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CleanDeceit
2016-08-18, 10:36 AM
In every D&D game something the players care about is at risk. Innocent people need help, the world could be destroyed or the players themselves are in danger. The PCs are faced with a situation that needs correcting or they are doomed to lose something they care about. Only in the case that the PCs are evil, can the known world (the portion of the campaign environment the players are a part of) be actually secure and stable, thus the players are motivated to disrupt it.

True or False?

Note: I am not trying to prove right or wrong, I am hoping to logically debate the nature of good campaign design. I appropriate your perspectives.

Vitruviansquid
2016-08-18, 11:08 AM
False, I would say.

The fundamental if a successful campaign is purely social. If the people at the table like each other and want to spend this time together, poor writing and planning will be overlooked. If the people at the table don't get along, even a flawlessly written and planned campaign will be broken.

Which is kind of a cop-out answer, I know, so assuming it's a group that reasonably wants to play together, I would say still false. There are many possible stories to tell in a campaign, and even perfectly liked, playable games out there that are meant to tell different stories that can even be impossible to run with those requirements.

Christopher K.
2016-08-18, 11:18 AM
I'd like to chip in that I think tonal consistency is important to a successful campaign. As a DM, you don't want to handle a joke character in a setting like Dark Sun, and you usually don't want a serious character in a game like Toon.

It's something you should consider if you can while assembling a gaming group.

Yora
2016-08-18, 11:55 AM
The first question really is about proactive and reactive characters (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.de/2010/01/sandboxes-and-roguish-work-ethic.html). You don't need evil characters to be proactive. The only difference is the evil character inherently come with goals while a lot of good characters merely have a desire to maintain the status quo. Keeping things as they are because the looming alternative would be much much worse is the lowest common denominator of motivations.
"Let's get filthy rich through grave robbing" is not much of a motivation, but at least it's a goal to accomplish something.

I think an important part of a good campaign is to be flexible. If you plan a whole campaign it should not depend on too many expectations about what kind of people the players will be playing. Of all the things that players don't like in a game the biggest is being told what their characters feel and think. Do not expect them to do the good thing because it's the obvious good thing to do. When they encounter a situation they will make up their own mind who are the goodies and the baddies and how the whole thing should end when they are done. Which might not be what the GM assumed they would want to do. A well planned campaign is one that can continue to progress whatever the players decide to do. Don't make NPCs you like so much that you don't want to see them die very early in the campaign. Don't lead the players to towns you're not willing to see turned into a smoking pile of rubble. Everything is expandable when the players decide what the adventures of their characters are.

kyoryu
2016-08-18, 01:31 PM
In every D&D game something the players care about is at risk. Innocent people need help, the world could be destroyed or the players themselves are in danger. The PCs are faced with a situation that needs correcting or they are doomed to lose something they care about. Only in the case that the PCs are evil, can the known world (the portion of the campaign environment the players are a part of) be actually secure and stable, thus the players are motivated to disrupt it.

True or False?


The core premise here seems to be "you can only have a stable society if you have evil characters."

False.

The error is in conflating "stable" with "good." You can have a stable, but absolutely horrible society that the PCs are motivated to change.

Christopher K.
2016-08-18, 01:54 PM
The core premise here seems to be "you can only have a stable society if you have evil characters."

False.

The error is in conflating "stable" with "good." You can have a stable, but absolutely horrible society that the PCs are motivated to change.

I think the premise is more that you as a GM can't have the world "at peace" unless your players' goal as an evil party is to disrupt that peace.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-18, 02:22 PM
In every D&D game something the players care about is at risk. Innocent people need help, the world could be destroyed or the players themselves are in danger. The PCs are faced with a situation that needs correcting or they are doomed to lose something they care about.
Close, but not quite. You don't have to be Evil to be proactive, as others have said. You'll be mostly right, if you expand "things players care about and are at risk" to include things like the characters' personal goals.

For example, a politically oriented game might have a world that's mostly stable and lacks active threats, but that a Good player character might want to improve upon some element - standard of living, scientific progress, anything positive. (This is obviously far more general and impersonal than it would ever actually be, but it's hard to get more specific without knowing an individual campaign world and the player characters.) The risk comes from them - they're starting with a blank slate, but they've got to navigate the situations they find themselves in to avoid being trapped in situations that take them further away from their goals rather than closer to them, and tension can be born from that. As a bonus, their enemies aren't necessarily Evil - they're just people with conflicting goals, which makes them much more interesting and personal antagonists while leaving it up to player ingenuity to try and neutralize them as antagonists or even gain them as allies. But since a wrong move could give a force opposed to your goals a leg up on you... The risk is in player hands.

