The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 2 of 5: A Perfect Vision Through A Glass, Darkly
In the first part of this article, which itself is the first installement of a series of articles, I discussed the execution and delivery of uniqueness in an RPG campaign, and derived a definition of doing so to perfection that was achievable in more than a hypothetical sense, that was actually a practical goal: “Perfection in an RPG is achieved when Player contributions synergise with the original vision to produce a sum that is greater than the sum of its parts”. I then went on to list four elements that were required in order to achieve this goal: an initial vision; a common foundation; an evolution of vision; and an evolution of character. The article resumes as I begin to examine these four elements and how to achieve them. (It should be noted that this article is a lot bigger than was originally intended!)
The Initial Vision
Producing the initial vision is purely the province and responsibility of the GM. It consists of a completely logical setting, with the consequences of all historical forces and trends integrated into the contemporary circumstances. For everything that is in place, there should be a reason for it, and a reason for that reason, and so on, until you track all the way back to the central premises of the campaign.
Responsibility for the concepts inherant in the initial vision are shared between the players and GM; if it is his responsibility to execute an environment in which the players can adventure in the modes that most attract them, it is their responsibility to ensure that the GM knows where they want the campaign to go.
So the first compromise is in the constituant componants of the initial vision itself; rather than being purely the most original and interesting and internally-consistant concept that the GM can produce, his design must provide a setting for the players to enjoy the type of adventures that they want.
Unless he’s a mind-reader, that means that they have to communicate to him what they want, or he has to communicate to them the sort of adventures that his setting concept will entail. Or both. The more communication there is up front in this respect, the better the resulting campaign will fit the players, providing the maximum opportunity for them to contribute to its ongoing development, and hence for the synergies that are our goal to eventuate. (True-confessions time: this is one area that I have to admit that I can do better at.)
Once the GM has a field of action to target, there are three different approaches (in general terms) that can be applied to actually assemble the Initial Vision: Top-Down design, Bottom-Up Design, and Hybrid Design.
Bottom-Up Design
For reasons of clarity, I’ll examine these approaches out of order. Bottom-up Design is the approach that most people use, especially when they are just starting out. The basic methodology is to decide on an element of the current campaign situation that you want to be in place, find a logical justification for that element, then a logical justification for the circumstances that created the first justification, and so on.
The advantage of this approach is that you only need to go as deep as you feel necessary for practicality, so it is a lot faster to implement than either of the alternatives. The disadvantage is that unity of concept is placed at risk, because there is no attempt to explore all the ramifications of any elements embedded in the unique concept of the campaign.
This compromises the uniqueness of the setting because more elements are standardised and conventional, and it can compromise verisimilitude when something that should have been changed by the element, or by its justifying logic, is not. As a result of these compromises, such campaigns rarely achieve “perfection” in terms of the definition arrived at earlier.
However, it’s not all bad news. The campaign is more accessable to players by virtue of being more standardised, and there is considerably greater scope for contributions from those players, so this world can be more collaborative. My original superhero campaign was constructed in just this way, and it lasted for many years.
The key to making such campaigns viable is this: whenever you identify something that is “standard” to the setting but which shouldn’t be, whenever you spot a contradiction, you need an additional justification to explain the discrepancy – a logical reason that explains why something that should be different is not. In effect, you counterbalance (at least in part) the change that has been established within the campaign and limit the scope of the consequences. Done properly, this permits the campaign’s uniqueness to grow organically over time, with an organically evolving history that continually expands.
In a nutshell, this technique cuts short the initial development of the campaign in favour of distributing part of that development throughout its lifespan as additional game prep.
Another downside is that new players can get caught out by the changes in history, since there are fewer overt manifestations of the central concept.
Top-Down Design
This approach is one that I’ve talked about in the past, in a number of these blog posts, especially Distilled Cultural Essence Part 1. The methodology is to decide on a fundamental conceptual element of the campaign, deliberately chosen to distinguish this campaign from all others, and then to explore all the ramifications of that change to compile a description of the current world. If necessary, you then add a second, and a third, until the world is genuinely unique.
