The Culture: It's Easier Than It Seems To Run Big Campaigns

How do you run something big like RIFTS?

The Referee sits the players down, gives them a big picture briefing like I did yesterday, and asks one question: "What theater do you want to handle first?"

This is a separate and distinct question from "Who among you want to run the major powers?"

The latter question is about top-level Faction Play, doing a traditional (i.e. double-blind) wargame style of play. The former is about what areas in the overall campaign map interest players enough to roll up fresh 1st level men and get down on the ground engaging in more usual adventuring play, with boundaries defined by the Big Powers at work therein and what they're doing.

An Example In Action

In a Discord server, the Referee puts for a request for action from the players in the campaign. One group of them decide that they want to follow up a lead about a location said to possess great and powerful treasures, but that location is west of the Rocky Mountains in what was formerly known as Cascadia (i.e. British Colombia, Washington State, Oregon, bits of northern California).

The Referee privately contacts yet another player because that player has a character that's been quietly building up a power base in that region to ask him about what therein could be the basis for such rumors. That player responds by explaining that the rumors exist because what it took to build up his man's city-state required tapping into a series of pre-Rifts caches and using them to build up his man's economy and thereby be able to defend against the kaiju attacks from the Pacific. Due to the traffic coming in and out of his man's Domain, word would slip past the Rockies and go East sooner or later.

The Referee tells the players in charge of the Coalition States, Northern Gun, Tolkeen, Lazlo, Manistique Imperium, and a few smaller factions "Intelligence gets a follow-up from their contacts out West in Colorado. A man claiming first-hand knowledge of a pre-Rifts treasure trove has appeared. Get him, secure him, debrief him. How that's done is your problem."

Those faction leaders contact other players. Some use deniable assets (mercenaries), some use faction assets, and others use (more or less) personal assets to do this. The interested players choose (or roll up) characters, lead by a character played by the faction leader, and they start up a series of downtime actions prior to session time to see who gets to the prize first.

The Referee adjudicates the results of those downtime actions and then announces which teams arrive to contest for the prize and that is the session for the week- this is a Braunstein scenario.

Once that contest is decided the consequences of that action are adjudicated by the Referee and the faction leader(s) decide what to do next. Meanwhile, the results of other actions (and inactions) are also announced by the Referee and the timeline is updated on the campaign calendar (characters are locked down for various reasons until the calendar catches up, as usual).

Why This Works

Players drive the bus. While the big picture action is ongoing, player attention can and does wander; by removing the false belief that a player can only have one character in the campaign at a time, players become free to act on their interests in the campaign and thus are always able to participate in events as they come up. They may need to roll up a new character (not as big a deal in a Palladium game as in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition), but they can do it.

The Referee needs only to keep things moving along. Players, running various factions, decide on big picture actions and what things of particular interest (and focus) to pay attention to at a time. They, in turn, are the folks responsible for rounding up other players to participate in the emerging scenario.

This is where #EliteLevel players are able to make best use of players that aren't nearly so ambitious or invested. It also lets players cultivate more skill at using the game by giving them more opportunities to do things (via new characters) that they usually do not get to do. (Thus also avoiding boredom.)

As people are not equal, there is no good reason to not let people sort themselves out like this; let the natural leaders lead and the others will follow or be left behind.

It also means that characters dying isn't the massive failure state that Cargo Cult play presumes; a player participating in this scenario that loses their character still has other characters in their roster, and can always roll up more, so One True Character does not exist.

This structure demands that players exercise agency. The Referee should ensure that player agency is present from the get-go by having player-run factions as well as focusing playing sessions on adventure scenarios where players are required to make command decisions to succeed (as befits a wargaming hobby).

And by using proper 1:1 Timekeeping, you force players to deal with Opportunity Cost (as people with agency have to do); if they decide to focus upon stealing either plans for a Valkyrie or a working example of one to reverse-engineer and produce in-house that's at the cost of other opportunities. Even Cosmic Horrors have limits on what they can do.

Conclusion

Be it AD&D, RIFTS, TORG, Spycraft, Renegade Legion, Shadowrun, or whatever it turns out that running big campaigns that deliver on that satisfaction promised by the medium and hobby isn't as hard as it seems.

What it takes? A Referee with some acumen at running an organization, some players with ambition, and a clear line of communication in both directions. The calendar and maps help a lot, but most of this is down to a couple of people that can be authoritative and competent at the controls- something the wargaming club culture of old still had, and the Bros are now proving again (a) still works and (b) still can be done. The club has moved online.