WhT makes a good campaign?

There have been lots of good points in this thread so far.

Myself, I like to run long campaigns rather than short ones, and think the main requirement for this is to have the right players, people who want to be there and are willing to engage.

Campaigns, and in particular long campaigns, need continuity. High character turnover is one of the main threats to campaign length, whether from retirement, death, misadventure, or players leaving. Each character leaving may take with it all the subplots connected with that character, along with the associated campaign lore, investment, connections to NPCs etc. A point can be reached where none of the players can remember why their characters are there or are no longer invested in the original goals of the campaign, which can seal the end of the campaign. It can be possible to get out of such a situation by evolving the campaign away from original concepts to better fit the new PCs, but often the referee is too invested in the original concept to let go of it, even when it becomes obvious s/he hasn't sold it to the players.

Some players like to constantly change PC. It may be possible to tolerate a player, maybe two with such tastes, but not many, as the lack of continuity or investment in long term challenges negates the main advantages of a campaign.

Potential solutions are a commitment on the part of players to keep characters around for the long haul, low lethality due to low combat or less deadly dangers, organisations connected with the PCs to provide replacements and maintain institutional memory.

The other technique I have learned is not to overinvest in any single NPC or plot. I constantly through out potential plot seeds without detailing them much and see which ones interest the players. I then elaborate on the successful plots. I present lots of NPCs and see which ones the players feel strongly about, and survive the first meeting with the PCs. NPCs who players instantly hate make great recurring bad guys, especially when kept sufficiently in the background to persist for a while.

It can really sting when some of the players turn not to like the main plot of a campaign and start running away from it, especially when they do engage with interest in smaller subplots. Tastes are subjective and there are no guarantees that the players will fall in love with the plotlines that seize you. A conventional RPG campaign with a referee in authority has primary responsibility to make the campaign fun for everyone including themselves. Sometimes when a campaign isn't gelling, the appropriate action for the referee is to either call it and wrap things up quickly, or try and mutate the campaign into something that does interest the players while still appealing sufficiently to the referee. I've seen too many campaigns descend into a slow death spiral of apathy and lack of engagement, or crash and burn, to tolerate that sort of thing nowadays.

delericho said:

Partly, it's planning - I've found that if I don't plan a campaign properly then it's pretty much doomed. But good planning by itself isn't enough, because...

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A lot of good advice above. I think that planning is essential - the roadmap, and where we are going. However, a large part is also not planning in too much detail. I don't know where the L12 game went off the rails, but the L20 game clearly rolled with the events early on. Series of hot die rolls leads to something unexpected? Often, that would become a "hey, remember when..." event. By making it a living part of the campaign, what happened really mattered - not just for today's game, but reverberating through the campaign. Similarly, the players taking an interest in a minor NPC was recognized, and developed - not being committed to a specific major NPC allowed that to happen.

Good luck with the new campaign!

Planning in a "Round Robin" campaign is always problematic.

I plan my adventure. As the first DM I lay the groundwork. I describe the long term problem that will drive the campaign, and I introduce some clues. I also, of course, have to present an adventure with an internal plot, an adversary of some kind, and have to give them some sense of closure when they finish handling my piece of the big problem.

I can plan for all of that. What I can't plan is what the next DM will introduce. His job may include more clues, some plot hooks, details about the big picture that I never considered.

And when he's through, another DM will take over and take the campaign to even more places I couldn't plan for. And if we do it right, 20 levels or so from now, a conclusion I couldn't have planned for will come to pass, and we'll have a fun story to tell.

Greenfield said:

Any comments?

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The four D's:

1) Danger

2) Discovery

3) Drama

4) Nuts. Big brass ones.

Manbearcat said:

The four D's:

1) Danger

2) Discovery

3) Drama

4) Nuts. Big brass ones.

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4) Daring?

That said, I like your twist so much better.

(It reminds of an interview I went for about 25 years ago and I was asked for my strategy for the department I could be leading [trade finance]. "I would go with the three Cs: cotton, coal, and seafood." Yeah, I got that job and my interviewer later became a business partner in some other ventures.)

Scrivener of Doom said:

4) Daring?

That said, I like your twist so much better.

(It reminds of an interview I went for about 25 years ago and I was asked for my strategy for the department I could be leading [trade finance]. "I would go with the three Cs: cotton, coal, and seafood." Yeah, I got that job and my interviewer later became a business partner in some other ventures.)

Click to expand...

Daring is definitely the way I wanted you to think I was going...exceeeeeeeeeeeept....











...this may have been a super-duper lame attempt at an ultra-juvenile deez nuts joke...

Well, some planning just got easier.

Several of the players just let me know what they're running:

We have a Rogue with Bard in his future, a Monk and a Barbarian. Probably a Druid as well.

Which means I'm probably running a Cleric or something Arcane.

Why not both? Give in to the urge to theurge!

Okay, status report:

We have a Human Rogue, planning to go Bard, then Fighter, then Eldritch Knight. (Remember, we are running DMG, PHB, MM only, at least for the moment.)