This means doing virtually all of your campaign prep up-front, and its benefits and drawbacks are the exact opposites of those offered by the previous approach. There is no compromise of quality, but there is a lot more work involved in campaign creation. Because there are fewer compromises, “perfection” is more achievable, but it is more likely that player contributions will conflict with some part of the unique vision, so the campaign becomes a little more high-maintenance. In fact, it’s more work, plain and simple – though the benefits can make it worth the extra effort.
The one major caveat to be aware of is that you can end up with a campaign in which, to all appearances, the “standards” are in place – which is to say that none of the conceptual changes that you have made actually make any practical difference at all. The result doesn’t feel unique, it simply feels pedestrian. There is no guarantee that a fundamental conceptual change will translate into differences that are felt by the PCs. Even once those changes are revealed in such a campaign, they will be easily forgotten and are more-or-less disposable.
Hybrid Design
This is the methodology that I reccommend, and that I prefer to employ. It embodies some of the strengths of both – and, to some extent, some of the flaws as well, I must admit – but it evades the major weaknesses of both and guarantees not only a unique campaign but one that is percieved to be unique.
I start by selecting a change that I want to make that will be immediatly aparrant to the PCs and that will make an immediate difference to the game. I then employ the bottom-up technique until I have identified a fundamental difference that could be responsible; I then employ the top-down approach to identify and explore all the other ramifications.
Once I have this starting point, I look for a further change that will compound or interact in some way with the first. This interaction might be present at the commencement point of the campaign history, it might be immediatly prior to the commencement of play, or it might be an interaction intended to occur in the course of the campaign; but it is most likely to have occurred at some earlier point in the campaign’s background. From this interaction point, I track backwards in time to identify the cause of the change, using the bottom-up method, and then track forward in time from that original cause to define the consequences.
This diagram illustrates the process. A is the initial effect that I want to have in the game. It might be that Goblins have higher technology than anyone else, or that Drow are half-demons, or that everything west of the rocky mountains is part of a spanish-ruled Canadian Monarchy, or that magic works by stealing the life-essence of dragons, or whatever. I trace back through cause-and-effect, assembling a history that brings about this change in the contemporary environment until I reach a fundamental point of difference (B). I then work back forwards, compiling all the ramifications and consequences of that initial change (C1-C5) – note that for some of the possible “A” points that I mentioned, there might be many more than a mere five consequences! This structure is shown in Red.
Point E would have been C6, a sixth consequence, but I choose it because I want a different outcome. Tracing back along the line of cause-and-effect, I reach point D, which is where the outcome of E can be changed to something more of my liking, but this requires it to interact with some other chain of events, shown in blue. If E relates to the outcome of a war, then the obvious point of change in assumptions would be something relating to the other combatants. I again trace the line of cause-and-effect back to the fundamental cause, F, and then go forward to determine all the consequences of that change, labelled G1-G6.
This diagram is clearly simplified. It is unlikely that there would be only one point of intersection between these two sequences of events, for example. Since the blue sequence was constructed already knowing the key events of the red path, it is only necessary to quickly revisit the red paths and check for additional impacts from the blue changes.
By making the changes to campaign assumptions one at a time like this, you can build up as many as necessary to achieve the game world that you desire. Ultimately, you don’t really care about the consequences other than A and E, but the other impacts give credibility to those events and depth to the campaign.
Segment Numbering and Identification
I find it useful to number each segment of the chart, and assign a corrosponding 1-line summary. Increasing numbers obviously mean increasing time. Because I’ve used this technique a number of times, I’ve developed a bit of a feel for it, and have some notion of the number of fundamental changes that will be needed to achieve a certain level of effect.
Obviously, this approach is even more work – but it yields the best results. It also almost certainly requires the production of some sort of player briefing before characters can be generated, simply to enunciate all the aparrant consequences that their characters will have grown up with or can see around them.
Once you have derived such a sequential listing, it’s not all that difficult to assign dates, either using landmark events from history that have been impacted by the changes you’ve made as signposts, or by working backwards from the current game date to get relative dates.
