*Thanks for watching!* Let us know what Campaign and GM you are in the comments below! Check out FarSight Sci-Fi RPG here, definitely one to consider for your collection: lightfishgames.altervista.org/
Thanks again for the video Guy! I have a video suggestion for you: How to make things personnal for the PC? How do you evoke emotions, how do you intensify their motivation, their hate for the BBEG or the importance an adventure has to them? I want to take my epic campaign and make it also personnal for the PCs to enhance the experience, and erase that feeling of railroading. I want the epic campaign to feel as a personal tale for any PC that was played in any epic campaign. Would be even more epic in my opinion.
You say you have a great creative mind for epic campaigns, you love playing it because you're good at it. Remember, we can put the events and NPCs and everything that structures the epic campaign anywhere you like, So let the players drive the story and do the things they want to do, and revolve those epic events in a player campaign as seemingly "random events" from the players actions. so basically Epic over arching campaign (players can't know this) / Player Campaign mix! You can do it!
For a simulationist campaign, I would say bad idea on doing it as one of the base level ones like your video discusses here. I would more consider it an idea for on the list of styles in an open campaign.
Another great video! After watching videos for a year I finally ran my first campaign a couple days ago, and it was amazing! This video is great because my style differs from my husband's, but I couldn't explain how before. He's an epic storyteller with factions and intrigue, but I am more player centric. I don't feel original enough to design this epic tale, but I can hopefully do some fun monster of the month adventures with sprinklings of pc growth. I guess I want my campaign to have a strong finish character by character rather than a climactic ending. And if a BBEG emerges somewhere along the way, great!
I think I would be more interested in playing a personal player campaign, but running one (if I ever get the confidence to do so, and have the dedicated time to run one) I would go for epic campaign as I can see big cinematic story worlds in my head.
I think you missed one. "world building campaign" the characters explore the territory and thus the players learn about the world. after a dozen stories, the players create new characters and enter an established world. the previous characters may be npc's or even used again. each time the characters interact in the world, the world expands. it's very rewarding for all involved to see the game world grow due to the players exploring and adventuring.
I've been thinking to use Fiasco for this - populating the game world with juicy NPC villains, ones who (the same!) players will know inside out when dealing with them later in the main campaign. Never thought to spend more than a oneshot for that.
Seems to me this would be a version of an Open campaign. If you are simply exploring then your campaign, session to session, would be very flexible and you would have a multitude of choices in where you go and what you do as a player.
@Darren - I would agree, however the process of world building involves developing the npc's, politics and antagonists to the empire(s) the characters are interacting with. this is far more indepth than simply running around and seeing what the characters can find that Interests them.
I would cally campaign an "evolving campaign". It's kind of similar to an open campaign, but all the smaller story arcs connect to each other amd in the end move towards a singular conclusion and probably a singular BBEG. But neither I nor the players know the full story when it started. It just evolves over time.
I'm currently running a campaign like that too. Where every choice matters, as such they have defeated multiple BBEG's, killed evil gods that stood in their way. There is a world ending evil at the end of the campaign that the players are actively trying to keep sealed away. Started the campaign January of 2020, the players didn't want the campaign to end so they set up a guard over the seals and are running around trying to turn the world into a utopia. So the ball is in their court as when they want the campaign to end. Sorry for the rambling reply. ^_^
This is how I run it, an overarching story with background details that hint towards a narrative, but the individual adventures are only loosely leading toward it until the end.
I kinda feel like the ideal campaign is kind of all of these, an epic over arching story set in an open sandbox that ties in the players histories. Like I am aiming for an open campaign that is character driven and includes a big bad at the end. But who that big bad is up to who the characters gravitate too.
I find the easiest way to make a campaign like this is to give the PCs a sort of hit list of multiple BBEGs that they will need to defeat all of in order to accomplish their goal. Order doesn’t matter of course.
Exactly this. If you are not incorporating all of these things together it is going to be a bad time and players will be bored just following any single type. Like he said epic is railroad and linear and players will want a break from this singular pursuit all about thwarting the BBEG. Also they will be bored without any real goal to strive for in the future So having a over all story arc re appearing from time to time pointing them toward something is a must also. And for the love of god you better include player driven and backstory throughout your entire campaign. It doesn't have to be about them all the time because they will also get bored or feel pressured. Also you don't have to tie everything together, that will give you a headache and possibly a heartache if it all falls apart. Leave some unanswered questions and loose ends as you go this will allow you to tie or not tie things together. A Okay DM follows a single campaign arc. This DM you will join because your bored and have nothing else to do. A Good DM follows 2 of these campaign arcs This DM you would join again even if you have other things to do. A Great DM follows all of these arcs. This is a DM you will be asking them when they will be running something again.
I like campaigns and i cannot like, the adventures can't deny, when the gm walks in with a decorated case and throws character sheets in your face you get SPRUNG. Cause you notice that case was stuffed, deep in the dm guide they're glaring, the other players can't stop staring OH DEE EMM I wanna roll with ya, and hear your scripture. The npcs tried to warn me but that campaign you runs got me so horny.
I adore this approach and also favor it myself. It's also possible to add a little bit of open campaign flavor if you have an arc where the goals can be done in different orders (kinda like most BioWare RPGs), or you can add little breather episodes here and there that may not tie directly into the either the players' arcs or the main plot of the epic campaign, but may earn them something useful to see those things through, like a powerful weapon or a base of operations.
I do this too. Some storylines will happen along the way, after need or development, and some will be an unrelated bad guy or monster - but the overarching arch is based on the player backgrounds or ambitions.
@@TheKansleren I try to be "a fan of my players" so I don't clown on them for crit fails. What I have been known to do recently is that sometimes a crit fail will reveal a new villain or storyline. It often happens with a psionic character that pulls unwanted attention with her telepathy.
@@storytellersteerpike4452 i cant remember who i got this from. But i have my players describe how they fail and give them inspiration when they roll a 1
I've always been fond of the X-files approach, where some adventures are one offs, but some significant number of adventures are geared toward learning of/dealing with the "big bad". This gives a certain amount of freedom to either experiment with types of adventures or to buy time when working on the details of what the "big bad" is up to next :)
I would say that I generally run epic campaigns, but I also like to dig into the player's backstories and narratives to weave them into the game as well.
I run my games similarly to games like breath of the wild or skyrim. There is an open campaign to play around in with an epic campaign in the background. The open campaign is used to strengthen the players via sidequests and arcs so that they can take on the epic campaign.
My friends have trouble doing one-shots. They turn from one-shots to adventures to campaigns, but the DM tends to link things up. They just thought we would get trough it faster. We spend the first couple of scenes just RPing between the players and slowly crawl through his amazing story.
