a Character

“Weaken” is perhaps the wrong term. “Undermine” is a far better verb to describe the action to be avoided.

If a character is capable of bench-pressing a fully-laden oil tanker, and his strength is reduced to the point where he can merely lift an empty one, it doesn’t really alter the fundamentals of that character very much. But if a key element of the character is a sense of exuberant freedom, the last thing the GM should do is force the character to feel trapped and confined with no escape in sight, and especially not without the full connivance of the player. If the character has a shtick that is “cool”, the GM should never take that shtick away from the character. He can render it ineffective against a single foe, but should never remove it – or do anything that removes the “cool” from it.

29. Interfere with a character

A GM can help a player get under the skin of his character. That’s not only fine, it’s recommended. But the GM should never force the character to behave in a certain way against the wishes of the character. The most he is ever justified in doing is taking the player aside and trying to understand why the player thinks the character would behave or react in a certain way.

But there’s more to it than that. Interfering with a character can take many forms; another is to arbitrarily redefine who and what the character is. If there is a problem with what the character can do, get the player’s assistance and approval for any changes before they become rules.

30. Take Over a character

A stronger form of the first two types of detrimental behavior. Telling a player what his character does is a real no-no, and can poison any prospects of that character becoming a favorite. Heck, it can even turn a player off an existing favorite. You can explain context, and perception, and employ logic and persuasion – but NEVER arbitrarily override a player’s choice of action.

Furthermore, the GM should never permit any disapproval of an action to bias him against the outcome of that action. I don’t care if the GM thinks that an Elf will automatically do X under Y circumstances, that doesn’t justify forcing an elf character to fail when he attempts to do Y. The GM can advise “you think that will probably not work”, he can ask if the character is sure of what he is doing, he can even request a discussion of the logic behind the decision (especially if the GM suspects that player knowledge is being used as character knowledge) – but at the end of the day, the GM has to interpret the player’s choice of actions impartially.

There is an exception: if a player is unable to attend a game session, or is going to be late or have to leave early, it may be permitted (even required) for the GM to take over the character. In which case, it is incumbent on the GM to play that character as he thinks the player would have done even if he thinks the right way for the character to behave is differently.

31. Make a character feel helpless

I don’t completely agree with this rule. Now if it read “Don’t make a player feel helpless,” that would be a different story.

I have no particular problem with circumstances occasionally making a character feel helpless provided that the player never feels that way – so long as there is a clear path for the player to follow that will lead to the character finding a solution that reveals that they aren’t actually helpless after all. This is where the GM can divulge some ex-parte player information to the benefit of the campaign – but be warned, there is little more excruciating than the GM dropping hint after hint and the player still not being able to grasp a solution that seems obvious to the GM. Better by far to present the player with a complete chain of logic on a note leading to the ultimate conclusion than to leave the player feeling stupid for not being able to see the blindingly obvious – or the blindingly inobvious, in this case. Presented with the solution, the player can then roleplay past the roadblock.

Oh, and on the same general theme: never have an NPC present a solution that should have been obvious to the PC. It will only make things worse.

32. Make a character look hopeless

A subtly-distinctive variation on the preceding point. If an opponent is so hard to hit, for example, that the combat monster in the party is having trouble landing a telling blow, Never, ever, make it look like its the character’s fault. You can have blows bounce off surprisingly resilient armor, you can have the enemy twist away from the blow by the narrowest of margins so that what would normally be a devastating injury becomes an easily-ignored flesh wound – these both imply solutions to the problem, or at least that it’s because the enemy is impressive, not that the PC is un-impressive. This applies especially to the character’s shtick, the thing that makes them special and earns them their place in the party. Frustration makes no favorites.

33. Let a character dominate the campaign

Warcry had to leave the Zenith-3 campaign, because he had come to dominate it. In order for the opposition to be able to go toe-to-toe with him, they had to be able to take any other PC out of the battle with a single blow. I have seen the same thing happen with other characters in other campaigns under other GMs – there comes a point where the choice has to be made between the character and the campaign. Where time permits, perhaps the character can diverge into a spinoff campaign – but its better for the character to retire with dignity than for the whole campaign to come crashing down.

There are more ways to dominate a campaign than with sheer force, however. It can be just as bad for the campaign to suffer a character who knows everything and whose decisions are therefore the only ones that matter. Or a character who has maxed out every skill in the book.

Every advantage beyond the norm that the GM gives to a character should be balanced by an equally-restrictive liability or disadvantage. In the Shards Of Divinity campaign, the central focus is a character who knows things no-one else does, and that gives the character an advantage over everyone else – PC or NPC. But the character’s contemporary knowledge is lacking, the character is several levels behind his companion(s), and that knowledge is sharply restricted to human affairs – he has extremely limited knowledge of elves and dwarves and other non-human species. Nor does he know anything much about things that were not significant to human history in the past, but that are going to be significant in the future. And finally, the character is capable of both breathtaking insights and bone-headed stupidity. His companion(s) are there to back him up and support him, he is their employer – but the balance in terms of game play is far more 50-50 than it may first appear.

34. Let a favorite NPC or past character steal the spotlight

I, personally, would have split these two points apart into two separate rules – but this is the way the GM who submitted the point phrased it, thinking of two completely separate campaigns as he did so.

Because the senior (NPC) members of the Adventurer’s Club were all modeled on Blair’s favorite Pulp characters from fiction, and were all more experienced than the PCs, the first is something of which he has been accused a number of times. His goal was to ensure that any resource the players needed, they could get their hands on, and that the providers of these services and resources would be competent to handle whatever the PCs asked of them. The inevitable result was that the PCs were overshadowed by any club member who did the same sort of thing that the PC did, because the NPCs were built to a different standard. One of the goals – with Blair’s full agreement – that I stipulated when I first came on board as co-GM was that we ‘humanize’ these expert NPCs. If they are more experienced, they are more famous – so make sure that they have more problems with fame. Give them blind spots and weaknesses and flaws outside their areas of expertise, and make these worse than those of the more fully-rounded PCs. And give the PCs an advantage that the other club members don’t have – the ability to cooperate effectively – then have the NPCs recognize this advantage and come to the PCs for help and guidance. In other words, lower the NPCs and elevate the PCs in importance to the campaign. We haven’t finished this rehabilitation yet – but we’re getting there.

The second part refers to past characters. This is aimed squarely at me, I think – though I’m not aware of any occasion on which a past character has actually stolen the spotlight. In any campaign that’s run for as long as my superhero campaign has done, characters come and go, replaced by younger individuals. This immediately opens the campaign up to two separate blind alleys – the first is to have the PCs so overpowered relative to the campaign concept that the campaign becomes untenable; the second is to expose the campaign to the same problems described above for the Adventurer’s Club. Dealing with this conundrum is an ongoing exercise. For a start, combat fatigue has become a real factor for the senior team. I also subtly play up their flaws, limitations, and weaknesses whenever they are present. I give them problems to deal with that are beyond the scope of what the PCs are generally expected to deal with. A plotline late in the first Zenith-3 campaign deliberately killed off many of the more powerful members and those whose story potential was less than the survivors. Circumstances have given the PCs a particular expertise in a number of areas, and they have now been designated the parent organization’s go-to group for dealing with those problems (this has yet to actually impact the PCs but it will in due course). Extra efforts have been invested in humanizing the NPCs. In the first campaign, the NPCs were given restricted access to campaign events and NEVER got involved in battles (well, almost never). Their role was as mentors and guides – and some were good at it, and some bad, and some a mixture of both. In the new campaign, the NPCs and the PCs approach each other far more from a position of equality – while at the same time, the great killing-off has further reduced the PCs access to the NPCs. All of which makes the PCs more the masters of their own destinies – and the point-people for the problems that their characters confront.

Again, there is an exception to both of these: an NPC who makes the PCs laugh can generally have as much rope err spotlight as he can steal.

Concluding Thoughts

Analyzing why you like something enough to make it your favorite thing of that type is never a waste of time. It puts a GM in touch with the personal strengths that are the pillars of their style, it informs players more clearly of what they want – and what they don’t – and the process facilitates and encourages participation and dialogue.

• Players and GMs, Who is Your favorite PC and why?
• GMs, who is your favorite NPC and why?
• Also, GMs, who is your favorite PC amongst the characters within your campaign – and why?
• And can anyone think of any additional “rules” that we may have left out?

If you’ve followed the advice that I proffered in the first part of this article, your proposed sequel campaign is now brimming with ideas but they are scattered and incomplete. Some of these campaign seeds will flower and bloom, others will wither and lie dormant and unused. They are not yet part of a campaign. Culling, compiling and hammering them into a unified shape is necessary before the campaign can be made ready for play.

Big Pictures

The place to start is with some major decisions. Because there are quite a lot of items to consider in this context and at this time, I’ve subdivided these decisions into four subcategories – Big Picture Decisions, Theme Decisions, Interval Decisions, and Campaign Structure Decisions. Some of these will come naturally and immediately to the GM, others may require considerable contemplation.

Meeting Expectations

The Key to making these broad general decisions is knowing what the players expect from the campaign. I made a big deal of this in the first part of the article so I’m not going to rehash here the points that were made earlier. In general, there are three ways of handling those expectations, and as a general rule you will want to employ all three. The first way of handling expectations is to meet them.

There are going to be some expectations on the part of the players that you want to satisfy, hands down. For one thing, you don’t want to marginalize the achievements of the precursor campaign – and that means that the sequel is going to be all about consequences and reactions to consequences. You won’t want to make any major changes to the style of GMing that you employed in the first campaign, so that means that the campaign structure will be largely similar. Favorite NPCs, especially the ones that the players love to hate, shouldn’t be changed. So many of the key components of the campaign are fixed.

Inverting Expectations

At the same time, there are some expectations that the players may have that you will want to deliberately turn on their heads. In particular, any notion they may have that the previous campaign solved all the world’s problems, that an evil figure will have somehow become an angel following the defeat of his plans, that allies and friends will be steadfast, and especially that any relationships with NPCs that their former characters had will survive intact. Friends fall out and drift apart all the time. People make well-meaning mistakes all the time. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the saying goes, and while everything that the PCs may have done in the big finish may have been done with the best of intentions, the outcome was what it was and not what wishing would make it.

Some former enemies may be revealed in the course of the new campaign as having good reasons for what they did, and may become allies – especially if social or political circumstances within the campaign change. And some characters do reform, or attempt to reform.

My rule of thumb is for characters to always be true to themselves. If they are villains, there is a good reason for that behavior – even if it’s just that they are evil! The better you understand who your NPCs are – or, in this case, were – and how they think, and why, the more easily you can interpret who they will be and what they will do under the changed conditions following the precursor campaign.

Twisting Expectations

A favorite technique of mine is to take a couple of selected expectations that the players hold and twisting them. This comes under the general heading of “Be careful what you wish for”. This takes an expectation, especially one that’s outcome- or consequence-related, and appears to satisfy it while delivering a wholly unexpected and undesirable / desirable outcome. In The Hobbit, Gandalf and his allies drive the Necromancer from his lurking place in Mirkwood – only for him to stand revealed in The Lord Of The Rings as Sauron, and more dangerous than ever.

Managing Expectations

One of the most valuable tool that you have in your arsenal is the reminiscing session. Get your players together after the campaign for a post-campaign party. Play games, eat, drink, be merry – and above all, reminisce. If there’s a revelation or two about the previous campaign that you can finally reveal (even if it makes you look a little foolish), do so. Then listen to what the players have to say very carefully; the conversation will tell you volumes about their expectations of the sequel.

To some extent, players will be unsurprised that things have gone to hell in a hand basket since the preceding campaign; they will expect you to twist and manipulate events to create the scope for a new adventure. So you have a certain latitude. Above all, if the new campaign is to invert or twist expectations of the precursor campaigns’ outcome, part of the new campaign must be the reforming of that outcome; if the players can see the potential for this, they will forgive and accept an awful lot.

There are some expectations that you want to encourage, if you can possibly deliver on them. Insights into what happened in the preceding campaign are a good thing to promise. Try not to encourage the expectation that the new campaign will be “bigger and better” – or even that it will be “flashier” or “grittier”. You can probably promise an interesting plot twist or two, since every good GM throws these in as a matter of course.

Historical Foundations

One useful technique for throwing the big picture into perspective is to sum up the previous campaign as analogous to a historical period, then look at what came next. You might decide that the most appropriate analogy is between Imperial Rome at its height, for example – in which case, the sequel campaign should have a theme of increasing decadence and corruption, “barbarian” incursions, and decline preparatory to the fall of the Empire. There are two ways you could play such a campaign theme – either the PCs are going to be the key to reinvigorating the Empire, or they are going to ultimately become its executioners, a mercy killing after it has undermined and abrogated every principle that made it worthwhile. Of course, the “invading barbarians” don’t have to be from a well-established neighboring Kingdom or rival Empire, they could be from another plane of existence!

These progressions seem “natural” when they are encountered, they are inherently recognized as plausible and believable.

A Plurality Of Civilizations

Of course, it’s always fun to have several different civilizations at different stages within their evolutionary cycle. If the Elves were learned and wise and socially or politically strong in the previous campaign, perhaps they have slipped into decadence – just as the Orcish civilization is starting to emerge from the tribal stage and forming city-states, and the Human Kingdoms are beginning to dream of Empire.

I’m a big fan of the concept that organizational structural change becomes inevitable through growth and efficiency demands. The first Fumanor Campaign was all about recovering from the apocalypse that took place a century earlier in the campaign background and discovering the true cause of the collapse of the old Empire. In the course of the second, the Kingdom of Fumanor (for which the campaigns are named) had grown too large for effective administration from a central position; it was being held together by baling wire and good intentions and not much more. On their estates, the Nobility was more or less independent and the situation was ripe for civil war. That war was the big finish to that campaign, and its outcome dramatically increased the size of the Kingdom beyond any hope of central administration; it is falling apart at the seams in the third and fourth campaigns. One of those campaigns focuses on the never-ending task of putting out increasingly-damaging forest fires in the dynamite factory, holding the Kingdom together despite the inevitability of it flying apart; while the other is dealing with the confrontation with an empire that emerged from the apocalypse more powerful than it had been previously and has since slipped into decadence. Ultimately, both campaigns (and they started off as a single campaign) are about the growing pains as the Kingdom Of Fumanor becomes the Fumanorian Empire – or collapses into warring city-states and a new age of barbarism.

Golden Ages make dull settings

As a general rule, Golden Ages are dull. There’s not enough internal division to make a political campaign interesting, there’s no external threat big enough to threaten them. Expansion is both easy and inevitable. The average citizen can live out a life of moderate prosperity and never be endangered. If the outcome of the prior campaign was an expected new golden age – or even a promised one, if the GM got carried away with his flavor text at the wrap-up – either the sequel campaign is in trouble or the GM is definitely going to have to undermine that rosy promise. Systemic political and social flaws must be uncovered and brought to light, new threats must appear from the outside and internally, and in general, there’s got to be trouble afoot.

Counterpoint

That’s not to say that there can’t be a fun campaign set within a golden age if the GM is creative enough. It will simply be radically different to the preceding one. An age of exploration and discovery and progress, an era of prosperity and opportunity and civil liberties, can carry the seeds of its own inherent demise. Human flaws and failings and ambitions won’t have changed all that much – some people will feel threatened by the prosperity of group X, some people will see the opportunity for personal gains beyond the general, and there’s always the potential of an even bigger enemy on the outside, or even simply an evenly matched rival that’s come out of nowhere. There’s still plenty of scope for adventure – don’t let the difficulty put you off. It’s going to be a harder campaign to run than if everything was falling apart, but in part that’s because it’s an unusual setting – and uniqueness of campaign is always good.

Themes

Having nailed the general concepts of the background of the new campaign, and how it is going to differ from both the expectations of the players and from the old campaign, it’s time to think about themes for the new campaign.

A Theme, in this context, is an element or transition of style or content that will recur throughout the campaign. It can usually be summed up in a relatively pithy and very brief statement.

“All things must pass”. “Some things are inevitable”. “The road to hell is paved with Good Intentions”. “One Man Can make a difference”. “We’re all more than the sum of our parts”. “There are things man is not meant to know”. “Evil cannot help itself”. “All men carry the seeds of their own destruction within”. “Into every life a little rain must fall”. “Death is a dangerous business”. “Winter always follows a Summer”. “Be careful what you wish for”. “Anarchy is its own reward”. “Individualism is Solitary”. “Even a fool can be wise after the fact”. “No-one in Babylon-5 is exactly who he or she appears to be”.

Think of them as taglines that sum up all or a significant part of the campaign – or, in this case, are intended to. As game play proceeds, the interaction between plot and player, between PC and environment, will generate new themes, some of which may supplant the themes the GM initially had in mind.

For example, my current Zenith-3 campaign has fourteen themes (and there may be more that I’m not going to reveal here):

1. In order to be a hero, one must do heroic things. Even if no-one is watching.
2. A Villain is someone who does villainous things. No matter what their reputation or intent.
3. Black & White morality can be fuzzy around the edges.
4. For part to be saved, sometimes part must be lost. But who decides which part is which?
5. Everything you thought you knew is wrong – except the parts that aren’t. Twists and turns await.
6. Perspective or Insight can be more valuable than expertise.
7. Technology can be useful or user-friendly; it’s rarely both at the same time.
8. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.
9. Nothing is forever, and the more permanent it seems the more suddenly it can be swept away.
10. We are all flawed. Sometimes those flaws can destroy us.
11. Inevitability says nothing about Duration.
12. There are more things in heaven and earth than exist in ANYone’s philosophy.
13. All victories have a price.
14. A team is more than the sum of its parts and no stronger than its weakest link.

Virtually every adventure of significance in the campaign will play into one or more of those themes. The planned big finish to the campaign will involve almost all of them.

There are at least seven types of theme. There may well be more, but these were all I could think of when planning this article.

Social & Political Themes

Social and Political Themes deal with relationships in general, and how people interact within those relationships. Things people agree on, things they don’t, and the confrontations that result. A sub-theme of one of my current Fumanor campaigns is the emergence of the Orcs as a politically- and socially-progressive influence. Yes, you read that right.

Mystic Themes

If the supernatural is going to play any part in your campaign, you should tie it to one or more Mystic Themes. Most of the examples from my campaigns need a lot of contextual explanation, or would reveal secrets about those campaigns that I don’t want made public, but here’s one from the Shards Of Divinity campaign: “Magic has no conscience.”

Cosmological Themes

Some campaigns have cosmological themes, indicating that “what’s out there” is significant. A common theme to all the Fumanor Campaigns is “Order Vs Chaos”. One of the themes of the Shards of Divinity campaign is “Creativity comes from God.”

Emotional Themes

Many themes will be emotional in nature, dealing with the relationship between individuals. “We are all flawed. Sometimes those flaws can destroy us” is definitely emotional in nature.

Tonal Themes

Sometimes a theme is simply a common emotional connection. “Hope is eternal”, “Sadness is inevitable”, “We all do things we regret”, and “Despair is self-defeating” are examples.

Philosophical Themes

By far the majority of themes will be philosophical in nature. You don’t have to look very hard through the list of revealed themes from the Zenith-3 to see the truth of this fact.

Conceptual Themes

Finally, there are conceptual themes. These encapsulate a big idea that will be explored at length within the campaign. I often use these conceptual themes as the basis of a campaign’s title – “Seeds Of Empire”, “One Faith”, “Shards Of Divinity”, “The Tree Of Life” being a handful of examples. You could probably add “The Adventurer’s Club” to that list – before I named the campaign, it was simply referred to as “Blair’s Pulp Campaign” or “The Pulp Campaign”. An exception that you might think belongs in this list is “The Rings Of Time” campaign – “The Rings Of Time” was intended to be a one-off adventure that the players insisted on continuing, and which lent its name to the overall campaign.