But these are hard to read and absorb. It’s my preferance to expand each of these one-line summaries into a paragraph or even an entire chapter of a History.
An Example from Fumanor
By way of example, I offer a small extract from the history of elves in my Fumanor Campaign, something I’ve been working on for some time. These 15 chapters begin with the fallout from a prior series of events and the resulting evolution in Elvish culture and tell the story of the second great war between Elves, Dwarves, and Drow, a pivotal event in the history of all three races:
- Noletinechor, Guardians of Elvish culture, are founded.
- Second War between Elves and Dwarves begins, started by Dwarves
- Corellan converts the Noletinechor, Guardians of Elvish culture, into the Huyondaltha, a Martial Order, to defend Elvarheim.
- The Huyondaltha invade the Dwarven Tunnels but are relatively ineffectual. In desperation, their leader turns to darker strategies (analagous to poison gas in WWI).
- Concurrent with 15-18: Diplomatic relations between Drow and Dwarves as the two progress from hostilities to trading partners at Lolth’s direction. Dwarves acquire Adamantine and Mithril from Drow.
- Elvish eco-terrorism threatens the Dwarves, forcing the Dwarves and Drow into closer alliance.
- Dwarves, using Drow intelligence, launch an underground invasion into the heart of Elvarheim. Raiding party are captured.
- The captured Dwarven raiding party reveal/discover that the initial offensive act (16) was a deception and not a Dwarven Act.
- Bladedancer incursion threatens the Dwarven royal family.
- Drow are about to achieve their (secret) goal of making the Dwarves a subject race when one of the captives (21) arrives with an offer of a cease-fire.
- Dwarven King is hesitant until the Drow Ambassador panics and kills the messenger, and gets caught in the act.
- Peace is declared between Elves and Dwarves.
- Trade Negotiations reveal that Elves were using Dwarven expertise to craft magic items that boost their spellweaving abilities and enable them to craft horrors and abominations. Drow release their creatures into the intervening tunnels as a protection from Dwarvish reprisals.
- Elves acquire Mithril for the first time, traded from Dwarves for lumber.
Each of these, rendered as a narrative, will occupy about half-a-page of text (I’m currently at the point of the big reveal, item 22). Chapters 29 through 31 will examine the repercussions and consequences for each of the different races in detail.
These chapters exist to do only 5 things, that are critical to the background of the campaign:
- Create the Huyondaltha;
- Give the Drow a magical leg up;
- Explain how the Elves come into posession of Mithril, given that they aren’t natural miners;
- Release a bunch of nasty critters in between the Dwarves and Drow, isolating them from each other; and
- tell the story of a typical Drow plot by Lolth, lasting something like 200 years and expanding on her personality and capabilties.
Moving On
I’m about out of space in this post, so the next part of this series will examine the remaining elements required to achieve “perfection” in an RPG Campaign.
- The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 1 of 5: Don’t Compromise With Mediocrity
- The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 2 of 5: A Perfect Vision Through A Glass, Darkly
- The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 3 of 5: Laying A Campaign Foundation
- The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 4 of 5: Evolving The Campaign
- The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 5 of 5: Character Evolution
- Lessons From The West Wing II: The Psychology Of Maps
- Lessons From The West Wing III: Time Happens In The Background
- Lessons From The West Wing IV: Victory At Any Price
- Lessons From The West Wing V: Bilateral Political Incorrectness for RPGs
Discover more from Campaign Mastery
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
April 1st, 2010 at 8:46 am
I love the thoughts you are presenting here… but this is killing me so I gotta say it.
It’s “pursuit” not “persuit.”
Otherwise keep writing, it is fascinating.
April 1st, 2010 at 10:54 am
Wow. Do you honestly go through such a meticulous method, or is this an April Fool’s joke? I mean, I do more or less the same thing, using the hybrid approach. But I would never chart it all out. I can’t even see myself being able to enumerate all the parts of the setting well enough to do so.
I also find it interesting that you assume that the “initial vision” is almost solely the province of the GM. Have you ever tried a game with shared setting creation? Prime Time Adventures is one of the most extreme examples of this. When you all sit down, the only pre-conception is that you are working to create a TV show. Everything about the show is decided as you play the game.
