What Media Format Is Your Preferred Campaign Style?

[Aldarc]

Andor: Nice strong beginning with pacing across four three-episode arcs. Oh naughty word. We don't have enough time. Let's shove the last four seasons of the campaign into one season.

 

[Autumnal]

I'm afraid I view RPGs are a distinct story form, and regard styling them after another form as a category error.

Well, thanks nothing to be ashamed of, we all have quirks and fetishes.

Seriously, though, fundamentally I agree. I recognize many points and zones of contact, but for me RPGs are innately a unique impure hybrid of inspirations that became (is continuing to become) its own thing as much as prose or music.

I do think, though, that the various worlds of serial storytelling have a lot to suggest to us about time management/structure.

 

[Voadam]

I mostly do modules, usually Paizo APs, so the TV episodic series with an ongoing theme and plot but a different main focus villain/story for each season works well with a lot of digression individual mini stories mixed in. Buffy is a decent rough example.

My one shot modules are more like a movie, usually Army of Darkness or Big Trouble in Little China style adventure, spooky but not over the top horror, and comedy with wacky protagonists.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Kids playing on a playground.

As a DM, I provide the structures with hints of what you could use them for. The players decide on how they actually want to use the structures. Not everything has to be used. The same structures can be used over and over for different purposes.

 

[Reynard]

My PF1 APs ran a lot like serial series of the premium TV era. I definitely leaned in that direction as I prefer it to episodic style of the last century. My current Traveller sand box Pirates of Drinax is moving in the direction of DS9 and B5 in which its a hybrid of serial and episodic.

Im finding I do really like single film length games and wish folks ran them more. I dont need everything to be an on going campaign. Sometimes a really great story and time happen in a single night.

When i run my 3 to five slot "convention campaigns" they fit this space really well -- long enough with enough "acts" to feel complex and satisfying, but short enough to be complete.

 

[Reynard]

I'm afraid I view RPGs are a distinct story form, and regard styling them after another form as a category error.

Okay. Great.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For example, mine is 90s-00s ensemble television semi-serial action adventure drama a la Buffy or Angel. that is, focused on a group of characters where there is a mix of monster of the week adventures as well as "mythology" episodes that tie to the larger story of the campaign, broken down into "seasons" that might map to tiers of play in D&D but otherwise just be about moving on to the next cool thing after resolving each "big story." It is not a perfect mapping, obviously, and every campaign is going to focus more on certain aspects of the formula, but it is there. Another element of this I like is that characters often start out as strong but flat archetypes, but backstories and character focused NPCs and such come up over time, adding depth and complexity to the characters that they did not possess at the beginning.

I think one major thing here that pushes RPG campaigns structurally towards being like Buffy/Merlin is that in general, all the PCs are on the same side and in the same place, and aren't backstabbing each other.

This is very different to most TV shows and movies (not all, c.f. GotG etc.). Like, Game of Thrones structure of chopping around all over the place between diverse characters with opposing goals isn't going to work for most RPGs/RPG groups - hell even if the PCs were the Stark kids, that's one hell of a "split the party" to structure around!

 

[overgeeked]

When running open-world sandboxes, the closest match is the open world video game.

When running most anything more limited in scope, it’s some combination of Claremont’s X-Men, X-Files, Supernatural, Fringe, etc with solid Monster of the Week vibes with slow burn or build B and C background stories.

When running one shots (especially anything horror adjacent), it’s definitely in the Tales from the Crypt, Twilight Zone, Tales from the Darkside, Outer Limits, etc style of playful and twisty. Damon Knight’s fork and some kind of nasty comeuppance is always a winner.

 

[aramis erak]

Serial, generally a mix of 3-act and 5-act adventures, up to 5 scenes per act, usually 1-3.

Tone varies by game.

 

[Lanefan]

I think one major thing here that pushes RPG campaigns structurally towards being like Buffy/Merlin is that in general, all the PCs are on the same side and in the same place, and aren't backstabbing each other.

This is very different to most TV shows and movies (not all, c.f. GotG etc.). Like, Game of Thrones structure of chopping around all over the place between diverse characters with opposing goals isn't going to work for most RPGs/RPG groups - hell even if the PCs were the Stark kids, that's one hell of a "split the party" to structure around!

It works fine for me.

Just as in the Game of Thrones books, you run it in chapters - play one party for a while, then put them on hold and play another party for a while, lather-rinse-repeat until-unless some of those parties meet, interweave, combine or split up again, etc. etc.

And during all this some characters die off, others are introduced, some last for ages while others die before they know what hit them, and they all have their own agendas which may or may not align at any given moment.

A campaign like that can go on almost indefinitely.