Image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay, background by Mike

Few campaigns make any attempt to match real-time with game-time, and mine certainly don’t. I’m quite capable of hand-waving days, weeks, or even months of time if nothing of interest is happening. I’m equally capable of spreading a single game-day over 3 or 4 game sessions if there’s a lot going on. And I don’t think I’m anywhere close to being unique in this respect.

Nevertheless, eventually, the in-game calendar will approach December 25, or its local equivalent, or a PC’s birthday, or any of a number of other dates of social significance in our real lives.

In my superhero campaign, for example, the 4th of July factors centrally into the current adventure – so much so that the players have opted to time-travel into the past just to give themselves more lead time, as explained in recent posts.

In the past, I have written about the opportunity for seasonal adventures, and even offered a few myself. This year, I found myself reflecting on the reality of gift-giving in real life.

Most seasonal adventures in ongoing campaigns simply use the season as a backdrop with some social elements (even if out of place). Where the social narrative does play a role, the focus is generally on the giving of gifts, simple because that’s where the primary PC interaction takes place.

Exchanging gifts with my players this year took perhaps half-an-hour. When the current superhero campaign started, a week or two before Christmas game time, it took a similar amount of game time (though it took more like 90 minutes to play, because things that normally happen simultaniously in real life were spread out to occur sequentially, permitting each to be its own point of spotlight focus).

Giving a gift is the tip, the focal point, of a very large iceberg, and that iceberg is often overlooked, compressed, or hand-waved unnecessarily – which neglects a rather large opportunity for GMs.

An Anatomy of Christmas Shopping

I know some people who make a list of recipients and then just “go shopping” – I’ve done that a time or two, myself. I know others who spend the whole year looking for ‘the perfect gift’, essentially spreading the Christmas process over the entire year. Someone I used to know did 90% of their Christmas shopping at the Boxing Day Sales (December 26, for those who don’t know what ‘Boxing Day’ is). This year, I did 90% of my Christmas shopping with a single purchase on a single site. In the past, I have also done the bulk of it online but at multiple sites and in the form of many distinct transactions.

I know some people who leave their shopping until the last minute. Others distribute it throughout the year, or the second half of the year, or even do most of it very early, as I mentioned.

Because the last time that my players all expect to get together is the first Saturday in December, I have to plan to have my gifts ready by then. Because I shop online, I have to allow 4-6 weeks for delivery, sometimes 4-8 from sites known to be a little slow. That means that I normally do most of my Christmas shopping in or before the first week of October. Over the last couple of years, I’ve allowed an extra 4 weeks for Covid-related delays – I haven’t needed all of it, but have certainly needed all of that and more on occasion for gifts that I bought myself. And I normally do all of it at once – family as well as friends.

I start organizing my Christmas in September, in other words. As a result, I am well-known within my family for being the most organized family member in this respect.

This litany isn’t to big-note myself or laud my organizational skills (though the skills that I bring to the game table as GM definitely help in my real life); it’s to show the massive diversity in approaches that are possible.

But, when you boil it down, we all go through a fairly similar process.

  • List of recipients
  • For each person on the list:
    • Assess them – likes, dislikes, known possessions, known desires, etc
    • Consider any restrictions or incapacities
    • Vague gift ideas

    (in practice, you tend to do each step for all people on the list and then move on to the next step).

  • Allocate the budget
  • Select and Purchase Gifts for each person on the list
  • Start hunting for gifts for the hard-to-shop-for and anyone you’ve accidentally left off your list
  • Select packaging
  • Gift-wrapping (some people don’t do this, considering it wasted money that could be used to add another dollar or two to the gift budget)
  • Gift-giving and receiving

Each step in this process is an opportunity for Roleplay and adventure. And that’s the subject of today’s article – looking at the 9-tenths of that 10-step process that isn’t gift-giving in terms of RPG opportunities.

A Reflection of Character

There are so many combinations of gift-purchasing alternatives – I don’t doubt that my earlier list leaves some out – that the choice of how you do your Christmas Shopping is a reflection of your character as it really is. This is a good starting point for New Year’s Resolutions for those who are so inclined – that’s a subject for another day!

Now think about that in the context of the PC. How you behave, in normal play, is a result of the intersection between personality, capability, and conditions/events external to the character. The parts of a player’s character’s personality that you get to display depend on the opportunities presented to them, and are always going to be colored by the circumstances and the immediate goal of the character(s).

Gift-shopping is a way to express the totality of a character’s personality.