My favorite type of campaign is a combination of thr first three. Think of it like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or any of those types of shows. Some episodes are "lore" episodes and progress the plot, but a good portion of them are just "monster of the week" episodes and some of the episodes explore the main characters more. You can do similar things in a campaign where some adventures are just random adventures the party is going on for rewards or other reasons, some adventures end up forwarding the plot, and sometimes the pcs have to face a rival from their backstory. Sometimes these adventures appear to be one kind of adventure, but are revealed to be another kind by the end. Doing a campaign like this is a lot of work bc it requires you to be at least decent at being all the types of gm, but it covers most of the weaknesses of the individual styles
My style of GMing is usually a hybrid between Epic and Character campaigns, usually with an emphasis on Epic elements. My last campaign was almost a Textbook Epic campaign, and everyone (including me) loved the ending, and some players cried tears of joy at the end. It was comparable to my Magnum Opus, D&D wise.
I ran a few adventures with my friends using The Strange, where every adventure is a different mission given by their boss (they work for an organization called The Estate). Each mission is disconnected from the others but some NPCs can reappear from time to time. I feel that this is the best way to run this RPG system and I've been having a blast so far. The fact that every adventure can take place in a different world definitely helps in making each of them feel more unique. I don't know if it fits the mold for Open Campaign or Accidental Campaign though, I have a hard time distinguishing the two.
I get you with the tears. One of our players plays a naive, big, dumb lug (with often surprising insights) but he tells these daft stories about mythical creatures that are really funny, until you read between the lines, and you realise it's about death and abuse the character lived through as a child and you just want to give the character a huge hug.
@@paulkemp8520 Woah I LOVE that! I think TTRPGs can be very therapeutic for processing our feelings or examining how we react to the world around us, and it seems like this character is the embodiment of that philosophy.
@Luke McGovern I think it primarily depends on the group, and I'm fortunate enough to have a wonderfully tight knit group of friends as my players. But as for what the DM can control? I would say: - Establish a judgment free zone where players are really free to be vulnerable. - Run a player focused campaign, as described here. My "Epic sprinkles" was when they realized that the overarching BBEG was responsible for tragedies in all their backstories. So be Epic, but make it personal. - Encourage players to invest in your world. Let them have S/Os, get married, buy land. I'll draw art of their characters, and sometimes commission other artists to as well as a surprise! At that point? They're in deep. Once an ethical delimma comes up, or their NPC lover drops to 0 HP in combat, you have players on the edge of tears and willing to sacrifice life and limb. The only downside: my group of four PCs travel in a group of ELEVEN once you count the NPCs they brought along. So... I hope you have a lot of different voices prepared.
@@BigCowProductions ok, Im not sure how much it'll help, but the one I remember best came about when an NPC was telling us some gold was going missing. Muk says, "ah, sounds like a gold snaffler, nasty buisyness that", and we are like, "nah, it sounds like embezzelment, whats a gold snaffler anyway?". So Muk says "my family would work hard in the tribe all year, and would squirrell away all the gold we could in a secret place. Sometimes the gold snaffler would come and eat all out gold and kiddnap me dad. He could be missing for weeks but eventually he would come home. Strange thing is he would have new clothes, and stink of booze and perfume, strange thing that". Sorry its the only one I remember
On the simulationist thing, if you have the players for that you'll know. The moment you mention the difference in tax codes from location to location, or why the war has ravaged the economy and not bolstered it. You'll confirm this when they start working out how to abuse this by buying armor in one town for dirt cheap then upping the price as they get near the warzones or places which have crippled logistics chains. I have a close friend like this and I'm that guy as well... our other DM who does Epic campaigns narrows his eyes at us in ways we can feel when we start swindling NPCs.
I've just started GMing! I have an epic campaign in the plot, but at session zero, learning the characters the players made, I realised I wanted to know more of their backstories and weave them into the plot.
Something you can do for this then is play it as a Player campaign for a few levels, then through those sessions note what makes the characters tick. After those first levels you can slowly work in the BBEG and transition in to an Epic campaign with Player elements. Not only can this help you players figure out their own characters, but the BBEG can be more organic and realistic in their motivations against the party. This also makes it possible for the BBEG and any associated lieutenants to have knowledge of the party and what makes them tick.
A good option is make an epic campaign, but every 3 or 4 sessions, depending on player count and other stuff, have a player orientated session. This way the characters get sessions where everyone is equally the main character, but then they also get ones where they are the side character and ones where they are the only main character. And if you can find a way to make their stories progress the whole plot that's even better. I played in one group where the GM was talking about one time a month having a bonus session with only half the players. And have them do a smaller story that affects them more specifically. It never happened because other things. Point being there are definitely good options and ways to combine the different styles.
I've been running an accidental simulated open-epic-player campaign for years now. Over the years they built their own guild, defeated a god, and traveled through time while playing as the bad guys. Each new playgroup added to the story, some joining the guild, some going on their own way, but all painting the blank canvas I gave them. They created a masterpiece.
that´s the same style I want to make. In my group we have two DMs for two campaigns (we both are new and so we can help each other and have breaks to plan ahead. I my Campaign will start I think Mai or June. at first the will the experience the emergency of all the Beastfolk-races (pretty much all Races which are part animal z.B Tabaxi, Lizardfolk.... except Dragonborn they have their own story) and after that I will see how they formed the world.
Simulationist campaign works very well for one particular scenario - 1. You have a group of players who are experienced in and thoroughly invested in your world (either because you've run a consistent world for a really long time or you're running a widely known world with few changes from established canon) 2. You've demonstrated a rigid adherence to the mechanics of your given game system so that the players can be confident that if they perform X action, Y result will occur. When this occurs, you get a group of players who act in the best interest of their characters working within a framed system to create some pretty amazing stories. If I'm being honest, it's my preferred playstyle, but It is EXTREMELY difficult. As a GM, you need to have so thoroughly developed the world that the players interact with that it is capable of reacting organically to both what the players do and what they don't do, often with little warning as to what that might be because they aren't following your plan. Nice players will give you some advance warning as to what their plan is. As players, you need to know the ins and outs of the system almost as well as the GM does, because the GM in this style will not hold your hand as you push against his NPCs. If your technical improv isn't up to snuff, it'll snatch immersion away almost instantly. I love it, it's absolutely incredible when it works, but it's hard to pull off and easy to screw up.
"I ... love ... campaigns and I can not lie, D&D players can't deny, when a DM walks in with a gaming case and mean grin on their face we have ... fun." Thanks for the outlet. I'll see myself out.
