The Challenge of Campaigning

[Falseprophet]

I will say that most of the really longer term games that I know of are not one weekly schedules. I am involved casually with three other 10+ year old campaigns in addition to my own, and none of run weekly. Bi-weekly, once per three weeks, and monthly are very common for longer term campaigns, at least in my experience, for a number of reasons.

I agree--expecting a group of 4-8 adults to meet regularly one night a week (and it almost always has to be Friday, Saturday or Sunday) to sit around the gaming table for 5+ hours, while it would be ideal, is pretty much impossible for me and my friends. We're lucky to get together once a month sometimes.

But otherwise, this article is spot on, Alexander. You've given me a lot to think about as I try to start up my first campaign as a tabletop DM in about a decade.

Always good to see the tabletop articles, rare as they are. We're a dying breed, but I suppose that's what the previous tabletop generation said too.

I think it's very possible the tabletop industry could die off. It faces multiple bugbears including competition from other media, the crisis in publishing overall, and a 40-year-old image problem that's been hard to surmount. But I think the hobby has enough unique appeal that it will still exist as a hobby for some time to come. RPG design will probably become more and more a part-time labour of love and less a full-time profession. Quality and volume of product might suffer as a result. On the other hand, it might rekindle some of the magic of playing in those free-for-all, anything goes first couple of decades of tabletop gaming.

 

[Amazon warrior]

I rather hope the bit about not cancelling a game due to illness is tongue-in-cheek (few gaming sessions are improved by the GM having to dash to the loo every 5 minutes), but in general yes. You only get out what you put in, and that goes for everyone. For my nascent campaign, I've been writing up session summaries for people to read so that hopefully none of us will lose the plot.

(Incidentally, I totally second the anthology proposal - I ended up printing out several of the columns for reference while planning a session on the train the other weekend.)

 

[Archon]

Falseprophet, I get where you are coming from regarding the challenge of organizing a group; and perhaps I have a skewed perspective on this because I work in such a geek-friendly environment.

So, with that caveat aside, I do see people regularly and successfully able to set aside one evening to play WoW, play intramural athletics, and so on, and positioning it in that light has been useful to me in getting people to commit to play. Note that I generally run with 5-7 players, and end up with 4-5 each session, so it's about an 80% attendance rate.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

We always come up with off the cuff "vaguely in-character" rationalizations for why certain character weren't present and suddenly appear when their player isn't there/arrives late.

By "we" I actually mean "our DM" though, and he's the sort of guy who will openly mock us while we're playing, so explaining character absences tends to be another opportunity for him to take a crack at us - depending on which character wasn't there, he'll explain that they actually were there the whole time, but were so completely ineffective that they accomplished nothing noteworthy (an all too likely scenario with us when we are present, unfortunately), or that they're off drunk somewhere and have just staggered over to join us (the preferred explanation for why our dwarven fighter goes missing from time to time).

We've managed to keep this campaign running for 2 years now so far!

 

[Norm Morrison IV]

We always come up with off the cuff "vaguely in-character" rationalizations for why certain character weren't present and suddenly appear when their player isn't there/arrives late.

By "we" I actually mean "our DM" though, and he's the sort of guy who will openly mock us while we're playing, so explaining character absences tends to be another opportunity for him to take a crack at us - depending on which character wasn't there, he'll explain that they actually were there the whole time, but were so completely ineffective that they accomplished nothing noteworthy (an all too likely scenario with us when we are present, unfortunately), or that they're off drunk somewhere and have just staggered over to join us (the preferred explanation for why our dwarven fighter goes missing from time to time).

We've managed to keep this campaign running for 2 years now so far!

2 years and going strong (or so it sounds) is the operative fact. Good Job.

 

[LunarTick]

I never quite know how to deal with missing players.

In my DnD campaign with five players, I usually let games go on when 3 players are present and play the missing characters in the background myself. Never making big decisions but still, it bothers me to take over their characters (the characters are usually in the wilderness, traveling or in a dungeon, so there's no simple excuse why they wouldn't be with their comrades).

It's easier in my CoC campaign, when someone can't make it, I usually say something along the lines of Player X's character is quite swamped in deadlines/ ill at home/ avoiding suspicion by staying in home. This is easier for me, but the players of this group like to stay complete.

Yeah, sometimes I cancel sessions and it bothers me and sometimes I let the session continue with fewer players and it bothers me.

 

[Archon]

Gildan, two years and going is awesome! /salute

 

[0over0]

In my last campaign, I had what turned out to be a popular solution to absent players, though I actually made it initially as a joke.
If a player wasn't there, then their character had been struck by the dreaded, uncurable sleeping sickness. They would simply fall unconscious and the party would have to deal with this handicap or find someplace safe to stash them (which created new fun moments when they rejoined the following week and the party was far away or otherwise occupied). It sounds harsh, but in fact added a great dimension to the game and I think made the party look out for one another more than they might otherwise have.
It also gave an extra incentive to people to show up. Sometimes bad things happened to unconscious players--and this didn't always involve hp loss or theft. But it was a good group who took it in stride and added this opportunity for character building into their character and into our campaign.

I also gave bonus xp to anyone who wrote a character diary entry for a session. This was a great way to keep the players personally involved in the story as well as keep everyone reminded of what had gone on. In addition, it was a great way for everyone to expand on their session RP because the entries were often quite personal in perspective, giving us all glimpses into someone's character (in and out of game).