I suppose the answer on your thing would be "true" if you really generalized the heck out of it, because of course there's nothing to do in the campaign if every part of the world is perfect and the characters' goals can all be achieved without taking risks. But that should go without saying, I would hope. You don't need active risk to engender stories, just imperfections, which can vary from observer to observer.

Demidos
2016-08-18, 02:22 PM
Note: I am not trying to prove right or wrong, I am hoping to logically debate the nature of good campaign design. I appropriate your perspectives.

First off, I have to say, I really cant tell if you meant appreciate or whether you meant appropriate, and I find that hilarious.

-----------------------------

Second off, I would agree with the other posters -- that premise would depend on three factors, each which lie along a spectrum
1) How good/evil aligned is your setting?
1) How good/evil aligned is your party?
1) How far is your party willing to go to remake the world as they want it?

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-18, 02:25 PM
First off, I have to say, I really cant tell if you meant appreciate or whether you meant appropriate, and I find that hilarious.

I noticed this, but until you pointed it out I completely forgot that "appropriate" can also mean to take something from someone, and just assumed it was a typo. That is hilarious.

Thrudd
2016-08-18, 02:34 PM
In every D&D game something the players care about is at risk. Innocent people need help, the world could be destroyed or the players themselves are in danger. The PCs are faced with a situation that needs correcting or they are doomed to lose something they care about. Only in the case that the PCs are evil, can the known world (the portion of the campaign environment the players are a part of) be actually secure and stable, thus the players are motivated to disrupt it.

True or False?

Note: I am not trying to prove right or wrong, I am hoping to logically debate the nature of good campaign design. I appropriate your perspectives.

False. The PCs need a motivation to adventure, true. That motivation does not need to be correcting something or protecting something, nor does it need to be disrupting the system. True, there need to be areas of conflict or danger for adventures to take place. The PC's need to want something, that something needs to require adventuring, and the game needs to give them ways to pursue adventures that get them what they want.

kyoryu
2016-08-18, 02:47 PM
I think the premise is more that you as a GM can't have the world "at peace" unless your players' goal as an evil party is to disrupt that peace.

And I would argue that, as an example, the world of the Hunger Games is "at peace" at the beginning of the series. An oppressive peace, sure. But peace.

I mean, there's a few things going on, really. Two basic plots are "change the world" and "prevent the world from being changed". Whether a "good" or "evil" party will engage in either of these depends on what the current status quo of the world is.

Secondly, there's whether a party is proactive or reactive. A lot of times people presume reactive, because most published adventures require reactive parties, as it's a lot easier to script for that and to anticipate/force likely reactions. And most people playing RPGs want to be heroes. This makes the default template "reactive Good party trying to prevent the world from being destroyed."

And then all those get conflated, when they're really fairly orthogonal to each other.

As an example: Let's assume there's a setting where the world is ruled by dragons. Humans are subservient to them, and any sign of rebellion is crushed mercilessly. As a result, there's basically no rebellion.

Is the world stable? (Note that I'm using the word the OP used) I'd say it is. Is it possible for a campaign to center around a good-aligned party in this world? Yup!

In this case the world is stable but intolerable, and so the goal of a good-aligned party would be to be disruptive to the stable order.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-18, 03:14 PM
And there's no sense disregarding parties with Neutral aims and roughly Neutral means (which, I note, doesn't necessarily make you Neutral). You could be a wizard living in a pretty nice world, but the world's niceness isn't giving you the arcane secrets you so seek! You won't crush people to get what you want, especially if you plan to put those secrets towards Good use later, but you'll certainly act for your own interests without any prodding.

CharonsHelper
2016-08-18, 03:25 PM
The core premise here seems to be "you can only have a stable society if you have evil characters."

False.

The error is in conflating "stable" with "good." You can have a stable, but absolutely horrible society that the PCs are motivated to change.

That was actually the premise of the one evil campaign I ever actually ran. Things were bad, and the PCs were more than willing to fight fire with fire so that the 'right' people would be able to be in a position to make the 'hard decisions'.

kyoryu
2016-08-18, 03:28 PM
And there's no sense disregarding parties with Neutral aims and roughly Neutral means (which, I note, doesn't necessarily make you Neutral). You could be a wizard living in a pretty nice world, but the world's niceness isn't giving you the arcane secrets you so seek! You won't crush people to get what you want, especially if you plan to put those secrets towards Good use later, but you'll certainly act for your own interests without any prodding.