How big an interval?

The third of the big decisions that has to be made is how large an interval will separate the sequel from the precursor campaign. There are essentially five options, and each have their own strengths and weaknesses, advantages and flaws. NB: I’m excluding prequels and other such variations from consideration here. The topic is already quite big enough, thank you!

Retrograde beginnings

The least-common of the five is the Retrograde Beginning, where the new campaign starts prior to the conclusion of the precursor campaign, overlapping with it. This permits the establishment of characters prior to the in-game spotlight landing on them, permits the exploration of a different aspect of the big conclusion of the precursor campaign, and emphasizes the continuity between the two. Setting the new campaign in a location close to, but not part of, the big finish locale – so that the new PCs can look apon their old character’s achievements from a distance – is also useful. Another benefit is that there is very little work needed on the campaign background, because the entire precursor campaign IS the background. And finally, the overlap pretty much guarantees that the new campaign will get started with a bang!

If you choose this interval, be sure and make it work for you. Take advantage of this temporal setting, or you will find yourself saddled with the flaws without receiving any real benefit in compensation.

Those flaws: the new PCs may try to get involved in events that were ‘settled’ in the prior campaign. The players will be put under additional pressure concerning player-knowledge vs character-knowledge. There won’t be time for new seeds and plotlines to sprout unless these are also inserted retroactively into the old campaign.

All of which makes this type of campaign harder to set up and to GM in its early stages, which no doubt is the reason why it is so uncommon.

The more leftovers from the old campaign that you have, especially in terms of unresolved plotlines and unused adventures, the more useful this approach is. But there is one final caveat – why did the old campaign wrap up? If it was for any of several possible reasons, including having grown to complicated and unwieldy, you may find those problems perpetuated into the new campaign from day one.

Immediate Commencement

Pretty much all of the above also holds true for the second time-interval option: starting the sequel campaign the day after the previous one wrapped up. It avoids or mitigates some of the flaws, but also fails to take full advantage of the benefits. In many ways, it’s a “nothing” solution. It’s much harder to surprise the players under this arrangement; the foundations of the campaign will be too well-known. There are times when this is the right way to go – I chose this approach for the interval between the Zenith-3 campaigns, because several of the characters were crossing over from one campaign to the next, and because there was a radical change of location involved.

Near-term commencement

A better choice is to set the new campaign in the near-term but definitely after the conclusion of the previous campaign. That means that the GM has to fill in the blanks of what’s happened in the meantime, but this gives him the chance to “clean house” and write out plotlines that were becoming counter-productive. The big advantage of this approach is that it gives the GM a little elbow room and a cleaner sheet of paper at the start of the new campaign. But it’s somewhat more work to set up than either of the preceding campaigns.

There is a sub-question, of course: what exactly is the “near-term?” Generally, it can be conveniently measured in months, and it is certainly less than 2 years, but that covers a lot of ground.

Years Later

There are some definite advantages to having even more elbow room. This weakens the bonds between the campaigns substantially, giving the new campaign a life of its own. That makes it harder to reuse props and maps from the old campaign, but also means that the GM has had time for new seeds to be planted in consequence of the old campaign which have now sprouted into whole new plotlines.

Generations Later

This is so far removed from the precursor campaign that the two have very little in common. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your perspective. I once designed a campaign using this interval that was all about the dark and dirty little secrets of the intervening years and the price that the then-rulers made with ‘Ye forces of Darknesse’ for the last 300 years of peace. Never got to run it and the notes are now long-lost. What those rulers didn’t know was that the PCs in the preceding campaign had locked ‘Ye Forces Of Darknesse’ away until certain things took place so the place was safe from the Vile Horrors for that period of time in any event – nor did they realize that the price (in citizens to be handed over to the Evils) was gradually fulfilling the conditions of release of the Evil Lying Horrors. (I don’t remember much more about that campaign design).

The example works because it leverages the timeline – the fact that it is generations after the original campaign is a key plot point. And that’s the key to all these big decisions: make an informed decision after considering the alternatives and then put it to work for you.

Overarching Plotlines

The last of the big decisions is one that’s relatively easy to make, because you made it for the precursor campaign and probably don’t want to change it. That decision is whether or not to have overarching plotlines that extend from the beginning of the campaign to the end. My style is very narrative and plot oriented, so I usually answer ‘yes’ to this. Others prefer a less structured approach where things don’t happen until the PCs get involved with them. Like most big decisions, both have their advantages and their drawbacks, and there is also some middle ground to explore.

Yes

In the ‘yes’ case, the goal is to turn all your campaign ideas into a series or list of events that are going to occur around the PCs, who can then choose to get involved in them – or not. If they take too long to resolve something, another problem rears up to further complicate their lives. One plotline leads to another, or sets up circumstances in which another plotline becomes more significant than it otherwise would be. Railroading is the big danger here. It takes more work in advance, but at the same time adventures are faster to write because they always have a context and a direction. The campaign can be likened to a road map for the campaign, in which the GM is going to wash out certain bridges and cut certain roads and may even have set one or more intermediate destinations – but the actual navigation is up to the players. Because the GM is setting the destinations, his campaign structure need only concern itself with the dual alternatives of whether or not the PCs find a way to reach that destination or not; everything else is contained within the individual adventure.

No

In the ‘no’ case, plotlines don’t exist until a PC interacts with them by going to a certain place or talking to a certain individual or making a certain decision. The GM never develops any plotline beyond the basic concept until it becomes clear that this plot idea will be part of the next session of play. This is less work in advance (but more work for each session), is a lot more flexible, but runs the risk of feeling static. From time to time, a GM can be caught out when the players unexpectedly zig instead of zagging and shoot off in a completely unexpected direction for which the GM has no plotlines on standby.

and Indifferent

There’s an intermediate position in which there are some overriding general plotlines, general directions that everything is going in, but within which the individual plot ideas are left undeveloped until needed. The notion is that the general direction will provide an interpretive context for the plot idea at the time that the plot idea gets used, so that it automatically updates the plot idea as necessary.

To be honest, I find this approach to be half-baked and more work – with more potential for leading yourself up a blind alley – than either of the others. But some people swear by it.

The Random Element

In all three cases. it should never be forgotten that PCs are wild animals, untamed and unpredictable, capable of licking the palm of your hand one minute and ripping the head off your campaign the next – sometimes for no better reason than ‘because they can’. No matter how carefully planned, the PCs will do something unexpected – sometimes brilliant, and sometimes crazy; sometimes insignificant and sometimes critically important. The more rigid your planning, the more vulnerable to the Wild Card your campaign becomes.

With that vulnerability comes the fact that everything listed in the campaign plan is there for a reason, and if you carefully noted that reason at the time, you can fill in the blanks and get the campaign back on track relatively quickly. You may be more vulnerable to the unexpected, but you can recover more easily.

In contrast, the GMs without a master plan can be left floundering when their minds come up blank. They bet the farm on their ability to improv a plot development no matter what the PCs did, and their bluff has been called. It happens less frequently but when it happens it’s a lot more severe, and can even bring the entire campaign crashing down.

And the GMs with a vague master plan but no concrete details planned in advance? They are somewhere in between. The PCs will always constitute a random element that needs to be taken into account.

Making Allowances

I solve this problem by making allowances. While the high points of the next adventure may have been written down months or even years in advance, its the current situation as defined by the past decisions and actions of the players that place the internal details in context. By always framing the adventures from the point of view of what the NPCs involved are doing, I have the freedom to let the players tell me what the PCs are doing.

The advice presented below is generally relevant regardless of what type of campaign structure you choose; some structures require additional steps in the creation process, that’s all. It will be fairly obvious which ones those are, and when they don’t apply.

Campaign Phasing

No campaign is ever the same all the way through – unless it ends prematurely, of course. Instead, campaigns can be subdivided into phases or stages. The larger and more complicated the campaign, the more stages it will have. If a campaign is considered to be one long story, phases are the equivalents of volumes within that multivolume plotline.

In fact, there are multiple different criteria which can be used for this breakup, and they all distinguish phases of the campaign by differences in the treatment of one or more criteria within the campaign. Some coincide with phasing by other criteria. When I’m planning a campaign, and especially when I’m planning a sequel campaign – for reasons that I’ll get to, shortly – I carefully plan out the phases of the campaign.

Logical Phasing

Logical Phasing distinguishes between parts of the campaign based on in-game events and locations. If the campaign is about the founding of a new nation, on a newly-discovered continent, for example, it would break down logically into:

• Discovery Announced: An expedition of exploration returns with news of the new discovery. The decision is made to colonize the new world.
• Outfitting the Colonizing Expedition: A leader is chosen and several officers appointed to the expedition (the PCs). They supervise the outfitting of the expedition, deal with attempts to undermine or cancel the expedition, attempts to use it politically, attempts to cut its funding, and so on.
• Making The Voyage: Finally, the expedition is ready and sets off for the New World. Before they can get there, severe challenges will have to be overcome.
• Establish The Colony: Landfall at last! The colonies are established, but the new colonists face unexpected dangers from natives and wild animals the like of which they have never seen before. To make matters worse, the climate is turning against them. And then they discover that another nation has also landed colonists and layed claim to the continent!
• Growth and Confinement: Having survived the initial phase of settlement, the colony is booming. It has several neighboring colonies, some allies, some enemies. But rule from afar is beginning to grate, and decisions are being made that favor the home country over the colony – something the colonists are beginning to resent.
• Revolution and Independence: Eventually, things boil over into a revolution, something the mother country won’t take lying down. Will the colonies succeed in uniting with each other and winning their independence?

Does the above sound familiar? It should – it’s a narrative describing the colonizing and independence of America, compressed to fit within the single lifetime of a band of PCs.

Logical Phasing breaks the campaign into discrete logical stages; the adventures that fit within each stage are often radically different from those that are sensible in a different stage (some ideas will work in multiple stages, though).

Thematic Phasing

Sometimes a campaign’s themes change and evolve in the course of the campaign. If handled well, this approach can yield a grandeur and epic sweep to the campaign; if handled poorly, it’s just confusing. You could summarize the themes of the “America” campaign as “Politics; Exploration; Politics; Revolution” for example, where these are successive and not parallel.

Another one might be “Signs and Portents; The Coming Of Shadows; Point Of No Return; No Surrender, No Retreat; The Wheel Of Fire”. This should sound familiar to anyone who has watched Babylon-5…

Dramatic Phasing

Here’s another criteria to consider. “Inconvenience; Passing Difficulties; Direct Threat; Life Or Death; All or Nothing”. This is an example of phasing where the dramatic significance of the outcomes is the distinguishing factor. When the campaign starts, the worst that can happen is inconvenience, a temporary setback of no real note. Through progressive stages, plotlines become more and more critical and the risks ever greater until finally the point of playing for all the marbles is reached in “All or nothing”. This could be about alien invasion, or the zombie apocalypse, or the fall of an empire, or any of a dozen other subjects and settings in almost as many genres. There are worse ways to structure your campaign.

Emotive Phasing

Another choice is to look at the emotional overtone that you want to dominate the plotline. A great example would be a campaign whose emotive overtones follow the Five Stages Of Grief because a deity was killed during the climax of the precursor campaign, or at the very least, his death became inevitable. (The stages are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance). Or perhaps the campaign is the life story of a particular ruler, as viewed through the eyes of the PCs.

General Phasing

Most people will recognize the stages of general phasing. They are components of virtually every large narrative work.

• Introductions: Establish the foundations of the situation and introduce the key players.
• Developments: Something happens that makes the live(s) of the key players ‘interesting’.
• Reactions: People react to the changing circumstances. But consequences continue to mount until:
• Things Get Worse: It’s only now that the real seriousness of the situation becomes fully apparent. Friends often become enemies in this phase.
• Revelations: Heading toward a climax, this is the GM’s last chance to reveal who the real opposition have been all along, or what’s really been going on. Former enemies may become allies.
• The Chips Come Down: The enemy makes his move, or the PCs move against the real source of their problems. Either way, both sides are now fully committed.
• Payoffs & Conclusion: the big conclusion, and everything that’s been leading up to it yields a payoff or resolution. The plot threads all come together, and are wrapped up in suitably dramatic fashion.

As such, it makes a great model for a campaign phase structure, and will usually exist in parallel with any other phasing.

Plot Arcs & Threaded Narratives

One of the great strengths of the plot arcs and plot threads system is that each plot arc and plot thread can have it’s own set of general phases. Some plot arcs may wrap up completely in the Introduction and Developments phase; these can be said to exist purely to lay the foundation for complicating another plot thread that follows.

The current Zenith-3 campaign consists of 36 plot arcs, each with a beginning, middle, and end, and many with more complex substructures of the full general-phasing variety. The overall campaign has been structured into 13 phases, each of which has it’s own distinguishing features of the types discussed above. In the diagram below, campaign phases are in rows and plot arcs are in columns.

The 13 phases are grouped into six overall stages. Phases 9 to 6 are “Pre-apocalypse”; Phases 5 and 4 are “Apocalypse Stage 1”; Phases 3 and 2 are “Apocalypse Stage 2”; Phase 1 and 0 are “Apocalypse Stage 3”; Phase -1 is “Apocalypse Stage 4”; and Phases -2 and -3 are Apocalypse Stages 5 and 6, respectively. The whole campaign has been mapped out into 130-odd parts. Only four of the plotlines are unresolved until the big finish – though one that the PCS thought was resolved will make a surprise return at the very end.

Pre-apocalypse – that is to say, phases 9 through 6 – occupy about 2/3 of the campaign. Apocalypse Stage 1 occupies about 2/3 of what’s left, and Apocalypse Stage 2 about 2/3 of the balance. Each of the boxes in phases 1 through -3 represents a single adventure or less. “Apocalypse Phase 0” is the beginning of the cataclysm itself, something I don’t think will surprise anyone. Earlier phases are preliminary skirmishes, maneuvering for position, and so on.

I’m starting to get sidetracked, so it’s time to move on.

The Relevance to a sequel campaign

It might seem obvious, but here it is: the combination of the precursor campaign and the sequel campaign can be viewed as ONE BIG CAMPAIGN.

Instead of the climax to the precursor campaign being an end-point, it suddenly becomes a mid-point. Things the players thought they understood in the precusor campaign can prove to have a completely different meaning by the time you’re finished with them. Making the precursor campaign (at least nominally) part of a broader structure carries a lot of advantages.

It totally does away with the ‘blank sheet of paper’ problem. It automatically builds in player and character expectations. It predefines the answers to a lot of the big-picture questions – and does so in a way the GM should be reasonably comfortable with, because he ran the entire precursor campaign that way.

It’s like saying “The Hobbit” is Book 1 of “The Lord of The Rings” – the plot connections between the two become immediately apparent, as does the whole backstory of the ring (so far as it is known to Frodo at the start of the latter book).

But the sequel campaign, viewed in this way, also has all the advantages of a reboot of the series. Anything that didn’t quite work in the old campaign can be tweaked and adjusted as desired, so long as a few core elements remain.

Here’s another way of looking at it: The precursor campaign was the TV pilot, and the new campaign is the TV series. Very few shows make the transition from Pilot to series without a few tweaks along the way; sometimes the changes are dramatic, with a largely different cast, and other times they are barely noticeable. And, once you have planning for the new campaign underway, you can set aside the old one without even mentioning its existence to the players.

Plots or encounters in each phase

Each phase in the campaign will have certain preordained plots and encounters in addition to those isolated adventures. These will stem from one of three sources: Conflicts, Confluences, and Continuations. These encounters and plots all exist simply because NPC A or Plot Circumstance B came about in an earlier plotline.

Conflicts

For example, if you establish a rabidly anti-religious villain, who likes to run around burning churches to the ground, he’s likely to put in an appearance if a plotline in the new phase involves constructing a new temple of special significance or opulence. If you have established a Kingdom with a vested interest in controlling the trade routes between two rival nations, they are likely to react when the PCs start a shipbuilding industry in one of those nations, giving them a capacity they never had before. Anyone of special significance to a campaign should react to any development within it – whether that reaction manifests as an event of significance to, or is even noticed by, the PCs.

Every adventure should be reviewed before, during, and after it is run with a view to answering the question, “Who’s going to have a problem with these events / this outcome?”

Confluences

Events which occur in-game will represent opportunities to some established figures – who will take advantage of those opportunities if they can, and may try to do so, regardless of the likelyhood of failure. If you only have a 1% chance of success, you only have to try 100 times to have a reasonable level of hope that your ship will come in. Heck, every time after the first 49 should be an overall 50-50 shot or better – the chances of any one scheme succeeding remain miniscule, but persistence will win in the end!

Every adventure should be reviewed before, during, and after it is run with a view to answering the question, “For whom do these events / this outcome offer an opportunity – and what will they do about it?”

Continuations

And some plotlines simply occur because the main plotline hasn’t run its course yet. KAOS will still go after Maxwell Smart; it’s simply what they do. ‘More of the same’ should always be on the agenda!

Organizing your ideas

This advice will apply generally to all campaigns, but especially to those that don’t employ the threaded-narrative approach. For campaigns in that style, I have actually spelt out a specific approach suited to your specific needs in an earlier article, Back To Basics: Campaign Structures (about 3/4 of the way down, look for the heading “My Campaign’s already running…”). Of course, your campaign isn’t already running, but it’s easy enough to adapt the approach spelt out therein. Of course, the more you know about the PCs who will be inhabiting your campaign (even though play has not yet started), the better.

Index Cards or Post-it notes

The best approach is to use index cards or post-it notes. TV shows do this all the time to decide how to structure their scenes in an episode and how to structure their episodes into a season.

On each, use about half the card or note to summarize, as succinctly as possible, one of your plot ideas. Then put them on a table or stick them to a whiteboard so that you can move them around as necessary to group them. I like to number each one as a reference point. How you are going to group them depends on the type of phasing you’ve decided on. Some adventure ideas will work better early in a campaign, others may be better placed later. But I’ll get into that after commenting on a couple of alternatives.

Virtual Cards

These are the computer-based version of your yellow post-it notes. You will want software that lets you put them anywhere you want and move them with just a mouse-click – I’ve seen some that always places them at a fixed point on the screen and some that won’t let you move them at all. Neither is useful for this purpose.

I’m not a big fan of virtual cards.

Brainmapping Software

Same idea, different interface. ‘Nuff said.

Cut and Paste

One of the simplest approaches, and one that I have used many times, is simply to open two documents in your favorite word processor and put them side by side. One contains all your unorganized ideas, and the other is empty. You’ll create headings in the empty one as necessary, and then cut and paste ideas from the master list until they all have a home in the new, organized list – except for the ones that are left over and don’t fit, of course.

