- Planning and reading ahead is everything. This goes for anything in life, really - if you have no idea what the campaign's about, your experience will suffer for it. This is doubly true when the campaign lasts for a year or more of play; you need to know where you're going and understand the game. Read the campaign, write notes, write notes in the campaign's margins, highlight it, do whatever you need to in order to make sure you know what you're doing. The players depend on you to make the game memorable and fun, you're the guiding person in the party. They have confidence that you know what you're doing. Don't make them feel that their confidence is misplaced.
- Those plans will go awry regardless. You are going to run into Murphy's Law eventually, like it or lump it. Even if you plan for them to go right to Kenya after Cairo, they may decide Shanghai looks more appealing. Even if you plan for them to easily defeat the Tainted Oni Army, the dice may argue that their Lion Clan Raiding Troop dies in glorious battle. You have to accept that, and be flexible about it. In other words - plan for the failing of your plans.
- Fatigue will set in for everyone concerned. Make no mistake, running a campaign for longer than a few months can get exhausting. Players get touchy, the GM gets touchy, and this is how campaigns die. It's up to you to know when to call for breaks, chill, play some board games, and otherwise enjoy yourselves again. It's also up to you to know when it's time to let the campaign go. If it dies, it dies. Try again with another group, another time.
- Players and dice have one thing in common: neither are predictable. This is somewhat a continuation of the above point: your players will do things that may skew your plans, and so may the dice. If you want your players to go into Dungeon A and fight the Orc King, but they'd rather go to Castle B and fight the dragon or even stay in Town C and explore, then let them. You should plan for that and understand players are human and make strange choices sometimes. That's why they're PCs, not NPCs. And sometimes, yes, the Flying Polyp does smash a PC for 47 damage, turning them into chunky salsa all because the dice decided to have seven of its tentacles attack at once instead of two or three. If it happens, let it. Let the dice fall where they may.
- Always have a backup plan, just in case the players have their own. You need to practice some of the Tao of Nyarlathotep here - always stay one step ahead, and you can't be taken off guard. If they go investigate the Forsaken Castle of Khorne's First Army no matter how much you try to discourage them, that's fine, you can always ambush them with a Daemon army. If they decide to go snooping around in the abandoned manor convinced there's a Lich haunting it, go ahead and subvert their expectations by having it just be a gang of Kobolds playing pranks on the locals. even if it's the most bare-bones idea to throw in last minute, do it anywhere you need to in order to keep things flowing. The players will often tell you, by their PCs' actions, the sort of fun they're looking to have that session.
- If thinking on your toes is hard for you, don't worry - your players will help you! I can't tell you how often I've had the players' reactions alter the way things occurred in my run of MoN. They took things so out of order in Cairo, I had to restructure the chapter to accommodate. They did things so out of left field in regards to some of the tools I gave them, like the Dimensional Shambler, that they swung around to being awesome and hilarious. I didn't expect how one of my players played off being mind-swapped by a Yithian, and I didn't expect that same player to "Bye, Felicia" a god. I had to create a map of a place not discussed in the campaign over a fifteen minute break because I was caught off guard by a player decision. Some of the best situations in games I've run come from the players just being the players, and taking more charge than I thought they would. Let this happen - it's fun, and it breeds good story and game-play.
- Just because you prep a side quest doesn't mean you have to use it. It's an RPG, not cooking - the ingredients won't go stale or rot just because you don't use it right now. Keep it in mind for a future session. The party can always deal with the robbery attempt on the local Crane Clan Lord or the owlbear nest in the woods near that poor assailed village later. If they're fatigued or busy with a more pressing issue, like the solar eclipse happening in a few months' time causing the end of the world as we know it, then don't press them to go places they don't want to. Give them the option to follow the lead, and let them explore at their leisure, if they explore it at all. Yes, it sucks to waste the hard work and effort, but it sucks more to ruin a game because the players aren't having fun.
- When you fuck with your players, don't be surprised when they fuck with you right back! I absolutely love, as a GM, when my players play me. It's part of the fun of tabletop gaming in my opinion - that back and forth repartee between player and GM, each trying to one-up the other. If you give players enough freedom and have enough obvious fun with the game, it can be quite the entertaining little competition. You get to smack down their Space Marine troops, and they get to gloat in the face of your Slaaneshi Warlord when they defeat him. You get to wreck their shit with a cult, but then they turn around and surprise you by destroying the cult temple in the most badass way possible. It's one of the best parts of a tabletop RPG, and should be encouraged. You're all friends here after all, aren't you?
- Giving your players freedom reaps rewards. Really, this could be considered the summation of points 3 through 7. If you let the players take the reigns every so often, it can bring the game to the next level. Of course, try to corral them in when it gets too much to handle, and don't let one intractable player ruin the fun for anyone else by metagaming or being too much outside the mold. One maverick in the party is fine, but too many cooks can easily spoil the soup.