Sure. Even good characters can be proactive in a "good" world, provided that the issue they're trying to solve isn't directly related to the overall "goodness" of the world.

If you're in a good/stable world, and want a "save the world" plot, you'll have to threaten the world. So that just means that you don't have "save the world" plots. You just need some motivating factor for the party that *isn't* the overall status quo of the world.

CharonsHelper
2016-08-18, 03:42 PM
If you're in a good/stable world, and want a "save the world" plot, you'll have to threaten the world. So that just means that you don't have "save the world" plots. You just need some motivating factor for the party that *isn't* the overall status quo of the world.

Basically - you just need magical terrorists.

Though frankly - I think that the "save the world" plot is overdone.

Knaight
2016-08-18, 04:16 PM
False. You generally need some sort of conflict, but the world as a whole can easily be both secure and stable without issue. An outright utopia is likely a problem - D&D conflict tends to be violent, and the sort of conflict that leaves a utopia a utopia really isn't, but short of that? There are options.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-18, 04:32 PM
Basically - you just need magical terrorists.

Though frankly - I think that the "save the world" plot is overdone.
This notion is entirely incomprehensible to me, probably because I don't really consider "save the world" a plot as much as an end set piece. Now, there are some common elements of world-saving pieces that are done to death, but the fact that there is a world in need of saving in them almost can't be one of them, because the world potentially ending at some point (in a literal or metaphysical sense) is pretty close to a natural extension of being involved in any story of a scale where that's possible, and the fact that the world is ending by itself does little to hold individual works in common.

I mean, "saving worlds" is the main goal in Mass Effect as much as Kingdom Hearts, but I don't know anybody who would argue that they hold much similarity beyond that at all; they're almost as distinct as you can get. Even on a more traditional tabletop fantasy level, proving to the gods that the mortal races are worth not scrapping and starting over with is a very different world-saving adventure than stopping a magical terrorist organization from creating and using a ritual that will bind everyone's souls to the lower planes all at once, even though both revolve around powers beyond what the players can simply defeat all at once potentially ending everything if the players don't act.

I'm not saying other motivations shouldn't get more spotlight, but saving the world, as far as it can be considered a plot, is pretty hard to overdo.

Alcibiades
2016-08-18, 05:16 PM
Kingmaker and Hexcrawl are two types of campaign that don't answer to the premise in OP, for instance.

Slipperychicken
2016-08-18, 06:16 PM
Kingmaker and Hexcrawl are two types of campaign that don't answer to the premise in OP, for instance.

I came here to mention this.

Knaight
2016-08-18, 06:30 PM
Even on a more traditional tabletop fantasy level, proving to the gods that the mortal races are worth not scrapping and starting over with is a very different world-saving adventure than stopping a magical terrorist organization from creating and using a ritual that will bind everyone's souls to the lower planes all at once, even though both revolve around powers beyond what the players can simply defeat all at once potentially ending everything if the players don't act.

There's a lot of similarities between these, and speaking personally all of them look like the same tired trope I have no interest in.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-18, 10:12 PM
There's a lot of similarities between these, and speaking personally all of them look like the same tired trope I have no interest in.
... I don't see more than one similarity between them, and that's that the world (or at least humanity) will cease to be if the players fail at one of the myriad ways they could go about performing either task. Care to fill me in on the rest?

Knaight
2016-08-19, 01:44 AM
... I don't see more than one similarity between them, and that's that the world (or at least humanity) will cease to be if the players fail at one of the myriad ways they could go about performing either task. Care to fill me in on the rest?

The PCs are generally positioned as a last hope, so all of the things that come along with that are included in all of them. The scale of the conflict gets in the way of exploring more local and more human concerns in both cases, other than the concerns of the PCs relating to their position as the last hope of the world. Those threatening the world are established as extremely clear antagonists in all cases, and conflicts involving a bit more nuance tend to get cut. So on and so forth.

kyoryu
2016-08-19, 10:23 AM
The PCs are generally positioned as a last hope, so all of the things that come along with that are included in all of them. The scale of the conflict gets in the way of exploring more local and more human concerns in both cases, other than the concerns of the PCs relating to their position as the last hope of the world. Those threatening the world are established as extremely clear antagonists in all cases, and conflicts involving a bit more nuance tend to get cut. So on and so forth.

