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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Dallman" data-source="post: 9187536" data-attributes="member: 6999616">Well, no. A campaign generally starts in a specific genre, although this may be quite tightly or loosely defined. For example, the genre of "This campaign is about retrieving the fragments of the Rod of Seven Parts from the dungeons where they are known to be hidden" is rather more specific than "You're going to go treasure hunting all across a continent that's as large as Asia, with a similar variety of terrain, cultures and languages."Long-running campaigns (which are my preference as GM and player) also have a tendency to grow out of their initial genre and style, in ways the the players and GM cannot foresee at start-up time. I had no idea whatsoever when I started running <a href="https://tekeli.li/infinite-cabal/" target="_blank">Infinite Cabal</a> how the story would conclude. I knew who had recruited the characters, the first job they would be given, and some general ideas about the construction of the universe they would explore. I discovered far more about the universe when a player decided to ignore the rules for safe inter-world travel, and I was forced to explain what he found.I had no clue at the start that the PCs would be recruited by Athena to assist the Greek deities in overthrowing the Ancient Egyptian demiurge who had been miss-managing the Infinite Worlds for millenia. Nor had I even heard of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether" target="_blank">female German Jewish mathematician</a> from 1920 who would replace the demiurge as controller of the universe, concluding the campaign. Those ideas emerged from running the game over more than 200 sessions, plus a lot of reading about history and theoretical physics looking for game applications. Many of the ideas and insights came from the players, and from NPCs I was running in the same immersive manner as I use for my PCs in other people's campaigns. Many other ideas that sounded good, or seemed to fit into the initial design of the campaign, were discarded as better ones emerged.</blockquote>

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