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View Full Version : Campaign vs just a game



Gamer Girl
2011-03-06, 12:46 AM
So trying to get a new weekly D&D group together, with me as DM. We all met today and talked it all over. We when over the normal things like when and were to play and did a bit of character stuff.

But three of the players kept asking 'what kind of campaign' it would be. I kept telling them 'just normal fantasy D&D', as I did not quite get what they were asking. After about a half an hour, they finaly told me they wanted to know 'all about the campaign' so they could make 'good characters'.

I was a bit confused. They were free to make just about any character they wanted. I'm quite open to that. I asked if they wanted to know more about the game world, but they kept coming back to asking what the campaign would be...

A couple minuets later, they finally explained what they were asking. They wanted to know what the game play was going to be like ('the campaign'). They had the idea that if the game was going to be nautical, then they would all make underwater characters. If they would be in grasslands they would have mounted characters. And so forth.

They somehow had the idea that the whole game would take place in like a single square mile of the world. I tried to explain that as adventures they could simply end up anywhere. And that the idea that they would only adventure in one tiny bit of the world was just odd. They would start in the wooded town, but could end up in the mountains, desert, underwater or such as the game went on.

I've always been more generic. The players just make characters and adventure. They don't plan out complex builds to fit one tiny nook of the world.

So how common is this? Are there DM's out there who run such limited games? ''You guys are in the horselands and will never go to another land''. It was just odd to me.

BobVosh
2011-03-06, 01:18 AM
Once in a while I run a fairly long story in one location. Rare, very rare though.

LoneStarNorth
2011-03-06, 01:20 AM
I think a lot of people will occasionally run a campaign with a strong theme or common type of encounter. For example, if you tell the players that they're the crew of a pirate ship, or underdark explorers, or astronauts, they'll know that characters tailored to aquatic/underground/space encironments will be better suited to the campaign.

Not all campaigns need to be like this. If you say "it's just a generic fantasy campaign" then they should feel free to make any character they want and not worry about it. Some people just like to know what's coming I guess.

CarpeGuitarrem
2011-03-06, 01:25 AM
Honestly, consider that a blessing. They're wanting a specific theme from you. That lets you focus less on giving crazy variety to the world, and more on fleshing out a single area. There can be campaigns that don't leave the continent, campaigns that don't leave the town, campaigns that don't leave the dungeon...theoretically, you could have a campaign in a single castle.

I think themes are cool, and they make for more memorable campaigns.

valadil
2011-03-06, 01:26 AM
I've always been more generic. The players just make characters and adventure. They don't plan out complex builds to fit one tiny nook of the world.


What sorts of adventure? What are their quests? Do you tell the players the quests or do you let them run free? Are you doing a long running story or will each dungeon have its own story? Are you even using dungeons? If the player has a lot of contacts and allies, will that matter? Does the setting matter or will you just fudge it? Do your dungeons have to make logical sense, or will 'a wizard did it' be adequate explanation for fantastic terrains?

These are the kinds of questions you have to answer. It can be hard to come up with these if you haven't done a variety of games. They want to make characters that fit. Nothing sucks more than to make a talker with political connections and find out that his name and rank won't matter since he spends all his time spelunking in caves.

I think the best thing to do would be to tell them about the average adventure you'd put them through. This is really easy if you've done other campaigns. Just tell them what your last party had to do.

Volos
2011-03-06, 01:30 AM
One of my players started running his own group recently. He seems to be on this whole 'kick' of certain region campaigns. For example he just quit his ocean campaign and asked everyone to make new characters cause now he wants to do a desert campaign. But the problem with this is that he's already hinted that he'll do a forest campaign following that. I've tried to explain to him that in order to keep everyone interested he should just run a game and see where it goes. Instead he rather do a handful of adventures in an area and then have everyone roll new characters when it's time to switch to the next one.

Personally I run games that end up all over the place, but allow the players to drive it where they feel it needs to go. They feel like destroying an evil church, they do that or atleast try to. They want to slay a dragon, that's fine too. I love using the rules for odd enviroments, but I never force the players to stay in one area for longer they want to. If they are in the middle of a region and already getting tired of it, I have freak weather or plane shifting to mix things up.

Reluctance
2011-03-06, 01:35 AM
Sounds to me like your players are looking for a theme. This is a good thing; it gives them a reason to build a cohesive party can help direct the plot when things flag, and allows them to avid options that won't work out in actual play. (Ask any rogue or enchanter in an undead-heavy game how much they would've appreciated a heads up beforehand.) Not to mention, throwing four or five total strangers into a sandbox can result in a lot of boring lost time as everybody wonders where to go next.

At the very least, discuss a theme before everything starts. (Devoting your first session to character generation is good. It avoids having players step on each other's toes, and helps ensure that characters mesh both their stories and their roles. Including a little discussion about what sort of stuff the players want to see never hurt anybody, either.) If they're secretly trying to make sure that their focus won't go to waste in this game, make a mental note of it. If they're trying to have a decent narrative bond for the group, work with them on that. And if they want a more focused story than "generic fantasy heroes go around doing stuff", work on your plots even if that distracts from total freeform.

Vangor
2011-03-06, 01:50 AM
I try to give my players a small benefit of information on types of terrain and enemies they may encounter en masse, should I feel this is useful during character creation. For instance, a player wanted to be a reaping mauler, but my campaign was fairly construct and giant centric. Almost half of the encounters were invulnerable to his capstone, and most encounters were filled with huge enemies with high strength. We used the build later in a different campaign where he could better grapple opponents.

Now, I do try to create broad, diverse campaigns and provide everyone with benefits and drawbacks, but the story does not always allow this and not always in equal amounts. Asking about some basics for campaign is common anymore for us, though nothing to where the players design characters explicitly for the campaign.

Think of this this way: your players do need to stay within the confines of the campaign (to an extent), but you do not need to stay within the confines of the characters. If your campaign uses ships frequently, can you see a party with no spells or abilities related to the weather, water, or breathing and with no experience on boats or using rope or such choosing to undertake this adventure? Plenty would avoid, but the players cannot avoid the campaign. Similar, if you set a story involving helping a temple of helm, a blackguard is a poor fit, and not all DMs can manage this well and few would manage to create as good an experience for the blackguard as every other character I would bet.

Dimers
2011-03-06, 02:28 AM
A couple minutes later, they finally explained what they were asking. They wanted to know what the game play was going to be like ('the campaign'). They had the idea that if the game was going to be nautical, then they would all make underwater characters. If they would be in grasslands they would have mounted characters. And so forth. They somehow had the idea that the whole game would take place in like a single square mile of the world.

That same question could also mean they want to know how much combat to expect (pacifist characters okay?), how much RP (no need to make three pages of backstory if you're focusing on something impersonal), whether exploratory and sensory advantages will be important, whether there'll be rails to follow, whether morality is grey or B&W or unimportant ... what the game play will be like, not only where it'll happen. It sounds like you want to leave a lot of this up to the players. That's great if they know now, ahead of time, that they'll have that responsibility and opportunity.

That said, if you've got plans to noticeably include or exclude some particular environment, yeah, that's important for them to know too. For example, it's hard to take a mount into twisty little cave passages, so if you tend to disfavor underground settings then a player might want to try out a mounted build that they can't use well in other games. As others have said, enemy type also greatly affect what character abilities will come into play.


So how common is this? Are there DM's out there who run such limited games? ''You guys are in the horselands and will never go to another land''. It was just odd to me.

It's pretty common, although not often that explicit. It's just, ya know, Jane The DM likes using undead hordes and has the hots for Legolas, so her players make can try more neat character ideas with elves and undead hunters.