Who the PCs are, and their ties to the world, is almost irrelevant.

There's a reason that adventure paths (which must be generic, and enforce a sense of linearity) often use this structure.

Sebastrd
2016-09-02, 03:34 AM
In every D&D game something the players care about is at risk.

True


Innocent people need help, the world could be destroyed or the players themselves are in danger. The PCs are faced with a situation that needs correcting or they are doomed to lose something they care about. Only in the case that the PCs are evil, can the known world (the portion of the campaign environment the players are a part of) be actually secure and stable, thus the players are motivated to disrupt it.

I think you're using too narrow a definition of "something the players care about" in your examples.

I'm currently running a campaign in which the PC's baby sister and mother are heavily involved, the world is in danger of being destroyed, and the characters have extensive backgrounds. I'm also playing in a campaign right now in which two of the PCs, one of which is a paladin, are clearly played as murder-hobos who are only interested in getting their next XP/loot fix. Both are proving to be successful campaigns, but the "something the players care about" is decidedly different in both games.

Sneak Dog
2016-09-02, 04:31 AM
No risk means there's no cost for failure. No tension. The risk doesn't have to be things going wrong though, it could just be things not getting better.

I mean, if you want to win the centurial (err, a word for 'happens every hundred years'?) mage contest, the risk is that you lose. Even if you lose, the world won't end, your character won't die, all his hopes and dreams won't necessarily be crushed. He just failed to win the mage contest. Aaand maybe all his hopes and dreams got crushed.

It makes for a bit more of a light-hearted optimistic story in a bit more of a utopian setting, but that's just a style choice.

Frozen_Feet
2016-09-02, 05:22 AM
Fundamentals of a succesful campaign:

1) you need an active GM showing up at the table to set up the game.
Corollary of 1): you need a location to serve as "the table".
2) you need a pool of interested players. These don't need to be the same players from session to session. Strictly speaking, only the campaign material itself needs to be passed down from session to session.
Corollary to 2): the more reliant the campaign is on a single set of players or characters, the more vulnerable to ending it becomes when one of those players or characters leaves the game.
Corollary to corollary: campaigns which involve high risks or high stakes for vital players or characters are more prone to self-destructing.

Hence, I posit the answer to the original question is False from an in-setting perspective, and indeed a campaign is more likely to be succesful if it doesn't contain volatile elements in its setting.

Your typical tabletop players and GMs have been brainwashed to expect high risks and high stakes by 1) traditional (genre) fiction (books, movies, comics etc.) or 2) computer games.

However, these things are different in important ways from tabletop games:

1) Traditional fiction is usually complete. The creation process is done and over with. Example: The book you're reading won't spontaneously fail to provide an ending because the author fails to appear when you next pick it up. In tabletop games, the creation process is incomplete and ongoing and influenced by random chance (both in and out of game). The more volatile you make this process, the more likely it is to blow up and end.
Addendum: it is possible to mimic conventional structures in a tabletop game.
Cave-at: the more you try to mimic conventional structutes, the more your campaign will require railroading, pre-planning, player buy-in and player commitment.

2) Computer games, as seen since "saving the game" became a thing, offer unlimited trial and error. Hence, high-stakes and high-risk for characters fails to make the game volatile to players. In tabletop games, you typically play for keeps - campaigns aren't made with unlimited trial and error in mind.

---

A question emerges: is it possible to create a situation where the basic claim - "succesful campaign contains elements the players care about and are at risk of losing" - is true out-of-setting.

Yes, and trivially so: a campaign is succesful if it contains elements which 1) the players find interesting and 2) risk losing if they don't play the game.

What is "interesting" depends on the target audience, but the campaign has to create a feeling: "you will miss out if you don't participate".

Which means the campaign creator needs to advertize. Make pretty pictures to catch the eye. Hand out game materials rewards. Make the play situation comfortable by providing snacks. If you already have a group or reputation going, you might be able to pull players in just because you're a funny and charismatic person, and the campaign material itself might be secondary or even immaterial to your success - but if you want to transfer that quality to the campaign itself, then you have to get other people to follow your lead.