Organization Structure

The major way of organizing these cards / post-it’s / notes is by plot thread (if you’re using a threaded model) and campaign phase. I like to note six things beyond idea number and the synopsis:

• Campaign Phase: If you’ve decided that you want your campaign to be phased “Happy, Sad, Angry, Hopeful, Desperate” then the first thing you will want to do is identify which, if any, of these categories the adventure idea fits into. You will often get more than one answer. To save space, I will use a numeric code or an alphabetic one – “Ha, Sa, An, Ho, De” would do. Use a row for each phase and do a special card which prominently identifies the phases of the campaign to use as a heading for the row.
• Theme: If you’ve decided on one or more campaign themes, consider each idea for whether or not it represents one particular theme from amongst those listed. Unless you have deliberately chosen to have your thematic structure evolve during the course of the campaign, you will want to have at least one example of each theme in each phase of the campaign. Use a column for each theme, and do a special card which prominently identifies that theme to use as a heading.
• Content: I’ll use a one-word summary for the style of adventure. “Drama, Action, Twist, Emotional, Soft, Talky – whatever comes to mind. You don’t want two of the same thing in succession. If necessary, I’ll use two words. I may then add one more word if it’s justified: “Necessary”.
• Fun: A rating (none, 1, 2, or 3 stars) for how much fun I think the adventure idea will be. If I’m pressed, I might use two different colors and rate each for fun from both GMs and Players points of view – but I usually don’t bother. You’ll obviously want to prioritize the ones that are going to be the most fun.
• Completeness: How complete and ready to run is the idea in its current form? Some of my ideas are multipage, detailed affairs that could probably be run without further development, others are nothing more than a single line: “Killer Computer, twist is….” This permits you to pick and choose between your ideas based on the amount of prep time you have available at the time that you are doing prep. I usually rate them 0 to 3 stars, where 0 is the least complete and 3 is almost ready to go.
• Participation: Finally, if there’s a specific character type or race who is going to find the adventure particularly significant or interesting, I note who they are on the card/note. If you know who the new PCs are going to be, you can restrict yourself to them as individuals, otherwise you will have to be more general in your approach.

The process

So, rate each adventure and then stick the card or note in the appropriate spot. If there is already an idea in that space, the order (front to back) should be: any that are “Necessary”, followed by “Highest combined Fun & Completeness rating” (break ties with Fun rating).

Some spots will fill with multiple ideas, some might not have any. When you’re finished, you will have a row of ideas for phase 1, and another for phase 2, and a third for phase three, and so on. After any “necessary” ones that are there to set up the big finish or communicate a key theme, concept, or plot development, the idea on top will be the one that is most fun for the least effort.

Don’t be surprised if your ideas reveal a development line as the campaign unfolds, in which one theme starts out as dominant but another comes to the fore as that one fades out. Don’t be surprised if particular campaign phases show a preference for different types of adventure or for different themes. You can identify and analyze all sorts of patterns and progressions within the overall campaign.

Save your unused ideas!

It should probably not need mentioning at this point to anyone who has read the first part of this article, but save any discarded ideas – you never know when one will come in handy! I’ll even rate them in the same way that I have the ones actually in use for the campaign – just to make it easier and faster to pluck one out of the slush heap if I really need it.

Fill in the empty boxes

It does no good if all your ideas are in the middle, or at the start, or at the finish. It’s not good if all your ideas cluster around only two or three themes. But here’s the best part: since you already thinking along the right lines, this is the best possible time to fill in some of those empty boxes.

1. Go to the first stack of ideas within that theme that you have (if any). Leaving the top one, reconsider the rest, in the order they are stacked – are there any that can be moved to an earlier phase, or a later phase? If not, put them back where they came from and move on to the next stack within the theme.
2. Once you have worked your way through all the second-best-or-worse-within-theme ideas, if you still have empty boxes, look across the phase at adventure ideas that speak to other themes (leaving the topmost one in place). Can any of them speak to the theme that’s unrepresented? Can you add a twist to the plot idea to incorporate a theme that needs filling?
3. If the space still needs filling, you have three choices:
   • Leave it empty;
   • Look further afield – check your slush pile again. Look in any related themes outside of that phase that have multiple entries for one that can be massaged to fit.
   • Come up with a new plot idea right now. Look at the theme that is unfilled and ask yourself how that theme might show up in a plot during that particular phase of the campaign.

The one thing I recommend that you Never, Ever do is mark the space “TBIL” (To be Inspired later).

Tweak the Necessary Ideas

Next, look at any plot ideas that have been marked as “Necessary” and that have at least one other idea in the same pigeonhole. Do any of them have 1 star or less for fun? If so, can any of the more fun ideas underneath be tweaked to incorporate whatever element made this plot point “Necessary?”

Cull the excess ideas

Next, go through any stack with multiple ideas. Eliminate unnecessary ones any that have 1 star or less for both fun and work, and put them back into the slush pile. If there are still multiple cards / notes in a slot, repeat the process for any that have less than two-stars for fun. You only want to keep the best. (Don’t throw the cards away, you might need them back in a minute).

NPC Comeuppance

Do any of the ideas that are left feature NPCs who need to get what’s coming to them before the end of the campaign? If so, is there such a payoff plot point somewhere on the table? If not, choose an appropriate idea from the slush pile, mark it “Necessary” and add the notation “Payback (NPC Name)” – and immediately add one star of fun for the “just deserts” factor. Then put it in the appropriate phase and theme space.

Compile the campaign plan

Go across the table and on each card add the Phase Number. That adventure idea is now committed to taking place within that particular phase. As you finish each phase, gather all the cards in that row and put them in a stack. The final step is to compile these stacks into a document. This could be as simple as “Phase 1, Theme 1, Adv 07, 23; Theme 2, Adv 11; Theme 3, Adv 16” and so on. You are now free to pick and choose these ideas for development into adventures as you see fit, right?

Continuity

Sorry, not quite yet. You can’t have a villain doing something after you’ve written them out of the campaign. You can’t have a trading consortium make someone an offer after their ready cash was stolen in an adventure (unless the PCs recover the loot of course). With your ideas more or less in rough order, go through the stack one more time looking for any such continuity foul-ups. You need to fix them before your campaign plan is complete. If necessary, subdivide the phase.

The Campaign Creation Endpoint

So, if you follow the procedure, what do you end up with?

Plot Threaded Model

Instead of themes, these work on plot threads as the organizing principle. Otherwise it’s exactly the same. However, as an extra step, the threaded model requires you to actually assign each adventure an order in which they will occur.

So, what you will end up with is a structure something like this:

Campaign Phase;
   Phase description;
   Themes and related notes;
   Adventure 1 within the phase, with Plot thread or arc; themes; notes, rating
   Adventure 2 within the phase, details as above;
…and so on. After all the adventures in Phase 1, you’ll have phase 2, then 3, and so on.

Every adventure is occurring in its allocated place for a reason. Make sure you note that reason, so that you know what you have to fix if the PCs Wild-Card messes up your plans.

Sandboxed Model

The sandboxed model is just as simple. It will look something like this:

Campaign Phase;
   Phase description;
   Adventure 1 within the phase, with themes; notes, & ratings
   Adventure 2 within the phase, details as above;
…and so on. After all the adventures in Phase 1, you’ll have phase 2, then 3, and so on.

To use this list, simply look at the current phase of the campaign, find the adventure that fits the amount of prep time that you have available, choosing the most fun one first, and that’s the adventure that you write up for your next game session. But you can only get out of that phase after all the necessary plot points have been ticked off (and should only get out of the phase after all the three-stars-for-fun ideas are taken care of, at the very least).

Applying these principles to non-sequel campaigns

It should be fairly obvious that most of the difference between a sequel campaign and a non-sequel campaign is the existence of the precursor campaign. That means that the players will have certain expectations of the sequel that they would not have of a new campaign, and that some of the prep has been done already; but it also means that in some respects, the GM has a little less freedom. Hopefully, he will need less freedom anyway, because parts of the new campaign are preordained by the old one. Don’t be surprised if you need an entire phase or three of the campaign just to sweep away parts of the past that are going to get in the way of the new campaign later on – especially if you choose a short interval between campaigns.

Beyond these effects, the techniques described work for ANY campaign. Sequel, non-sequel, it makes no difference (some other campaign types like Prequels are a whole different kettle of fish).

Further Reading

Use the following links to look for other articles here at campaign mastery on the subject of campaign creation:

• Campaign Creation
• Campaign Management
• Planning & Preparation
• Encounter Design
• Adventure Prep

Have fun!

A long time ago, when I had an idle six months or so, I came up with a theoretical model for chaotic systems from a roleplaying point of view. I was looking for a way to simulate the behaviour of the stock market in the Champions Universe. The result was 31 pages of 6-point type (the largest font size that I could use and still have some of the key tables fit on a single page of text). To test the system, I applied it to the conditions then operational in the real world stock market and found that it had a 98% correlation with reality in the long term.

The system never saw play. It was obviously completely unwieldy; it took a lot of effort and a lot of prep time to use. But, purely for the sake of stimulating the minds of our readers, I thought I would go through some of the logic steps that I followed way back when. Will I, or anyone else, ever use the resulting system? Probably not – this is likely to be a purely intellectual exercise.

Cycles Apon Cycles

The starting point was to suggest that the movements of the stock market were largely cyclic, trending towards a mean value. This is simple to achieve with an RPG: If we call the mean 1000, then we can have a range of plus-or-minus 1000 to play with.. If yesterday’s value was lower than 1000, then the odds favour an increase, so I used a 3d20 table in which 2/3 of the results were an increase and 1/3 was a further decrease. I then scaled the results as a proportion of a “typical” movement.

• Lowest result: 3
• Highest result: 60
• 1/3 of 60 is roughly 20, so apply this as a negative modifier if yesterday’s result was below 1000.
• 3d20-20 gives a range of -17 to +40. If the average change on a typical day on which the stock market went up was 100 points out of 1000, that would give 100/40=x2.5 factor.
• So the bear market daily trend is +2.5 x (3d20-20).
• 2/3 of 60 is roughly 40, so apply this as a negative modifier if yesterday’s result was above 1000.
• 3d20-40 gives a range of -37 to +20. If the average change on a typical day on which the stock market went down was 100 points out of 1000, that would give 100/37 =x2.7 factor. The higher factor means that drops are going to be steeper than gains.
• So the bull market daily trend is +2.7 x (3d20-40).
• In actual practice, I didn’t use the +1/3 -1/3 ratio, I used a table that showed the likelyhood of a gain or loss according to how far the current value was from the mean.

I played around with the numbers a lot more, but that illustrates the general principle.

But there is also a weekly cycle, and a monthly cycle, and a yearly cycle, and a 7-year cycle, and an 11-year cycle. So do the same set of calculations for all of these, but divide the effects of these cycles into a constant modifier that gets applied each day to the result.

• So if the 7-day cycle yields +21, that becomes +3 daily – and is then rerolled according to where the stock market ends up at the start of the next week.
• Similarly, the 365.25/12 (monthly) cycle divides whatever the scaled result over that period is by 30.4375, so a change of -15 would become a daily modifier of -0.493 (3 decimal places is plenty).
• The yearly cycle divides whatever the scaled result over that period is by 365.25. With maximum scaled change of say +150 points, that would be a daily modifier of +0.41.
• The 7-year cycle divides whatever the scaled result over that period is by 2556.25 – but I would use 2500 as being close enough. The maximum scaled result might be +250/2500=+0.1.
• The 11-year cycle divides whatever the scaled result over that period is by 4017.75 – but I would use 4000 as being close enough. The maximum scaled result might be +400/4000=+0.1.

Something I learned when playing around with the sums of Sine Curves and shifting one horizontally with respect to the other was that there were times when they would cancel out and times when they would add together. These same principles are the foundations of playing around with biorhythm results, which was a fun early application of home computers – unless you took the whole thing too seriously. This method uses a similar technique.

There have also been suggestions made that there is a 23-year cycle. And no, it had not escaped my notice that all these are prime numbers.

Variable cycle length

In the model that I created, I went a step further, and set up periodic cyclic adjustments in the length of the cycles. Since I was doing the whole thing with a piece of custom computer software I had written in BASIC, this was easy to do. I seem to recall assuming that the maximum permitted cycle change was limited to 10% of the average cycle length.

Long-term growth

The next thing that I factored in was the long-term trend – and by long-term, I’m talking 25 years or more. This is a constant trend, always upward. Small on a daily scale – around the +0.25 mark, as I recall (though memory might be faulty), this perpetually moves the goal posts. I kept this as a separate value to the daily summation of cycles so that they were always measured against a fixed basis. As I recall, part of this was a fixed increase and part of it was an amplification effect, so that actual daily swings increased in amplitude as the stock market grew.

For Greater Realism

The amplification effect has greater impact on losses in the downward part of any cycle and greater impact on the upward part of any cycle. My refined computer model and set of rules actually looked at each cycle and amplified it accordingly. Downward effects in general tend to be harsher, more sudden, and less frequent, so I also factored that in.

Similarly, in a recession (or worse yet, a depression), movements tend to be flattened, while in a boom things tend to be a bit more excitable. So I built a “prevalent mood” factor in which reduced daily changes or amplified them accordingly.

Day Of The Week

Stock Markets don’t generally trade over the weekend, or late at night each day. That means that the most dramatic changes tend to be on a Monday, when people scramble to catch up with the purchases and sales that they would have made over the weekend if they had been able. If the Saturday trend was up and the Sunday was down, that doesn’t matter too much. If both were down, then even if the Monday trend is upward, the market will tend to continue to decline. Any reasonable model has to factor that in – mine did.

Significant Events

There’s a whole heap of significant events that happen in a year, or a decade. I modelled these into three categories: Amplifiers, Bear Events, and Bull Events. Some of these happen regularly every year, like quarterly profit projections and end-of-financial year reports, others happen with lower frequency and less predictability, like natural disasters, or new industries, or new government initiatives. (EVERY government decision makes money for someone!)

Amplifying Events

Amplifiers are things like financial reports from big companies. If these are generally more positive than expected, the result will be a stock surge. If they are less positive than expected, the stock market will deflate. These tend to amplify the correlating cyclic effects – so an unexpectedly large profit announcement will amplify any cyclic trends that were upwards, while a more pessimistic announcement will amplify negatives. Add too many of these together and you get large-scale movements like recessions and booms.

To model these, you need to consider the overall composition of the stock market, and how much the largest companies on that market contribute to the whole. If the 100 largest companies are 40% of the market (they probably aren’t that much), then each has an influance of about 4%. A ten percent change in value is therefore 10% of 4% or plus-or-minus 0.4% of the total market value. And a ten-percent change in profits is a big deal that doesn’t happen very often – usually 1% is closer to the mark. But we’re only interested here in the extraordinary results.

Using this chain of logic, I decided that all I cared about were the ten companies with the biggest change in profits for the year. It didn’t matter who they were – simply determining their overall ranking would be enough to model what was going on. In practice, it turned out that the four biggest such rankings were more than enough. If those four were all positive, the results overwhelmed negative effects amongst the other six, and vice-versa.

That was enough to set a trend in the overall amplification factor, year-on-year. Of course, special attention had to be paid to new companies and closures/amalgamations/hostile takeovers but these were simple – exclude them because someone else will take their place. A company that is subject to a hostile takeover will improve the profitability of the new parent company, as will a merger.

Bear Events

Some random events are catastrophic and tend to pull the market down. But something I learned from my time working in the Insurance industry is that to some extent, these are predictable – you might not know where and when, but the larger the area / customer base, the more certain it is that something will happen somewhere in any given time period. Using these principles, I developed a table that randomly selected how long it would be before the next catastrophic bear event and how severe it would be. Each Bear Event not only amplified any downward trend, it compressed any upward market trend, and it reduced the overall size of the market as well.

These effects were simulated by adjustments to the various multipliers and modifiers on the cycles and to the overall results as well. The size of those adjustments was dictated by the severity and was termed the “significance”.

Each bear event also carried a third factor – rate of rebound. This was set up to use compound interest principles (sum of a geometric series) to determine how slowly the market would rebound from the catastrophic event. Some were deep and slow, others were deep but quick to recover; some were shallow and quick (and had little overall effect as a result) while others were slow but persisted for a long time.

The most cataclysmic bear event until recently, in the popular consciousness at least, tends to be the trigger for the Great Depression, when the stock market lost about 1/3 of it’s value in a 24-hour period. It’s worth noting that at the end of the Depression, the stock market was actually higher than it had been prior to the Wall Street Crash. In terms of actual losses, there have been a couple of more significant cataclysms since, but until the GFC none of them had quite acquired the popular cachet as the events of the late 1920s.

Crippling strike actions, Droughts, Wild Weather, and Banking collapses are all bear events.

Bull Events

I used the same principles for Bull Events. These tend to be less frequent than Bear Events, and less severe. Nevertheless, some events tend to bring an immediate surge to the market. Strangely, Wars being declared and Peaces being declared are both Bull Events. Though the constituent stocks involved will be different, the overall market reaction to both is generally positive.

Interestingly, I found that the rebound “downwards” after such events tend to only be about half the size expected unless a Bear event intervenes. Instead, the market ceases to rise very much in response to cyclic upswings, in effect “borrowing” from future increases to fund a consistently higher market value. Typically, too, what “rebound” there is tends to follow reasonably quickly – usually less than a week after the event, and often the next day.

Patterns Of Successive Bull & Bear Events

Given the random nature of the interval between successive bull and bear events, regardless of magnitude, it’s obvious that there can be four different patterns:

• Bull-Bull
• Bull-Bear
• Bear-Bull
• Bear-Bear

When I looked at these historically, I found that in each category, there was a change – I chose a flat 10% per event but it is probably a variable – that the market would overreact to the second of these. When a market overreacts, it resets the clock UNLESS the event that follows is of the same nature as the event that suffers the overreaction. When there is no overreaction, the % chance of an overreaction to the NEXT event simply increases by the 10% rate.

I think this has more to do with human psychology than with any actual impact on profitability or stock values.

Overreactions have the effect of boosting the significance of the event, but also bringing forward the recovery from the event.

Superheroics as Market Events

All this was for a world in which there was a globe-trotting organization of superheroes who went wherever the trouble was. When one showed up, it usually spelt trouble for that particular neighborhood because they tended to be there for a reason.

Superheroic interventions come as a paired Bear-Bull event outside the normal continuity of such things. Insurance companies tend to face massive payouts in their wakes, and manufacturing can be severely impacted, as can mundane things like freight deliveries that can have a big impact. Throw in the psychological impact on the population, and the Bear part of the equation is easy to see.

When they succeed, they rarely stick around to help with the cleanup – that only invites a second wave of trouble to an already damaged or devastated infrastructure. At the same time, a victory by “the good guys” has a definite morale-boosting effect on the general population and is followed by a phase of reconstruction. There are opportunities to modernize equipment, write off debts, and do other things that help the bottom line. There also tends to be national money – a sort of “disaster relief” – that flows into the local economy. Where businesses have been devastated, this simply helps pick them back up to where they were – but to anything that survived, it acts as a boost. So surviving a superheroic intervention tends to be an economic stimulus, at least locally.

Overall, then, Superheroes are good for the economy. That effect, plus the general confidence that results from security, means that new members are a positive market event – a Bull event – unless they are replacing old, established, hands. The loss of members is a negative market event, a Bear event. Public assessment of the reputations of the heroes plays into this as well – a new or returning member of massive popularity is a good thing, while the loss of a mistrusted member can even be a positive market event.

The best way of simulating all this to-ing and fro-ing about new members is to go back to where we started, with another extra “daily cycle” – but with the GM evaluating events in the campaign instead of rolling the 3d20. Similarly, the events of superheroic intervention are best simulated by an initial negative impact – a straight drop in the markets – followed by an additional weekly cycle in the positive direction.

Nowheresville

No community has yet engineered a crisis to bring about a superheroic intervention to stimulate the local economy in my game world. In general, politicians are too scared of the potential political fallout if they get caught engineering such a crisis. Nor has anyone attempted to stage a superheroic intervention in a bid to manipulate the stock market – most responsible businessmen are too conservative for that. But when governments or individuals feel their backs are against the wall, extremes of behavior can result… There are certainly a couple of plotlines there, waiting to happen.

Superheroic Spinoffs

Superheroes tend to come with baggage. The corporate entity that was building killer robots gets shut down by the superheroes, and the assets then get foreclosed by the banks and insurance companies – including the technology that went into those killer robots. With a little tweaking by some (hopefully) clever engineers, robot manservants and cleaners go on sale a year or so later. Heat rays, new energy sources, personal jetpacks and antigrav platforms and, well, you name it – they all have industrial applications. The presence of superheroes is generally good for the productivity of the world, and that’s a series of long-term bear events. Part of the thinking that I try to do whenever a villain is encountered in one of my campaigns is to decide how long it will take before that villain’s tech begins to seep into the general economy, and what shape it will take.