Factoring into that is the social context. The way we do gifts here in Australia is not that dissimilar to the way they are done in most western societies – the US, the UK, Canada. I have no doubt that the approaches of 100, 120 years ago – around the turn of the 19th century – were somewhat more individualized in those societies. And gift-giving is still quite different in other places.

    Christmas In General

    The first two links are good references for many countries. Later links focus on just a few. In most cases, none of the pages tells the complete story of how Christmas is celebrated, you need to actually compile your research from multiple sources.

    Christmas Gifting specifically

    Information on gifting practices around the world is a lot less cohesive than the general Christmas links shared above, and the few sites below that mention Australia (the only nation I know well enough to judge) vary from the ‘incomplete’ to the ‘wildly inaccurate’. I’ll try to put these results into context as I go. There is no cohesive overall page on the list that treats the subject comprehensively, I’m afraid.

    • Trip Trivia: 20 Unique Gift-Giving Traditions Around The World – this site seems reliable in its content – for the 20 countries highlighted.
    • Western Union: Christmas Day Around The World – more comprehensive than most, but very very superficial, too. Christmas Trees are far more common in Australia (usually pine trees) than suggested, and everyone has access to plastic substitutes. Aside from that, everything that’s actually said about here is accurate but incomplete. Which makes this better than many.
    • Meet’n’Greet Me: Christmas Around the World: Christmas Gifts and Traditions – The headline sounds promising, and I can’t point at any inaccuracies – because not every country is represented (and specifically, Australia isn’t covered). Still, that puts it ahead of several other sites.
    • Xperience Days: 40 Unique Gift-giving Traditions – More comprehensive than most, and accurate so far as it goes. The Australian entry talks exclusively about Christmas In July and is correct in its description – but this variation is not universally practiced here. But that’s the only reason this isn’t at the head of the list.
    • Globesmart: Guide To Gift Giving Around The World – this site starts out in a promising manner but soon seems to shift gears without warning to focus on business gifts – and not necessarily for Christmas, either. But what is here has so much plot color potential – a gift of six carnations from a Russian could be interpreted as a very mafia-like death threat, or as a deliberate insult, for example – that I had to list it anyway. And I have no doubt that what information is included is accurate.
    • Truly Experiences: 10 Countries With Curious Gifting Traditions – appears accurate but superficial and many of the entries don’t add much to the other sites listed already. Included in case they have a country that hasn’t already appeared.
    • Culture Trip: Christmas Gifting Traditions Around The World – The headline sounded so promising that this was the first link considered for this section. But then I read the entry on Christmas In Australia. The first half of the entry is an accurate description of the environment here at this time of year; the second half invents a tradition out of whole cloth surrounding food-themed hampers. Yes, you can get these and give them, just as you can any other gift you care to nominate – but they are hardly what I would consider a tradition. I’ve received two in my 57 years, three if you count the coffee sampler pack that I got one year from my sister and her family. And that inaccuracy makes me question the accuracy of everything else on the page.
    • Remitly: Holiday Gift Giving Traditions Around The World – Another promising headline. But the focus of this page isn’t about Christmas gift-giving, it’s about when gift-giving takes place (including Christmas). There are snippets of useful information, but you have to dig for them – and most of the discussion is superficial, good for telling you what subject you need to research.

As always, there are (at least) two schools of thought regarding such international traditions in your campaigns.

  • Option 1 is to accurately represent the traditions of the characters, based on their nationality.
  • Option 2 is to accurately represent the traditions of the players, as a point of common reference.
  • Option 3 is to invent something out of whole cloth – if the society in which your game is set is sufficiently different from modern-day practices. In which case, the links above offer inspiration.

I tend to use a blend of the first two options in my modern-day games and a blend of the second two options in my other campaigns. The dominant and common theme is the second option, which is treated as a ‘universal common denominator’, and which is varied or modified according to the nation in which the PCs find themselves; but I also allow the PCs to pay Character Service to the traditions native to wherever they come from, and to try and integrate the two.

As a general rule, I always try and relate the situation to the real world. If you have a multinational team of characters, who happen to be all together in country X for a long period of time, what would their Christmas practices be? The equivalent situation would be a small company with employees from many different nations all under the one roof, living and working together – their dominant Christmas culture would derive from the host nation, with their individual traditions shoe-horned into that context.

This is a golden opportunity to amplify the cultural differences and distinctiveness of the characters and their respective backgrounds.

But, on top of all that, there are enough variations on offer to individualize each PCs approach according to their personality, exposing elements of their natures that don’t often get an airing – if you make room for those expressions of personality.

An opportunity to layer depth

That’s just the start of the opportunities that the holiday season has to offer. The player may decide that this is a chance to show a vulnerability in the character – for example, someone who is normally incredibly organized, but who always seems to leave their Christmas Shopping to the last minute.