 

[Kaihlik]

This is very much an article for the older RPG audiance. We dont run a game on a regular basis because as students with part time jobs its just impossible to guarentee any kind of regular schedule as often things like work shifts or lack of money can prevent people from getting to the game. Its not much fun if the GM decides to run his game every tuesday night when you are working.

On the other hand we have the advantage of seeing each other on a more regular basis (if not all at once) and keep our interest by discussing things and resolving things outside of game time.

My Dark Heresy game started as a bi-weekly session when all of our University timetables ended up having Wednesdays off. Since then it has become an irregular even happening whenever we have the chance although we are still playing. Normally I have just arranged the game for when everyone is available although I didn't call it off when someone was ill.

Kaihlik

 

[Tavis Allison]

Archon, you know I've got mad props for your GMing theory (your advice on gp-to-xp ratios made many White Sandbox players very happy) and I love hearing Greg talk about his experience in your games (do I correctly guess you're using the Rudimentary Resurrection Tables from the Judges' Guild Ready Ref Sheets?)

We're coming from different places here, though. For me the no-player-commitment campaign I'm part of with New York Red Box are more successful - more fun, more unexpected and creatively exciting - than than the weekly campaigns Greg & I played in previously with a static player group.

Is this because NYC, and to a lesser extent Vancouver Red Box, are so crammed with gamers who are already linked up through healthy networks like nerdNYC that we can get away with things that wouldn't work elsewhere?

Is it because you prioritize things like being able to develop the stories of a stable cast of characters, and get to know & adapt to what the individual players in your group like? These are things I definitely have to eschew; sometimes I have 15 players at the table, sometimes four, and can't do lots of the traditional DM advice.

 

[Norm Morrison IV]

Archon, you know I've got mad props for your GMing theory (your advice on gp-to-xp ratios made many White Sandbox players very happy) and I love hearing Greg talk about his experience in your games (do I correctly guess you're using the Rudimentary Resurrection Tables from the Judges' Guild Ready Ref Sheets?)

We're coming from different places here, though. For me the no-player-commitment campaign I'm part of with New York Red Box are more successful - more fun, more unexpected and creatively exciting - than than the weekly campaigns Greg & I played in previously with a static player group.

Is this because NYC, and to a lesser extent Vancouver Red Box, are so crammed with gamers who are already linked up through healthy networks like nerdNYC that we can get away with things that wouldn't work elsewhere?

Is it because you prioritize things like being able to develop the stories of a stable cast of characters, and get to know & adapt to what the individual players in your group like? These are things I definitely have to eschew; sometimes I have 15 players at the table, sometimes four, and can't do lots of the traditional DM advice.

Boy, this cuts through a lot of layers, and quickly.
(Not to mention the ready ref sheets from JG! )'

Most rulesets for RPGs, and every version of D&D (especially after O), has been written for the campaign ideal, when looked at from that direction. Not always with the same intensity, not always using the same paradigms, but that stable group that runs with a group of developing PCs has always been the highway these rules were meant to drive on.

One thing that 'official' and 'current' rulesets do is create the ability to play in tourney or revolving style games, as the expectations are consistent. I love to hear that you've taken the dynamic energy of it and run with it.

 

[Tavis Allison]

Norm, I talk about the dynamic energy of not knowing who'll be at each session over here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_271/8108-Imagine-Your-Perfect-Arcade-Game]. It's definitely a different aesthetic; the dungeon and campaign world becomes the focus of the development when PCs drop into and out of it, while having the same group of characters allows you to make their personal development the focus.

You could say that each version of D&D has tended to facilitate the focus on PCs' character arcs by making them more likely to survive. In New York Red Box's Glantri campaign especially, where PCs start at first level, who'll be in the party each session is unpredictable not just because of scheduling but also because of a strikingly high death rate.

Certainly, the impetus to develop the AD&D rules was to have a Hoyle's standard that let players go from one tourney to another and have consistent expectations about how things work. I think Gygax's glory was that he failed at this so magnificiently, while by doing it so efficiently 4E demonstrates why it might not have been desirable in the first place.

However, the rules aren't the only source of consistent expectations. At NYRB we've just started a 1978-edition Gamma World game with rotating DMs, and just about everything you want to do requires a lot of creative interpretation of its cryptic rules. I think it'll work for us because, while players drop in and out, most are part of a larger play culture in which we've learned ways to decide stuff on the fly that we're content with.

 

[nick kessler]

I don't agree with the majority of this article because frankly I think it is misleading advice. D&D is a game that has been known to be played "on the fly," quoting Gygax himself. I know Gygax has said a LOT of things about his game, and the amount of media attention given to him by gamers was incredible, so obviously this could be a contrary statement, but that's not my point. I agree with both lomlylithruldor and Lawless Squirrel's comments: that the game is in fact a social gathering (it's never any fun otherwise) and that 10 hrs of of DM prep work isn't necessary, especially if you're playing a weekly game where everything is fresh in your mind. If you do too much prep-work (which, when you're obsessive, like a lot of us gamers, is really easy to do) you wind up disappointing yourself, railroading w/o realizing it and frustrated that what you prepared wasn't even encountered by your players. I'm surprised the Escapist allowed this article to be published. Is it just because the rest of your articles have been good (which they have) and they decided to not even look at this? We have enough problems with the advent of 4E and all of its meticulously unnecessary statistics and reading material than to be encouraged to prepare for 10 hrs a week when it takes at least an hour to run an encounter. That means about 2 hrs prep time per encounter. Doesn't quite make sense to me.