And, when I want a particular technology to enter general circulation, the best place to start is by introducing a supervillain using that tech into the campaign!

Superheroic Funding

Which brings up an interesting related question: where do superheroes get their money? Some are inventors – and everything said above about recovered villain-tech applies equally to on-general-sale hero-tech. Some use their abilities to predict the future. Some are inherently wealthy – but that wealth always has limits. Some have government funding – which always seems to have strings attached. The parent team to Zenith-3 in my campaign runs a four-star zero-G hotel in their asteroid base – with tickets stamped “at your own risk” – and one member has published a massively-popular book of philosophy (the profits from which he turned over to the team) which then became the basis of a cult (that was the bad news) which continues to funnel collections to the superheroes (which they aren’t all that comfortable accepting).

Superman used to repair a lot of the damage himself (at least temporarily), and help out on large civil construction projects, saving Metropolis a bundle. He would also squeeze the occasional lump of coal into diamonds, and had an instinctive knack for creating collectables, most of which he gave away. Add to that the tourist trade he brought in, and the occasional insurance company subsidy by the city government doesn’t seem so arduous. I used to think the stories where the Man Of Steel built bridges and so on overnight were light-weight – only when I started thinking about the economic impact of a superhero did I see that these “light” stories were an essential part of the “Superman Operation”.

If Lex Luthor wasn’t already the richest man in the world (or close enough to it), his many licenses and patents from anti-superman activity would surely have carried him to that point in a few short years. I wonder when he’ll figure that out, and what his reaction will be? An amusing thought on which to conclude!

It happens to all GMs if they stay behind the screen long enough: a campaign comes to an end, and the players insist on a sequel – but the whole reason the campaign has come to an end is that the GM has run out of ideas for the original campaign (or at least, out of ideas that were as good as the ones already used).

There are often good reasons to say no, or at least ‘not yet’ to such a request. The GM might want a change of pace, or might want to run a different game or genre for a while. He might have a new idea that he’s been developing in the meantime. Some players may be more enthusiastic about a sequel than others. The GM may feel that the ideas on which the original was founded have run their course. The campaign may have reached the point where it feels more like work than recreation. There may have just been a big finish which has left the GM feeling burnt-out. Or he might be unsure about what made the first campaign so popular that a sequel is demanded in the first place – and so, not sure of what to keep and what to throw away.

At the same time, there are some tremendous attractions. The GM has invested a great deal of time and energy on the background and NPCs of the existing campaign – being able to recycle some of that material into a new campaign obviously gives him more bang for his buck, more reward for his effort. Any props, maps, or game supplements bought specifically for the old campaign also get reused, increasing the gaming value for dollars invested. A lot of the work of a new campaign is already done.

On top of that, there will always be things the GM feels he could have done better, or that he got wrong – a sequel is a way to get that monkey off his back, and that can be a powerful inducement.

But sequel campaigns are scary propositions. There are a number of pitfalls – I’ll be discussing some particular ones in the paragraphs that follow, but there are others.

Preplanned Potentials

The first time a sequel is demanded can come as a shock to the GM, and an extremely flattering compliment that makes him want to say yes, even if he has no ideas on tap for such a campaign. Then the doubts set it – Was the campaign really that good? Or did it go through a painful initial awkwardness that the players want to avoid? Is it just that the players finally have the GM housetrained? Does the GM even have any ideas left that are any good?

After it’s happened a time or two, though, you learn to anticipate the possibility. Throughout the course of a campaign, I’m thinking about the campaign that will follow, and storing ideas for it. I will often deliberately pre-plan the potential for a sequel into my campaigns from word one, which can make the process of implementing such a sequel a much happier one.

The First Decision

Whether you have done so or not, when you are faced with the question, you have three immediate choices: To say ‘yes’, to say ‘no’, or to say ‘eventually’.

It’s easy to say yes when you’ve already prepared for the possibility, and don’t feel like you need a change of pace. It’s easy to say ‘eventually’ if you have the sense of a campaign idea but it needs more development, or if you want to actually have a brief change of pace while working on the sequel campaign – and that at least keeps the gaming group going in the meantime, even if all you do for six months is play board games. It’s very hard to say no in the face of player demands for more, but sometimes that is the right decision.

Before you can make that decision properly, you need to consider the major potential pitfalls.

Lightning in a bottle

For any campaign to run its course and reach its conclusion, ending with a bang rather than with a whimper, it must have had some magic in the alchemy that went into its life. Running a sequel is rather like trying to capture lightning in a bottle – it’s possible (you need a leyden jar and a kite) – in other words, some very specific preparation.

Knowing the specific preparations that need to be made depends very much on knowing what it is that you are trying to capture. Exactly what was it that the players enjoyed so much that they want more? Was it the game setting? Is it some of the NPCs, or the style of the adventures? Are there unresolved questions that they want answered? Do they genuinely want to know what happens next – in other words, was it the plot? Was it the way their characters became entwined in the plot? Only if you can identify the particular brand of lightning that you captured the first time around can you know what the sequel must keep – and what can be thrown away and replaced with something new.

At this point, I recommend that you pause for a moment and read ‘Why Movie Sequels almost always fail‘ (link opens in a new window).

Now, I don’t agree wholeheartedly with the article; the very example offered of eight heads in ten flips of a coin argues against the core point, because while the article is using all ten coin-flips to describe just one movie or book, the metaphor is inexact, and it is equally valid to call each flip a different movie. So eight heads in a row would be eight out-of-the-ballpark successes – with two flops (tails) somewhere in the run, of course.

Another flaw in the arguement is that no-one covers unsuccessful songs, and while that’s somewhat true of shows like American Idol, and to a lesser extent of shows like X-factor and The Voice, as a general rule it’s not true at all. There are four sources of successful songs:

• Original Songs written by the artists
• Original Songs written by other artists but not used by them
• Covers of songs that the new artist feels didn’t achieve the success or attention they deserved, or were album tracks that were not released as a single by the original artists
• Covers of successful songs.

The first three sources are especially important for first and second albums, before the artist develops the confidence and ability as a songwriter.

The truth is that people generally like the version they hear first over other versions – even if the version they hear first is a cover version. It’s only when they are already aware of a song that they know that the comparisons become valid, and the performance is judged on its own merits. So it comes back to expectations, and to capturing that lightning in a bottle for a second time.

‘Been There Done That’ syndrome

Keeping the wrong things can lead to the new campaign feeling old and stale right from the beginning – in other words, to “Been There, Done That.” The worst mistake a GM can make in preparing a sequel is to make it exactly the same as the successful campaign. Even new characters aren’t necessarily enough novelty value to keep a campaign sequel functioning. Only if you are sure that this won’t be a problem should your answer be a ‘yes’ or ‘eventually’. Later in this article, I’ll offer some specific techniques for avoiding this, but the bottom line remains – know what cards to keep in your hand and which to throw away.

Player Expectations (In General)

A key issue is the general question of player expectations. The sequel campaign will have to be bigger and better in all the areas that made the precursor campaign shine so brightly, but that’s not enough.

Star Wars I-III

For proof of that statement, all that needs be done is contemplate the reception of the second Star Wars trilogy. With the exception of the unmitigated loathing felt by many for the character of Jar-Jar Binks (which I’ll discuss separately in a moment), there were a number of other problems with this trilogy. Little things like the so-called “prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the force” that were never explained, and were then totally ignored. The whole transition from movie #2 to #3, and especially the ease with which the big bad villain of the intervening animated series was dispatched, which showed completely inconsistent power levels. But, there were arguably as many holes in the older trilogy (though they were less prominent). No, the real problem with the original trilogy is that it failed to satisfy the expectations of the audience.

That was an inevitable risk, of course – because Lucas had a choice: to tell the predictable story, or to try and keep the plot at least a little surprising. In other words, it was the fact that these were prequels that was the handicap to be overcome – and doing so resulted in a lesser story than what might have been. Personally, I don’t find the movies as bad as most people seem to think – ignoring the irritation factor of specific characters and overlooking the plot holes and inconsistencies, they are as good as “The Empire Strikes Back” in my opinion, and I didn’t expect them to be any more than that – due to the problems inherent in everyone already knowing the basic plot in the first place.

The Necessity Of Jar-Jar Binks

By far the biggest criticism of that trilogy, and one with which I absolutely agree, is the incredibly annoying character of Jar-Jar Binks, and it was all about the vocal characterization, which I found offensive and demeaning to African Americans – even though it was a member of that race who was providing the vocal.

But what all the criticism of Jar-Jar fails to mention is the absolute necessity of a character to fill that role, specifically someone well-meaning but manipulable and yet part of the inner circle. The leading characters couldn’t do it, they had to be too heroic to be the tools of the true villain. The entire first movie is about getting Jar-Jar into that central position, the entire second movie is about setting up the (poorly-explained) conspiracy – with (unknown to anyone) the same person playing both sides against the other. And the third movie is about the transition from Anakin to Darth Vader and the ultimate delivery of power to the true villain by the foolish Jar-Jar.

The biggest problem of all with Jar-Jar is that he is absolutely essential to the plot; and, knowing this, it becomes even less comprehensible how none of the people working on the film could fair to realize just how annoying the characterization was going to be. I am absolutely convinced that if they had told Ahmed Best to use any other accent, Jar-Jar would have been funnier – and far more acceptable.

All this is relevant to the question of sequels in general. Certain characters, events, or plot devices may be absolutely essential to explaining the transition from old campaign to new – but if those characters are too annoying and distasteful it can contaminate the entire sequel. Taking an especially beloved character and ‘ruining’ them can have the same effect.

The Psychology Of The Sequel

Many of these issues are inherent in the vary nature of a sequel, and they all boil down, in the final analysis, to player expectations, what the players want in a sequel. Deliver that core and the rest is yours to play with as you see fit.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

The more players in a campaign, the more likely it is that some of them will have differing expectations and desires of a sequel campaign, and satisfying all of them leaves the sequel as an insipid copy of the original. The mere fact that you have more people to satisfy leads to compromise, and each compromise sucks some of the vitality from the ensuing sequel. This is one of the ongoing complaints about the Hollywood Studio system. An excellent example is the story of Star Trek V, as recounted in ‘Captain’s Log: William Shatner’s Personal Account of the making of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier‘. This movie started out as an interesting premise, but was eviscerated by studio demands and rewrites and budgetary limits until it was a morbidly-decaying corpse of a plot. The philosophical issues raised by the original plotline were deemed too controversial, for example, completely ignoring the fact that Star Trek had tackled the core issue a number of times. It might never have made a great movie, but it would have made a good one – instead of being the worst of the entire franchise (and I include Star Trek The Motion Picture).

The mistake that was made here was in trying to salvage parts of the plot after the original premise was ripped from it, and would have proved far too expensive anyway. It would have been better to start afresh with a new idea than to proceed with a half-baked and shallow copy of the original plot. (These days, with CGI, the original could probably be made – but would still have been too controversial for the studio, but that’s a different arguement).

Sequels Are Hard

There is an expectation amongst GMs and Players alike that a sequel campaign will be easier to create than an original, and to some extent there is a certain validity to that statement – because some past creativity can be recycled, the workload in those areas is reduced. What few people take into account is that what’s left is a LOT harder than it usually is. When the necessary effort is put in, however, the sequel can be greater than the sum of its parts.

I make the above statement not to discourage GMs from creating sequels in response to player demand, but to inject a little realism into the expectations of both sides of the GM screen. Don’t expect it to take only a few weeks – it will usually take as long as creating a new campaign from scratch would have taken, if not longer. The best approach is to start working on nuts and bolts for a sequel campaign (if there is going to be one) as soon as play begins in the precursor campaign – and to develop the two in parallel. The ideas can always be recycled if no sequel campaign manifests.

Something borrowed, Something New

So much for generalities. Lets now move on to the heart of the topic – how to escape and avoid these pitfalls. I’ll assume that you already have some idea of what your players enjoyed most about the old campaign – enough to request the sequel in the first place – and what elements are free to be reinvented as necessary.

Campaign Seeds

History has a continuity that makes it different to fictional stories. Organizations may be dead, broken, or scattered – or simply bereft of leadership. Their original purpose may no longer be fulfill able, but their ambitions (in general terms) will continue. Political Factions won’t go away, and ideas are even more pernicious. So the place to start planning a sequel campaign is always to sketch in a rough outline of who and what are left after the big finish to the old campaign, and how those groups might react to the changed circumstances following that climactic conclusion.

If you have five organizations left over, devising a plan for each for them to achieve their original goals, or something equivalent, gives you an excellent foundation. Since there is no action without a reaction, even in writing, these groups will be opposed by others for various reasons – if they have no opposition left, one will immediately start to gestate.

Another thing to note before you begin is exactly what the PCs – and players – expected would be the washup from their final battle in the precursor campaign. While deviations from this should be expected by the players and intended by the GM, it remains the starting point. Remember, the Road To Hell is paved with Good Intentions!

There are some specifics to dig out and throw into the idea heap for a sequel campaign. These are the seeds from which the new campaign will grow, so lets look at each of them in some detail.

Accumulated unused Plot ideas

Every GM accumulates plot ideas that don’t fit their current campaign for one reason or another. A good example of that is shown by Johnn’s article here at CM a few years ago, Undead Are Taking Over… What happens? and my reply, The Undead Are Coming!.

Some people just forget these; other, wiser, heads put them in writing. Who knows when they might an idea? The are all grist for the mill in a new campaign, especially any that derive from the precursor campaign!

Leftover Plotlines

Almost every campaign also accumulates its share of leftover plotlines that were never wrapped up. It’s easy to get diverted. Like a snowball rolling downhill, these – no matter how minor they were at the time – can become major elements of the new campaign.

Leftover NPCs of importance

Significant NPCs who survive the finale of the precursor campaign will continue to hold the same basic ambitions, modified as necessary to take the finale events into account. This can be especially important if the finale leaves any sort of power vacuum, as is often the case.

And that brings me to:

Leftover Politics

Politics is usually larger than any one person. Once hostilities break out, for example, the death of the architect is usually not enough to restore peace; at best, it may make peace possible. Whatever political forces were at play will either be continued by the successors of those who were lost in the precursor campaign or will be usurped by opportunists. With additional time – and the question of how large an interval in game time there should be between campaigns is something that will be considered in part 2 of this article – some of these political imperatives will change, some will become muted or reduced in priority, and a few will be achieved, rendered impossible, or made irrelevant – and new ones will rise to take their place.

Backup Plans

Arch-villains rarely have just one plan up their sleeves. Even if the villain is apparently killed in the finale, one of his flunkies or aides can always step forward, usurp the title, and claim his predecessor’s backup plans as his own. And that totally ignores the possibility of someone figuring a clever way of surviving. So far as new PCs are concerned, they would not necessarily even know that there had been a change – at best, one of the villain’s plans was stopped by some adventurers making the ultimate sacrifice – or the ultimate mistake.

Exceptionally clever villains may even have anticipated the success of the PCs in the precursor campaign, even their own destruction in a final confrontation, and layed plans accordingly, for their own return. I used that trick for both the second and the third Superhero campaigns in my Champions universe, with a villain who simply would not stay dead!

Player Expectations (Specific)

The best way to avoid the “Been There, Done That” problem is to assume that ‘the perfect solution to all the world’s problems’ that ended the previous campaign is neither perfect nor the solution to all the world’s problems. At the time, everyone (including perhaps you) was seeing it through rose-colored glasses, and it was the best approach that they could find at the time. If you can reach the point where you are thinking “if the PCs only knew [x] at the time, they would have done [y] differently” in the prior campaign, then you have the foundations of a sequel. [x] might be something that was already in existence, or something that someone would do to try and take advantage of the situation during or after the big finish.

A key principle is that “it is possible for men of good conscience to disagree honestly”. In politics, it’s easy to become cynical – never forget that there are going to be some on the other side who are utterly sincere in their beliefs that [z] is the right thing to do, the best thing to do, and that they may have a point – no matter how much your own, equally sincere, belief may be that [z] is the worst possible thing to do. Everything that went into the decision-making of the PCs at the conclusion of the progenitor campaign should be picked apart and viewed with suspicion. Is there an assumption that can be twisted to the ends of a new plotline?

New Ideas

As you compile lists of these raw ideas, new ones will inevitably come to you. Add them to the list!

Allocated Plotlines

I will pre-allocate a number of plotlines from the outset. Substitutions are permitted, but these are blank spaces each of which I strive to keep filled until play commences.

Sometimes these allocated ideas are not big enough to sustain an entire adventure. When that happens, I look for themes, or associated subjects in common, or simply ways to take two small ideas and meld them into one large idea.

A Plotline for each type of PC

Every campaign and genre has its own set of archetypes. In Pulp, it can be detectives and mad scientists and secret agents. In superheroes, there are Psionics and Martial Artists and Energy Protectors and Bricks and Detectives. 3.x has its character classes, Star Trek has its bridge stations and the specialists who work at them. Then there are the questions of Races. Once I have the foundations of the campaign and a list of ideas with which to populate it, I start by deliberately choosing ideas each of which will feature one type of PC. Either the players will have someone apon whom that plotline will focus amongst their number, or they will have to find a way to handle a problem for which none of them is really suited – either makes a good start to a campaign structure.

A Plotline for each specific PC

Once the players start generating characters (if they have to), I also like to ensure that there is at least one plotline for each PC. These go beyond race and class and focus on the individual and his or her circumstances. This is an excellent tool for making each of them feel part of the campaign.

A Plotline for each specific Player

And, if I know them well enough, I like to have one specific plotline targeting each of the players, if there isn’t one already. The common thread might be plotlines that each player will especially enjoy, or plotlines that target a weakness or blind spot of the player, or that simply revolves around a subject of interest to each player.

Campaign Seeds

So you have a list of ideas, and the foundations of a campaign, and some initial thoughts about possible plotlines, but they aren’t a new campaign yet. These are Campaign Seeds, rather like adventure seeds but with a broader scope. Nurturing these seeds and growing them into a full campaign is the next stage in the process…

Sometimes you know, when you start an article, that it’s going to be too big for a single post. It’s going to take too long, or you have some intricate details to work out, or it’s just too big a topic. This was one of those times. Next week in Part Two: Organizing your Campaign Seeds, Interval Decisions, Consequences to campaign structure, Managing player expectations, and more on sequel campaigns in general!

I mentioned in my last article that each GM evolves their own standard style and formatting for the adventures that they write. This time around, I thought I would look at exactly how I format adventures for my campaigns. I write most of my adventures on a PC – the same one I’m using to draft this article, in fact. For the most part, I will use the rtf format and Wordpad; when an adventure is finished, I will import it into Word for the addition of final touches.

As you read this, it may occur to many of you that its structure bears no little resemblance to a pseudo-coded flowchart. My professional background is in computer programming, and I still employ many of the skills learned in that capacity in various ways – adventure planning being just one of them.

Wordpad

Wordpad suits my needs for the bulk of the writing because it is a simple, fast-loading rich text editor – meaning that I can use fonts and text color, have access to bold and italic, and can indent text quickly and easily. I try not to use tabs because while the tab marks will transfer into word, the tab settings won’t. In fact, I would use Wordpad for everything (and sometimes do anyway) if it only had a few more features.

Word

I use Word to insert headers on all but the first page and footers with the page number on all pages. I’ll also insert page breaks at the last minute. Opening a Wordpad-created document in Word carries with it all the formatting and content of the document, but none of the page layout specifications, like page size and tabs. I generally don’t attach illustrations, props, and handouts to the adventure, keeping them in separate documents so that I can distribute them more readily. As a general rule of thumb, jpgs and pdfs are the formats used for these extras.