I love campaigns and I cannot lie. You other DM's can't deny. When there's a tear in your eye, remembering all who died, and the epic ballads the late bard has sung
I feel like, as the accidental campaign, many kinds evolve into eachother. I had an epic campaign planned which then turned into a player focus game as we went on and I found it was more interesting for my group when I involved their pasts.
i only ever made player campaigns, and i really liked how you described the problems i had every single time, players swiching caracter or not coming during their caracter arc
This was interesting. I actually typically run hybrids of these various campaigns and have run into just the various strengths and weaknesses Guy describes: My first campaign (in my modern, post Eighties/Nineties gaming career, which kicked off in 2016) was a Starfinder campaign. It was initially *disguised* as an open campaign and the first few adventures seemed episodic, but I had elicited detailed backstories from all my players and within the structure of the *epic* campaign that I had actually planned, we had *player-focused* adventures in which everyone got a shot at the spotlight. Once we reached a conclusion to my originally-planned epic arc, it then became an *accidental campaign* b/c we wound up deciding to play up to level 20 (fortunately, I had seeded a backup BBEG for just this eventuality in the earlier adventures). That campaign never felt too railroad-y b/c there was enough "play," enough give-and-take in the narrative and enough episodic interludes, to ensure that they got to do other stuff than just battle the BBEG. We did have players decide to switch characters, but it never felt like that derailed anything b/c player-focused adventure was only part of the general menu and no *one* character was ever such a focus that their loss could derail the whole campaign. It was built to feel at points like "open" adventure but never so open that our sense of purpose fell out, and their "open" adventures inhabited enough of a structure that they could see and feel the impact they were making on the world from one arc to the next. And the epic arcs delivered b/c they had enough breaks from the bigger arc that returning to it always felt fresh and urgent. Not all of these things paid off equally, and it was different for different players. Some players really were there for the player-focused arcs and appreciated the epic inasmuch as it touched on that arc, but occasionally found the epic-ness to become a grind. Some players were really *not at all* there for the player-focused stuff but just wanted to be part of an epic narrative, and no-sold attempts to involve them in their own adventures. Some players tried their best to sell the player-focused stuff but it made them anxious, and they were really more at home in any of the other modes. Some of them were just happy to Do Cool Shit no matter what the adventure mode was. On average, I think it worked out. I'm trying on a similar balance of elements in my follow-up campaign, but it has a much more specific "epic" rebels-taking-down-a-tyranny arc (and also a simultaneously scarier and more nebulous "there's-also-this-weird-alien-threat" arc akin to the White Walkers in Game of Thrones or, more accurately, the Consult in the Prince of Nothing and Thousandfold Thought books by R. Scott Bakker). The balance of elements still seems to be working okay and I have a better sense of who is into what (and some of the players have grown in confidence and are trying new things, which is always fun). I'm only struggling with one player/character, whose arc revolves entirely around Revenge for His Hometown Overrun By the Tyranny that the shape of party choices in the larger arc has kind of neglected. That's a concern, and there is definitely going to be no "accidental" element this time around -- we'll be lucky to get through all the story road we need to traverse in 20 levels -- but otherwise balancing a few campaign types against each other in a larger framework is still working for me. I would argue that this parallels the way stories in television have evolved. A lot of them mix epic narratives, short-arc and episodic storytelling, "open" narratives and character-driven stories in just this way. That's actually where the idea came from for me. Be interesting to hear Guy's perspective on that.
The current campaign I'm running (currently level 3, almost 4) is an open campaign that I plan to have slowly build up to being an epic campaign. So during the lower levels they are exploring the world like a sandbox learning more and more about the setting until the big bad becomes the main focus of the campaign (plan on having that occur around level 7-9). I set up 4 different secondary big bads for them to discover and deal with in the meantime. Surprisingly they already dealt with one without even realizing it. They are current searching for the one they already killed and I can't wait to tell them that they killed him a dozen sessions ago lol
as someone who tends to make a mix of epic and player campaigns, can attest to the weaknesses. I had one that had a huuuge overarching story that needed all of the PC's to work and then one of them left for good and the game died two sessions in. _Two._ The one campaing I'm running right now is an open one, simply because I don't have a big bad in mind yet. Sure I have the PC's personal boogeymen up my sleeve and ideas for personal adventures, but no end goal.
I'm currently running a player campaign. One of the bigger difficulties is connecting character goals into something all players will be interested in. So I tend to connect the dots and always ask the players for their long and short term goals. If we're working on a long-term goal of one of the characters, I always try to make sure to give attention to short-term plans of others, so that no one loses interest. I have absolutely awesome players who give me great opportunities to connect their backstories. Example? We need to find an npc from character A backstory. To do that, we visit character B home island since the head of the state there is from the same guild as character A. And then in turns out that character C has relatives there. On the way there we meet long lost father of character D. When I plan the campaign I feel more like solving a puzzle than doing something from scratch, since my awesome players always give me some source material in form of their backstories. And if a player decides to switch characters, I have a guarantee that they will still be interested in finishing the current quest, because all of the stories are connected in one way or another.
My current gm is pretty great at making an epic campaign feel like a player campaign. He sprinkles in quests for our characters stories to progress all the while giving us a fantastic bbg at the same time
Just learned that my campaign i am running is a mixture of the first three types in this video, the players stories are woven into the epic campaign, with the occasional stand alone adventure thrown into it - never thought about it until i saw this video - thanks! :-) For us this campaign format works best, one year in it, maybe another to go.
Absolutely the epic. I love tying everything together and plotting behind the curtain what the adversaries will do in response to the player's actions.
How about a mix of open and epic? Each week is a different baddy but you leave threads which lead to a grander narrative, maybe the first bad guy they beat comes back again more powerful then ever. Maybe the players will begin to notice that there is a wider conspiracy afoot!
That’s my favorite kind. The players go from quest to adventure solving all kinds of different problems, but they eventually connect the dots and realize that behind it all is a much greater evil threatening the world.
Sounds like the majority of anime. Introduce the characters/world setting with a monster of the week. Keep that going until around 1/2 through when a new, really big bad shows up. The final act is tying all of the threads together and the final resolution.
I definitely run Epic campaigns with Player elements to it. One of my favorite things during a campaign is to subtly place hooks in to a character without them realizing I have done so, then setting the hook suddenly with a couple well placed descriptions. I get a variety of reactions ranging from wide eyes and mouth covering to a player actually realizing the significance of what I am saying and blurting out, “Oh, shit. No. Nope”, to the occasional tear.
One challenge I've found, having been running an "open" episodic campaign lately, is that there are minimal excuses available to reuse ideas/enemies. When I'm feeling creatively energetic it's great, because I get to do wild new stuff every episode, but when I don't have as much time or energy, it can be a little difficult.
My current campaign is a hybrid of the first three. Player focuses that bleed into an epic storyline and an open adventure that allows them to build thier personality and defines the setting that lets them understand the world and the epic setting.
The best campaigns I've been part of have been some combination of "player" and either "epic" or "open". We can weave in player stories along the way, or even as part of the central story in most campaigns.
What about a world/exploration campaign. Where the main focus is having the players slowly learn more about the world. Almost like the main character is the world itself? What you categorize this as? It seems like that's how many OSR games are played or styled after
I like to create campaigns where the world has problems and and secrets and let the players choose what they want to do with this information. That way even I don't know what's going to happen
I enjoyed the video a lot, thanks! I'm currently running a "simulation" campaign where the party owns a company set to colonize a "new world". Session one began with them setting sail, and we've had seven sessions so far filled with ocean exploration. I ran this by creating an over-arching world, kind of like how you described making an epic campaign, but instead of one BBEG, there are numerous factions with their own motivations. Then I let the players have at it! Something that's really helped is to create "epic" style villains for each faction (a leader and their captains for example). The party finally landed last session, and I'm planning on running the mainland more or less as a hex crawl (6 miles per hex). I've created encounter tables for each of the faction territories to make them feel unique, and seeded each hex with at least one hook (a cave, ruins, etc.).
