Campaign Evolution or The Pain of Mutation
Posted 15th August 2009 at 06:21 AM by Pour
I began a 4e campaign 9 months ago. I had some very vague ideas on plot and direction, so decided to start it off as a sandbox. My previous campaign, in comparison, had a very central BBEG and a clear-cut goal from very early on in the campaign. This goal of stopping the bad guy took them from level 1 - 18 (3.5e). I thought I would change it up and go completely free of that so as not to be repetitive (as well as to test my abilities).
For the first fifteen sessions or so, it went well, and the group was thrilled with the variation and the unexpectedness. Then players began hinting at feelings of aimlessness, of wandering without any real drive or goal. I began to worry.
To get a little more in depth, each player is a child or ward of the now-epic characters from last campaign. They'd been kidnapped by an evil circus for an unknown reason (suspected political) and were trying to get back home, constantly ending up in deadly situations and deadly places. Yet there wasn't something to really rally behind. Many of the players were the same from my last campaign and I couldn't help feeling they missed the central drive of a BBEG.
At that point I had to make a choice. I had introduced an unmanagable number of factions and plot strings, enough to focus several campaign arcs on, but they all lacked interconnections or larger value to the characters. So I went about the next seventeen sessions establishing artifacts called Hearts, each corresponding to one of my nine planes, which began linking boss enemies and three major factions for the power they promised.
Players came and went, and by Session 34 I'd lost three of my old players and gained three new ones (for a total of six). All are very interested in the game right now and express joy and interest, but I want to make sure that continues. I admit I've felt some anxiety during these nine months working to reshape the plots and the campaign to both fit the characters and their expectations.
My larger designs for the game's plot have change considerably throughout, though much of these changes are behind the scenes. Because of all this campaign evolution, I haven't revealed enough of a central plot. They've only been living and playing in the world, actually defining their own sort of theme in the way of group and friends as family, and the value of trust and love of one another. That has really impressed me, but I think they also want some more direction from me.
I feel the time has come for me to finally begin revealing aspects of the plot that will last into epic tier (thinking that I probably should have done this sooner, but only just today did I figure out something that made sense with all our sandbox exposition and allowed for multiple cool and character-testing moments).
The campaign is the most character-driven and rp heavy I have ever been involved in, a deep, dramatic game that offers me as much pride and grief. Especially having gotten six players who I think are in it for the long haul, I'm beginning to feel comfortable and confident in my choices as DM. Time to make the finer strokes, the definitive moves and clarify the campaign story at last.
I suppose I'm writing this now mostly to get my thoughts out and down somewhere, but also to highlight my personal struggles, joys, revelations and failings.
I'm trying to draw out what I've learned from my campaign thus far, and I think that will come in subsequent posts. I think I should lay down some profound statement, though... if I can muster one...
I am a better DM for having tried to work outside the normal BBEG campaign, to juggle six people in a homebrew world, to cultivate a game where character is the most important element, and create a story more elegant than my last and perhaps beyond my current ability to implement.
I applaud all homebrew DMs going through the every session struggles and the larger trials and tribulations of constructing something as close to professional as possible, something people play every week with great joy and which generates for them something to look forward to in the week. Call me corny, but that is a noble pursuit.
For the first fifteen sessions or so, it went well, and the group was thrilled with the variation and the unexpectedness. Then players began hinting at feelings of aimlessness, of wandering without any real drive or goal. I began to worry.
To get a little more in depth, each player is a child or ward of the now-epic characters from last campaign. They'd been kidnapped by an evil circus for an unknown reason (suspected political) and were trying to get back home, constantly ending up in deadly situations and deadly places. Yet there wasn't something to really rally behind. Many of the players were the same from my last campaign and I couldn't help feeling they missed the central drive of a BBEG.
At that point I had to make a choice. I had introduced an unmanagable number of factions and plot strings, enough to focus several campaign arcs on, but they all lacked interconnections or larger value to the characters. So I went about the next seventeen sessions establishing artifacts called Hearts, each corresponding to one of my nine planes, which began linking boss enemies and three major factions for the power they promised.
Players came and went, and by Session 34 I'd lost three of my old players and gained three new ones (for a total of six). All are very interested in the game right now and express joy and interest, but I want to make sure that continues. I admit I've felt some anxiety during these nine months working to reshape the plots and the campaign to both fit the characters and their expectations.
My larger designs for the game's plot have change considerably throughout, though much of these changes are behind the scenes. Because of all this campaign evolution, I haven't revealed enough of a central plot. They've only been living and playing in the world, actually defining their own sort of theme in the way of group and friends as family, and the value of trust and love of one another. That has really impressed me, but I think they also want some more direction from me.
I feel the time has come for me to finally begin revealing aspects of the plot that will last into epic tier (thinking that I probably should have done this sooner, but only just today did I figure out something that made sense with all our sandbox exposition and allowed for multiple cool and character-testing moments).
The campaign is the most character-driven and rp heavy I have ever been involved in, a deep, dramatic game that offers me as much pride and grief. Especially having gotten six players who I think are in it for the long haul, I'm beginning to feel comfortable and confident in my choices as DM. Time to make the finer strokes, the definitive moves and clarify the campaign story at last.
I suppose I'm writing this now mostly to get my thoughts out and down somewhere, but also to highlight my personal struggles, joys, revelations and failings.
I'm trying to draw out what I've learned from my campaign thus far, and I think that will come in subsequent posts. I think I should lay down some profound statement, though... if I can muster one...
I am a better DM for having tried to work outside the normal BBEG campaign, to juggle six people in a homebrew world, to cultivate a game where character is the most important element, and create a story more elegant than my last and perhaps beyond my current ability to implement.
I applaud all homebrew DMs going through the every session struggles and the larger trials and tribulations of constructing something as close to professional as possible, something people play every week with great joy and which generates for them something to look forward to in the week. Call me corny, but that is a noble pursuit.
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