Laptop

In play, I will use a laptop to display images and a hardcopy of the adventure to GM from. The hardcopy lets me take notes. I’ll also have a copy of the adventure in electronic form on the laptop; at the end of play, I can use a color code to indicate scenes that weren’t played and where in the adventure we are up to.

Page Layout

Page layout is the final step in the process, but it’s also the logical place to start.

Margins

I’ll generally leave the minimum margin my printer can handle on the RHS of the page and about 2 inches / 3-4 cm on the left. This gives enough white space on the page for notes. The header will be located about 1.5cm (half an inch) from the top of the page, and the footer about the same.

Header

In the header, I’ll put the name of the adventure, in the same font (but a smaller size) as that used for the main title. I’ll use a font size that puts the entire title on one line, but certainly nothing bigger than 14 pt – or smaller than 7.5pt. Although I’ll leave the header off if pressed for time, I prefer to leave it in.

Footer

The footer is in a standard font, eg Arial, and 9 or 10-point text. It will only contain the page number. I spend minimum effort on this, and will also skip it if pressed for time – I can always manually write page numbers in, if I have to.

Adventure Structure

The overall structure of an adventure consists of two sections: The front page(s), and the content. Let’s look at the front page(s) first:

Title

The front page(s) contain a lot of different pieces of information. The first is the title of the adventure, rendered in a legible font that captures some of the style of the adventure, in a fairly large font – rarely less than 24 point, and occasionally more than 72-point. I don’t care if anything else fits on that page or not – this is something that I can hold up like a movie trailer at the start of play. In general, I won’t use a graphic, for two reasons: Clarity (I want the players to be able to read it at a distance) and Time (which can always be better spent elsewhere).

Subtitle, Campaign

As a subtitle, I will usually indicate which campaign the adventure is for. This is helpful when you go looking for campaign notes several years later, saving you from having to locate named characters to work out which campaign they’re from. In the meantime, it helps focus the mind on the unique attributes of that campaign.

Anticipated Participants

Either on the same page or at the top of the next, I’ll have a list of the characters I expect to participate in the adventure, in the following order:

PCs & Players – PCs and the players who own them are at the top of the list. These are the stars of the adventure, or should be. This also serves as a useful reminder of character names. I try to always address people by character name unless I’m instructing the player to do something. This is also a convenient place to jot down xp rewards after the adventure!

Key NPCs – I sometimes follow that with a list of the major NPCs, in the anticipated order of their appearance. If I find time, I’ll put a page number after the character name to indicate where the description is, but I so infrequently have the time that this is a convention honored more in the breach than in the observance.

NPC Illustration Checklist – After each NPC name, I’ll put a pair of open brackets separated by a space, like this: ( ). When I find and save an appropriate photograph or illustration (or create one) for a specific character, I’ll make an angled mark like this: (/). After I’ve done any editing or resizing needed, I’ll change the slash to an ‘X’ by putting in the other stroke. When I’m getting everything out ready for play (or packing, if the day’s play is to take place away from home), I’ll add a horizontal mark, indicating that the image has been printed and/or copied to a memory stick for use on the laptop.

If the adventure is anticipated to take more than one game session, I’ll add as many sets of parentheses as there are expected to be sessions. The goal is to make sure that I always have what is needed to run the adventure.

Prop & Game Aid Checklist

The same technique is used for a list of any props or game aids that I want to be sure to take. The number of times this has saved my bacon is embarrassing to admit – and the number of times I wished I had taken the time to compile such a list for an adventure is even greater. And yes, character sheets and the scenario printout are both items to include on the list!

Dates

Sometimes, these will be followed by a number of dates.

Date Written – The date the scenario was written is of obvious use, since it permits different drafts and revisions to be distinguished.

Date Play Commenced – The date play commenced – or was expected to commence – is of obvious value in sorting the adventures chronologically. Sometimes I will number the adventures instead, especially if the third batch of dates listed below are to be used.

Local Date – This is the in-game date when the adventure is expected to start, and is usually followed by the in-game date when the adventure is expected to conclude. Some campaigns which involve time travel or interdimensional travel may have multiple dates shown. I’ve had to recreate the local date, or work out from scratch what the local season is, too many times. The Local Date is something I always like to include. If I’m not sure how long a preceding adventure will take, I’ll leave a space to write the appropriate local date in, and use a relative indicator for the end date: “Local Date  (_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _)  – (+5)”, for example – showing that while I don’t know when the adventure will start, it’s expected to take five game days to complete.

Synopsis & Structure

The dates (if any are shown) are followed by a brief synopsis of the adventure. Heavy emphasis on the “brief”. If it’s longer than 4 printed lines, it’s too long. This is an important and useful summation for me, as GM – it provides context for everything that follows.

General GMs Notes

That’s followed by any general reminders that I’ve made to myself. In addition to anything else that might be there, this will include three specific notes:

Metagame Function – What relevance does this adventure have in relation to others that may be planned or may have already occurred? This is vital information; in the event that I’ve somehow completely fouled things up, salvaging the metagame function of the befouled adventure is priority number one. I’ve written adventures specifically to introduce a character who will become important later in the campaign, or to establish a theme that will become significant, or to wrap up a plotline. I’ve written encounters whose sole purpose is to advance some background plot or other. Blair and I wrote a plot whose sole purpose was to justify the FBI taking over the Adventurer’s Club in the pulp campaign of the same name for various reasons.

Style, Tone, & Pacing Notes – What sort of mood am I shooting for in the adventure? Creepy? High-Octane? Paranoid? Mysterious? Romantic? Slapstick? Melodramatic? Sad? That’s the tone. How do I plan to achieve it? That’s Style. Do I want to push the pace or linger over details? Is there some portion of the adventure that should be especially frantic? Or perhaps there is a particular tone that I want to avoid – that’s been the case more than once. These questions should form the basis of everything in the plotline that isn’t there to serve the metagame function. Props, for example: if there’s a photo, rendering it in pastel colors and giving it a frame of love-hearts (things that my art packages make easy) gives everything a romantic overtone.

Moreover, if things get fouled up, salvaging the mood is the number two priority. Any decisions or action that I ad-hoc should still fit within the overall tone of the adventure – so that it is not completely obvious that I am ad-hocking the adventure!

Absentee Notes – What will it do to the adventure if one of the expected players can’t make it? What’s my strategy? Are there any absences with which the adventure could not cope at all? I only make notes under this heading when I absolutely have to, but there are times when it’s inevitable – when a plotline is designed to be a star vehicle for one particular PC, for example. If that PC’s player can’t attend, there are only three options: Cancel the game session, run the next adventure in the sequence (assuming that it’s finished and the metagame considerations don’t make it impossible), or run something else more-or-less off the cuff (even if it’s an out-of-continuity adventure). Under most circumstances, there are still more options available – you can brief the player and get key decisions in advance, and/or run the PC as a temporary NPC for the session, for example.

Content Structure

The final category of information to form part of the preliminary pages of the adventure is the content structure. Is this a three-part adventure, or a two-part adventure, or a one-part adventure, or a five-part adventure – and why? In general, if there is a major shift in focus or tone, it’s better to break the adventure into two parts at that point. Sometimes these parts will be given unique subtitles, sometimes they will simply be called “Part 1”, “Part 2”, and so on. Sometimes adventures end on a cliffhanger, and at other times they reach a firm conclusion with some downtime for the PCs before the next adventure starts. That’s the sort of information that I place in the content structure notes.

For example, the final adventure of the previous Zenith-3 campaign had the overall title of “The Light Of Morning”, which was a somewhat poetic allusion to the coming of a “New Dawn” within the campaign. It was an adventure in five parts.

Part One was subtitled “Elements Of Perpetuity” and was all about lasting impacts and the preparations by Zenith-3 for their ‘retirement’ and their replacements taking over. At the same time, two of the team had retired to serve the newly-elected President – one as Chief Of Staff and the other as chief advisor and wife – and were in the process of moving into the White House. There were a number of difficult policy decisions that had to be made. So the subtext of this part was “After we’re gone”. It ended with a cliffhanger – an explosion in Southern Arizona creating a crater 32 miles across and 8 miles deep, which quickly began filling with Lava while Temporal Warning alarms went haywire all over the team’s headquarters, signaling a massive incursion from off-dimension.

Part Two was subtitled “Elements Of Conclusion” and was all about wrapping up outstanding plot threads (including some that the team thought had already been dealt with). Ironically, some of them led back to the crime boss they came across in their very first adventure. The explosion was the literal destruction of one of those plot threads. The temporal incursion was not explained, but side effects – like the Daleks who were invading Korea dropping like flies – show that if anything it’s even bigger than they thought. This also ends in a cliffhanger (one which would take too long to explain here).

Part Three was subtitled “Elements Of Transition”. The solution to the two cliffhangers was revealed, leading the retired ex-members to return for one last mission. It transpired that the real villain of the entire campaign (who had just been defeated in his bid for the Presidency) had one final card up his sleeve – a desperate plan for a suicide mission to achieve his true goals, one which united the power of the three biggest threats that the PCs had encountered in the course of the campaign within his body. Mutually as compatible as matter and antimatter in collision at close to light speed, the combination turned his body into a huge bomb capable of destroying almost anything. This was all about the changes within characters – both the PCs and the villain.

Part Four was subtitled “Elements Of Resolution”. It brought a permanent (is there any such thing in superhero comics or games?) end to the villain, and resolved the central themes that had been part of the entire campaign – unstated at first, hidden for a time, and then overt for the final year or two. And it ended with the godlike beings who had been protecting and surreptitiously guiding the PCs for the entire campaign ‘going away’ to rest and recuperate. “For now, you are on your own.”

Part Five was subtitled “Elements Of Regeneration”. It featured Inauguration Day of the new Presidency that the PCs had brought into existence, the final departure of those characters who were going to move on to the new campaign, and the arrival of the NPCs who were taking their place. The theme for this part was the new beginnings for that campaign world.

The first three chapters were all buildup; the fourth was climax; and the fifth was conclusion and denouement.

Where there is no major change in tone, but the adventure is deliberately planned to span more than one game session, I will divide it into Acts instead. There’s no real difference in practical terms, but this nonclemanture shortcut helps me keep the overall structure straight.

Some plotlines have more complex structures. Blair and I once ran an adventure that was actually four simultaneous plotlines, one of each PC, in different times and places. We cut from one plotline to the next at the conclusion of a scene in one of the plot threads. This permitted cross-connections between the plot threads. There were two metagame reasons for doing so: First, it gave us the opportunity to show the PCs how much their lives had changed since they started play within the game; and second, it let us try out, and get experience in, the technique, which we knew we were going to need in the future.

Part or Act Structure

Okay, so those are the constituents of the front pages of the adventure. In a pinch, if you’re good at off-the-cuff adventures, that might even be enough; I’ve done it before, and used to do it regularly. But, in general, I find it helpful to have an actual written adventure, no matter how brief the writing might be.

Each Part or Act has the same overall internal structure. Some Parts are further subdivided into acts, especially in a threaded plotline.

Jump Flag

The first thing that might be encountered – on the same line and in the same font as the title (see below) – is a Jump Flag. That’s a number preceded by a trio of hashmarks, like this: ###2. I’ve tried using fewer, but I find that the repetition of three makes the jump flag stand out when just glancing at the page. Each is also followed by a space.

A Jump Flag works similarly to an Anchor or Target in HTML – it’s a destination that indicates that players might arrive at this point having bypassed some of the plot. In other words, it’s a point in the plot to which the characters might Jump – hence the name. I’ll talk about Jump Flags and their use in Scene Structure / Choices & Navigation, below.

Plot threads (if any) are identified by alphabetic character as part of the Jump Flag. This is incredibly useful in writing the adventure because it permits the writer to focus on one plot thread at a time within an Act or Part, complete the current iteration of drafting/writing content for that plot thread, then move on to the next.

Act Titles

All parts or acts have a title, even if it’s just “Act I” or “Part 3”. Some have specific titles, as is the case in the example offered above. This will again be rendered in a decorative font, usually in 14- or 18-point type.

The font chosen might be the same as that used for the adventure title, which has the advantage of providing an ongoing thematic consistency; or it might be a separate font if legibility is an issue.

Scenes

Each act consists of one or more (usually more) scenes. Each time the action takes place in a different location, it happens in a different scene.

Next Act

Each Act concludes with any notes about what action or interactions be resolved before the next act can begin, and any notes about wrapping up the Act.

Scene Structure

Scenes also have a standard structure. There is a header line and then the content.

The header line consists of up to 4 elements: Plot Thread ID, Scene Number, Location, and Estimated Playing time.

Plot Thread ID

The first is an identifying thread code, if necessary. These are exactly the same alphabetic character used for Act jump flags.

Scene Number

And, like Jump Flags, scene numbers follow. These are in the format Act-decimal-scene number.

Where a scene is written in more than one way – reflecting changes in the plot as a consequence of anticipated character decisions made by the PCs – it may be followed by a lowercase alphabetic character indicating which version of the scene it is. So scenes “1.3a” and “1.3b” are variations on scene 1.3; only one of the two takes place, and the end of each scene will have a jump flag to the next scene in that particular thread and variation.

Location

Where does the scene take place? This is just a summary or location reference, not a full description. It is on the same line as the scene number.

Estimated Playing Time

Sometimes I will include an estimated playing time for the scene. This is especially important in threaded plots that are eventually expected to coalesce back into a single plotline. If there is one, it will be in brackets on the same line as the location and scene number.

Pacing Notes

Immediately after the header will be a line with any pacing notes to observe in the scene. These are only included when the pacing of the scene is noteworthy. I have sometimes employed a technique in which one or more players are sent away from the table (and out of earshot) for exactly X minutes; the result being that characters not sent away have just so much time to act before they are ‘interrupted’ by the ‘arrival’ in the scene of the other PCs.

Pacing notes are preceded by three percentage signs and must fit on a single text line, for example:
%%% slow and deliberate until the wolf howls, then v.fast

Introductory Narrative

Every scene has a description of something. It may be a location, it may be the action being performed by an NPC, it may be a list of those present. This narrative is intended to be read to the players verbatim.

Timecheck

Where it’s important, the narrative passage may conclude with a timecheck – what time it is where the PCs are. Coordinated threading is almost impossible to get right without timechecks.

Referring to Players

For anything relating to game mechanics – calling for a skill check, for example – the players name is used. Everything else refers to the characters by name. Tenses are used appropriately for the narrative to be read to the players, as are first and third person usage.

Dialogue & Action

Dialogue is separated from narrative or other dialogue passages by a blank line. It is written in the style of a script (though aligned left) – character name (in bold), with a colon, and with subsequent lines indented. I will usually use quotation marks to distinguish dialogue from actions employed instead of words. Italics are used for any foreign language.

For example:
Girlfriend: “Ludo, sweetie, does this mean that we won’t be going to Casablanca after all, mon         capain?

If a PC is expected to respond, especially the case if this is a conversation with the PC or a question to one, I will put (reply) after the line of dialogue. If a PC is expect to respond to an action or announcement, I will put (react) after the dialogue/action. In both cases, the bracket means “pause for PC(s) to” do whatever is in the brackets.

GM Notes

These are quite common, and include any instructions to me as GM. They are preceded by a row of three asterisks and a space, like so:
*** Describe the journey to Nassaud, Romania. Aprox 106km, 3hrs by hired car or train.

Choices / Scene Navigation

Sometimes the PCs will have a choice that has more substantial repercussions than can be contained in a single scene. These will be preceded by a less-than greater-than pair, a space, and then the decision to be made. Indented on the following line will be navigation directions within the adventure. For example:

<> How do PCs react?
   – Break down the door: goto scene 3.13a
   – Shoot out the lock: goto scene 3.13b
   – Pick the lock: goto scene 3.13c
   – Find another entry point – continue

Note that the most likely choice continues within the current scene, presumably scene 3.13.

Props & Handouts

Amongst the other GM instructions that may given are those which involve props and handouts. If these are simply given to the player to read, I use the normal GM Notes indicator (***) but if the player is expected to do something more than that, I use a trio of ampersands instead: &&&. This is followed by some means of identifying the prop or handout. There are two ways of handling the question of what the player is to do with the prop: a standard GM note (*** )on the following line, or a Choice Flag (<> ).

Act Exit

Choices, actions, NPC dialogue, or even a descriptive passage of narration can signal the end of an act, or even of the entire adventure. Something has to go last, after all. Two equals signs followed by a greater-than signifies the end of the act, and is followed on the same line by the jump flag code that identifies the next Act in the adventure. If there’s no flag code it means go to the next act in sequence, i.e. the next passage of text that starts with the words “Act XX”. If, instead of a flag code, the direction is “PCs Exit, stage left” or “fade out” or any of half a dozen other terms that mean the same thing, they are to be read to the players and signify the end of the Adventure. While I sometimes use these terms at the end of an Act for dramatic effect (by putting the text on the line after the Jump Flag), it is more usual to reserve them for the adventure exit.

Break Points

Three exclamation points in a row signify a Break Point. These come in two varieties: minor and major.

Minor Break points are points in the action which are suited to letting people get up and stretch their legs, go to the rest room, have a cigarette break, etc. These will have the advised length of the break shown in brackets after the Break Point signal; this is followed by anything that the plotline requires me to do as GM during the break. The estimated time to complete the task is included in the break length – so it’s not impossible to see things like

!!! (20 mins) setup battlemap town #2.

That might include a 10-minute break for me as GM and 10 minutes to set up the battlemap, or 5 and 15, or whatever. I will usually set up the map and then take the break, but sometimes I’ll do it the other way around – especially if I’ve told the players to stay away until I come and get them (a sure sign that I want the layout to come as a surprise).

Major breaks are exactly the same as Minor Breaks except that these are also suitable cliff-hanger or dramatic beats on which to end the day’s play. A Major break is signified by simply underlining the exclamation points.

I will also, on rare indications, wish to indicate “don’t take a break at this point!” That is usually the case where the plot would seem reasonably suitable for a break based on what has just happened, but that the action that follows is unsuitable to restarting after a break, or it might be because there is a better breakpoint a couple of minutes away.

Next Scene

The final element of a scene’s structure is any “*** goto” instruction pointing to a jump flag or new scene. This is only present if there are some scene variations to be skipped. For example, Scene 3.13 is to be followed by variant scenes 3.13a, 3.13b, and 3.13c according to the earlier decision example. At the end of each of these (except 3.13c, obviously) there is a notation to proceed to scene 3.14, or perhaps to Act 4.

As We Play

Two things will happen as we play. The first is that I will take notes on the printed page of the adventure (if necessary using the back of the preceding page for extra room). This will usually include noting the choice of figures used to represent various NPCs.

The second is that I will color code the electronic copy of the adventure. Gray indicates a scene that’s been skipped, Red indicates a scene that had a radically unexpected outcome, and blue indicates a scene or act that proceeded more-or-less according to plan.

The big advantage that is conferred by this color-coding method is that I can review the adventure days or weeks later and make any adjustments necessary as a result of any red-flagged sections. They serve as a mnemonic device that can be invaluable – even if it’s only for preparing a synopsis of play for the start of the next section.

The Wrap-up

So how many of these do I actually use? The answer is all of them – slightly inconsistently. The GM Notes indicator is pretty ubiquitous. Everything else comes and goes. The objective when formatting an adventure is clarity of communication to the GM – not when you’ve just finished writing it and it’s still fresh in memory, but 2, 3, 48 or more months later. To achieve that clarity, I’ll sacrifice anything I have to – including the standard formatting.