I think that a 'Simulationist' campaign would fall under the 'Accidental' campaign umbrella. The best I could link it to would be purely open world video games like Sim City or the like ... 'open world' games like Far Cry still have a narrative thread and even games like Surviving Mars have mission arcs or overall goals. I've never played a 'Simulationist' campaign (in either role) but I think it would be fascinating ... it would be heavily player driven, but not like the 'Player' campaign, but instead broader themes like 'I want to be an adventurer' and they set goals for themselves during the game, like 'this is a nice valley, what do we need to do to make it into a nice place to have a cottage?'
My campaign has evolved since it began last year. It started as an accidental campaign meant to be a one-shot. We grew attached to the characters and settings and decided to continue in this world. I wanted to build on one character's backstory, so that features significantly, but it also evolved from my original villain towards an epic campaign. I also threw in some random ideas for adventures that I had that only retrospectively tied in with the main story. Sometimes even one of the other players is DMing another story set in the same world and everything is allowed in terms of plot direction. So there you go, an accidental player-focused open epic campaign 😁
I'm definitely an Open Campaign GM. I also play with Noobs so I help them with their backgrounds to nudge them in derailing my campaign! I could never run an Epic Campaign but I can give the players epic moments, and not just epic combats. I like the idea of a PC campaign and the players do have their own goals - then there must come a Choice - Reveal a Personal Secret, Leave the Party, Stay with the Party or Give up your goals at let Fate (the dice) take control. NO - I like my OC - A Broad Goal that the PCs can move in and out of with a potential Final Show with a host of different challenges on the way, some personal side quests, different guilds to join, World & Local events, plot twists, and as entertaining as possible. Thanks for this vid, enjoyed it all.
I am currently planning a large scale campaign that would mostly align with your "open" style, but also will include elements of "epic" and "player". My approach is to plan out the world and lots of plot hooks and give the players a lot of agency in choosing what to do and how to do it, shaping what will become the story. It will be made with the party in mind, so there will be lots of points made to involve character backstories, promote growth, test flaws and let them shine.
I tend to run epic campaigns, but I mix in the player campaign aspect of it by focusing on PC's goals and endeavors throughout the epic campaign. Everyone gets their time in the spotlight!
What about "Living World" Campaigns? A Series of mini campaigns (3-4 sessions) or a handful of one shots that develop the common world that your players play in. Each story takes place in a different part of the world, where the players help sculpt its history, customs, and legends. This is where the Setting is the star of the story.
I love running the transitional mixer campaign: a blend of all four. An open campaign that has an epic campaign that gradually unfolds as a slow burn sub-plot before exploding into a final arc. The campaign itself is largely structured around the individual stakes and goals of the players with their personal arcs being resolved along the way. After the final arc resolves the campaign continues on as a free-form sandbox where the players get to traverse the planes and explore the endless horizon. We've managed to run several games like this and have even had games that ran for years on this structure. It's really good for long-form games but involves a lot of cooperation between all people involved. Lone wolves don't do too well in these sort of games. As far as playing (which I never will ever again) all four are really fun. I've had amazing experiences will all four of these types of campaigns. You break down the pros and cons of all four styles really well here! This was very useful in giving me some more perspective on how I might want to focus and structure my games in the future.
I'm an Epic/Player GM. My campaign itself is an Epic, but I weave player backstories into the campaign itself and into arcs within the overarching campaign to give each player the focus for 3-8 sessions. My players love it and so do I. It's a TON of work to pull it all together, but it's an absolute blast when it all comes to fruition with each arc. Lots of dopamine hits lol.
We've been playing for about 10 years in an open campaign setting, but then we integrate smaller campaigns dmed by different members of our group (because like this, everyone can play once in a while which is only fair if no one wants to be the forever-dm). The sub-campaigns normally tend to be epic, but at a non-world-threatening level. As an example: we are currently trying to get rid of a probably-mongol-inspired ork army north our castle that wants tributes every month... We are using the caste we got as a home base and the currently-unused PCs are busy repairing the castle and turning the village into a metropolis. This itself also kind of is a campaign. First 30min. of a meeting is catching up with one another and deciding what will be built in the village. Maybe the farm that was burnt down by the orcs or a new storage building for the tributes... yeay... I can really recommend this kind of format for groups in which everybody wants to play. If you got a dm that only wants to dm - great! Never let go of him/her/them! But don't condemn someone who wants to play too to only dming please. Also, this system enables to swap the DM if the current one is having a rough time in real-life and doesn't have the time to prep at the moment. He either finishes his sub-campaign or delegates elements of it to the new DM.
One of my longer campaigns, about 4 years, mostly every two weeks to monthly, started out intending an epic campaign but evolved into more of a mix of character driven & open because my big bad was ill conceived and remote and they revelled in picaresque adventures that were their own ideas. Sometimes adventures came out of their plans, sometimes I started an idea and ran with it. Lots of memorable stuff, but eventually died to group composition losses as people moved, broke up, etc.
I've been running a sandbox game for a few years now, and referring to it as a "campaign" even though I'm not sure it qualifies as one. The characters are free to roam within the setting (a large province populated by an ever-growing cast of NPCs and factions, with a bigger world beyond the borders waiting to be explored someday) and can follow whatever adventure hooks they like; BUT there's an evil world-ending slow-burn plot going on in the background and many of the adventures and mini-quests they've undergone have led them to uncover parts of it. There's a BBEG behind it all, even though they don't know that yet, and as they continue to roam they'll get ever-closer to figuring out who they are and what they're up to. Sometimes I'll nudge the party in the direction of one of these leads, but mostly I'm happy to let them figure it all out at their own pace, and have all kinds of random fun in the meantime. So is that a "campaign", or am I misusing the term?
in a group i played several years with we were having an open campaign, but we took turns GMing after every adventure (but the overall group of player characters basically stayed the same). overall i can recommend to try out this approach, it has some really great benefits: - everyone has different ideas, styles and narrative focus points etc., so as a result, everyone makes different adventures. so from a player perspective it was really cool to experience all these different kinds of creative choices and every adventure was vastly different from the one before. - from a GM perspective you have a lot of time in between two times you are running an adventure. this means less work/stress to prepare and a lot more time to be inspired, collect ideas and fluff material. - it means everyone takes both roles. from my experience i became a better (role-)player by GMing and became a better GM by seeing things from a player perspective regularly enough. also, everyone tends to be more on the same page, i think it just feels more collaborative overall (though maybe i was just lucky with the group). - it is a great chance for players to try out the role as GM if they haven't before. - if someone wants to change their character mid-campaign, they can conveniently do so while GMing themselves: they are in complete control of what happens to the old character and they can introduce their new character in a memorable way that ties into their current adventure. e.g. one time a GM had his own player character being kidnapped and it was unclear whether he considered replacing that character with a new one or not. don't make it too wild though: as you know players can easily foil your initial plan e.g. you don't want your character to accidentally die during the adventure; that never happened to us though potential downsides and how to address them: - the group of player characters is constantly changing a bit which might seem a bit weird -> not really a problem in practice from my experience. there are many ways to deal with it e.g. just make up some random excuse why they are sometimes not in the party (see above) or have the GM play them as NPC (its their character after all) but then remember to actually treat it like a NPC and not steal spotlight etc. - might have been the style of the group as a whole but nobody wanted to be "that guy who killed that character" while GMing -> just bring up the topic beforehand to clarify expectations. this also goes for any impactful permanent changes to the characters and the policy of how to hand out new magic items. for us it was not an issue but i believe it should be discussed in the group. - a few times people were not prepared at all -> that is a possible consequence of having people GM that don't commit to it as much as "full time GMs" so consider adding the possibility for people to switch their next turn with one of the other group members. and of course people have to be open about taking the role in general, don't force it on them. e.g. if 4 out of 5 people take turns as GM and the 5th is always taking the role of a player character then that should not be an issue. - adventures vary in length: different GMs have different pacing etc. -> i recommend that individual adventures should strive for 1 session and may take up to 2 depending on how things are developing. any longer than that and it possibly starts to feel like an actual campaign. depending on the group it might not be a problem but it can feel like it violates the contract of the group about taking turns.
