Campaign Handouts

[DongShenYin]

For those GMs who prepare a summary of their campaign and/or world for the players, how elaborate is your handout? What do you include in it? Do you show this to potential players or to people who've already agreed to play? How complete is it, and do you allow the players to add, refine, and/or define some things? Do you hand out revised verions as the campaign rolls on?

--Dora

 

[Hand of Evil]

I have two type of handouts, Campaign and game:

The campaign is house rules, defining good and evil, campaign area background overview, timeline. Mostly it is like an introduction in a book.

Game hand outs are bullet items or limited descriptions of information from the last game; things like names of places, NPCs and event from the game, rumors and current events, and answers to questions my players had from other games. Yes, after every game I ask my player to submit questions to me and I answer them, some are about rules, some about the world.

Game handouts to me should be interactive, they keep the players involved in the world and the game.

 

[fusangite]

My approach is essentially identical to Hand of Evil's. I have the first big world background and house rules handout which I then supplement with handouts depicting important documents or stories the characters encounter. For the first time, I've also produced an advertisement-type handout to recruit players to my game. In my view, recruitment-oriented handouts should be a maximum of one double-sided page whereas the backgrounder should probably be a minimum of five (single-sided admittedly).

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I recommend keeping your initial handout very brief; one page is best. If you can't sell your campaign with that, then no amount of additional pages will help.

Once someone has expressed an interest in joining, I'd send as much info as the player seems interested in; you don't want to swamp them with info. I find it's best to get them to the game first, and then let them experience the campaign firsthand. Then you can slowly dole out the campaign materials. This has the added benefit of you not preparing a big whack of stuff only to have the player never show up again.

Personally, when I have a new player interested in joining our game, I send out a series of emails. With each one, I can gage the player's interest level by their replies. I keep things in a broad perspective, b/c a player might not be interested in the current adventure and could be turned off by it. A broader view allows them to see areas potential interest to them.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

well for a game handout, I am considering doing something like mashing up some wet leaves until they are almost in a paste and then giving them to my players in a bag, and I can say that is what the salve looks like.

 

[scourger]

I give handouts of information based upon the amount of knowledge the character has as represented by skill ranks in knowledge (geography, local, history, etc.). In game, more information may come from sepcific knowledge checks or bardic knowledge. I find these are the only ways to reward those skills.

 

[Pants]

I don't have handouts, but I always answer any questions related to the world and I do a review on what happened last session, just to help refresh memories. If any other questions are asked, I answer them in as much detail as people want.

When starting up new campaign worlds, I try to sum up the world in a sentence or two. If required, I will go into more detail on certain places, aspects at a player's request.