Few characteristics extend to every facet of a person’s life, and the same can be true of characters. Someone who is broadly generous may have a completely different and distinctive focus to their gift choices, one that is superficially miserly – not because they are a skinflint, but because the choice of gifts reflects a particular philosophy of the character, one that relates exclusively to Christmas.

Such individuality won’t be appropriate for all characters, and you certainly don’t want every PC to decide to be completely different to their usual personality when it comes to Christmas Gift selection! I would prioritize PCs who don’t get the opportunity to individualize themselves and stand out from the generic crowd of characters of similar ‘profession’ (character class) and ‘background’ (race). I would also de-emphasize anyone whose national background (race?) gives them a distinctive or unusual practices around this time of year.

But I would also work with the players of anyone who didn’t make that list to give their character a share of the spotlight through another part of the process.

The Christmas List

This is possibly the most difficult phase of the process to squeeze any meat out of – until you ask the player two simple questions:

  1. Is there anyone unusual that you are putting on your list?
  2. Is there anyone who has ticked you off enough to leave off your list – or to influence your choice of gift?

Suddenly, this isn’t a dull list of characters – it’s all about personalities and interactions. The villain who has a soft spot for puppies and children, who sets aside his ambitions just long enough to help the PCs rescue some lost kids. The politician who put his own interests ahead of those of his constituents in a personal interaction with the PC. The jerk who cuts the PC off every morning during his daily commute. The NPC who gave the PC a sympathy card when they seemed down, one morning. The don’t-wanna-be Villain who is entirely a victim of circumstance.

This is an opportunity to foster and enhance relationships, and to review the last game year’s play.

The Christmas Budget

How extravagant is the character going to be, and to whom? I generally try to be even handed in my shopping – I count up the number of individuals and divide my budget up accordingly. If I then see something suitable for a couple, their budgets get merged. Others do it differently.

How much is the character willing to spend? How sensible are they with their money? Is the character the type to over-commit themselves (I once had a character who did so and had to go to a loan shark to pay their immediate debts – which was out of the frying pan and into the fire, of course! – with the full cooperation of the GM).

In real life, I knew someone who pawned their wedding ring to buy Christmas gifts for their kids. My gift to them that year was to pay off half the debt (I couldn’t afford the whole amount).

I know someone who lists charities amongst those for whom they Christmas shop, then donate their share of the ‘gift’ budget to the cause.

There’s lots of scope here for personality expression and for individuality, as well as for social and cultural exposition. There was one character in one of my campaigns who came from a very poor background, and even though they were now reasonably affluent, their gifting budget was very tight, as an expression of that element of their background – because the player felt that it was often overlooked by the other players, and generally not evident enough.

The Character Mirror

Another point that is often overlooked is this: every gift that you receive is a mirror to how you are perceived by those giving the gift. Individual variations will occur from one gift-giver to another, but if you put them all together, the gift-givers are holding up a mirror to each PC as they perceive them to be.

It can be a worthwhile exercise, especially for characters who are a bit self-conscious, to think about what they think the gifts they have received say about them – a tool to help the player get deeper inside their character’s head.

This often won’t happen without some prodding from the GM, or at the very least, without the GM making room for such introspection in his planning.

Going Shopping

The opportunities are a lot more obvious when it comes to a shopping expedition or two. This generally means exposing yourself to the local environment (even online shopping exposes you to the internet, which is the equivalent) – and the local environment is the breeding ground and hiding place of all sorts of unsavory characters.

It’s worth remembering that there’s been at least one movie entirely about Christmas shopping – in this case, trying to get the last toy of its kind (and so keep a promise). You could stumble across anything from muggings to fraudulent or drunken Santas to road rage incidents following an accident in which both parties were trying to complete their Christmas shopping, having left it to the last minute. Of course, by the time you’ve sorted that mess out, some of the stores may have closed…

Heck, you could find yourself kidnapped by aliens, or attacked by crazed fans who have mistaken you for someone else!

And it’s all because a shopping expedition takes you places you wouldn’t normally go, doing something you wouldn’t normally do, and the GM is able to then use that as a vehicle for encounters and adventure. Perhaps with a comedic bent, perhaps not – though it definitely lends itself as a platform for that, especially if that’s not the usual campaign style!

Long-Distance Traumas

You’re always exposed to long-distance traumas if you order anything that has to be delivered, or if there’s anyone on your list that lives at a location remote to your own. There are three groups that I buy for – I get to see two of them, the last I usually have to mail. That’s one reason why it’s convenient to do all my shopping at the same time, aimed at being ready for the first week in December – it means that I have time to get that gift into the mail. That also often entails a scramble to ensure that I have the correct mailing address!