My campaigns usually start at the "player campaign" station but eventually ride into "Epic Campaign" station by relating everyones backstory somehow into the Epic. Best of both worlds I say, gets the players invested, cause their characters are personally involved throughout all of it.
I think you are mixing up gamist (focus on game mechanics, strategy, and character optimization) and simulationist (focus on accuracy to a specific genre or setting and/or environmental realism). Your playthrough of Fabled Lands books would be simulationist as the adventures on based on exploration of a detailed world vs an overarcing plot or specific character.
Up until recently, my campaigns were almost all Accidental (I was a very reluctant GM who only did it if no one else was willing). Wasn't until recently that I started doing an Open one with hints of Player, and it's been interesting. A LOT more work, but it's been rewarding so far.
A player campaign also requires the GM to have more restraint than most. The GM and players have to be able to sit back and watch; one of the most memorable moments for me as a player was opening up about very private details from his past with the party member he didn’t just know the least but who he was the least like. I literally had to walk away from the table to collect myself.
i usually run my campaigns as a mix of epic and accidental, i make a massive but extremely bare-bones plan with a final BBEG that delves into character backstory but none of the individual adventures have a real plan until about a week (or 2 hours) before the actual game. this in turn lets me make an insanely grandiose setting and larger-than-life evil, but also gives me the freedom to turn a heist into a ghost-busting adventure on the fly without destroying the plan or forcing my players into a rail-road.
Oh no, I somehow made all 4 campaign types. This is my first time DMing too. :'> - It started as an accident from random roleplay that eventually required me to pause and plan for a while to develop a proper world without retconning much of what we had done. - It's intended to be a bunch of increasingly more complicated quests that often have nothing to do with each other, from rescuing a lost girl who was being preyed upon by a sleep-inducing, carnivorous plants to guiding a mysterious, paranoid figure with a special magical item to the next town as they are tracked by parties of drow and their allies every night. They can find different adventure options by travelling to specific places on the map. - There are small story elements and clues scattered throughout their roleplays, encounters and quests that on occasion point them towards plot elements and let them theorise at what connection each piece of information they learn has, which will eventually culminate into a grand final quest to fix an interdimensional disaster caused by an outsider god's scheme to gain influence over Ao through a secret organisation hidden within a bigger cult. - Part of the planned adventures that they can experience travelling across the world include those intended to solve things related to their backstories, like the elven ranger from the Feywild who fled their home after accidentally leading a bunch of Fomorians to their village and is now too afraid of the consequences to even check the aftermath, or the aasimar cleric with memory loss discovering why they are undead and how their spiritual guide betrayed them in a time of need.
I think I run a players campaign that turns into an epic campaign. The strength of this style is that you give the players the ability to flush out their character by giving them choices. By giving them half of what they want, or giving them direction to what they want, or imposing a cost for what they want, they feel heard and validated. They want to chase your next hook because they think there will be another piece of their puzzle. Then you place the next hook in epic territory. You mash pieces together, do some light retconing, and make it so their quest was always part of the bigger quest. This has the strength of the two, big grand adventure and player agency, but it also has both weaknesses. A player might want to retire their character if you give them what they think is enough. Then suddenly those personal hooks go out the window. It is also on the longer side for game length, and with sporadic scheduling and busy lifestyles you may never reach the finish line. That said, I think a GMs job is to mash player stories with your own story in a satisfying way. Then adding a little more complexity every time you do it.
There is another, probably a meta style for this video, which is a mix of the first three which is more of a balance of them. Think of the Babylon 5 TV series though the 1990s as an example. There was an epic story line with episodic plot lines to the season midterm of 5 or so episodes along with those that are resolved in the same episode as resolved. The three types of plots are wound together through the series along with character growth focusing on the various characters where a plot line would be focused for a particular character. It is my job as a DM to weave these while giving a spot light to a character story plot line, keep them also moving along the main line goal as well. This allows the plays not to be bored on a single plot line while giving a different player there time in the sun. Yes, this took a bit more work, but gave a mix up to the players along with some unexpected twists.
Accidental campaign here that evolved into an open/episodic campaign. It was meant to be a oneshot with monstrous races as the PCs where i sometimes could run missions for them if our main campaign had a slow month...this has now become a full blown campaign closing in on 3 years and is the one campaign we have that is going strong and close to finishing with an end in sight. Due to the accidental nature the PCs didnt really get fleshed out backstories or gotten them weaved into the adventure so we put a lot of energy into the connections they build here and now instead.
Mini-Epic + Open World = Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel campaign. Each season has a Big Bad working up in the background, while there is a monster of the week fleshing it out. Monster of the weak could be completely separate, be sprinkled with clues, or be a mini-boss for the Big Bad. One Big Bad per level tier, if you play that way.
Related to the above is what I call "accordion campaigns." With an accordion campaign, you have the beginning point set - you know where you start - and you have the goal of the endgame set as well - you know when you're finished. When setting up this sort of campaign, it's important to get the permission of the players, and ensure that they know, understand, and accept these two slices in the ever-expanding Dagwood sandwich to come, because that way you can all know when the campaign is over, and you and your players can decide when and how you want to make that happen. But in the between times separating the beginning and the end, the rest of the campaign is pretty open-ended, and you can just keep having fun until you start the endgame sequence. A whole lot of shows on television are built like this, from 80's classics like "Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors" and "Dungeons & Dragons" (which are also great examples of what happens if you don't push to make the endgame happen eventually: everybody eventually has to move on with their lives, so the campaigns peter out rather than coming to a definite conclusion; better to end with a bang than a fizzle, I think), to the 90's classic "Gargoyles" with its many intricate plots and sub-plots, to the ever-running "Sailor Moon" series, which has Big Bads who would field a continuing string of monsters-of-the-week, to "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and its "Korra" sequel, which are pretty much exactly like an accordion in their ability to expand or contract their overarching plot to the needs of the producers.