It’s probably worth noting that I don’t add these formatting marks in after the fact, I insert them as I go. Sometimes, with a complex plotline, that requires keeping a separate document that’s nothing but act and scene structure notes and navigation pointers, so that I can see more of the plot breakdown at the same time.

Most GMs would be unlikely to have as formalized a structure as this. Heck, some of my adventures are nothing more than title and bullet-point notes. But by classifying the types of information that might need to be incorporated into an adventure as I have, at least you have an option to bear in mind when the issue comes up in your adventure writing!

Debate is still going strong over my last article taking a closer look at what constitutes good storytelling techniques (Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity), but – never one to back away from potential controversy – I’m about to dive headlong into another, and one from the same technique.

Anton Chekhov famously advised never to show a loaded gun in the first act of a play unless it was fired by the final act.

The principle has become generalized and known in literature as ‘Chekhov’s Gun‘.

Like a number of literary conventions and techniques, this advice is all well and good in principle, but falls down at times in practice, and – I contend – especially so when it comes to RPGs.

Driving The Plot

As the Wikipedia page notes, Chekhov’s Gun is all about foreshadowing, and rests on the principle that any ‘active object’ that is present in a scene must be assumed to be there for the express purpose of foreshadowing future events (an ‘Active Object’ is an object that can be used to do something). A loaded weapon is used as a metaphor for all active objects within the scene.

There is a particular minimalism that is implied by this principle that works on a Stage, where a minimal number of props can be the subject of focus. But that principle fails in any immersive environment.

You would not include a telephone as one of the props on stage unless at some point a call was going to be made or received. But if you were making a TV show or movie, the absence of a telephone where you would expect to see one is far more disruptive than showing a telephone and not using it. However, having dressed the scene with a telephone, it then becomes logical for it to be used (or for an attempt to use it to be made) if there is a need for communications.

The RPG Paradigm

RPGs are a different kettle of fish again. Unlike a novel, a play, or a movie, the author of the adventure is not exclusively driving the action. It follows that if he places a loaded weapon in a scene, it is not his choice whether or not it is subsequently used. A better paradigm might be a choose-your-own-adventure structure, in which the objects used to dress an environment are both logically consistent with that environment and represent options made available to the PCs from which they cherry-pick the ones that will move them closer to a solution.

In fact, that’s not a bad structural analogy in other ways. You can think of each PC as carrying internally his own set of options that are always available unless specifically blocked by circumstances (and the GM is in charge of those circumstances); the combination of the repertoires of all the PCs, plus any specifically made available by the GM and less any that he has blocked represents the sum total of the options available to the PCs for dealing with the circumstances and moving the plotline forward. Which choices will they make? The GM can sometimes guess in advance, but will never know for certain until the Rubicon is crossed.

Creating Options not Railroad Tracks

In other words, the GMs placement of objects within a scene is all about creating or removing options for the PCs, rather than laying down a railroad track along which the plot has to run. The options should be those that are logically present, unless the GM specifically removes one – a decision that has to be justified by the circumstances.

If I mention a modern office building as a setting, I don’t have to state that there is a phone on every desk; it can be assumed. If there aren’t phones on the desks, that’s noteworthy.

Similar logic can be applied to a loaded firearm. If it is logical for one to be present, it must be assumed to be present unless the GM makes a point of the exception.

The corollary is that objects that would not be expected to be present are also noteworthy – and that brings us back to Chekhov’s Gun. The principle, as generally stated, only applies to situations and settings where the loaded weapon is going to be an unusual object.

The Assumption of Function

The other limitation on Chekhov’s Gun as a literary principle is that the only function of a firearm is to shoot at someone or something. Just how valid is that assumption? Are there any other uses for a loaded weapon?

Characterization

Of course there are. The first is characterization. A Big Game hunter is likely to have weapons on the wall – presumably unloaded ones. A lot of police officers have loaded weapons in their homes – as do ordinary people in a lot of countries. Criminals frequently have them lying around. If there’s a danger of wild animals, a loaded firearm is a natural precaution.

All these are examples of circumstances under which a loaded gun would be present logically – which means that if the characters know that this is the setting of the scene, they will be able to assume that one is present. However, if they don’t know that the setting justifies the presence of the weapon, they can infer it from the fact that there is a weapon present. An additional function of the weapon is therefore characterization of at least one of the inhabitants of the room.

Past Use

What if the weapon had been already fired when the characters arrive on the scene? So long as it has not been completely emptied of ammunition, it is still technically a loaded weapon. In order to justify the presence of a loaded weapon without having it fired at some future point, all you need is a body apparently dead of one or more gunshot wounds when the scene opens. The existence of the weapon is no longer justified by foreshadowing, and Chekhov’s Gun no longer applies.

This justification works equally well in all media, it’s not just a roleplaying thing.

Loot

The next one, however, is purely gamist. You put a loaded gun in the scene because you want the PCs to have a loaded gun.

Actually, that would be pretty sloppy writing under most circumstance. You would normally put a firearm and ammunition in the scene. Why? It’s easier to justify their presence than it is to both justify their presence and justify someone having loaded the weapon.

Why “under most circumstances”? I didn’t originally include that caveat, but then the following occurred to me:

It’s the zombie apocalypse, or the Day of the Triffids, or whatever. Someone takes refuge in a house and barricades the doors and windows. They locate and load a weapon, but before they can use it, they are attacked and killed by whatever the greeblies are, who have entered through some unprotected window or other entrance. At some later time, the PCs arrive for whatever reason, kill any greeblies that are still present, and discover the corpse and the firearm.

Under this scenario, it is totally plausible for the PCs to find a loaded weapon. They don’t have to know the back story, though they might be able to infer it from the circumstances. So why is this an example of superior writing relative to the finding of the unloaded weapon and the ammunition?

First, because it is more logical for an attempt to have been made to employ the weapon if it was present. And second, because it places the arrival of the PCs after the beginning of the scene (even the rest of it all occurred “off-camera” – showing that the world around them is not static, frozen in time and waiting for them to appear on the scene. Things happened before they arrived and will continue to happen after they leave. They may only become aware of this if they return to the location, but the pre-sequence alone is enough to increase the verisimilitude of the game world.

But the second reason only works because of the first.

Mystery

The next potential function follows directly on from the sidebar discussion above – if a loaded weapon is present, it can be assumed that someone had what seemed like a logical reason for loading it. That usually implies that they anticipated a need to use it.

And that gives grounds for a mystery: if the weapon is in the hand of a dead man, why didn’t he use the weapon to defend himself? It might be that it simply jammed, making the mystery trivial – or the weapon might have been fully functional but the man was killed before he could employ it, again making the mystery trivial – or he may have suffered a slow and deliberate death at the hands of a third party, apon whom he failed to employ the weapon at hand for some reason. That’s the mystery.

For some reason, as I was typing the above, scenes from The Abominable Dr Phibes kept flashing through my head. But there can be almost any reason for the failure to fire the weapon – anything from poison to paralysis from fear to the presence of a third party as a hostage against action by the dead man.

The expectation of use of an active object creates a mystery when it has not been so used.

Threat

And finally, perhaps the weapon was never intended to be used – but is present to provide the threat of its use. Weapons, by their nature, can be intimidating, and that usage alone can justify the presence of a weapon without it being used.

Where there are two reasons for a weapon or other active object to be present, there will be a third, and a fourth, and so on to the limits of the author’s creativity. The five justifications provided cover most situations, but more than anything else, they indicate the likely existence of other reasons .In fact, including an active object in a scene because you expect it to be used in a subsequent scene is one of the poorest justifications for its presence.

The Lack of a Loaded Gun

There is another point to be made: If, for whatever reason (including following Chekhov’s advice), you leave a gun out of the scene and then find that you need to write one in retroactively – or take something out that was included – it’s easy to do with a play, novel, or script, up to the point of publication. Even afterwards, it’s possible to write in a hidden observer or object in some media – and still have it seem plausible – though that’s a lot harder. Such retcons are much, much, harder – both to achieve and on the suspension of disbelief – in an RPG.

In fact, the hardest medium to retcon is the RPG in some respects, because the players are used to formulating a perception of the world based on the GMs descriptions, and deliberately omitting something – without even giving the PCs the chance to spot it – is widely regarded as deliberate cheating and railroading of the worst kind.

Metagaming Flavor Text

A danger that exists more substantially in RPGs than in other forms of literature is that of telegraphing significant plot developments and scenes by means of the specificity and quantity of flavor text. I’ve lost count of the number of times a character in KODT has said “Be on your toes, the flavor text is so thick you could cut it with a knife” or words to that effect. And, while KODT is a comedic drama, what they are lampooning with these statements is a real phenomenon.

It comes about because GMs focus their creative energies on the scenes and settings that matter, developing substantially greater quantities of flavor text just by including everything that’s important. A scene that doesn’t matter so much gets rather less descriptive effort.

But what are the alternatives? Overloading every non-critical scene with excessive flavor text may have been acceptable literary technique in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but it quickly grows irritating to modern ears. And leaving out critical elements from the descriptions of important scenes to preserve a “flavor text parity” is also unsatisfactory to players, who will roundly complain to the GM about the practice whenever they encounter it.

All this is directly relevant to the discussion of Chekhov’s Gun. The minimalism that Chekhov described as good literary practice encourages the direct indexing of relevance to flavor text quantity and specificity, which in turn encourages this behavior by players.

That alone argues that Chekhov’s approach is not best-practice when it comes to RPGs.

Conclusion: What is good writing for an RPG?

We’re approaching the end of this article and at the same time, getting to the heart of the matter. Every literary medium has its own internal rules and structures, and it’s best practices that constitute good writing within that medium. Some of these are universal, while some translate from one medium to another incompletely, selectively in application, or not at all.

What are the qualities that I associate with good writing for an RPG adventure (rules are a completely separate discussion)?

In no particular order, I would argue in favor of the following criteria:

• Consistency – more a function of editing/layout, but each of us develops our own literary conventions when writing adventures for our campaigns. When I read an adventure written by someone else, I don’t care what their conventions are particularly, so long as they have been applied consistently throughout.
• Personality – some writers have a natural facility with the written word, and can impart personality into every line. Others are hacks who have difficulty imparting flavor to a curry. Most of us are somewhere in between. The more naturally personality and flavor leaps off the page and into the narrative, the better the writing.
• Accessibility – at the same time, I don’t want to have to stop and reach for a dictionary every time I read something. If there’s a term used with which most people are unfamiliar, it’s not enough to define it within the flavor text or GMs briefing or some NPCs dialogue – I want an explicit definition made clear on the page where it is used for the first time. If there’s an NPC, introduce them to me at the same time as they are being introduced into the adventure.
• Organization – Don’t, for the love of heaven, stick all the definitions and other essential information in an appendix at the back – and that includes NPCs, monster stats, treasure details, spells, map keys, etc. I don’t want to have to leave where I am in the adventure, find an entry somewhere else in the text, interpret it, and then go looking for wherever I was up to. Nor do I want to have to go find some other part of the adventure in order to be able to referee the current scene. The more self-contained each constituent part – be it scene, act, or chapter – the more functional the adventure, and hence, the better written so far as I’m concerned.
• Plot – I like adventures that go somewhere interesting, either literally or metaphorically. An adventure with something to say, or something to think about.
• Verisimilitude – a well-written adventure has to make sense. No 100 Orcs in a 10′ x 10′ room need apply. Nor do any adventures that have characters behaving against their best interests without explanation. Sure, it might be that the character has had a lapse in judgment or has misinterpreted a situation – in which case, tell me about it, and make sure that you tell me how the adventure will change if the PCs manage to clue the idiot in. And don’t assume that you know how the PCs will react in any given situation.
• Balance Of Narrative Passages – The best way to avoid Metagaming of the narrative (as described earlier) is to to have all the flavor text descriptions be roughly the same length. Rather than making some of them filler and others significant, put something significant into every scene. And don’t assume a linear structure to the adventure – remember, the perversity of the PCs tends to a maximum so far as following plotlines is concerned!
• Concision – finally, be as concise as possible, especially when it comes to synopses and directions to the GM. And if there is an alternative section of text that might apply, tell me about it before starting on the first alternative.

This list is almost certainly incomplete. The perfect format for an rpg adventure has yet to be invented, and its possible that it never will be – that we can only get closer with subsequent iterations while never achieving the ideal. But that’s a subject for some other time.

One definition of minimalism might be that it provides the minimum necessary information from which an entire description can be extrapolated. Chekhov’s Gun doesn’t apply to RPGs in so many ways and for so many reasons, but mostly because Roleplaying game adventures are a unique blend of narrative fiction, script, and non-fiction literary forms. Some of it is stage direction and some of it is plot navigation. Examining the reasons for that failure to apply is nothing short of illuminating, however – a window into crafting better adventures for any game, any genre. All it takes is a little extrapolating from the starting point that Chekhov’s Gun provides. In that respect, even in an RPG, it fulfills the spirit of minimalism that Chekhov was advocating – even while that recommendation is contradicted by the specifics. And that’s a noteworthy inclusion.

Wikipedia defines a ‘Deus Ex Machina‘ as a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. It can be roughly translated, they say, as “God made it happen,” with no further explanation.

They also state that the Latin phrase comes to English usage from Horace’s Ars Poetica, where he instructs poets that they must never resort to a god from the machine to solve their plots. He refers to the conventions of Greek tragedy, where a crane (mekhane) was used to lower actors playing gods onto the stage or raise them through a trap door – both ways of having them appear miraculously on stage.

I just happened to be reading that page this weekend and my first reaction, as a Gamer & a long-time GM, was “there’s something wrong with this picture”. The disapproval of the literary device only makes sense if one assumes that the Gods are fictional.- that’s why Gods are continually showing up in the Greek plays, they were as real to the Greeks as Mountains, Fire, Lightning, and Rain, capricious natural forces that showed up whenever something interesting was going on. There is an implicit assumption of fictionality in the disapproval; if Divine Beings are ‘real’ within the context of the narrative, then it becomes unrealistic for them not to appear.

Immediately, there is a conflict between what we are taught by experience – through television and novels and accepted literary conventions – constitutes ‘good writing’ and the demands of verisimilitude. My second reaction therefore was, ‘examining that conflict would make a great article for Campaign Mastery’ – and so it is that you come to be reading these words!

Reconciling the Conflict

The conflict exists because on the one hand we have the principles of good storytelling demanding that we eschew Divine Intervention as a narrative tool, and on the other the insistence that if the Gods are real (which they supposedly are within the fictional context of the game), the internal logic demands that they appear. The conflict is inherently present in the game worlds that we present to the players, in the adventures that we craft to occur within those worlds, and in the expectations of the players. Ultimately, they come down to the burden of suspending disbelief, and the requirement that we have to have it both ways in order to satisfy that burden.

After spending a few minutes thinking on the subject, I have been able to identify three ‘acceptable’ ways of resolving that conflict to everyone’s satisfaction. There may be more, but these are the only three that I’ve found thus far. They are:

• The Gods On Call
• Out Of The Frying Pan
• Just Another Character With An Agenda

The Gods On Call

If the Gods can only get involved when invoked by mortals – or can only intervene indirectly – then the conflict disappears because Divine Involvement is no longer a Deus Ex Machina. Instead, the gods become akin to the power pack on a science-fiction weapon or toolkit, extending the capabilities of the wielder. Their natures & personalities become a cloak of religious interpretation of physical phenomena and their existences mere metaphors for the limitations of the weapon/toolkit and its power supply.

The result is science fiction in fantasy clothing, as expressed in Larry Niven’s “Flight Of The Horse” collection, his “Dream Park” series, “The Flying Sorcerers”, or the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Devil’s Due”. It’s an extremely low-fantasy approach that finds favor with some GMs, especially those wont to explain “Magic” as some form of Psionics. This approach has never appealed to me, though I enjoyed all of the named sources, but I have a noted preference for high fantasy – others can and do prefer this approach.

Out Of The Frying Pan

It’s perfectly acceptable to employ a Deus Ex Machina in the classical sense of the term if it only gets the PCs “Out of the frying pan and into the fire”. This approach was used to good effect in Stargate, in which the Asgard are initially used to get the characters out of trouble – only for the piper to call for his payment with the introduction of the Replicators, a menace even greater than the ones SG-1 are already trying to cope with.

Although I rarely employ this approach in it’s pure form, it’s not entirely absent from my campaigns, especially the forerunners of the Zenith-3 campaigns.

Just Another Character With An Agenda

The final solution to the problem is to humanize the Divine Powers. If they become “just another character with an agenda” and their intervention makes sense in terms of that agenda, the implausibility of their involvement goes away.

This is my favorite of the solutions because of the depths of characterization it provides – a Divine Power can assist this week (in furtherance of their agenda) and interfere next week (in furtherance of that agenda). Interaction on a human, ie roleplaying, level becomes possible. What’s more, this approach lends itself to limiting divine power, as I advocated in A Monkey Wrench In The Deus Ex Machina in various ways, preventing them from being a universal Panacea to all the PCs problems.

A General Principle

All of these solutions require some work on the part of the GM. Some of this work is high-concept and some of it is mundane nitty-gritty, but it all has to be done.

One characteristic each of the solutions share is the insistent demand for consistency. Another is than none of them are fully encapsulated by the most common RPG systems, and each will therefore require careful examination of game mechanics, races, encounters, etc to ensure compliance with the chosen view of the game universe. I’m thinking specifically of D&D and Pathfinder here, though the comments are just as applicable to most other game systems – they are certainly true of the Hero System, GURPS, Rolemaster, TORG and 7th Sea, for example. Traveller, Space Opera, Paranoia, and the Star Trek RPG are all ‘hard’ SF series in which deus ex machina should all be technological in nature, if they exist at all, and hence the problem doesn’t arise. Interestingly, Call Of Cthulhu and The Lord Of The Rings RPG are amongst the most pure games in this respect – both have a specific solution in place and stick to it exclusively, requiring the GM to follow their line. Toon, of course, breaks all the rules and doesn’t care – and that more or less exhausts the list of game systems I’ve played enough times to comment on in this respect!

Most games simply assume that the Gods are, or are not – and then go straight into personalities (or perceived personalities) and other attributes of specific pantheons or divine beings. There is often little consistency between the concepts that frame one part of the game mechanics and another; and for a relatively superficial action-adventure series of dungeon-bashings, that’s probably good enough. For anything with more depth, though, there is the potential for scope and creativity here that can and should be exploited.

Conceptual Development

For longer than I have been writing for Campaign Mastery, I have been advising people to look at the big questions behind their RPG campaigns, the core assumptions that underlie everything that transpires within the game. I did so once again, here, in A Quality Of Spirit way back in December ’08. There are at least 7 such “Big Questions” that bear directly on these issues:

• What are the Gods?
• What is their origin?
• What are their limits?
• Where do they get their power?
• How do they translate this power into effects and manifestations?
• What is the role of Worship?
• What are their limitations?

These are all about putting salt on the tail of Divine Power as applied to Deus Ex Machina, about determining what the Gods can do, how, why, and how they can interact with the game world – and with the PCs who live in it – in a consistent manner.

Nuts And Bolts

Once you have the high-concept answers, you need to determine what impact the answers have, if any, on the game mechanics. The Cleric and Druid classes, or their equivalents, are obviously right in the line of fire, but so are the Paladin, and potentially the Wizard, Sorcerer, and Ranger class – or their equivalents. And if the nature of magic is affected, that can affect all Magic Items – which in turn affects Rogues and Fighters and Barbarians. There will be additional high-concept questions to consider along the way as well, such as “Where do new Clerical spells come from?”

Another Perspective

It should always be remembered that the purpose of all this work is to answer the question of what the GM can justify doing within the game. These are deliberate limitations on his palette of in-game events, with a restriction that has as much to do with creating ‘good adventures’ as it does anything else. Any other benefits that may derive, such as uniqueness of campaign, are incidental rewards. It can help, however to look at the questions from a couple of different directions:

• From the perspective of what the PCs and other character classes can do, in-game; and
• The tone and content of the planned or existing campaign.