Normally, I would advocate all these things happening as a continuing subplot – character orders something at the right time, as an event in one game session, and for the next game session (or two or three or four), the GM simply makes a point of telling the player that the product that he ordered has not yet arrived.

In modern times, there is (of course) parcel tracking, but that’s often (not always, but often) so generalized that it doesn’t tell you anything useful – “en route” doesn’t tell you much.

    And then there’s the potential for a complete failure of the system. Let me tell you a story…

    I ordered a book. I was advised when the order was processed, and when the order was dispatched, and when the order was en route, and when the order was delivered. Except that no book arrived.

    There was one line in the delivery notification that offered a clue – it referred to delivery being made to Belmore River, which is a location 440 km (about 275 miles) north of my suburb, Belmore.

    I immediately engaged the vendor about the potential mis-delivery; they confirmed that the address they had on file was the correct one, so someone in the firm contracted to do their deliveries had clearly stuffed it up. A couple of days later, they reported that the firm in question, being unable to locate the correct street address in the wrong place, had returned the order to them.

    They gave me a refund, less a money handling fee. They did not offer to resend the order to the correct location. So the net effect is that I’m poorer, with nothing to show for it. That’s why I will NEVER shop with that vendor again – not because of the nondelivery (those things happen and it was outside their control) but because they made NO effort to fairly resolve the problem.

    Well, not quite ‘nothing’ to show for it – I at least have this anecdote.

…and it’s an anecdote that is directly relevant to the subject of discussion. This sort of thing doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen every now and then – maybe one order in forty goes astray. And, on at least one occasion, it was entirely my fault (and I offered to wear the cost of that mistake) – I mistakenly gave the wrong street number. That package eventually found its way back to the vendor, by which time I had ordered a replacement.

Anyway, as I was saying, I would normally advocate splitting this phase of the Christmas Story up – but in this case, I would employ flashbacks on the day of the Christmas Adventure to keep everything coherent, and build narrative momentum within the story. I would, however, anticipate and leave a ‘gap’ in events in which the ‘shopping’ could take place.

Long-distance traumas happen regularly and without warning. Why should it be any different in an RPG?

The first (and only?) gift-giving

Gift-giving and related occasions tend to come in waves. The first one is with friends who you won’t get to see for the rest of the month – that’s the one that I have with my players, for example.

The second one is with co-workers and is often much smaller in scale, though it is usually accompanied by something more of a party.

The third one is with family visited before the critical date (December 25), if any. The fourth is Christmas Day itself, and the fifth is with any family and friends that you catch up with after the critical day.

That sounds like a lot – because it is!

When I was a kid, we would have family Christmas at home (usually starting around 5 or 6 or 7 AM); after breakfast, we would then travel to second Christmas (aunts, uncles, and one set of grandparents). We would have Christmas Lunch with them, but either before that or in the afternoon we would head off to the other set of grandparents for a third Christmas. So multiple Christmases are not unusual – either that, or my family is unusual!

Unless you have something very specific in mind for one of these events, or their in-game equivalent, I would run all of these into one “event” within a game. There is too great a similarity between these different events, better to make them one continuous blur rather than dig into minutia trying to distinguish one from another.

There are two primary sources of gameplay within a Christmas party – Gift-giving and social interaction.

Gift-giving, as already stated, is as significant as you want to make it; it can hold a mirror up to the recipient, but it can also say just as much about the giver. And, if you do it right, there will be some sort of interaction between giver and recipient (in character, of course). This is best handled with some sort of randomization technique and a regular rotation around the table.

The method I would use would be for everyone to roll a die (high decides who, other than themselves, goes first). They would then roll a die to select who receives the gift from them, skipping over anyone who has already received a gift from them. I would then use another die to select someone other than the giver and recipient to become the next giver. This spreads the spotlight around and keeps it moving unpredictably. I would also use a copy of the list of gifts and how they have been wrapped (prepared in advance in consultation with each player) to give vague descriptions of the shape, but leave the actual description of the gift to the player doing the gifting (unless they were hopeless at it, in which case I would ask if they wanted me to step in and provide appropriate narrative).

But the untapped potential is with the social engagement aspect of a Christmas Party. Strangers, friends, enemies, people of importance and people of no importance, people of interest, celebrities both famous and infamous, all rubbing shoulders. You can have multiple plotlines running simultaneously. Some might begin and end within the Christmas adventure, some might be nothing more than a single exchange of dialogue, while others might extend far beyond the Christmas ‘episode’. Some may culminate at the Christmas Party, as things long stewing come to a head; others may have their beginnings at the event, and color relationships into the New in-game year.