I run long campaigns within a larger really really long meta-campaign. In 1983 I started my own sandbox world. All set on one island. I was young and went with a basic trope, the Island had once been the home of the Gods where they walked among the mortal races in harmony etc etc... something happened a thousand years ago causing Mists to fall over the island, and all contact to be lost. Any ships or flying wizards who tried to find their way through the mists never returned. Now the mists have lifted... and every nation is in a hurry to get there and stake a claim to whatever is there. Around the coasts towns that had been uninhabited for centuries were being repopulated and a sort of "Wild Frontier" was being established. The first group of players to play in this campaign world were playing in a completely Open Campaign, they were exploring, and acting on behalf of various third parties to find and recover things, and found their nemeses along the way. There was no goal beyond "Find stuff and deal with it". Back then we had the rulebooks, Dragon and Imagine Magazines and the odd 3rd Party resources (Like Flying Buffalo and Judges Guild if anyone remembers them???). If you'd talked to me about "3 Act Structures" I'd have stared at you like a dog that's just been shown a card trick. I just wrote a dungeon... the players explored... found the dungeon, and killed everything in it... eventually one of them decided to find out why the Mists had fallen and set himself that quest... the others said, "Yeah... OK that sounds like fun..." so they set off and I had to start dropping bread crumbs, (and figuring out for myself why those Mists had fallen...) We played that campaign for about three years, with about 1/4 of the map ever being fully explored. Toward the end of the Campaign I began setting the stage for the next one by hinting at one of the Continental Powers mustering a huge army to invade and take over everything. This was not initially an "Evil" plot, as this nation was monotheistic and viewed cultures who worshipped many Gods as devil worshippers and felt the need to "Educate" them through fire and pain. Essentially they were based on the Holy Roman Empire... I never got round to running that campaign for the D&D group as we split up and went our separate ways after leavings school, but I still had all the notes, and we promised to get back together and run some of it at Holidays and stuff... In the meantime I got into LRP and most of my TTRPG gaming went into hiatus as I became involved in running an LRP site. After that closed down, a bunch of us got together to start our own, and a few of the people who played in my D&D games got on board and said "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we used our old game world and continued the Campaign???" So we did that, and during LRP Down time we used to Table Top events that were not possible to recreate in our LRP. We eventually managed to get the conclusion of the Invasion and Occupation campaign down to one big final battle. At around that time we were also very heavily involved with The Lorien Trust who run "The Gathering" in the UK, and our group was essentially the same characters, with the same backgrounds... we explained the situation to the guy who ran the plot for our faction... HE had words with a couple of other faction plot refs... and we ran the battle... Live Action... 200+ people on each side! It is impossible to over state how satisfying it is to run your "Final Encounter" of a campaign you've been running for over a decade to take place in such a fashion. It was also the first time I had absolutely no control over the outcome, and got to take part in the battle as a player!!! That was in about 1998/99. And since then I have continued to run L1-20 campaigns set in the same world... acting as a "Metaplot" I have a basic template for a L1-20 campaign... in nine parts. 1. Introduction, runs L1-4/5 this gets the players together, throws some basic adventure types so any new players learn the style of play and house rules... seeds are sewn in the wider plot. 2. The Call to Action. The players first learn of the quest they need to go on. Either reputation, Prophecy, or simply lack of other options means they are the ones who must do the thing... This usually lasts till about L10-12. Throughout this section most, if not all, adventures are connected to the main plot, with various options along the way to reach the next step, to avoid being totally railroaded. 3. The "Oh Shit! This is worse than we thought!" section. At the end of part 2, a greater realisation dawns on them... this leads to even darker, more powerful foes and tougher objectives. Recurring NPC villains start to target the players friends etc... This runs to about L15/16. 4.The "We need the X to do the Y" this is where they now understand the situation, and must do something to prepare to deal with the final situation. They may need to assemble the Rod of Seven Parts, collect the hearts of one of each of the Chromatic Dragons to perform a ritual... something that takes a lot of time, and requires great effort. This will take them to round about L20 5. The Final Showdown... this isn't usually just one smackdown. It often requires finding the bad guy, or tracking down their lieutenants weakening the BB before that final confrontation. Eventually they come face to face, and all Hell is let loose. Within that structure I also use a number of Story Telling techniques, to advance the plot itself, with the players often losing, and even as they succeed and grow, the enemy will also, always tipping the balance in favour of the bad guys, so that even at L18-20 they rarely feel that it will be an easy quest. I mentioned NINE parts... well, I realised that players tend to grow weary of linear campaigns and feel that they don't get to explore as much as they would like. So I always find a way to insert a healthy amount of downtime between the main parts for them to do their own things. This is usually done by something simple like "The Wizards need time to decipher the lost scrolls you recovered before they will know where you need to go next, this might take a week or two..." I've been running this 9 part Plan for about... maybe just over... ten years now. I've got 2 guys who have been in all of the 7 campaigns I have run using it, and neither of them, or any other player has ever realised that I have run that same structure 7 times. I'm lucky... my players know what to expect from my campaigns. A firm story, and a largely linear structure. So I don't tend to get wise arse players, intent on fucking it up as the rest of the players will shut that shit down pronto. For the past six months I have been working on what might be the final campaign within the game world I created 40 years ago... the one that will FINALLY explain why those damned mists fell in the first place. I mentioned I was working on it on Facebook last year, and have so far had over thirty five requests to play in it...
I think of campaign style as falling somewhere within a spectrum of story depth and cohesion. The further down the spectrum the campaign goes, the more it relies on large scale planning from the GM and consistency of player involvement. 1. Accidental Campaign 2. Open Campaign 3. Simulationist Campaign 5. Epic Campaign 6. Player Campaign 7. Epic+Player Campaign This last form, I consider to be the greatest narrative achievement that can be reached but relies heavily on thoughtful and creative planning by the GM and players being committed for the long term. In this form, the GM takes into account both an epic world story they want to tell and dives deep into their character's backgrounds. They craft major personal quest arcs that also advance the plot of the epic story. This offers the greatest level of player engagement and narrative impact.
My campaigns tend to be a mixture of all 4 types. I tend to get ambushed by friends to run campaigns, so I often have to start with no clear idea what's going on (accidental), but I get players to write backgrounds to give me something to work towards (evolve to player journey), then with a bit of momentum, I'll start throwing out seemingly random evils (Open), and once I've done enough sessions and sown enough player and npc seeds, I start the old plotweave ball of twine rolling and link things that seem unconnected together in a way that - to my players - looked like the plan all along and thus the true nemesis is unveiled and the Epic phase begins. My current campaign is somewhere between player goals and random evils at the moment, but the true villain has started to form in my mind.
Nice thoughts! I think there's another dimension relevant to this matching between the GM's and campaign's types: how much the GM can commit to a campaign. As you said in the begginning, life sometimes get in the way and we may abandon that awesome story the group had been building. I've been favoring open campaings recently for this reason. We can enjoy great adventures in short spans and the GM can and should throw their best ideas ASAP while there's a low cost of abandoning the story after any one of those adventures. Also, if you eventually find yourself running a long term game you can always find a way to tie everything up and give it a nice conclusion: if you ran a series of loosely related adventures, you can conclude the story as an epic campaign but if you linked the adventures through PC's story developments, you can conclude it as a player campaign.