Both of these can be considered consequences or derivations of the answers to the fundamental conceptual questions posed, but there is no reason not to put the cart before the horse; choosing the set of consequences desired and then reasoning backwards to the concepts and assumptions that generate those consequences. Being able to find your way from desired outcomes to causes is always a useful skill to have for a GM, in any event.

Character-inspired answers

To illustrate the utility of this approach, and the scale of the impact that these questions can have on a campaign, here are four possible answers to the question, “Where do Clerical spells come from?”, or – more correctly – “What are Clerical Spells and how are they created?”

• Clerical Spells are respectful requests of the Gods formulated by mortals. As such, formulaic prayers are given less weight than original compositions, and the Gods – to prevent themselves being run ragged – are literary snobs. Clerical Training is as much about poetic and lyrical improv as it is theology. Perhaps the gods only listen to their appointed followers and those within the bounds of a church or shrine consecrated to them. This gives the Gods far greater capacity for independent activity, implying that they are more (and do more) than what characters might read about in the equivalent of Sunday School.
• Clerical Spells are means of compelling activity on the part of the Gods, formulated by mortals to bind the Gods to their will as part of a compact. This implies that mortals have something the Gods need – worship being the most obvious. Perhaps the Gods derive some form of spiritual sustenance from acts of worship. It is likely that the Gods would either ignore requests from those who can’t deliver the power of worship (non-clerics) or do the opposite just to be perverse – it depends on how willingly they entered into the compact. Either way, clerical spells tend to be formulaic phrases strung together in a logic as binding as that of a computer program, and the Gods are dependant on mortals.
• Clerical Spells are means of compelling activity on the part of the Gods, formulated by the spiritual enemies of the Gods (Devils/Demons/Whatever). These enemies came up with this means of controlling and confining their enemies without realizing that it made them subject to the same limitations. As a result, they are perpetually angry and destructive. The whole “Good vs Evil” theology erected by mortals to explain the relationships between these opposing forces completely misinterprets the relationship. The previous answer was all about voluntary submission and a spirit of cooperation and collaboration; this is a much more sinister and adversarial solution in which both Gods and their Enemies are, to some extent, enslaved by the Mortals who worship them. Of course, both sides continually try to alter the rules of the ‘game’ – the Gods by imposing theological doctrine on mortals and Devils by twisting language like a lawyer. New Clerical Spells can be devised at any time but are as complex as designing a new clock, with its myriad of moving parts all functioning in harmony – or the clock doesn’t work.
• Clerical Spells have been bestowed apon mortals by the Gods. They are ways of telling mortals, “this is what we’ll do and if it’s not on the list…” Of course, there are several ways of ending that sentence. Clerics might be able to request new spells from the Gods to perform specific tasks, or the limits might be absolute, or it might even vary from Deity to Deity. There’s something about the notion of the God Of Luck saying, “I’ll give you your spell if you can roll better on three dice than I can” that I find quite appealing. Clerical Spells are more like command words or passwords – and perhaps only key words or phrases within the spell actually matter and the rest is subterfuge designed to protect the authority of the church.

Each of these puts a fundamentally different spin on the relationship between the Gods and Mortals, and hence a different spin on the manifestations of those relations within the game. They all explicitly confine Deus Ex Machinas into categories of those that are acceptable within the games narrative structure and those that are not.

Tone-inspired answers

An equally-valid approach ois to decide the type and style of the plots that the GM wants to run and choose answers to the questions that support and enlarge apon those foundations – then deal with the consequences to character classes etc that result. A campaign might be a dramatic end-of-an-epoch series of stories of imminent Armageddon” – or it might be “the gods have gone away leaving just their miracle-fulfillment machines” – or “the Gods are Demons with a better grasp of PR who have succeeded in enslaving the mortal races” – or… well, you get the idea. Each of these campaigns deals with a theological context either as a central point or one of a series of distinguishing themes in quite a different way, and hence will have different answers to the list of “Big Questions” – which in turn will have knock-on effects within the game mechanics.

Perhaps there was a zombie apocalypse 20-odd years ago that has just been beaten back – and the survivors now want to know how it happened in the first place, who’s responsible, and why. As soon as you (or the game mechanics) state that “Clerical Magic works” – or simply that undead shun consecrated ground – you’re into the territory of “why?” Having answers permits the PCs to discover those answers, making them ever more-connected with the plotline and the world around them – and permits informed judgment calls on the part of the GM when they do something not covered by the game mechanics. (“Can you dehydrate holy water? What happens if you sprinkle it in a circle around your campsite? Is there such a thing as un-holy water? What happens if you inject Holy Water into the venous system of a Vampire, for example using a dart gun?”) I’ve never known a game system to answer any of these in its game mechanics (one probably has, and I’m sure my enlightened readership will quickly tell me about it if so!)

But they are all good, practical questions that I have been asked by players in the course of a game at some point. If you don’t know why Holy Water affects undead in the first place, you’re going to be scrambling for an answer.

I was going to follow this with a discussion of the theological foundations – the answers to those “Big Questions” – from some of my campaigns, but rather than dilute this article with material of only tangental relevance, I think I’ll leave those discussions as the foundations for other articles down the track. Besides, why blow my was in one article whemn I can get 4 or 5 out of it?

For some time now, I’ve been aware of a subtle difference between the advice being dispensed here at Campaign Mastery and what really happened in the games that I run. At first, I wasn’t entirely sure that my perception was accurate; I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what the differences were, indicating that it was something very subtle, and even when I became convinced that there was something to it, I was inclined to dismiss it as the difference between a perfect world (the idealized approach offered by these blog posts) and the real world, where compromise is often necessary. And I still couldn’t put my finger on exactly what the difference was.

It was while reading one of the books inherited from my friend, Stephen, that the penny dropped and I figured out what the difference was. The book was “Captain’s Logs Supplemental” by Edward Gross and Mark A Altman, and the text was discussing the differences between ST: The Next Generation and Classic Trek, specifically the differences in the casting process and the dynamic of the cast as viewed on-screen.

Star Trek was always intended to be an ensemble cast, but the triumvirate of McCoy, Spock and Kirk hijacked that to a large extent (according to the book) and turned it into a star vehicle for these three cast members. Thereafter, the rest of the cast struggled to get even a featured moment that didn’t involve one of the big three; while with Next Gen Roddenberry finally got what he had been aiming for all along. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with this assessment or not – or whether you like one or both Star Treks or not – the important point here is the difference between a star vehicle and an ensemble.

The differences are subtle but unexpectedly profound. And exactly the point of departure between the idealized advice that I had been advocating and the real world practice that I was experiencing in my own games.

Now, I’m a firm believer that the more you understand what’s really going on under the hood in your games – whether it be game mechanics, character interactions, or your own through processes – the more control you have over the game and the better you are able to GM that game. You’ll know when to encourage and when to discourage, when to play into and when to step away from, established player behavior patterns. And make no mistake, this is as much about the players as it is the characters that they bring to the table.

So what are the differences?

In an ensemble, there may be one or two featured characters in a plotline but these ‘hats’ get passed around from session to session, adventure to adventure. This week, the featured character might be Narcissus of Thiomipoles and next week Brutus the Barbarian. Those who aren’t wearing that ‘hat’ get only a passing mention unless they are interacting directly with the featured character or with the plotline that has derived from them.

In a star vehicle, there is a small segment of the character population who are consistently at the centre of things, who are the characters driving the show (or, in this case, the game) forwards. In general, this will be one-half or less of the total PC population. The other PCs are supporting cast, present not to star in their own right but to give the stars someone to interact with, to propel the story forwards. They may supply crucial information to the main stars that enable the plot to move forwards, but they rarely have the spotlight all to themselves – and when they do, it’s only a precursor to new complications in the lives of the starring characters.

In an ensemble, you could have an adventure in which a character does nothing except stay in the background and observe or may not appear at all except at the beginning or the end of the adventure, this week, while next week they are the centre of attention; while in a star vehicle, its unthinkable not to have the stars take centre stage for the majority of the adventure.

The differences as applied to RPGs

RPGs are a little different to a television series, or a play, of course – and a lot more complicated. For one thing, we have two distinct modes of play – combat and non-combat – in virtually every game that I can think of. For another, the players decide – to some extent – whether or not their characters are going to take an active role in the plot. It’s entirely possible for combat to be a star vehicle for one or more characters while roleplaying is more of an ensemble. There can be particular phases of non-combat play that are star vehicles and others that are more egalitarian – for example a character or player who always comes to the fore when detective work is called for. And even beyond those, in general “PCs talk to someone / talk amongst themselves” roleplaying, its possible to transition from ensemble to star vehicle and back again with no hard delineation between these very different styles of player-plot interaction.

The only way to make sense of this anarchy is to break the RPG down into sub-activities. Combat, Skill-Focus Activities, Planning and Dialogue are the categories that I’m going to use; while they are very broad, and there can be crossovers amongst them, they will hopefully be sufficient to delineate the different types of circumstances.

Combat

The more combatants there are, the more Ensemble in nature the treatment of PCs will be. Even so, there are potentials for individuals to star more prominently on a regular basis. To some extent this is a function of character abilities – in a D&D encounter with undead, you would expect the Cleric to star. At other times, a more traditional combat-monster PC might take centre-stage. In general, though, we aim for egalitarianism in combat.

Your Combats might be a star vehicle if:

• one specific character usually strikes the final blow;
• there is one specific character whose combat capabilities you always have to take into account when designing encounters;
• you have to deliberately design encounters to give a character spotlight time; or,
• one specific character is designed to take large numbers of low-level “supporting” enemies (ie flunkies) out of the combat quickly.

For example, in my Fumanor campaign Seeds Of Empire we have one PC, Eubani, who is unapologetically the star; everyone else fights a holding battle until Eubani is free to dispatch the enemy. There are exceptions, but they occur only when an encounter has been specifically designed to make another PC the star.

In the One Faith Fumanor Campaign, the entire campaign was designed from the start to be a star vehicle for one particular PC (it started out as a solo campaign) – but Combat is the one time when that character is potentially overshadowed, or at least no more prominent than any other character.

In Shards Of Divinity, we once again have a deliberate star vehicle for one specific character, but that character is not a combat monster by any stretch of the imagination, and it usually falls to the other PCs to try and keep the star alive! These three campaigns cover the full spectrum of possibilities.

Skill Focus

It’s entirely normal for one character to be the focus of attention when a question involving a particular skillset arises. You wouldn’t expect a rogue to be able to answer a question on arcane theory or a physicist to be great at criminal investigation (no matter how used to working logically they might be). But even here, it’s possible for a character to steal the spotlight more often than others do, depending on their skills and the adventures that you are running. One of the ongoing challenges every GM faces in every game (regardless of game system) is creating situations in which two disparate fields of expertise, held by two separate characters, are required in order to answer the question at hand. You can liken the objective to the solving of a jigsaw in which different characters each have one or two pieces of the puzzle but can’t see quite how they fit together.

Even within this type of scene, subdivisions are possible, because its possible to group skills and expertise into practical skills and theoretical knowledge. It’s entirely possible for one character to monopolize the theoretical knowledge “skills” while the practical skills are more evenly divided – and possibly exclude that “expert” character entirely.

Your Skill-oriented scenes might be a star vehicle if:

• one specific character (as opposed to the player) seems to know more about the world than anyone else;
• a single player is always asking to make a skill roll;
• only one character has an academic background;
• characters with high skill levels don’t have sharp boundaries to their knowledge; or,
• you have difficulty posing a mystery or surprising the players with a world background revelation.

In general, one of these being true might not be enough to definitively consider these scenes as a star vehicle, but the more of them that ring true, the more likely it is.

It’s relevant at this point to mention Lucius, the starring character (quite deliberately) of the Shards Of Divinity campaign. This character has exceptionally high theoretical knowledge – but with some very firm limits as to what his expertise covers and what it doesn’t. In general, if it isn’t a key moment in human activity, he doesn’t know anything esoteric; for example, he has a very high skill in architecture – but his practical knowledge of the field is virtually non-existent, and he has very limited awareness of non-human architecture. He might be able to grasp something about the latter working from the general principles of the field, but that’s about as far as it goes. This means that there are times when – as intended – the campaign is a star vehicle for the character, but there other occasions when an everyman with a skill roll 10 or 12 ranks lower than Lucius’ actually knows more about the subject than he does.

Or, to take another skill from the same campaign setting, two characters can have an equally high “Spellcraft” check – but it means entirely different things to them. In terms of its most practical function, the identification of spells being cast, it is exactly the same; but to the cleric in the party, that aspect of the ability is rote learning of certain key phrases and gestures, while the theoretical aspects of the skill relate to the proper formulation of prayers, the relationships between deity and worshipper, and so on, while to the mage the gestures are secondary; his theoretical spellcraft relates to the relationships between energy fields and matter and the ways in which they can be manipulated. Druids would have still a third, subtly different perspective on the subject, which includes some things the mage and cleric don’t while excluding others, and a sorcerer would have a fourth interpretation.

These examples show that there is a balancing mechanism between ubiquity of skill application and level of expertise that is always possible, which can give a little spotlight time to a relative “non-expert” by virtue of that character’s background even in the presence of an apparent “expert”. It’s subtle, but this is something that I always try to take into account when setting difficulty scores for skill rolls.

It also shows that just because a campaign or scene is nominally a star vehicle for a particular character, that character doesn’t have to be the prime mover in every respect.

Planning

Who makes the decisions in your games? Who decides who is going to do what – and who has to be convinced of a plan before the other characters can get started? This type of scene is the one most frequently turned into a star vehicle whether the GM wants it to or not. There’s not a lot that can be done to make an introverted player into an extraverted character effectively – they generally either do it themselves or they don’t. The best you can do is throw the occasional opportunity to make a decision their way and hope they take the bait.

It’s also true that star vehicle behavior is at its most obvious in this type of scene – so much so that a “Your planning scenes might be a star vehicle if” section would be redundant.

Dialogue

In contrast to Planning scenes, dialogue scenes are the hardest ones in which to detect star vehicle symptoms. Outside of combat, this is one area where most GMs strive to give everyone screen time, and this is arguably where it is most important to spread the spotlight.

Your Dialogue scenes might be a star vehicle if:

• one particular character takes the lead in speaking for the group on a regular basis;
• one player seems to make all the decisions;
• one character regularly interrupts dialogue between one or more of the others either between themselves or with an NPC; or
• one character or player seems to be involved in all the consequential dialogues.

Is A Star Vehicle A Bad Thing?

Not necessarily. If a campaign is designed from the start to be a star vehicle for one character or player, the GM knows the fact, and can make sure that any others involved get a share of the spotlight along the way, can make allowances in other words. Things only become a problem when this was not the GMs intent, and one character or player is effectively hijacking the campaign in certain situations or types of scenes.

Even then, it’s not necessarily a problem. It’s entirely possible to have a campaign which is a star vehicle for all the PCs, simply by making sure that different characters are dominant in each of the types of scene. Spotlight roles can even be traded off – if the character who normally dominates combat is to take a leading role in the key dialogue moment of an adventure, the character who normally dominates dialogue can take the lead in the combat of that adventure – if it is designed appropriately. It’s even possible to balance things out over multiple sessions by having one “spotlight” character in an adventure or series of encounters.

Ultimately, that’s the point of this article – that appropriate measures can be taken if the GM is aware of the situation, but is likely to run into trouble (eventually) if he blunders his way through, blindly.

Ensemble Ideals

This leads me back to the comments made at the start of this article. For some time now, the ideal presented here at Campaign Mastery has been that of “the Ensemble”, where everyone gets a fair slice of the pie; but that’s not the only approach, and may not even be the best approach – if implemented poorly, it can seem artificial and forced. The sore spot tickling my subconscious was that my instincts, when it came to my own campaigns, had led me to solutions that were not in keeping with the idealized recommendations that I had been advocating in writing.

Does that mean that I’m repudiating part or all of the advice offered here in the past? Not at all. I’m simply recognizing that the real world is more complex than some of those solutions might suggest, and that some compromises may need to be in order.

Metagame Remedies

When one character is dominant in more than one sphere of game activity – Dialogue, Combat, Planning, or Skill-focused scenes – this becomes much harder to do, and that’s when a campaign is likely to run into trouble, usually in the form of frustrated players who are demanding a greater share of the spotlight. This can also occur when one sphere of game activity is excessively dominant.- when there is too much combat, the combat monster dominates. Something to watch for particularly closely is a character who dominates one sphere of activity and who continually tries to push the players, as a group, in the direction of more of that scene. They can either be trying to grab the spotlight because they haven’t been getting their fair share lately, or because they are trying to get more than their share. Either is an indication of the same problem, but the responsibility – and the remedial action required – is different.

The first remedial action is to discuss the problem with the players – all of them, at the same time. It might be that the player concerned doesn’t realize that he’s hogging the spotlight, or that the other players are being sufficiently entertained just sitting back and watching.

The second remedial recourse is to introduce some house rules to cope with the problem – something like “Skill Ranks can only be used once per day”, though that might be going a bit far. Simply having NPCs who react more favorably on things said by one of the non-dominant PC might be enough. These should be kept as light as possible. Ultimately, it might be better to skip straight to the third course of remedy, reserving this as something that the GM can come back to if the third solution doesn’t seem to quite go far enough.

The third remedy that I recommend is changing the adventures that the GM is coming up with in order to emphasize anyone and everyone other than the dominant character, operating on the premise that by virtue of their dominance they will still get their fair share of the spotlight. It’s when you reach this point that the GM should be aware that his campaign is in serious trouble, and it’s going to take drastic action to fix it.

The fourth remedy is to ask the player to retire the dominant character. I’ve had to do this once, resulting in the Warcry campaign. But what happens if the player says no? What’s more, this might not fix the root cause of the problem, if one player is simply better at gaming the game mechanics to extract what he wants from them. It can even make things worse if you aren’t careful.

The fifth remedy is to completely change the game system of the campaign. Switching from Champions to Mutants & Masterminds, or to BESM from Pathfinder, or whatever, and converting the characters, can eliminate any rules loopholes that have been exploited by the player. This may not solve the problem, and may give (correctly) the impression that the GM is actively discriminating against the player / dominant character. It can also upset the other players. It also exposes all the headaches of investing in, and learning, a new game system. In fact, it’s so fraught with difficulty that a lot of GMs don’t, or won’t, even contemplate it.

That leaves only one remedy, the harshest and most extreme of the lot: asking the player to leave the campaign altogether. The only more extreme step is winding the campaign up altogether.

It must be emphasized that it is rare for this problem to reach these extremes. To contemplate anything beyond remedy #2 or perhaps #3, the campaign must be at the point of imploding. These are all desperate attempts to salvage something from the imminent train-wreck. If you aren’t at that extreme yet, look for variations on an earlier solution.

GM mélange

Quite often, when one character so totally dominates a campaign that the GM is forced to consider any action whatsoever, at least some of the blame can be put down to laziness or mélange on the part of the GM. At the same time, a case of GM lassitude can also result from one character dominating excessively, because it can get as dull and frustrating for the GM as it is for anyone else at the game table. In the second article I ever wrote here at Campaign Mastery, I made the point that Lassitude Is Not Burnout, and the principle of that (rather short) article still holds. If you feel like you’re burned out, if it all seems more like work than fun, try the remedy contained in that article. Once you’re back to feeling inspired, you can examine the situation at your game table with a clearer head and a sharper perspective. That can reveal causes and solutions that are completely beyond you at the moment.

