Rusty DM Needs Your Campaign Advice!

[The Shaman]

It's too linear, like you're writing a story, not playing a game.

Would someone please slap S'mon with some XP for me?

 

[Doug McCrae]

My main concerns are:
1) Seems too scripted.
2) Why do the players care?

Plans for a campaign should be a bit vaguer than this imho. More like hooks, without resolutions. It is, surprisingly, still possible to do foreshadowing with this technique by means of a sort of 'Schroedingers GMing'. If the PCs become interested in X, then X turns out to be connected with prepared elements Y and Z. For example if the PCs in your game decide to ignore the goblins and hunt some gnolls, then those gnolls worship the BBEG demon.

You can have all of your grand plan about the mad king and the crown prince possessed by a demon and so forth but you remain flexible about it, in case the PCs decide not to help the crown prince, for example.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I think the way to do the Part 1/2 transition is not to play out the capture. End Part 1 on a high - the defeat of the goblins, then begin the first Part 2 session with something like, "Many months have passed since the death of the Goblin King and your subsequent arrest on charges of high treason."

This makes it not a railroad* but the initial conditions for a new campaign arc. It's widely accepted that the GM has the right to determine the initial conditions for a new game, up to and including the PCs starting in gaol.

*At least by some definitions of railroad!

 

[Doug McCrae]

don't try to script the campaign in advance

I think it's okay to have a script, provided one is prepared to ditch part, or all, of it if required.

One could, I believe, if one knows one's players and their PCs well, have a script that turns out to accurately fit, say 95% of their actions. The other 5% is where one has to be flexible. Requiring the PCs to be of good alignment, as NMatuzic is, really helps here. I've noticed my superhero games are somewhat easier to predict than my D&D games.

Though I know some GMs don't like to plan that much of a campaign in advance, preferring to be surprised by what happens. I can understand that, to a large extent I feel the same way.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Doug McCrae wrote:
I think the way to do the Part 1/2 transition is not to play out the capture. End Part 1 on a high - the defeat of the goblins, then begin the first Part 2 session with something like, "Many months have passed since the death of the Goblin King and your subsequent arrest on charges of high treason."

Yeah this works too. Can save yourself some dice rolling time. Of course some players would still complain that this is rail-roading. Some will complain that they should get to roll the dice. Some players will whinge about anything. I'd do a linky thing to that thread about whinging players that's currently going on but... technology.. yuck.

I will simply say that sometimes rail-roading a scene is a good thing. It can let the overall campaign move along to a new phase. I mean what is the real difference between the cut scene that goes: " after your success with the goblins you are asked to go help the neighbouring kingdom fight some orcs." and the cut scene that goes "you get falsely accused and slammed in jail."

Well there is one difference I'm sure people will point out. The second one seems like a negative/ a punishment. Well, it aint. It's a transition. Just like the first example I gave. Now obviously no-one wants a whole campaign of that. But a cut scene? I fail to see how this can be a problem for anyone.

cheers.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

I will simply say that sometimes rail-roading a scene is a good thing. It can let the overall campaign move along to a new phase. I mean what is the real difference between the cut scene that goes: " after your success with the goblins you are asked to go help the neighbouring kingdom fight some orcs." and the cut scene that goes "you get falsely accused and slammed in jail."....Now obviously no-one wants a whole campaign of that. But a cut scene? I fail to see how this can be a problem for anyone.

I don't really like either of those scenes for a roleplaying game, because the players aren't doing anything in either case. The first one is a little better, because the players can immediately say, "We decline to fight the orcs," whereas they can't really decline to be imprisoned.

It's not really a problem in the sense that it's going to anger the players, or deprive them of anything essential. It's just that using a pre-scripted scene in a roleplaying game makes it harder to engage the players. If you can tell a captivating story, and your players enjoy it, then by all means do what works for your group. It's just not the most effective way of keeping the players on the edges of their seats and ensuring a game session they'll talk about for years to come.

I think of it this way: a scene in an RPG without player impact is like a scene in an action movie without sound. You can make a great action movie scene without sound, and I'm sure we can all think of some memorable scenes that did without sound. As a general principle, though, you want to use your medium to its fullest extent, and only handcuff yourself creatively when you can't affect the audience the way you want to in any other way.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Fair enough mate, fair enough. Personally I like a little constraint on my creative choices. Makes me work harder. Plus I like a bit of variation fo rit's own sake. But each to their own.

cheers.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I mean what is the real difference between the cut scene that goes: " after your success with the goblins you are asked to go help the neighbouring kingdom fight some orcs." and the cut scene that goes "you get falsely accused and slammed in jail."

Well there is one difference I'm sure people will point out. The second one seems like a negative/ a punishment. Well, it aint. It's a transition. Just like the first example I gave. Now obviously no-one wants a whole campaign of that. But a cut scene? I fail to see how this can be a problem for anyone.

cheers.

The real difference? It's not that the characters are thrown in jail as much as "you are asked to help" which the players may react to versus "you are boned with nothing you can do about it."

The jailscene cannot be that important to the campaign that it is forced on the players. Indeed, it might make more sense for the prince to seek out the players as he's now aware of them, become their friend on the road, and then the prince gets captured leading the party to free him. Now that is an adventure as opposed to having to free themselves after being captured off scene.

Now mind you, if your group doesn't care about it and your know your group, scene away.

 

[NMatuzic]

Thanks for the comments everyone, please keep them coming!

It seems that a fair number of people feel like my campaign is a railroad, or too much of a story. In response to this, I'd like to say that my campaign descriptions are large arcs in which many adventures will occur. But I find it difficult to play in a campaign with no basic storyline present. The best campaigns I've ever played in have been well thought out and planned, with twists and turns along the way. To me, there is not much point in playing unconnected adventures one after the other and calling it a campaign.

I am prepared to change my plans, or scrap parts of the campaign if the PCs' actions lead in a completely different path, but I still think that this campaign can work more or less as it is. While I do agree that PCs can take odd, tangental paths, I also believe that once they're on a quest with a goal they generally stick to it. Sure, the journey how to get there may differ widely, but their goal won't change much.

Applying that to my campaign as an example- the first adventure will pit the PCs against a goblin clan, and hooks will be placed to make it obvious they're working as part of some larger organisation. Soon, the PCs learn of a Goblin king and his invasion. They're already enemies of the gobbos, and their homeland is at risk, why wouldn't they then decide to take down the Gobbos themselves?

Yes, I know that they may not, but eventually the Goblin invasion will be noticable, unless they travel to some other part of the world for no reason.

I see roleplaying and D&D as a combined storytelling tool, rather than a game to be won. My group and I generally think along the same lines, and that's why I'm confident a more linear storyline can work. My campaign description is just a skeleton, and the PCs decisions and actions are going to be the stuff filling it out.

As for the capture, well, I do understand that it may not go down well. It's just a scene that could work so well, and being stuck in a dungeon is such a cliched starting point of a cmapign arc that it could work. It is a difficult thing to pull off, and maybe I'll get cold feet the closer I get to it- I do have alternatives, and now with some suggestions a few more!

 

[JoeGKushner]

With the fights against the goblins, you might want to steal the Keep of the Shadowfeel fights. You can use the road, the caves, and the free augmented bits to expand that with a hobgoblin raid. That will save some time on some of the encounter designs and allow you to focus a bit more on some of the other aspects.