What I like to do (especially with new players) is to create an epic campaign (beforehand I talk to them about the basic structure to see if we are all on the same page) with fixed characters which can be swapped for a very good reason (death, growing apart from the group, achieving the main personal goal etc.) and then create oneshots within the same world which kind of overlap with the main story (just had a oneshot which played thousands of years before and the "main event" which broke the continent didn't happen yet and they as players met a character they knew from the main story). The oneshots can even sometimes tie in with the main story so that you might have a session where one player plays two characters which can be a lot of fun for the players imho. This approach does two things for me: players can try out different classes and characters and you can drastically change the style, alignment and setting of the game. For me, this prevented a certain fatigue with the players main characters because you can try out new stuff and experience something fresh but you are also happy to come back to your main character. This hybrid-model of the campaign imho takes out the main weaknesses of the epic campaign style both for the players as they get to try out new stuff and for me as a GM to get a break from the sometimes overwhelming main story. Communication though is - as always - key. Be open about it (it sounds so simple but it happens so fast that communication fails).
i'm an open gm. I've never been very good at linking plot points together and i've never really used the player backstories except in the few systems where the backstory has a mechanical function or unless i'm trying to give that player a personal nemesis. So most of my games are episodic and sometimes use the same villains but usually is just a different threat every week.
What if an Open world has links between adventures and Epic goals, villains of various natures (are they really villains?) and Players can explore however they want?
This video although consisting of stuff I thought I already knew actually gave me a revelation as to why I didn't enjoy the session I played in earlier this week. Thanks.
I think a good concept for a simulationist campaign comes from tabletop story of "the all guardsmen party". While i its certainly not a simulationist campaign, the start can tell a tale with a bit of work. Playing a game as the boots on the ground solders from disperate sections of a massive meat-grinder war as you struggle and die again and again can really tell its own story. I think both within the 40k framework and outside it you can make these stories about how soldier lives affect those around them. I would really suggest checking it out (plenty of TH-cam let's read videos on it) and i think you could easily see the potential there if your a fan of this channel.
I did hit that like button. You earned it again, Guy. Thank you for helping me to better understand my own habits and why my games all run like one shots. I wasn't aware there were so many accidental GMs either until I saw that poll you posted.
I am an additive DM, I generally allow my players to do what they want (with limitations), while also disregarding UA (I hate that play test shit), we generally use reasonable home brew for new things and we never take anything away (I will never change the base rules), instead I let my players know that they will be testing things and it’s prone to change if something I didn’t account for would come up. I find my style instills trusts in both party’s and it gives me a respectable relationship with my players.
I am running a "I'm a new DM and am stitching together a campaign in reaction to the crazy choices my characters have made" campaign. Our current campaign is "Ghosts of Saltmarsh flavored", with about 60% homebrew to fill in the gaps and move the PCs between modules.
Oooh character campaign focus is scary. I always seed and have missions and interactions merging due to character's backstory and work hard to make sure the PC feel and are part of the world in the midst of my hybrid open/epic campaign.
My DMing style of campaign is like a Frankenstein version of all four of those. I start the campaign with a big bad in mind, but rarely plan out passed the next few adventures in how the party gets there. This lets us go on crazy side-quests that bloom out of nowhere and try accomplishing some of the characters personal goals along the way.
I wouldn't describe my recent campaigns as "open", but it is functionally the same, a small adventure with decent stakes whether it be the fate of a city, the fate of an abandoned nation, the fate of a small ruin, etc. There's no specific path I'm leading my players to, but they are lead via suggestions by the NPCs they help or by the most obvious destination based on the direction of their movement so far. I try to not focus specifically on any player if I can, and having learned from my early DMing, I've gone away from central BBEGs for the most part. My main focus for my campaigns is going around a theme: a flying fortress at threat of crashing, a cult of dragon like creatures in a ruin, a mysterious murder at a lord's home, the like.
I was actively learning using your channel as my guide from the very beginning, so I have weaved my natural tendency to do player-focused campaigns with epic ones. It's all about linking it all together. Inclusion of characters and their personal stakes had increased their buy in. As for simulation, I'm not a person for numbers, however I am a programmer, so I believe that simulation can create a great story, given the right configuration. Dwarf Fortress had created histories using procedural generation. So I believe that an epic campaign can be ran inside a simulation-style campaign. It's less likely to personally weave into each PCs back story, it might not challenge PCs character flaws, but it can be truly epic, considering that anything can happen. Easy ways to beat the boss using his vulnerability, difficult enemies in a starting location, and many more things that players will be making stories of
Thank you Guy. This was exceptionally helpful for me to think about how I run, when my campaigns succeed and when they peter out, why they do so. I would note you didn't give a DM style for 'accidental' campaign, which I would consider a GM who relies heavily on extemporaneous talents and reacts to the others at table. Regarding simulationist play, your channel is and always has been about narrative play wherein the players (via the PC personas) descriptively solve situations and (at least theoretically) the clatter of dice could never be heard. Simulationist play focuses on how the players use the rules-defined abilities of the PCs to outwit the rules-defined abilities of the NPCs with a fortune mechanic to mix things up. To compare the two is to carefully judge between a penguin and a giraffe. Thanks again and I look forward to more great content.
I've been running a player based game where the story is actually based on the GAPS in my player's backstories. They think they're just going to a far away city to make a guild but the Artificer is the decedent of the god of technology, and the Fighter's family abandoned him years ago so nobody would realize he holds one of the 5 fallen angel souls inside of him. Instead of basing the campaign on what they said in their backstories, I based it on what they didn't say and it's been going amazing for several months now.
Enjoyable and informative. I tend to run a hybrid of sorts. My campaigns start as open until my players reach a certain level and then I begin introducing the BIG BAD and move into an epic campaign. It did take practice to figure out the balance and knowing when the players are ready to move on. Just like different DMs there are different players and play styles. Great content.
My current campaign touched on almost all of these. The DM at the FLGS that I'd been playing at had a job change after 2-3 months. I hadn't played ANY D&D since 2e in the early 90s, and had played 5e ONLY at the store......but I took over as DM. I got this! It's only three players! Did it as "level zero" (using Treasure Hunt from 1e). A couple of weeks at it was good. Added one player. Then two. One backed out, but two other new ones came that week. One came back, one didn't, but two more joined again. I was at like 8 or 9 or something at that point. Eventually it ballooned to like 12 or 13. People Asked Questions and so of course I Gave Them Answers. Then, they wanted to find out How Are Things Connected? This caused my brain to produce more answers, causing more questions. A happy go-lucky accidental game need some structure...so I started coming up with a BBEG, a reason Why They Were Here, and had to start playing the long game. After almost a year of that chaos, the group split, and I was down to 7-8 really core players who were great. We moved it to my house, and kept playing. A couple personal issues happened, and we lost one player. Then, we took a break twice (once for my health ) and someone DM'd Dragonheist, and another time someone DMd Curse of Strahd during another player's personal Stuff. The lost player and the player with personal issues were times I made the campaign around the player for a bit. You know, give it some focus, some pull. And then right at the point when the spotlight got on them and my next SEVERAL sessions were wrapped around them...they had to pull back (or leave the table completely). Never again. No big story arcs like that for me. Now, here we are, a long way from fall of 2016. The former level 0 players are now level 12. They are about a couple months in real time sessions from getting their spelljamming ship that I initially promised they'd be IN SPACE by 11 or 12. I have a really solid BBEG fight in mind for when they hit 20ish...and it's gonna be brutal. Now, I just have to STOP myself from planning the campaign after this, it'll all be OK.
