ZEITGEIST [ZEITGEIST] About to start the campaign! Any tips from experienced players and DM's?
- Thread starter Velenne
- Start date
BobertoEnFuego
Villager
Congratulations! You are about to embark on an incredible adventure in the world of Zeitgeist!
Zeitgeist is a largely story driven campaign with lots of intrigue and roleplaying. Due to this, I have two recommendations:
1.) Zeitgeist has a diverse set of PCs. The text does a very good job explaining the backstory of the important characters and their motives. That being said, I found it very difficult to remember ALL the details. So I made myself a cheat sheet that contained the vital information. For a given PC that I believed was going to appear in a session, I wrote down their motives and fears. What drives them? What are their goals? What do they have to lose? What are they afraid of? What do they hate?
This made it much easier to roleplay these characters on the spot. If the characters got to a touchy subject, I knew they would not give up the information easily. Or if you pressured them in the right way, they would cave. If you want to go above and beyond, maybe write down a few lines of how you think they would speak or deliver a piece of information. I am not very good at getting into character on the spot, but this helped me a lot (of course I am nowhere near as good as the writing in the actual text...)
2.) Zeitgeist, in a way, is an amazing machine that runs itself. Everything, and I mean everything, has a reason. Every encounter/battle/interrogation has a reason for being there. So it is always important to understand the goal of each encounter.
This isn't your normal dungeon crawl where you open a door and an ooze stands before you. Why is that ooze there? Who knows! Who cares! Kill it!
In Zeitgeist, every encounter is a way to move the plot forward. A way to tell a bit of information about the world. If you can identify and convey this information to your players, every encounter will have much more brevity than your typical dungeon crawler.
So again, I made myself a list:
(For example)
Why are you fighting these dockers at the launch of R.N.S Coaltongue?
What information do I want to convey/give? (e.g. tension between the elite and the working class perhaps?)
With that, I wish you good luck! Zeitgeist is an amazing, complex, and daunting tale to tell. But very, very worth the effort put in.
Zeitgeist is a largely story driven campaign with lots of intrigue and roleplaying. Due to this, I have two recommendations:
1.) Zeitgeist has a diverse set of PCs. The text does a very good job explaining the backstory of the important characters and their motives. That being said, I found it very difficult to remember ALL the details. So I made myself a cheat sheet that contained the vital information. For a given PC that I believed was going to appear in a session, I wrote down their motives and fears. What drives them? What are their goals? What do they have to lose? What are they afraid of? What do they hate?
This made it much easier to roleplay these characters on the spot. If the characters got to a touchy subject, I knew they would not give up the information easily. Or if you pressured them in the right way, they would cave. If you want to go above and beyond, maybe write down a few lines of how you think they would speak or deliver a piece of information. I am not very good at getting into character on the spot, but this helped me a lot (of course I am nowhere near as good as the writing in the actual text...)
2.) Zeitgeist, in a way, is an amazing machine that runs itself. Everything, and I mean everything, has a reason. Every encounter/battle/interrogation has a reason for being there. So it is always important to understand the goal of each encounter.
This isn't your normal dungeon crawl where you open a door and an ooze stands before you. Why is that ooze there? Who knows! Who cares! Kill it!
In Zeitgeist, every encounter is a way to move the plot forward. A way to tell a bit of information about the world. If you can identify and convey this information to your players, every encounter will have much more brevity than your typical dungeon crawler.
So again, I made myself a list:
(For example)
Why are you fighting these dockers at the launch of R.N.S Coaltongue?
What information do I want to convey/give? (e.g. tension between the elite and the working class perhaps?)
With that, I wish you good luck! Zeitgeist is an amazing, complex, and daunting tale to tell. But very, very worth the effort put in.
gideonpepys
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Read some of the campaign journals posted here, that's my advice. Not mine, it's too long! But I stole dozens of ideas from other DMs as I went (until I overtook most people for a while before our campaign suffered a three-year hiatus). There are lots of cool ideas in other people's journals.
Velenne
Explorer
Thanks! Any you'd recommend in particular?
RangerWickett
Legend
We have cool handouts and NPC portrait cards for sale at RPGNow.com. Props are useful.
My advice: post brief updates of your campaign, or have your players do it. I like reading that stuff, and long campaigns can be hard to keep track of.
My advice: post brief updates of your campaign, or have your players do it. I like reading that stuff, and long campaigns can be hard to keep track of.
Another advice that helps both players and DM: Have someone make a list of NPC which includes a brief description of each. This way you can easily look at the NPC through the eyes of your players AND your players end up with a useful database should a NPC reappear after a while. My own group is somewhere in the 1st or 2nd third of adventure 3 and we already have more than 80 NPC on this list. And I don't even bother putting every little errand boy up there.
Ha! I'm still wondering if my DM's translated version of my messy german recaps make any sense to a native speaker
But yes, have some player write them. While I "only" DM for WotBS, the workload to prep all the NPC and plotlines take a lot of time. Especially as players don't always do what you expect and... things can get complicated in such a beautifully interwoven campaign. I can only guess that it might be worse in Zeitgeist.
Ha! I'm still wondering if my DM's translated version of my messy german recaps make any sense to a native speaker
But yes, have some player write them. While I "only" DM for WotBS, the workload to prep all the NPC and plotlines take a lot of time. Especially as players don't always do what you expect and... things can get complicated in such a beautifully interwoven campaign. I can only guess that it might be worse in Zeitgeist.
gideonpepys
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
I'm going to go back on what I said earlier and answer 'mine', with the caveat that you should skip the buffer adventures. The reason is that any/all of the ideas I liked in other folks' campaigns I incorporated into mine, so the ones I wanted to recommend are kind of covered in one thread. Best example: Colmar posted his 'session 0' Q&A for his players, to establish their loves, hates and interconnections, and I stole that wholesale. I recommend it as a great way to flesh out your constables.
Another thing I recommend: have your players consider their characters as heroes in an ongoing TV show. Assign a descriptive keyword to each character and reward them for hitting that note each session. Zeitgeist is such a colourful world, the heroes need to be equally colourful, consistent and memorable.
Better yet, if your group is mature enough, assign roles. I chose one very level-headed player to be the unit leader. That really did help to distinguish the constables from a regular bunch of mercenary PCs.
RangerWickett's suggestion to post your own journal is a good one, and you can see from all byt my most recent posts that they can be quite rudimentary and in bullet-point form. Not only will you then be able to ask for advice from readers who have some investment in your campaign, but you will also be able to go back in read your entries when players return to an area, encounter an NPC for the first time in a long time, or you return to the campaign after a long break. Our recent reboot would have been impossible if I hadn't kept our journal.
Other suggestions for fun journals:
https://zeitgeist-wotw.obsidianportal.com/adventure-log
Tizbiz
Tiggerunner
Redbadge's Campaign
Roadtoad's 'Bosum Strand Irregulars'
RangerWickett
Legend
Dude, thanks for reminding me about that Obsidian Portal blog. I'd forgotten about it.
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