We have a Half Elf Druid who may or may not add some Ranger.

We have an Orc Barbarian

We have a Half-Orc Monk

We (probably) have an Elven Wizard.

And the last minute add on, who never checked what anyone else was running, is a female Elven Bard.

The party met with the King, who was disappointed with the turn out. He had sent word to a number of kingdoms asking for people to form a "Free Company" to fight an international threat. H had expected between 25 and 100 people. He got seven, and then two backed out. (One player, like me, prepared several characters, to be ready based on what others brought.)

He looked at the group, who were all dressed up in fine clothes (provided by the castle staff), looking for anyone with a rank, a knighthood, or even a Fighter class, someone he could assign the role of commanding officer for this company, which he still hopes will grow. Nobody qualified, so he selected a minor dandy from the attending members of court, and gave him the job, at least while they were in his kingdom.

That was one of my characters, the Wizard, and a moment of thanks for the name Cyrano De Cognac. He carries a rapier, dresses fancy and is perennially broke due to his gambling habit. (An explanation for how someone from a rich family can have no more than a standard PC's starting money.)

They were charged with the mission, to track down and deal with the source for the odd tears that were happening in space, and the monsters that came out far too often for it to be random. There was a badly disjointed message from someone calling himself the "Nightmare King", as well as the "Dark Dreamer". (They suspect it was translated to Common from some other language by someone who spoke neither very well, and without the use of magic.)

After they accepted and were dismissed, a page brought them the formal charter, bearing the royal seals of approval from at least a dozen different nations: They ahd the right to bear arms, to cross borders without challenge, and to use magic in most of the known world. As a sign of how absent minded the King is, he forgot to add his own seal to it. He also neglected to mention pay, provisions, support, or anything else.

There was a note asking them to visit "The Countessa". They were escorted to meet with her. She was visiting the castle, and was staying in guest apartments. Their escort was a Jester's Apprentice, another potential character of mine who got vetoed because one player's character has a fear/dislike for clowns.

The Countessa filled in some blanks, such as pay. She had purses, already counted out, setting on a table. Again, expecting a larger company, she had far more than there were PCs. The Bard tried to Sleight of Hand to grab an extra bag. The Countessa noticed, gave her a dirty look, but said nothing. She provided a write they should take to the stable master, who would provide them with mounts.

She also put in a personal request: The "rifts" tended to occur in clusters, with many occuring in a given area over a matter of a few days or weeks, then ceasing there only to pop up somewhere else. Currently they were showing up on her lands, so she asked that the group pay particular attention there.

The lady, being a beautiful Gray Elf, wore a very forced smile when she had to address the Orc. He was so extreme in his "Barbarian-ness" that the Half Orc seemed positively charming by comparison. But she held it together for the meeting.

The dandy, my character, was all too happy to accept pay, but was waved off. He was her son, whose gambling habits were a source of some embarassment, so she assured him that she'd apply it to his outstanding debts.

They were dismissed and left, filing down the winding stairs from her chambers in the tower.

Then, a scream and a commotion up in the area they had just left. They charged back up the stair and found a room full of monsters, two of which were struggling to drag the Countessa through a rift.

And now it got fun. I have never been so happy to have such cold dice. I'm a believer in letting the dice fall where they may, but 1st level PCs are very breakable. Rolling where people could see, my monsters run up an epic string of dice rolls in the low single digits. None of the PCs had any armor on (remember, fancy clothes to meet the King) so they were protected by DEX, and maybe fighting defensively.

The players' dice were a little better, but not a lot. It dragged out the fight and added delightfully to the tension of the conflict. Even the two larger opponents trying the drag the Countessa were rolling miserably in their attempts to maintain their Grapple and move her. She, however, was rolling even worse, so they did get her through. It took three rounds to move her ten feet.

Then came the development I couldn't have planned for. The Barbarian broke through the line of Fiendish Goblins, ignored some AoO (cold dice saved him again), and charged into the rift to save the Elven lady. A round later the Monk did a tumbling run (double-move) to follow him. And they engaged the Fiendish Orcs, who were busy trying to hold onto her.

One of them was forced to release his hold to defend the other. I realized that this left her with a hand free, at least cinematically, so she spent a round drawing a dagger (which is how that works when grappled), then rolled a crit when she needed it the most. We ruled that she had cut the monster in that most delicate of places. He released, for a moment, and she fled, back out of the rift. PCs followed and the rift closed.

There was some mopping up, but it was over, even before the guards arrived.

So the very high class Elven noblewoman owed her life to an Orc and a Half-Orc.

Couldn't have planned a better plot hook if I'd tried.

You may recall I said that part of my goal was to give them a high road, some bit of glory and a meaningful success? I had planned on her being taken, and their mission would become one to rescue the "Damsel in Distress". Okay, she wasn't a fairy tale princess, but she was close enough for government work.

So now I need to replot a few things, but that's okay. I never liked railroads anyway.

Oh, and to close, one of my favorite gaming quotes: "Box-Text always wins Initiative."

Ooooohhh. Can we expect more story times?