Jader7777
2016-09-02, 06:18 AM
I've found that open ended campaigns should really be a soft open world that is more focused on the player characters and what their needs are. I like to have sessions that are based around one characters past/struggles/enemies etc and when they overcome it I like to mechanically back it up with a new additional power/weapon that's personally tailored to their play style. This sort of round-robin storytelling I think is the most natural and feasible means of progression.

A lot of people think that the campaign setting or story is the crux of the success but those elements have the same impact on your game as the table cloth you play on, it's just a base to do the actual interesting stuff on.

GungHo
2016-09-02, 08:14 AM
You can have a crap sack world where the PCs are trying to do the best for themselves in a bad situation by scrabbling their way to the top by doing things like brigandry, war profiteering, or Klingon promotions. The world may still be crap when they leave it, but at least they'll have the most toys on the way out.

Jay R
2016-09-02, 08:16 AM
The PCs need to be motivated to do something, but that motivation can come from any of a number of sources.

"Save the world" and "Disrupt the world" work fine, but so do, "I want to explore," or "Let's go find a fight," or "Our patron wants the Orb of MacGuffin."

kyoryu
2016-09-02, 10:12 AM
I mean, if you want to win the centurial (err, a word for 'happens every hundred years'?) mage contest, the risk is that you lose. Even if you lose, the world won't end, your character won't die, all his hopes and dreams won't necessarily be crushed. He just failed to win the mage contest. Aaand maybe all his hopes and dreams got crushed.

It makes for a bit more of a light-hearted optimistic story in a bit more of a utopian setting, but that's just a style choice.

Centennial?

But the other thing about stakes beyond "THE WORLD ENDS" is that you can *believe* in the risk. You pretty much know that the GM isn't going to let the world end, but he might well let a town get wiped off of the map, and he certainly will let a Bad Person become mayor of the town.

RazorChain
2016-09-02, 10:52 AM
Many PC's dont need any more motivation than XP and loot for barging into monsters home and murdering them. Saving the world is just an added bonus that makes them feel better while doing it.

Arbane
2016-09-02, 06:41 PM
But the other thing about stakes beyond "THE WORLD ENDS" is that you can *believe* in the risk. You pretty much know that the GM isn't going to let the world end, but he might well let a town get wiped off of the map, and he certainly will let a Bad Person become mayor of the town.

This statement confuses me. Why would the GM not let the world end? They can always make another one.

kyoryu
2016-09-04, 07:11 PM
This statement confuses me. Why would the GM not let the world end? They can always make another one.

In many cases, it ends the campaign, which people might not want to do. There's a lot of assumptions that the players "win" in the end in many games.

Feel free to substitute PC death. Even in games where it happens, it doesn't happen every session. On the other hand, if you have stakes in play that aren't as permanent, it's possible for any encounter/scene they're in to be a toss-up.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-09-04, 10:44 PM
Who the PCs are, and their ties to the world, is almost irrelevant.

There's a reason that adventure paths (which must be generic, and enforce a sense of linearity) often use this structure.


The PCs are generally positioned as a last hope, so all of the things that come along with that are included in all of them. The scale of the conflict gets in the way of exploring more local and more human concerns in both cases, other than the concerns of the PCs relating to their position as the last hope of the world. Those threatening the world are established as extremely clear antagonists in all cases, and conflicts involving a bit more nuance tend to get cut. So on and so forth.

I get the sense that you guys don't think something resembling the Order of the Stick would work in an actual tabletop game, since that's a "save the world" plot that pretty well misses all your bullet points. My experiences lead me to disagree, if that is the gist of what you're saying, but I'm also not sure that's the kind of disagreement that can even be meaningfully debated upon, so I think we may have to agree to disagree here.

Lacuna Caster
2016-09-05, 03:10 AM
I get the sense that you guys don't think something resembling the Order of the Stick would work in an actual tabletop game, since that's a "save the world" plot that pretty well misses all your bullet points. My experiences lead me to disagree, if that is the gist of what you're saying, but I'm also not sure that's the kind of disagreement that can even be meaningfully debated upon, so I think we may have to agree to disagree here.
For better or worse- and this might be intentional artifice/commentary by the author, though I'm not sure that helps- the OOTS plotline is rife with examples. e.g, idiot PC decisions papered over by peer pressure, blatant railroading and GM softballs, plus plot-hook insertions that have to be pretty hamfisted to divert from the looming omnicidal threat. (I dimly recall the author saying that subjecting real players to this would be terrible, but that it's totally fine as a storytelling device. I wonder about that.)


