What are the top five essential ingredients that make up a good campaign?
- Thread starter Enceladus
- Start date
Frostmarrow
First Post
I'll settle for combat, combat, combat, combat and more combat. It's good to be back. Nutkinland gave me a rash.
alsih2o
First Post
Enceladus said:
the problem can sually be avoided with a player-dm talk. start here, make sure everyone knows the "rules" up front. make sure the dm is providing for everyones enjoyment this way.
one of the hardest aspects there is player input. all too frequently we see people complainging far too late that they aren't having fun. i think one of the hardest things for most people to do do is criticize their dm effectively and humanely.
improving your ability to communicate your desires for the game to the dm would vastly improve most peoples enjoyment of the game (i believe). if oyu are a dm ask frequently, but remember, the answers will most likely be found in the players reactoions instead of what they are willing to say after the game when you ask.
i think almost every group could stand to use the following phrases amongst themselves more- "how do oyu feel about us..." "what do you guys think of..." "how could we make it so that..." and so on.
if you are sensitive to the time put in by the dm AND the immersionlevel and dedication of the players your enjoyment can be improved.
i know a lot of people think my original answer failed in simplicity, but i am very serious. the comraderie f the table, be it virtual or real is so much of making a good game great. and if everyoen just makes a little effort to making themselves see others viewpoints and tries to make EVERYONES game better then you end up wiht a great campaign regardless of system, setting or style
Enceladus
First Post
I run a website that has our campaign info on it. I usually have a bi-weekly poll that is relevant to the campaign. The questions range from what they think of the current setting to where to go next to what they think is important to their character etc. I'm always glad I have these because 99 percent of the time the answers always surprise me. It really gives me some insight as to what's important to them as opposed to what I think is important.
Desdichado
Hero
1) A setting that everyone can feel involved in and enjoy. Especially for the DM -- if he doesn't find the setting compelling, the game simply will not be compelling no matter what the players do. But it can't just be the DMs playground either, the players have to enjoy the setting as well, and feel invested in it.
2) Some concrete goals. I've seen a lot of games stalled out because folks either didn't know what to do, or couldn't seem to accomplish anything. I guess that along with goals, there needs to be progress towards those goals. It's OK to not let the PCs do whatever they want to, but if you frustrate everything they try to do, eventually the players also just get frustrated with the game.
3) Get everyone on the same page for tone. Nothing worse than a group that's half serious and half silly. Nobody ends up enjoying it much.
4) Don't get bogged down in rules. Either know them really well, or except a certain amount of hand-waving about things. This is more an ingredient of a good game session than of a good campaign, but a campaign is a sum of the game sessions, is it not?
5) A DM that is aware of the players, involving all of them, knows when one is feeling left out or frustrated, when one is hogging attention, etc. so he can address the issues as they come up. You've got to keep your players happy. Ex. My wife's first campaign seemed to be tailor-made for her in terms of theme, tone, setting, etc. and I was very hopeful that it would get her hooked on the hobby. However, the group was very large, my wife ended up feeling her character was fairly ineffectual, one player ended up domineering the action and edging other folks out, and the end result was that the game didn't live up to it's promise and my wife didn't have as much fun as she could have, and she may now be turned off the hobby altogether. I hope I can convince her to try again, with a smaller group at least (maybe even with just me as DM and her as character) and show her the real potential of the game.
2) Some concrete goals. I've seen a lot of games stalled out because folks either didn't know what to do, or couldn't seem to accomplish anything. I guess that along with goals, there needs to be progress towards those goals. It's OK to not let the PCs do whatever they want to, but if you frustrate everything they try to do, eventually the players also just get frustrated with the game.
3) Get everyone on the same page for tone. Nothing worse than a group that's half serious and half silly. Nobody ends up enjoying it much.
4) Don't get bogged down in rules. Either know them really well, or except a certain amount of hand-waving about things. This is more an ingredient of a good game session than of a good campaign, but a campaign is a sum of the game sessions, is it not?
5) A DM that is aware of the players, involving all of them, knows when one is feeling left out or frustrated, when one is hogging attention, etc. so he can address the issues as they come up. You've got to keep your players happy. Ex. My wife's first campaign seemed to be tailor-made for her in terms of theme, tone, setting, etc. and I was very hopeful that it would get her hooked on the hobby. However, the group was very large, my wife ended up feeling her character was fairly ineffectual, one player ended up domineering the action and edging other folks out, and the end result was that the game didn't live up to it's promise and my wife didn't have as much fun as she could have, and she may now be turned off the hobby altogether. I hope I can convince her to try again, with a smaller group at least (maybe even with just me as DM and her as character) and show her the real potential of the game.
