Here’s some notes I’ve knocked together on setting up a cool RPG campaign.
This is what I’d do today if I was setting up a new campaign. It’s not complex but it is slightly against the “run of the mill”.
Yes, I’ve pinched ideas from greater genius than my own. If you’ve never heard of the stuff mentioned, you’re in for a treat if you can be bothered to research them.
My usual “this is not the one true way” caveat applies. Reader, judge for yourself. If it helps you, hurrah!
Here we go…
1. Start with a cool idea
Roleplaying games that excite us start with a cool idea. It’s what Brian Jamison calls “the Pitch”. It’s a movie term. It’s about summarising the core of an idea in a manner which will excite and inspire your players. Jamison explains,
“The pitch gets players excited about participating in the game. The quality of the pitch is going to reflect on the quality of the game. Never start a pitch during a commercial break or in between video game rounds. Set the stage. Sit down someplace where you can talk with the player alone, face-to-face. If you are serious about having a good game spend a lot of time polishing the pitch.” – Jamison, “Gamemastering“, p. 19
Before you can make the Pitch, however, you need a cool idea. To be honest, although I can think of half and hundred cool things that might excite me to play, it’s my players who have to play too. Therefore, given the desire to run a game that’ll last, my feeling is that you want to collaborate on the “cool ideas” phase.
Talk to your players and ask them what sort of stuff might interest them. Listen. Make notes. Listen some more. Detect what feels good in your gut. Take the coolest ideas that excite you. Mash ’em up. See what you’ve got.
Then you can work on the Pitch. Given that you’ve listened to your players in the first place, your Pitch already contains elements of stuff that you know they are likely to enjoy. You can polish things from there.
2. Collaborate with your players
So you’ve pitched an idea to your players and they’re interested. If you were sensible, you pitched ideas that you stole from the conversations you had before you wrote the Pitch. But that’s just the beginning.
While I really like the approach Jamison suggests, in which you create bare bones and then let players build on it, I would advocate an even greater degree of collaboration (and less GM work). Don’t lock yourself away and start outlining anything alone. Instead, sit your players down and spend a session doing things the Fate way:
“Decide what the world that surrounds the protagonists is like.
Decide how epic or personal your story will be.
Decide what threats and pressures inherent to the setting will spur the protagonists to action.
Decide who the important people and locations are.
Each player makes a protagonist.”Referencing “Fate Core“, Evil Hat Productions, Chapter 2
Getting everyone around the table involved has two major advantages: firstly, it engages everyone in the forthcoming game; secondly, it provides the game with far better ideas than you can come up with alone.
Engagement is key: the more you collaborate, the more invested and excited your players are likely to be. Remember to try to say “yes” to ideas and avoid what Graham Walmsley calls “shooting ideas down”:
“When you build on an idea, you say an implicit “Yes, And…” to the idea.” – Graham Walmsley, “Play Unsafe“, p. 21.
Stop trying to plan. Listen, engage, and see where the session takes you. Using Fate’s useful list of steps, you can sketch out a cool setting and start everyone on the path towards creating a cool character.
3. Don’t fuss about the system
I used to think that my problems were related to system. Regular readers know that I have played and reviewed dozens, nay hundreds, of game systems. I was wrong. It’s not the game system that’s the problem, guys. As long as you pick a system that everyone at the table can enjoy, you will probably be onto a winner.
Arguably, some systems do certain types of game better than others. You might feel that there’s an optimum system for Fantasy genre games, or an ideal engine for Superhero games. That’s your prerogative as a gamer.
What I’m suggesting is that you stop focusing quite so much on the rules and, instead, focus on the game. By “the game”, I mean the action of playing. Whatever system you choose, the main action of your game will be taking place narratively. The system just adjudicates the bits that need some “Refereeing”.
Stop worrying about the system. At the end of that session on the setting, talk to the players about which system you feel will work best. Ultimately, the GM needs to be happy to run the system. As long the players are happy using the system the GM is comfy with, everything will be fine. In my experience, most players don’t care quite so much about a system when the campaign is well-run. Most players don’t read rule books anyway.
Final thoughts…
There you go. Job done. Sorted. Once you’ve got to this point, your player’s characters are ready to be interviewed and you just need to go and knock the notes into shape.
Maybe next time we can have a chat about HOW you do the “notes into shape” knocking.
Game on!