Don’t neglect the opportunities that come from NPCs interacting with other NPCs – all you need to do to make these relevant is to connect a PC to one end or the other of the interaction. For example, PC says something to NPC, who then interacts with the other NPC – perhaps an outcome that the PC wasn’t expecting to result. Or, the other end – NPC and NPC interact, with the PC either caught in the middle or trying to act as peacemaker or otherwise somehow affected by the conversation.

Going The Distance

Sometimes, to get to the party, you have to travel. Some people just drop everything and go somewhere on the drop of a hat at regular intervals; others have to plan a myriad of details in advance. I’m somewhere in between – but have commitments 4 days a week, sometimes 5. There’s very little that can’t be put off or called off with nothing more than a phone call or two – posting to Campaign Mastery being the main exception.

So most of my planning revolves around that, or would do except for one other fact: I don’t have a car or driver’s license, and that means that I can only get part of the way before needing to be met. That engages other people’s schedules and adds extra complication.

Even without that, there’s the packing and preparation. Going away is a Big Deal for me.

And so it should be for any PCs who have to travel. Various scenes from the West Wing are coming to mind at this point – airline routing through Pittsburgh (and why it’s desirable to avoid it), CJ Craig’s School Reunion, and the very secret meeting between Josh Lyman and the deaf pollster (whose name momentarily escapes me) at an airport come to mind.

On top of that memory are layers of memories from various Airport movies (including, of course, the classic Flying High), and any number of other movies and TV shows in which people travel by air, such as the classic Twilight Zone episode, “Nightmare at 20,000 feet“, which was remade as a segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, and then again remade in the third reboot of the series as “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet”.

That’s all grist for the mill; if you can’t get a couple of encounters or incidents out of them, you aren’t trying hard enough.

The Traditions

Every family also has its own traditions, completely divorced from those of the wider culture around them. One of the most memorable later-season episodes of MASH – “Death Takes A Holiday” – dealt with Winchester’s family traditions, for example

I seem to recall an episode of the original MacGuyver series that dealt with his family’s traditions (with an appearance by his father, ‘Harry’), and there have no doubt been other shows with episodes framed along similar lines.

These can be deeply personal and introspective moments for characters, and – if used as reference for Christmas events within the adventure – can serve as the perfect denouement to the adventure.

A Season Of Goodwill

The most common Christmas adventures, of course, revolve around this being the “Season Of Goodwill”. I’ve written before (in the 2018 Christmas article) about the Christmas Miracle.

But you don’t need to do anything so extravagant – I can conceive of a “Christmas adventure” which simply has a recurring theme of ordinary individuals simply performing an act of generosity for others, almost incidentally to whatever the main action is. This doesn’t have to be a PC – it can simply be a recurring theme to events in the background for most of the adventure, though it should end with someone doing something for the PCs that can also be characterized in this way.

The PCs are notified that an evil scientist / wizard, one of their arch-enemies, has just shown up at a local hospital / orphanage. They, of course, suspect that he or she is up to something nefarious, and so rush to the scene, to find all quiet. One of the administrators tells them that the villain gave them a cure for a very rare illness one of the children was dying / suffering from and left peacefully. Oh, and they also left this envelope for you. Inside is a Christmas card, which reads, ‘Tomorrow we are enemies, and I will seek to annihilate you and everything you stand for. But until then, have a Happy Christmas.”

Some Christmas Wishes

And in that same vein, I wish a very Merry Christmas to all of Campaign Mastery’s readers, some of whom date all the way back to our beginnings, thirteen years ago. Year 14 starts now!

Unfortunately, it’s been a very sad end to the year for a great many people. The destruction in the US; the building fire in Osaka; the fuel tanker explosion in Haiti; and the gas explosions in Pakistan and Sicily. Here in Australia, we had a freak wind burst that lifted a jumping castle 10m into the air at a school’s Christmas party; six children have been killed, two remain in critical condition fighting for life, and one survivor is lucky enough to be recovering at home, and today a sudden storm and possible mini-tornado has left one dead and two critical. And, of course, Covid is again raging, destroying the Christmas plans of many in Europe. Such tragedies always seem to wound more deeply at this time of year because of the contrast between the prevalent spirit of the season and the events.

I extend my sincere condolences to the family and friends of everyone caught up in these tragic events, and hope that 2022 can be a year of healing for all of us.

There will (probably) be no post next week, as I’ll be traveling between family engagements. Assuming that plans pan out as expected, I’ll see everyone in 2022! Until then,

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