For a less extreme example, you can look at the city creation rules for the upcoming Dresden Files RPG, available in abbreviated form as a PDF currently. Yes, you can argue that the “initial vision” is the licensed Dresden Files universe. But, the rules explicitly have the players create the city they are going to inhabit as part of the character creation process. Maybe I should wait to see what you place in the “evolution of vision” box before going any further with this argument.
.-= Lugh´s last blog ..Bestest. Wife. EVAR!! =-.
April 1st, 2010 at 8:29 pm
@Richard – Whoops, sorry about the spelling. Glad you could enjoy the article anyway.
@Lugh – Yes and No, Lugh. I do follow this meticulous process, it’s not an April Fool’s Day joke; but I don’t normally do a chart, just a list of events each of which lead logically to the next – more like what’s in the example.
I’ve never had any experience with shared setting creation, though it’s been mentioned a time or two, here and there; I find the idea fascinating but it’s not something that this process generally takes into account. If such a collaborative process was viewed as determining the various core elememts of the campaign, though, this process could still be used to explore causes and effects.
It might also be worth mentioning that I chose the example that I used because it illustrated the process of making a change and then wanting to change one specific consequence. Actually, a number of changes. The Drow in the campaign have an established but fragmented history, the elves have an established but fragmented history, and the Dwarves have an established but fragmented history, and none of them completely reconcile with each other; the only solution was to have the nature of each group evolve over time. Since it had been established in the first Fumanor campaign that the Drow tunnels were located beneath the Dwarven Mines and seperated from them by a long and dangerous journey through regions inhabited by a number of weird and dangerous creatures, it seemed beyond belief that the Drow – who have been established as plotters and schemers – would not at some point try and use the Dwarves as pawns. Doing so gave me the opportunity to explain a number of other contradictions within the campaign, like where Adamantine and Mythril come from, and what turned the Dwarves from something more typical of what you would read in the PHB into a martial race closer to Star Trek: Next Gen Klingons – and isolationist Xenophobes to boot. So, every time they cozy up to another race, they get kicked in the teeth and (eventually) betrayed; and they are trapped in between two hostile forces. That works for me as an explanation! Which is not to say that there can’t be glimmers every now and then that things might have gone down a different path, such as the the peace treaty that is reached at the end of the slice of history used as the example.
May 13th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Mike, I’m enjoying the series.
You mention the vision working logically back to your central campaign premises. Can you describe what a campaign premise is, and what it looks like? Or link to where you’ve covered this in the past?
For example, the premise of a book, according to Ray Bradbury, is to ask What if? And write a 200 page-long answer. :)
Just wondering what you do for a premise and how you record/organize/refer back to it.
==
Have you ever used this overall method of relations, logical consequences of elements, and justifications of circumstances with a published setting?
Thinking about the current published setting I’m using, and others I’ve used over the years, I suspect your systems and these products are incompatible, unless one took the time to smooth out all inconsistencies. And I bet this process would take a long time and result in a wholly new setting in the end.
Without having done it using the methods in this series though, I’m just guessing.
May 13th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
@Johnn: Essentially, a campaign premise is exactly what you describe: A “What If” whose consequences shape the entire campaign. So you start with the modern consequence that you want in your campaign {“Elves are militaristic pseudo-Nazis” or whatever), backtrack to discover how you can justify that, and then forward from that fundamental cause (the premise) to uncover the ramifications, how the changes have affected history and relations with the other races, and so on. The process of tracing back to discover a fundamental premise is what the first half of this article is about!
No, I’ve never applied it to a published setting, because I’ve never used one – all home grown stuff. But it would work just as well, generating a list of divergances from the published setting to accommodate your fundamental change. It’s that “smoothing out of the inconsistancies” that the second half of the article is about. And, fundamentally, Yes, what you end up with is a customised version of the original setting that incorporates the changes that you want to make – a version that is unique to your campaign and contains the changes that you want to make – your “original vision”.