Fundamentals of a succesful campaign:

1) you need an active GM showing up at the table to set up the game.
Corollary of 1): you need a location to serve as "the table".
2) you need a pool of interested players. These don't need to be the same players from session to session. Strictly speaking, only the campaign material itself needs to be passed down from session to session.
Corollary to 2): the more reliant the campaign is on a single set of players or characters, the more vulnerable to ending it becomes when one of those players or characters leaves the game.
Corollary to corollary: campaigns which involve high risks or high stakes for vital players or characters are more prone to self-destructing.
I only see this logic being borne out if the campaign is defined in terms of prefixed plot-points reliant on PC success, such that X and Y must happen in order to reach Z. It's quite possible to have a campaign with high personal stakes tailored to the PCs' agency, as long as you discard the plot.

I'd also question whether there's anything intrinsically wrong with a campaign 'blowing up' after X sessions, because all the PCs are either dead or got what they wanted. Wouldn't that just mean the story ended?

Frozen_Feet
2016-09-05, 05:33 AM
"Plot" is just one mechanism through which a campaign becomes reliant on a specific set of characters. Nowhere did I say a campaign has to have a plot - and if you conclude it's better off without one, you're not wrong.

As for whether a campaign "blowing up" is a good or bad thing, I wrote my post from the perspective where the "blowing up" happens because the GM added in elements antagonistic to what they want of the game - and the campaign ends because these conflicting elements kill interest in it. Being fine with the campaign ending in X sessions isn't synonymous with calling it a success if it ends after, say, 1 session because the GM or players grew bored with it.

Creating a campaign around the presumption of player success yet using a game system with high risk of player failure is just one of the more obvious cases of antagonistic design elements. Again, contrast with traditional fiction and videogames, which either lack these elements or offer a way around them.

Pugwampy
2016-09-05, 06:09 AM
I too would like to know this secret . In all my 8 years of gaming , I have never taken a campaign beyond 1 year / 18 sessions / level 12 before something happens to break it . I am dedicated and put my heart and soul into the art of DM,ing .

The concept of people doing one campaign for 3 years is or reaching lvl 20 totally alien to me.

I am very easy going and do the most work and yet my stamina outstrips players . I am so tired of begging . Being DM is truly a thankless and lonesome labour of love . I dont care for apologies or respect or even part of the social circle . Just want a session twice a month . I have needs too , dont people who get entertained understand that ?

Lacuna Caster
2016-09-05, 03:24 PM
"Plot" is just one mechanism through which a campaign becomes reliant on a specific set of characters. Nowhere did I say a campaign has to have a plot - and if you conclude it's better off without one, you're not wrong.

As for whether a campaign "blowing up" is a good or bad thing, I wrote my post from the perspective where the "blowing up" happens because the GM added in elements antagonistic to what they want of the game - and the campaign ends because these conflicting elements kill interest in it. Being fine with the campaign ending in X sessions isn't synonymous with calling it a success if it ends after, say, 1 session because the GM or players grew bored with it.

Creating a campaign around the presumption of player success yet using a game system with high risk of player failure is just one of the more obvious cases of antagonistic design elements. Again, contrast with traditional fiction and videogames, which either lack these elements or offer a way around them.
Can't argue with any of that.

Would it hurt to elaborate a little on the different mechanics by which, ah, casting-dependency can emerge? (I'm mildly familiar with a couple of games that explicitly avoid this- by, e.g, having a rotating roster of characters hired/anointed by a central institution, and/or swapped between players- so for me that's the first thing which springs to mind.)


I too would like to know this secret. In all my 8 years of gaming, I have never taken a campaign beyond 1 year / 18 sessions / level 12 before something happens to break it. I am dedicated and put my heart and soul into the art of DMing.
*shrugs* It's hard to say what might be going on- aside from a gentle reminder that any hobby-clique might break up after a year or so due to new jobs, homes, significant others, changing tastes etc., and that a fruitful 5-, 10- or 15-session run is nothing to be ashamed of, I'm not sure one can give much specific advice.

What kind of systems have you run? Have you run or played many con demos? Have you recruited (or tried to) within the same social circles, or several, or is there a scarcity of willing marks? Always as GM? City, country, small town, suburbs? Can you remember any details about what 'broke'?

Darth Ultron
2016-09-05, 03:57 PM
True or False?



False. In any campaign the players need to care about the world as if it was real. In fact, they need to care much more then they do about ''real'' things.

