Choosing a new campaign

[Umbran]

Earlier this week, my group finished playing through The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. One of my players is going to run a short arc game ("Always/Never/Now" - a game about semi-retired cyberpunk operatives that had largely retired, but must come back together for one last run), to give me setup time for the next big thing.

So, I have to figure out what that is. I have picked up so many ttrpg rules recently that I have a bit of option paralysis to deal with. Luckily, I can resort to asking my players what they want to play. Several of them are nowhere near as plugged into the RPG scene, and wouldn't know the differences between PbtA and FitD if they walked up and tried to sell them cheap dice.

They are, however, generally up for trying anything. I created a google forms survey intended to get a bunch of their current preferences, and see if I can thereby whittle it down to a few game pitches for them to choose from.

Which seems as good a time as any to discuss - if you yourself didn't have a clear single choice of what you wanted to run, how did you work with your players to figure it out?

 

[Reynard]

Depending on how much your players care about geek media, you might try asking them to list, say, their top 3 or 5 media things which have the VIBES they are looking for. So, not asking them to pick licensed games to play, but what stuff feels like. Then see what sort of overlap there is. If you get an Expanse, a Firefly and a couple Rogue Ones from your players, Scum and Villainy seems like a good option to run. On the other hand, if you get some Dark Souls, Elden Rings and Black Companies, maybe it is Symbaroum time.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I haven’t had this problem in a decade +. I started keeping a file of campaign ideas, and sometimes fleshing out some of the stronger ones.

I also participated in, bookmarked and sigged the “Campaign Ideas” thread here on ENWorld. Plenty of good seeds on there!

And your polling your players should REALLY help! I don’t remember HOW I came up with the initial idea, but the best campaign I ever ran was a supers game using HERO 4th and the Space:1889 setting. Part of why it worked was when I mentioned it to the group I was in, everyone’s faces lit up with excitement. I knew at that instant that all I had to do running it was not mess it up. Hopefully, your survey should reveal some similarly strong options.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I've had almost no luck getting players to express their interest, even when I restricted their votes to "yes I want to play this" or "no I don't" (so people couldn't wishy-washy say "sounds OK" for everything). Indeed it made the options paralysis worse.

So, I run what I want to run, and only once has there been a rebellion that caused us to cut short a mini-campaign. (Specifically against Ironsworn, which made me question my choice in friends, TBH!)

To solve my own options paralysis, I let the dice decide, with the "out" that I'm allowed to re-roll if I feel any disappointment by what the dice said.

I've also used "asked the wife" (or insert non-gamer) and whatever she rolls her eyes at least, that's what I run.

 

[payn]

Sometimes im not sure what exactly I want to run, but I usually always know what I dont. So, I would float ideas to my players and have a conversation about it. Probably go out for pints at the pub with no intention of a sesh zero or anything,. just talk games and ideas and see what comes of it.

 

[Umbran]

Depending on how much your players care about geek media, you might try asking them to list, say, their top 3 or 5 media things which have the VIBES they are looking for. So, not asking them to pick licensed games to play, but what stuff feels like.

Yes - I included something along those lines in my survey - what media inspirations they'd like to see.

I haven’t had this problem in a decade +. I started keeping a file of campaign ideas, and sometimes fleshing out some of the stronger ones.

The problem isn't that I don't have ideas. The problem is which idea to use!

And your polling your players should REALLY help!

It already has.

An example: We just finished Witchlight. One of my players is also running a Pathfinder game. So, they have their fill of High Fantasy for the moment. Unless we are going with Spelljammer, they'd like us to avoid D&D or other High Fantasy. That clears a bunch of options out of the way for the moment.

With just that response, I expect I have four top candidates:
Scum and Villainy
Deadlands: The Lost Colony
Deathmatch Island (which would be short - perhaps six months, followed by one of the other games)
Spirit of the Century

 

[Voadam]

The last time this came up for me was in 2020 when my brother who was running our online game got burnt out. I just started making a descriptive elevator pitch list of modules/adventure path things I was interested in running for a game and stopped at 20. I then posted the list for the group. These were all things I owned, a few I had run before, some I had and liked the premise of but had not read them yet.

1 Rising Shadow in Middle Earth
2 Investigations in Pirate City
3 Completely Not-Haunted Funeral of Professor Jones
4 Starts off with Goblins
5 Plagues, Riots, More 2020 themes
6 Meteor Strike
7 Efreeti Aladdin
8 Ancient Dungeons
9 Baba Yaga and the White Witch
10 Punch Demons in the Face
11 The Mummy
12 Thundarr the Barbarian
13 Maquis in Devil-Nazi Land
14 Doctors Without Borders
15 Tatters of a Play
16 Masks Around the World
17 Dark Shadows
18 Spawn of Pulp Action
19 The Lothian Express
20 Chained Coffin in the Holler

I already knew I wanted to run using 5e D&D, but a lot of these were 3.5, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, and even a Dungeon Crawl Classics one in there that I was happy to convert from.

There was quickly significant interest in Thundarr and enthusiasm for playing full on sci-fi in D&D land and we were off with a 5e conversion of Iron Gods that I ran for three years.

 

[Reynard]

With just that response, I expect I have four top candidates:
Scum and Villainy
Deadlands: The Lost Colony
Deathmatch Island (which would be short - perhaps six months, followed by one of the other games)
Spirit of the Century

FWIW I am a big Deadlands and SWADE fan and i have not heard especially good things about Lost Colony, even beyond @Retreater having the less that great experience they did.

Scum and Villainy is great fun if your players are into the FitD thing.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Which seems as good a time as any to discuss - if you yourself didn't have a clear single choice of what you wanted to run, how did you work with your players to figure it out?

I ran a number of one-shots last year, so people could try things out, and then put up a poll in our group's private Facebook group with options based on that list, plus a few other likely choices.

With that, we decided on Radiant Citadel every other month, alternating with (usually) a Shadowdark West Marches game, although it may also get swapped out for other games periodically, including Pirate Borg, Mothership and Eat the Reich (for spooky season).

 

[Duke_]

Yes - I included something along those lines in my survey - what media inspirations they'd like to see.



The problem isn't that I don't have ideas. The problem is which idea to use!



It already has.

An example: We just finished Witchlight. One of my players is also running a Pathfinder game. So, they have their fill of High Fantasy for the moment. Unless we are going with Spelljammer, they'd like us to avoid D&D or other High Fantasy. That clears a bunch of options out of the way for the moment.

With just that response, I expect I have four top candidates:
Scum and Villainy
Deadlands: The Lost Colony
Deathmatch Island (which would be short - perhaps six months, followed by one of the other games)
Spirit of the Century

If you're down to four options that are equally appealing to all, you could just roll a d4 at that point. Maybe it's the solo gamer in me that's perfectly fine leaving impactful choices up to the roll of a die...