Starting a long-term campaign. Help!

[Pyrinoc]

Hi, I've been avidly interested in running campaigns in role-playing genres for quite some time now, but I always seem to run into a problem with longevity. I'm not sure how you design a campaign with enough foresight to keep everything moving in a manner that interests players in both the now and the long-term future of the story.

I believe it stems from my lack of experience in designing a campaign from the ground up. How do people typically do this? Where do they start, what level of intricacy do they design to, and how far ahead of the current time in the story is typically planned for?

I know it's a rather generic question, but I'm not sure how to focus the issue down further. I'd really like to run something that intrigues both the players and myself, and runs for longer than just a few sessions.
Thanks

[Christopher Ashe]

Well I guess you've come to the right place. Generally I always go for the epic, that is, set my campaigns with the idea of a long run in mind. I've been doing it for a while now I suppose and I guess the best advice to you is first: do not script it, just get an idea of where you would like to go.

In all honesty though, now that I look at the clock, I really don't have time tonight to get into campaign design. But I'm not going to leave you hanging, I love talking campaign design. So rest assured that I will get back soon. Perhaps I'll even do a feature on it. Then again, that coul take some time as I still need to get back onto the game design feature thing. SO more than likely I'll get back onto it here. Anyways, until then....

- Ashe

[Felix]

Well I guess you've come to the right place. Generally I always go for the epic, that is, set my campaigns with the idea of a long run in mind. I've been doing it for a while now I suppose and I guess the best advice to you is first: do not script it, just get an idea of where you would like to go.

In all honesty though, now that I look at the clock, I really don't have time tonight to get into campaign design. But I'm not going to leave you hanging, I love talking campaign design. So rest assured that I will get back soon. Perhaps I'll even do a feature on it. Then again, that coul take some time as I still need to get back onto the game design feature thing. SO more than likely I'll get back onto it here. Anyways, until then....

- Ashe


Translated like a prick:

Blah blah blah big man coolness... blah blah blah... stuff I'll never get around to... blah blah blah... ask Felix.

So to answer your question, the best way to set up a long-standing campaign is to set (even if unrevealed to the players) an antagonist or set of antagonists with some ultimate goal (and lets hope it refrains from ending the world... I'm sick of saving it). Now while this is going on... it's actually the underlings (think Bebop and Rocksteady from the old Ninja Turtle cartoons) and the minor steps on the way to the ultimate goal that the players must try to advert. Like protagonists... if at first evil doesn't succeed.. it will try and try again with tons of work-arounds.

Come to think of it.. take away some of the childishness and you can actually use many action-oriented American cartoons from our generation. By our I of course mean mine and by mine I mean the only ones worth watching, not that Power Ranger lovey-dovey do-gooder crap the current coming-of-agers were subjected to in childhood. I'm talking classic Cobra Retreat! and Transform and Roll-Out! goodness. Now those were some tenacious villains.

To keep their interest, throw in some NPC drama... make them work for any powers or cool gear that they may acquire... but treat them with a little something something every now and then to let them build up an appetite (and that was in reference to in-game treats like a weapons locker or the ability to make candles light themselves, not a visit to the local backyard brothel)

As I've said a million times over... you may know what you want the final battle to entail.. but how soon they get there is entirely up to the players... Also... nobody says that final battles are final. Once you've taken that stronghold, its no happily ever after baby... somebody else is going to rise to replace the fallen adversary the same way my old Vampire crew were rolling up new characters night after night when I would 'punish them' for being stupid...

"You jumped into a den of experienced vampire hunters wielding only some pointy teeth and a pocketful of dreams... what were you hoping for?"

So game on your toes.. have a few scenarios scribbled down and apply whichever seems more appropriate to the time... or you can wing an encounter. The ability to think quick and pull clever ideas from a clenched keyster isn't just a player technique, it's more-so a GM lifesaver.

Okay... now disregard this and wait for the 15 page supplement that Ashe will post giving away better advice.

[Christopher Ashe]

First off, Felix: yer a dick. Love ya anyway though bro.

As always, however, Felix has some good points here. I was thinking about this earlier today and writing a feature on it and, while I may eventually do so, it would take quite a while. I give a lot of insight into running a campaign in the book and I really wouldn't want to simply give all of that here with nothing new so I'd have to think about it a bit. I'm not copping out of this though, that's definitely not the end here, I will continue on:

I was actually thinking recently about the Sword of Truth series as I was listening to it on audio while driving across the country. Now, some people aren't as big of fans of this particular series (citing Goodkind as being a bit preachy, particularly in the later volumes), but I think it does well as an example for running extended campaigns. Now, much to the dismay of Felix, this series is a save the entire world scenario. This, however, does not need to apply to the examples I give here. The reason I cite this particular series is because it achieves creating a story that wraps itself up by the end but still always has a greater and underlying step in the antagonistic process that continues on. This series, which has yet to complete by the way, continues to draw on material from books throughout and yet does a decent job of not being overly repetitive (in my opinion) in his drawing of material from previous volumes.

So here's what I'm getting at: you don't have to be worrying from the get-go about who the supreme antagonist is and what terrors he has prepared for existence: what may seem to the players as the greater plotline may only be the tip of the iceberg. In my opinion you should have an initial conflict, but the threat, while real, should also be largely alien to the PCs. Rather than face the direct antagonist, they should rather see the effects that such a villain could cause on the world and, as Felix said, should be intercepted rather by those who serve the villain. Of course I'm not talking about bumbling minions either. No man is an island, as they say, and this is equally true for villains. Whether subverted through fear, conditioning or otherwise, those who serve your antagonist do so with some amount of loyalty and have reasons (even if in their own minds) for why they do what they do. These minor antagonists are equally important to setting the overall tone of the true antagonist, which is not the Adolf Hitler of the story, but the Party itself. The antagonist is the collective, the faction. The leader is inconsequential, no matter how developed or powerful. This is the reason why terrorism has been the great antagonist of our generation. Even with the Osamas out there, the real problem is that terrorist cells can operate independently of central leadership, ergo, they never stop; you never win.

One thing that helps as the GM when working on an epic is reflection. You should always take a look after the session at what happened, what the players did, what things they showed interest in, what things they moved towards and what drove them away. In this, not only do you understand more the areas in which you can improve and where you are doing well in the campaign, but you also set the groundwork for the future of your campaign. Take some notes or something if this becomes hard to remember (it does for me) and review them here and there. Consider that the death of some minor antagonist in the first scene might have earth-shattering consequences in some obscure fashion down the road.

I think also, that is important to focus less on the antagonists in the beginning, rather taking time to establish the setting and the role the characters have in it. Even if your campaign is set in the modern world, there is something different, something defining that sets that story aside from the normal; from the mundane, and that is a setting to be explored and expanded on. Good stories, good campaigns, take time and build.

So there you go. That's the groundwork there as I could think of it for the moment. I'm hoping soon to get the time to actually put something more than the Siege together for the site, some base campaign design or whatnot. Until then, ask me anything and eventually I'll get an answer to you ;)

- Ashe

[Felix]

You know that you're the sole reason that I actually wrote out an outline of a project that I'll never get around to called 'A World Worth Saving.' The plot was a group of adventurers that kept hopping worlds that would inevitably be destroyed by evil... and running away when things got to hairy. It would've been brilliant... but c'mon.. I've got better things to do.. like cleaning the kitchen or subjecting my girlfriend to humor that would leave most 3rd graders bored.

(you'd still giggle like a school girl...)