And even more importantly the players need to care about their characters.

And maybe most important of all is the players need to care about accomplishing something noteworthy.

Pugwampy
2016-09-05, 04:49 PM
What kind of systems have you run?

3.5/pathfinder hybrid . Its usually sandbox campaign , half module adventures and half my own chips . Its mainly monster bashing and I dont only do dungeon crawls .


Have you run or played many con demos?
There is no such thing on my continent although i have been told some of my set piece encounters are con worthy . I shared a few pics here of my stuff but no real feedback . Dont you guys like decorated battlefields ?


Have you recruited (or tried to) within the same social circles, or several, or is there a scarcity of willing marks?

My conservative / practical culture makes any kind of DND chatting a mountain and then combine that with no fantasy gaming shops in my country . The income disparity here makes everyone suspect its gonna cost them money . 90 percent of my stuff is imported .

I was once told "no I dont want to join your sex club ." The player pool is very low due to lack of knowledge . Usually someone heard of Dnd and they want to try it and thats very rare . And lets not forget chatting about it and actually getting them to sit down and try it out is two different radical concepts. I kinda understand a stranger asking you to spend your only off day playing some funny boardgame with him does not sell too well . 3rd world countries are very unkind to DND



Can you remember any details about what 'broke'?

Either the players argue amongst themselves or they want to explore being evil and that degrades the whole game or someone bored or unhappy causes crap to upset players . I am sure the veteran competitor players and their pocket gods makes the newbies feel inadequate . I am pretty easy going on balance issues and whatever they want . I dont punish a person who spends hours digging up funny things from books . If its in the book go for it is my rule .

My most recent disaster was a combination of evil exploring and unhappy player trying to mutilate another player . He used the excuse because its evil but he is an unhappy player . If i hate one thing of this awesome game , its players .

I got nice 14 sessions I suppose I cherish memories and wait once more . Try try again next year. This was going to be "The campaign"

Frozen_Feet
2016-09-05, 07:19 PM
Would it hurt to elaborate a little on the different mechanics by which, ah, casting-dependency can emerge?

There are many. The most common and diffcult ones to deal with aren't particular to RPGs, they're basic group dynamic things which are encountered in other hobbies just as well.

For example, Pareto's principle is applicable to gaming groups: 80% of work is done by 20% of people in it. The following are special cases of this:

One GM syndrome:
There's this one enthusiastic person who owns all the gaming stuff, organizes the games, creates the campaign and in general serves as the engine for the whole playgroup. If this one person gets burned out, or moves to another town, not only does the campaign end, all the associated players might move out of the hobby due to lack of gaming opportunities.

Potential solution: start a club, actively groom a successor and share the campaign material.

Pareto's player:

There's one player who has great imagination, is friend to everyone else, brings all the nachos etc.. If this player gets burned out, moves to another town etc., it's likely one or two other players will follow suit, and a campaign will lose its vital spark.

Potential solution: ???

Guy who owns the house:
Remember that corollary about the table? Well it's this person's table and the game having a place to be played in is reliant on their goodwill. If this player quits, moves, is offended etc. and no-one's thought of an alternative, the campaign might die simply because of organizing difficulties.

Potential solution: play in a location which is open to every player.

The above emerge naturally and don't really care much about what kind of game or setting you're using. For contrast, the below have to do with poor play decisions or game design failures:

Overplotting:
You came up with a plan or plot requiring specific sequence of events. Now every time someone wants to do something else, you have to get them to wait, or wait yourself. Every new player or character is a potential spanner in the works, as is every player or character leaving.

GMs falling to this and then resorting to railroading (etc.) is a common story, but it can happen with players just as well. The game doesn't even need to have a predetermined story - this can happen in just about any game when players make unrealistic plans and are unwilling to let go of them.

Solutions: don't make convoluted multistep plans. Be willing to adapt or abandon plans when new players come & go. Don't make your interest in a game too reliant on a single outcome, reveal, event etc..

Too specific motives:
Often occurs alongside the above, but can happen on its own. Simply: the campaign was pitched for a specific group and no-one else in the campaign would have a good reason to pursue the same goals if the initial group dies. This can cause verisimilitude problems even when players all stay the same, but their characters die and they can't come up with reasons to carry on.

Solutions: favor general motives over specific ones. Create a campaign setting with lots of different things to do for different sorts of characters.