Take Inventory Of Your Campaign

It’s extremely rare for things to grow so dark and grim, at least from this cause. More often, this problem causes the occasional niggle or frustration, and that can be eased by the remedial action suggested in “Is it such a bad thing”. The first step is always to be aware of what’s going on at your game table – and the subtexts and contexts that surround those events. Then you can do something about it if something needs doing.

So, every GM reading this should take inventory of their campaigns. Think over the last three or four game sessions, break each down according to the type of activity and look for any character dominating. Every player reading this should take an honest look at their actions over the last three or four game sessions of each campaign they play in – have they been causing a problem without realizing it? Might another player be simmering in his juices over not getting his fair share of screen time, or over his toes being trodden on (for what no doubt seemed good reasons at the time)?

You have to know something’s wrong before you can fix it. The sooner a problem is discovered, the easier it is to fix; don’t let it become ingrained behavior. You might just make the game more fun for everybody – yourself included.

I thought that I’d talk a little today about the way Blair and I write adventures for the Adventurer’s Club campaign. Because we share the GMing responsibilities in that campaign – and I don’t mean alternating in the GM’s Chair, I mean we both GM at the same time – this process is necessarily somewhat different to my normal approach. Along the way, I’ll throw in some information about the benefits and liabilities of co-GMing, and why you might need to try it sometime.

A Blending Of Styles

In the beginning, Blair was the only GM of the Adventurer’s Club campaign, and I was one of several players. After three adventures (two of which I was unable to participate in as my character wasn’t ready), the campaign was beginning to fall apart. The players were unhappy, and several were thinking of pulling out to play something else. Blair himself didn’t know how long the campaign would last when he started it, though he hoped it would be around for a year or two.

The problems that were afflicting the campaign were many-fold. The adventures, though reasonable as stand-alone fill-ins, lacked depth. The characters, though reasonably conceived, were wildly inconsistent in the level of opposition they afforded the PCs. The background elements were good as far as they went, but were patchy and incomplete, and felt superficial. Blair had created a number of NPCs with which to populate the game world but these were all allies of the heroes and, having been modeled on Blair’s favorite pulp characters from other sources – totally overshadowed the PCs. Finally, there was a severe problem with the amount of prep that Blair was investing in the campaign.

After listening to the other players complaints, making my own observations, and discussing the situation with one or two interested non-participants, I came to the conclusion that Blair’s GMing style was weak in all the areas in which I was strong – and that there was a lot of potential worth preserving within the campaign. Since I had the luxury of the time in which to do so, I decided that it was worth at least offering to share the GMing duties. Blair saw the benefits immediately, and our collaboration began immediately. That was August 28, 2006 – so the collaboration, and the Campaign, has now run for more than six years and is showing no signs of stopping anytime soon.

Lack of Prep

Blair can be considered a self-educated expert in the Pulp Genre and a Grognard when it comes to period militaria and atmosphere elements. He has read hundreds of novels and stories from the genre, if not thousands, or that are at least peripherally related. That’s both the advantage that he brought to the campaign and the curse that had to be overcome. With his vast repertoire, he was able to take a pulp-derived adventure premise – described in little more than a single line – and run an adventure built around it, off-the-cuff.

That’s both an admirable quality and a potential failing, because it takes more than reasonable in-genre adventures to make a campaign; the wider scheme of things has to be more than the sum of its parts.

There’s an element of self-fulfilling prophecy to the depth of investment in campaign prep: if you don’t expect the campaign to last, you don’t invest the depth necessary to make it last, and consequently it doesn’t last. The more layers of complexity and detail that you can build into a campaign, the more there is for the players to explore and interact with, the more campaign elements there are that can interact in interesting ways, and the more there is for the players to explore. Sustaining the interest of the players in the campaign world is essential to campaign longevity; that alone is not enough to create a campaign that will last for a decade or more, but it is a prerequisite.

In particular, a GM needs to invest prep time in covering those areas in which his natural style is deficient. If you are bad at coming up with NPCs on the fly, you should invest prep into creating NPCs that can sustain prolonged interest. If you are weak at balancing combat factors so that encounters will challenge the PCs without being overwhelming, you need to spend time working on the combat situations that will occur within the adventure. And so on.

In comparison, I knew virtually nothing about the pulp genre, I can still (almost) count the number of pulp stories/novels that I have read on one hand. But I have a far more disciplined approach to campaign prep, which I use not only to shore up areas in which I am weaker as a GM, but to hone and refine those elements that come naturally. Much of the time, I actually enjoy campaign- and adventure-prep.

Co-GMing turns adventure prep into a collaborative and social occupation. This interaction gives Blair the stimulus and discipline that he needs to do what needs to be done, while the fact that I am working outside my normal genre limitations forces me to get a bit more creative and stretch myself in unusual directions. Together, we make one good GM when it comes to campaign prep. In addition, the fact that he is good at some things I am not (such as faking an Indian accent) means that we can write to each other’s strengths in designing adventures.

Depth of Adventures

The consequence of taking a “typical” pulp premise and improvising an adventure around it is that they are completely isolated, completely meaningless in the greater scheme of things. They have no connection to what had happened before, they have no connection with anything that might happen in the future, and they have no lasting consequences.

I regard no act of creation within a campaign as complete unless it does two or three things within the broader context of the campaign. Connecting adventures together to form a larger narrative comes naturally to me.

In large part, then, the shortage of prep time that Blair was investing in his campaign was directly responsible for the absence of depth within the adventures that he was producing. My involvement in the Campaign forced him to look beyond the source material on which he was drawing, to the fundamentals of character and plot – in the process, expanding the limits of the genre to encompass less derivation and more innovation and creativity. From the first adventure we collaborated on, this was a solved problem.

Wildly inconsistent opposition

While Blair had GM’d a couple of times before starting the pulp campaign, and was a hobbyist-writer of pulp stories, he had never GM’d the Hero System (never mind the Pulp Hero variant) before. As a result, while he could create opposition in a literary sense, he struggled to translate those capabilities into game mechanics, in particular as regards power level.

The real problem was that he was constructing his opposition (in terms of game mechanics) to an idealized standard based purely on the character concept he had in mind, without consideration of what the PCs were capable of. As a result, sometimes they presented a challenge for the PCs, and other times they had all the impact of wet spaghetti. On the other hand, while I had not GM’d straight Hero System game mechanics for more than a decade, my variant system was still firmly rooted in the mechanics of the original – enough that I could see where Blair was going wrong.

My approach was to invert the process. After an initial concept, I would look at the plot needs that the character had to serve, set the game mechanics – OCV, DCV, etc – accordingly, then adjust the initial concept as necessary to justify the scores chosen.

Early on, I introduced Blair to the rule of 5: Opposition with stats of 10 was an easy fight for a single PC. Add 5 to get something close to a fair fight for a well-designed PC. Add 5 more for each doubling of the numbers of PCs of that standard that the character had to stand up to. So, to stand up to four well-constructed PCs, a single enemy would need stats of around 25. These numbers had nothing to do with how capable the NPCs should be, they were simple rules of thumb for describing how effective the NPCs had to be just to hold their own in play.

Amusingly, the same values work reasonably well in 3.x…

Overpowered NPC allies

One of the big problems to be overcome was the perception that the NPCs who populated the Adventurer’s Club were “Blair’s Favorites”, demigods who could solve any problem, and who did not really need the PCs. Blair’s original concept was that these would act as consultants and drop-in characters for any role the PCs needed – but by making sure that the PCs had a resource to call apon for any problem that might confront them, never mind ones that were exemplars of their professions, he inadvertently made the PCs seem superfluous, at least to the players’ perspective.

Solving this problem has been a multistep process that is still ongoing. The first step was to make them more rounded characters, rather than idealized depictions of Blair’s favorite Heroes from Pulp stories, giving them flaws. The biggest is that they are robustly individualistic, and cooperate with each other poorly, as a result. Secondly, to have them tackling problems that were too big for the PCs to deal with, and that took lots of patient inactivity, by having them ask the PCs to help in smaller aspects of the big problem. Getting the PCs tails caught in the gears of the bigger problems would present them with challenges that were appropriate to their levels of capability while implying the scale of the bigger issues. Thirdly, by giving the PCs a taste of the consequences of their own gradually-growing fame, to imply that the considerably greater fame of the NPCs gave them an even greater handicap to overcome. Fourthly, by having the NPCs fail a time or two, needing the PCs to come to the rescue. And finally, by pointing toward the concept of generational change within the ranks.

Making the NPCs less effective, and less ubiquitous, while emphasizing the one thing that the PCs by the very nature of the fact that they were PCs had as an advantage – that there was a team of them – gave them something unique to contribute to the campaign that none of the NPCs could provide. To that end, we ripped the club apart, had most of the senior members drop out (at least temporarily), put the FBI in charge, and had the PCs become the new club administration’s fair-haired boys.

All of this placed the senior NPC members at the periphery of the activities of the PCs, shifting the focus of attention away from these impossibly-perfect NPCs.

Incomplete and superficial background elements

Another part of this process was the fleshing out of other members of the supporting cast – the staff that keeps the Adventurer’s Club ticking over, shifting the focus away from the paragons of virtue at least somewhat. The goal was to put these isolated campaign elements into context, to make it feel like the PCs were people inhabiting a real world populated by real people.

One-line descriptions of these characters (many of whom did not even have a name) and locations within the blub premises simply didn’t cut it. I wanted the PCs to be able to have a conversation with a waitress, or with the cleaning lady, and for them to have an honest-to-goodness backstory to tell. I wanted to rezone the locations within the club to make them interesting places to visit, with an atmosphere and some impact.

It all comes back to campaign prep, really.

In summary

It’s not going to far to describe Blair as bringing the concepts and genre knowledge while I brought practical and professional expertise to the collaboration. The game world and the people who have made it the way it is are still Blair’s creations; my role is to ensure that they are presented to the players in the most interesting way possible, to make his campaign world live up to the promise that it derives from his expertise in the genre. It’s in this context that the approach we use to create the adventures should be viewed.

Phase Gray

Collaboration is at the heart of the process that we have developed over the years for achieving this ambition. Because these collaborations occur at my place for various reasons, I usually handle much of the chores of the writing while Blair documents character concepts and broad notes. In order to codify the different stages of the process, I have taken to using different text colors to identify where we’re up to. Although we don’t actually refer to them as such, I’m going to use those colors as labels to describe these stages of the process.

The first stage is conceptual, and I use a gray text color for any notes. We start by reviewing the premise of the plot, where it is intended to take the broader adventure, its style, and in general getting an idea for what the overall structure of the adventure is going to be. In most cases, the synopsis is an idea, expressed in little more than a paragraph or even a single sentence. I tend to think of it as the “back cover blurb” for the adventure.

Some adventures seem to write themselves easily, while others have a far more difficult development. Whenever possible, a three-step approach is used:

1. What’s the overall situation?
2. What are the villains doing, and what are their plans?
3. How can we involve the PCs in those plans, and what will the consequences be?

By deciding what the overall plan of the villains is, as they think it would proceed with no interference from the PCs (or from anyone else), we create a framework that can be used as the foundations of the adventure.

The PCs anticipated involvement can generally also be initially broken down into three steps:

1. Realize that something is going on
2. Investigate to discover what that something is
3. Identify an opportunity to do something about it, then exploit that opportunity.

While we’re aided by our knowledge of what the PCs can do, and what the players are likely to want to do, and can tailor the information received and the circumstances to steer events this way or that, we are often surprised in that phase; our planning is deliberately robust enough to ensure that there are multiple paths to success so that we are completely comfortable with the PCs going off in an unexpected direction. Having two sets of eyes go through the villain’s plans to ensure that there are no obvious solutions that have been overlooked which can bring the whole adventure to a premature end also helps immensely.

The goal in this stage is to break down the plot into Acts or Chapters, each with its own one- or two-line summary. If the adventure is flowing naturally, we may even go as far as three or four lines, but that’s fairly rare. Some of the plots are my ideas, some are Blair’s, and some have evolved out of discussions between us.

Phase Fuchsia

For each Act, we will then work out who the NPCs are that we need to create; what the locations are that we need to specify; any game props that we need to devise; and so on. What resources we need to have at hand, in other words.

Blair will usually write these down. At the same time, we will break the synopsis of each Act down into smaller scenes. Because we already know to what end the Act is supposed to lead, and from where things stand in the plot at the point it is coming from, it’s very much an exercise in connecting the dots – with each of those dots being another circumstance or resource.

A key sub-step of the process is to ensure that each PC will have at least one moment to shine within the adventure, one appearance on centre-stage. This in itself often has a formative influence on the plotline’s breakdown. And if a PC is not active within this part of the adventure, we want to know what he will be doing at the time.

Once we have a list of the resources needed and a more detailed breakdown of the plotline that tells us how those resources connect to form the main plot, it’s time to start generating the actual resources.

NPCs

We start by generating each NPC. Research is important; where the NPC is to be modeled on a real individual, we will look for a Wikipedia page on that individual (and go to Google or other offline resources as necessary); where it’s an entirely fictional character, we’ll do whatever research we need on the circumstances and background of the NPC. Because we have identified the NPCs role in the plotline, and are crafting the character to fit, then building a backstory that produces an NPC who is both willing and able to meet those story needs, there is not a lot of wasted activity. Defining and refining each individual can introduce additional plot points; we want characters to behave plausibly, given their mindsets and capabilities, and that often means adding in an additional encounter to establish the relevant character traits of the individual. Sometimes these will reach the PCs awareness prior to the NPCs contribution to the plot, sometimes they will explain their actions after the fact, and sometimes the justification can be built into the encounter itself.

We’ll talk about background, ethnicity, name, appearance, characteristics, and capabilities, all with a view to the role the character is intended to play. We also try hard to find a photograph to present the individual to the characters. Sometimes, in the case where a real person has been used as a model, we can find something on Wikipedia Commons; sometimes, we need to do an appropriate Google Image Search. We’re aided in this by the fact that I have a large (and growing) collection of clip art saved from the net. Most of these are not images that are in the public domain, but these are fine for private use.

And sometimes an image will pop out that leads the characterization in a completely unexpected direction. Like the time we had an encounter with a Romanian Lawyer and Larry Hagman from the original series of Dallas popped up – we made the Lawyer a wannabe Texan, and played him for laughs.

Location, Location, Location!

Another piece of research that gets done at this point is where we want the action to take place (if we haven’t settled on that already). We use Google Maps and screen capture extensively for this purpose, but sometimes have to do more fundamental research – I have four different atlases that see extensive use for different purposes. Sometimes, we won’t know where we want somewhere to be, but will have an idea what we want it to look like – Google Image Search permits us to enter our descriptive keywords and narrow the search down to what we want – then looking at the website from which the image derives gives us a location. Nor are we above inventing places as necessary!

Encounter Settings

Related to the location are images that are intended to convey the setting to the players. We prefer to use period photos where possible, but are quite happy to take a photograph of something that looks right and transplant it in space to anywhere we want it to be. We also try to be seasonally correct. Sometimes, Google’s street view can be useful in this context as well.

Sometimes we have to do it ourselves, such as the island shown here.

Quite often, I will have to manipulate the image in some way, especially to paint out obvious modern contrivances like satellite dishes, mobile phone antennas, air conditioners, and telephone lines. And again, my clipart collection sometimes comes in handy! Sometimes I will have strong opinions as to which image is most appropriate, other times Blair will make the final decision.

Of key importance is being sure that we’re both as happy with the result as possible.

Illustrations & Props

We also like to provide visual images to illustrate the story, and props to help the players visualize the action. On rare occasions, I will generate these from scratch, more frequently I will locate a starting point and edit the resulting image. The image shown here (from the next adventure) is an example – the car started off as yellow, but was otherwise perfect to our needs. The original yellow (still visible in the wheel rims) didn’t fit the character who was to own the vehicle, though – we needed it to be red. I’ve painted out people in modern clothing, cars, aircraft, highway markings, even whole buildings!

All this helps us to visualize the action while writing the adventure (which is why we don’t leave it until the last minute) as well as helping the players afterwards.

Once we have everything we need to depict the people, places, and things that the PCs will interact with, we’re ready to move on to Phase Blue.

Phase Blue

Phase Blue is where we expand on the outlines of the plot. We add details of characterization, of key pieces of dialogue, of relevant skill checks and game mechanics, of decision points within the adventure and how to respond to different general player decisions, and so on. To save effort, my typed adventure notes will often say things like “refer Blair’s handwritten notes”.

We will often not do these in the sequence they will appear within the adventure, instead following an internal logic. That permits us to focus on all the scenes involving a particular character, one after the next, for example, ensuring consistency of characterization throughout. The color-coding shows at a glance where we are up to and what we still have to do. Where we anticipate the PCs splitting up (or where the situation is going to force them to do so), we will usually do all the scenes involving one group and then go back and do all the scenes involving the other. This avoids wasting time reacquainting ourselves with the status of each group at the start of each scene.

Phase Black

When the scenario is finished, everything gets converted to black text for printing.

So, how is this different?

The key to the approach we use is discussion and being willing to compromise. Both of us contribute ideas, and often have to persuade the other; by digging into the reasons we think something is the right approach to take in order to do so, we both have to look behind the curtains at what the scene is trying to achieve. In effect, this is the equivalent of several dry runs through the adventure.

The act of collaboration affects the process in other ways. Blair can be thinking about characters while I’m thinking about plot; I can be thinking about dialogue while Blair is making notes about a setting. It’s much easier to do two things at once when there are two of you. This carries through to the game itself; one of us can be handling the dialogue for a key NPC while the other is dealing with the PCs. Two NPCs can have a dialogue with each other – which is far harder to achieve when there’s only one GM.

It means that if – no, when – the PCs do something unexpected, there are two of us who can react to it. One deals with the immediate situation, while the other can look at the bigger picture of how this will alter the overall plotline of the adventure. In general, whoever has the clearest idea of how to deal with the immediate situation will speak up first, leaving the other free to do big-picture thinking. On any number of occasions, one of us has started GMing a scene and the other has taken up the reigns part-way through. As a general rule of thumb, Blair is the better at reacting to ad-hoc situations and I’m better at the big picture stuff, but we violate that rule almost as often as we observe it.

The result is a far more structured and deliberate writing process, which has been formalized to the point of using technology in specific and structured ways to achieve the goals. And yet, it’s also a process in which you have two creative minds tossing ideas into the mixture, and having the luxury of choosing which works best; there is more scope for innovation and flexibility.

But the biggest difference is that we can’t take things for granted. If it’s not spelt out and mutually agreed-on in advance, neither of us can tell where the other one is going; when it has been worked out in advance, we can trust that the other has some mental road map of how he’s going to reach the required point in the plot, impart the required information, no matter how far we may appear to stray from the straightest line in doing so. Again, we cover each other’s deficiencies.

Of necessity, we’ve both learned how to focus on the objective of each adventure, of each act, of each scene, and how to break those down into smaller components that add up to what’s required to achieve the big-picture goals. Often, I will be able to identify a plot need, and Blair has an answer by the time I’ve finished articulating the problem, or vice-versa. Or I can come up with a good idea that Blair will twist or manipulate into a great idea, ir vice-versa. Overall, the efficiency of creativity does not suffer for the need to articulate and define everything in a more concrete form; just the opposite. We easily get twice as much done in an hour of plotting as either of us alone could achieve, even taking into account the potential for abbreviating and thumb-nailing the ideas when you GM alone.

Not all combinations just work

Of course, it helps that we are a good fit, collaboratively. There are other players with whom I have collaborated on projects and our styles were often too similar, or one had problems articulating ideas to the other in a way that was readily grasped. It was a struggle. Before you can co-GM with someone, you need to know your own strengths and weaknesses, and those of the other person. That alone can make you a better GM, whether working with someone else or on your own.