- It's okay to be nice for the sake of the plot. If everything hinges on your players getting past this Crab Clan army, then make them a little less tough. If the players are getting beat up by the goblins, maybe choose a lower-tier enemy for them to fight. Sometimes, it's okay to not let the dice fall out of their favor, just in case something is really slamming your players too hard and the plot of the campaign is in jeopardy of dying because of it. It's your game and your story, don't let it die because the players aren't having fun anymore due to constant tragedies befalling them. Unless, of course, that's the aim of your campaign...
- It's also okay to be mean, even cruel, for the sake of the plot. Having too easy a time? Here's a dragon you just disturbed. Time to show them how on the ropes their sanity really is? Hallucinations of ghouls everywhere! Need to hammer a point about how power corrupts home? Oh no, it looks like your proud Scorpion Clan noble has just started showing symptoms of the Taint, and you're losing control because of it! There is limitless possibility to how mean you can be as a GM, especially if the plot demands it or it would enhance the story. By no means do something cruel to the PCs if it will cause problems for your story later on down the line, or if it wouldn't be fun for everyone.
- Tension and action work well to upset complacency, but it's better to not let them get complacent to begin with. Do not let the PCs rest on their laurels, always give them something to do even if it's not horror-related. If things are bogging down on their trek to the Mountain of the Black Wind, throw in some Dark Young. If the dungeon is getting too predictable in its traps, throw in some monster they weren't expecting ("How is there a Roper in here? We're in the woods!") If the Nurglings are getting boring, throw some Empire-related armies at them. Do not let them get bored, always give them something to do, some lead to follow, somewhere to go. Then, if they succeed at it, reward them for going out of their way to do it. And yes, scares always help as does tension, a lesson any Keeper or horror film could tell you. Whatever game you play, whatever you do, don't ever let an encounter just be another encounter.
- Nobody really cares much if your NPC accent is a silly stereotype. Trust me, they really fucking don't. Unless you have that one player who complains and nitpicks, in which case the other players will probably tell them to shut up. Do not be afraid to try, say, an Australian accent just because you're concerned it doesn't sound right or is too stereotypically Steve Irwin. As long as you try, and as long as you explain to the players you may not be perfect at it, they'll understand and accept it. In the case of worrying about racism, don't - if your players really think your attempts to mimic a Kenyan accent when they're in Kenya is problematic, they're probably people you don't want to hang out with anyway. Just stay away from ethnically offensive stereotypes when doing an accent, because just because it's the 1920's in game does not make Minstrel show style African American impressions okay. Be sensitive to ethnicity, but not overly so.
- There's three types of cheating: lies, damned lies, and metagaming. Every GM will come across this at some point in time, but if it happens in a big campaign, it can ruin everything. If you have players that aren't playing fair, kick them. you don't want players like that anyway. If they don't realize what they're doing, educate them. And, if they're doing it as a way to play with the GM, then play with them right back in-game - in a really damn mean way, so they know you will not tolerate that and that you're not bound by the silly rules. And if they still don't learn? Then it's time to have a talk, and possibly kick them if they won't change. Never let one stubborn munchkin of a player ruin a story for the sake of them trying to be the special snowflake.
- Killing PCs is like being a hit man - it gets easier over time. I get it, I really do - you don't wanna ruin anyone's fun by killing PCs off or otherwise driving them out of the game. But especially in games with high character turnover, you need to eventually break out of the comfort zone and become comfortable with slaughtering characters when it comes down to it. Of course, don't do this if it won't help the plot any, or if there's no reason to. And remember: the more epic and memorable the death, the less the affected player will care that their character died. Most players just want to see their characters go down in flames; an awesome death can help avert disappointment at losing a favorite character. Don't pull too many punches just because a player will be hurt; if the dice call for death, and there's no way to avoid it, then death it is. Live by the dice, die by the dice.
Yeah, I know I sort of did this already for MoN, but this version of it is for every large campaign a person can run in just about any system. It's not a retrospective, more of just a brief look at stuff I personally discovered while a large, epic-length, long-term campaign in general. Intrigued? Read on. It doesn't matter if you're running CoC, D&D, Pathfinder, L5R, WH40K, or any other system - long campaigns are both fun and challenging mentally, emotionally, and creatively. Though, honestly, I don't know how you'd even run a long-term Warhammer game; may Tzeentch bless you if you do manage to plan such a thing, you absolute madman. In any case, long games lasting a year or more can really drain energy and be daunting as all hell, so it's nice to have some pointers in general going in. That's the point of this list. Your experience will of course vary with your system used, so don't be too concerned if it seems like some of these don't really apply.
Like what you read? Consider tipping me on PayPal by clicking the little button in the sidebar.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
About The Blog
Welcome to Musings 2.0, my personal blog here on WordFlow! Here, you can find out what I'm doing now and where I'm going next, as well as get my thoughts on the Cthulhu Mythos, assorted sundry writing topics, and various scientific topics. Archives
January 2019
Categories
All
|