Protagonism:
The campaign was made to revolve around the Hero's journey of a specific person or group, and if said person dies or the group breaks, the campaign starts breaking down at the seams. Often goes hand in hand with too specific motives, but reaches to meta level as well. It's often said that while expectations of protagonism have been part of tabletop games from the start, the sort which introduces a lot of stupid started with Dragonlance. It isn't helped by heaps of fantasy novels following the pattern and CRPGs trying to mimic it.

Solutions: make the campaign about the setting or an on-going event, not specific people. Make it clear to players that heroism is not guaranteed, it has to be earned; and the flipside on how "anything could happen" is that all the various bad things which could stop a hero short can also happen.

Alternatives: protagonist characters are handed down from player to player; this makes the campaign resilient to changes in player base, even if it still needs specific characters.

More alternatives: use or make a game system which prevents protagonist characters from being permanently taken out, similarly to CRPGs.

Pareto's character:
There's a specific character or character type which is or grows to be unexpectedly important to success within the game (a healer cleric, a Batman wizard etc.). This may even be enforced by a game system. Worse, it may go unnoticed by players and GMs alike until the character is gone. (See: poor documenting in d20). This may lead to a negative spiral where players lose a lot and subsequently lose interest.

Solution: keep track of how effective different characters and character types are. Warn players or offer them alternative ways to acquire in-game resources when an effective character dies and the replacement cannot realistically fullfill the same role.

kyoryu
2016-09-05, 10:09 PM
Protagonism:
The campaign was made to revolve around the Hero's journey of a specific person or group, and if said person dies or the group breaks, the campaign starts breaking down at the seams. Often goes hand in hand with too specific motives, but reaches to meta level as well. It's often said that while expectations of protagonism have been part of tabletop games from the start, the sort which introduces a lot of stupid started with Dragonlance. It isn't helped by heaps of fantasy novels following the pattern and CRPGs trying to mimic it.

Solutions: make the campaign about the setting or an on-going event, not specific people. Make it clear to players that heroism is not guaranteed, it has to be earned; and the flipside on how "anything could happen" is that all the various bad things which could stop a hero short can also happen.

Another good solution is to use mini-campaigns or more episodic ones, even in the same world. That provides break points to reassess what you need to do given the characters you currently have.

Endarire
2016-09-06, 02:43 AM
Wise and caring people. The rest comes more easily with these.

Jay R
2016-09-06, 08:16 AM
Many modern campaigns are based on the idea that the PCS are or will be among the most powerful, and will need to save the world. A campaign on that basis ends when the world is saved, or when the PCs outgrow all their competition.

A campaign in which the PCs are never expected to be the most powerful, and are exploring a dangerous world, going into more and more perilous places, has no obvious end.

Cluedrew
2016-09-06, 08:59 PM
Wise and caring people. The rest comes more easily with these.That sounds about right.

Lacuna Caster
2016-09-07, 07:32 AM
My conservative / practical culture makes any kind of DND chatting a mountain and then combine that with no fantasy gaming shops in my country...

I was once told "no I dont want to join your sex club ." The player pool is very low due to lack of knowledge . Usually someone heard of Dnd and they want to try it and thats very rare . And lets not forget chatting about it and actually getting them to sit down and try it out is two different radical concepts. I kinda understand a stranger asking you to spend your only off day playing some funny boardgame with him does not sell too well . 3rd world countries are very unkind to DND...

...Either the players argue amongst themselves or they want to explore being evil and that degrades the whole game or someone bored or unhappy causes crap to upset players.

Yeesh. I dunno man. You just seem to be working under difficult circumstances...

(A) Have you tried experimenting with some smaller, rules-lite, modern-day-comedy systems designed for a couple of sessions, like Fiasco or Inspectres? Those don't require hefty rule-books and might be an easier 'sell', financially and/or culturally. Or, depending on what country you're from, maybe something tuned to an asian/african/mesoamerican setting could pique interest.

(B) Since you mentioned 'begging', maybe talk to the players about what they want out of the game, what they are or aren't comfortable with, how many sessions you intend to run, etc.? That gives them a better idea of what they need to commit to- and if you have to give up on certain people, so be it.

(C) If you can't find a local group, there's always the internet: Have you looked at Roll20 (https://app.roll20.net/lfg/search/) or similar sites? (There's a tonne of D&D/Pathfinder there, plus occasional sightings of Burning Wheel, Dungeon World, WHFRP, and so on.)

*shrugs* Hope that helps.