My Life As A Gamer: Putting A Proper Campaign Together (Part One)

You've read about how wrong typical tabletop role-playing games are. Now we start talking about how to do things right.

Rethink The Process

The first step starts with the recognition, acknowledgement, and acceptance that a tabletop RPG campaign has two levels of play: strategic and tactical. The strategic level is driven by Patrons and Domain Play. The tactical level is what most player recognize as RPG play: parties of adventurers going to and delving into dungeon. While the two levels are symbiotic, the big picture is the primary driver of campaign play.

The consequence is that a RPG campaign is a wargame first and foremost. There are two or more parties in conflict, each party with a Cause For Action that defines their Win Condition and their Loss Condition, and each Party is a Patron that holds and runs a Domain. Their interactions are the primary driver of the campaign's events, and as soon as one party wins or everyone loses the campaign is over and the game ends.

You must rethink your process to make use of this fact.

Starting Big

You start here, at the big picture.

• What is the prize? There needs to be something to contest or there is no game.
• Who is contesting? This defines your Patrons, their initial Domains, and (via Cause For Action) their Win/Loss Conditions.
• Where is this happening? A campaign played out across two galaxies is going to last a lot longer than one carried out over a single region.
• Why is this happening? This is answered by Patrons' Causes For Action.
• When is this happening? A question that matters more for Official Campaign Settings than home games; see below.
• How is this happening? This can refer to "limited war" scenarios where the full power of a party cannot be deployed, but it also applies to the ruleset being used as well as the Referee's adminstrative procedures for running the campaign.

This process compels parallels with history to find suitable models to refer to over anything else. Competent players and Referees will be as well-read with history as they will mythology and literature, if not moreso- just like the great authors in popular entertainment and the literary world have been (and still are).

It is here where concepts like Strict Timekeeping and 1:1 Time Accounting will be most obvious in their utility because time is the cornerstone of logistics and thus econonmy; what a party does at a given time also means that it does nothing else during that time.

Notes On Administration Of The Strategic Level Of Play

The core loop of Kriegspiel is also the core administrative function of the Referee. He will need a means to communicate with Patrons as a collective as well as separately, and he will need a reference archive for Patrons to resort to (such as to look at the campaign map or calendar, both of which are necessary).

It will feel more like Play-By-(E-)Mail than anything else, but younger players or those not familiar with older forms would benefit from a comparison with Real Time Strategy. Having a wargame background, or someone on hand with such, will help with managing this level efficiently.

The Patron Player Profile

Recruiting players for this level of play can be considered separate and distinct from recruiting for the other level. The profile of a player that a Referee wants for the Patron level permits fully remote participation, but it also requires maintaining contact on a regular basis due to the need to submit orders to the Referee and receive briefings from him.

This is a form of play that favors the "busy adult" with career or household obligations that limit their ability to play at the table. The career diplomat running running a Consulate or Embassy, the housewife with a handful of small children, the go-to tradesman making housecalls five days a week, the soldier or sailor deployed abroad or out at sea- all of these are people who should consider playing Patrons over ordinary Player-Characters (PCs).

Scaling Down

The tactical level of play, where PCs are out looking for gold and glory by seeking out treasures or exploiting opportunities that Patrons miss or can't follow-up themselves, is what most players will recognize as RPG play. This is your dungeon crawl, your skirmish battle, your monster hunt where it's You, The Boys, And Your Private Armies against whatever it is out there.

It cannot be avoided that Patrons and Domain Play will influence what players can choose for their PCs--what Races, Classes, powers, gear, etc. are selectable--both when they enter play and between sessions when they recover from field operations. The most ambitioous and fortunate characters at this level can and will influence the upper level of play, with the former often building themselves up into Patrons in due time should they persist and endure. Today's callow but ambitious youth on his first raid is tomorrow's great hero that seizes the crown and becomes king by his own hand.

Strict Timekeeping and 1:1 Time Accounting will compel those playing at this level to play and rotate a roster of PCs, which also serves to move attention around the campaign map in ways that dysfunctional play can never accomplish, and the potential to compel Patrons to alter or abandon their plans cannot be dismissed. "For want of a nail, a kingdom is lost" is an intended interaction between the two layers and there can be--and often is--significant lag-time between Cause and Effect.

Notes On Administration Of The Tactical Level Of Play

This is the mode of play that most manuals focus upon. What needs to be noted is that, other than when needed early on to get things rolling, many potential scenarios come about due to Patron interactions. If more than one can be done in a given week, put it up to the available players what to do; once they commit, that's what goes down that week at the table. If the other scenario(s) are time-sensitive, their resolution can happen away from the table..

The results of tactical level play needs to be included in the next regular campaign update; this sort of thing is a draw unto itself and keeps those unable to play at the table invested in the campaign- on both levels, especially if the table scenario had a direct or immediate impact on Patron affairs.

The Adventuring Player Profile

The key differentiations here is availability and flexibility. He's someone that is willing and able to be at the table more often than not and is fine with "This week it's Bob the Fighter, next week Dick the Thief, and in two weeks Harry the Cleric comes off the bench"- all three in different places doing different things.

Conclusion

Once you have the core scenario set out, figured out your Patrons and how PCs fit in, the rest will start to fall into place.

This week's posts will, for the most part, use Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition as examples. I will expand this into other games later this week to show how to do it with non-fantasy games.