I run simulationist campaigns for Aquelarre, a TTRPG that attempts to simulate a historical Iberia where all myths are true. The point is that the world exists wether the players want or not, but they influence it. Even if they do not interact with an NPC, it still does stuff. For instance, they met a starving carpenter, who they took in for the journey to the nearest town, leaving him very grateful. Some months later, on that town, there were troubles caused by gnomes, a type of demon able to manipulate one cubic metre of dirt or stone at 120km/h (it was the fault of one of the PCs for messing an important roll), and he saw his saviours slay the foul creatures with naught but their wits, one of the PCs lost an eye, another an arm, the third became a tetraplegic, and the fourth caught leprosy. Inspired by such bravery, he started carving wooden sculptures of the heroes, and selling them for very little margin, but rolled so many natural 1s (d100 system, so crits) that he became soooo rich. The following year, when they came back to the town, they found out there was a festival on their honour, and a legend made of them. That carpenter was now the richest man in town, there were pilgrims, everyone wanted to see the sculptures and relics of the gnome mummies, as well as the items the heroes used. So after years of journeys, maimed, broken and shattered, the characters settled down on the town, to peacefully live the rest of their days. (The campaign lasted 8 more sessions since they loved the politics of their town, and they wanted to become hidalgos). The point is, by creating and living the world, you're not forcing an objective, they create their own. You don't design buildings to be a place where adventurers go and have fun, you put yourself in the mind of the architect. Rather than go "I need more rooms, with more baddies", you go "where would the guard sleep? what do they do during the day?" and since the system has random characterization, each NPC is different. Maybe Guard#3 is called Roderico, has a wife with two lovely kids, but has a bit of a stutter that gives him a fair bit of insecurity. Maybe Guard#2 is shortsighted due to his age, so instead of a sling he charges with a pavís. Maybe Guard#1 is an unlucky man who forgot his club at home, so he'll use other stuff around. Etc. It's a world where the next adventurer group the players make, can live after the first group retires. Since it takes weeks to heal, timeskips are natural, so they see the world change. The first campaign we did, was set in 1045, we're now on 1365, we still track the family of the first group, and cared deeply when the black plague hit them that hard. It's an inmersive joy.
I'm running an Epic campaign with bits of Player campaign sprinkled in. Of course, since the entire party didn't know each other, it started out as an Epic campaign, but I made sure to lay the groundwork religiously each session, then BAM everything that happened so far? IT'S ALL CONNECTED TO THE CHARACTERS SOMEHOW.
Watching this video, I'm realizing that my campaigns tend to be a mix of these different styles. It's not an equal mix of course, probably 50% epic, 25% player, 15% open, and 10% accidental. I definitely agree that each one of them has its advantages, and I try to employ elements of each because I think it makes for a fuller and more fun campaign. The epic aspect is the most satisfying part for me as the DM, but the player's backstories and personalities have factored strongly in the story and have changed its course on many occasions. I also lightly flesh out areas of the world that are outside of the story's bounds in case they want to explore in a more open-world type of adventure (however I've noticed that this is something they seldom do, they seem to prefer following the story line). And then the accidental aspect seems to me as more of the in-the-moment improvisation when the players hit you with something unexpected. Thanks for this video, it has helped clarify for me how to make a better campaign for everyone involved.
My players have a strong preference for open campaigns. I've run multiple epic campaigns, and the feedback partway in is always that they want something more like an open campaign. Even short epic campaigns (think 5-10 sessions) tend to fizzle out, with one adventure ending and the PCs wanting to jump ship rather than pursue the next lead. The dwarf nail salon hit home.
My campaign is almost a player campaign, except I have tied all their backstories to a single big bad, but its also pretty open as I am building it as we go. The only thing I really plan ahead is the npcs in the town they will soon be in. I pay attention as we play so that I know when the moment is right to turn their world upsidedown. My players are very roleplay heavy and are very happy to play several games in a row without any fights, so haveing many npcs is the core if my game. I have done a lot of research on making a story as we go, but having it feel like it was always meant to be. I think the key is to know the goals of your NPCs and your players. Lots of communication, and being open. My players know they can attempt nearly anything, but there are consequences. Good and bad, and they are currently getting the joy of experienceing a new city with a strange culture, with the goal of getting the underground of that city open to fencing for a pirate friend of the party. They have very little info right now and will have to find that information through interacting with the npcs, but last game everyone told me how excited they were for the next game, and how much they liked Coffee the tiefling Coffee shop owner. (Wich clues me in to give him more than surface goals and troubles, maybe even have one of my baddies come after him, that the party met but didn't kill yet.)
*Thanks for watching!* Let us know what Campaign and GM you are in the comments below!
Check out FarSight Sci-Fi RPG here, definitely one to consider for your collection: lightfishgames.altervista.org/
Thanks again for the video Guy! I have a video suggestion for you: How to make things personnal for the PC? How do you evoke emotions, how do you intensify their motivation, their hate for the BBEG or the importance an adventure has to them? I want to take my epic campaign and make it also personnal for the PCs to enhance the experience, and erase that feeling of railroading. I want the epic campaign to feel as a personal tale for any PC that was played in any epic campaign. Would be even more epic in my opinion.
You say you have a great creative mind for epic campaigns, you love playing it because you're good at it. Remember, we can put the events and NPCs and everything that structures the epic campaign anywhere you like, So let the players drive the story and do the things they want to do, and revolve those epic events in a player campaign as seemingly "random events" from the players actions. so basically Epic over arching campaign (players can't know this) / Player Campaign mix! You can do it!
For a simulationist campaign, I would say bad idea on doing it as one of the base level ones like your video discusses here. I would more consider it an idea for on the list of styles in an open campaign.
Another great video! After watching videos for a year I finally ran my first campaign a couple days ago, and it was amazing! This video is great because my style differs from my husband's, but I couldn't explain how before. He's an epic storyteller with factions and intrigue, but I am more player centric. I don't feel original enough to design this epic tale, but I can hopefully do some fun monster of the month adventures with sprinklings of pc growth. I guess I want my campaign to have a strong finish character by character rather than a climactic ending. And if a BBEG emerges somewhere along the way, great!
I think I would be more interested in playing a personal player campaign, but running one (if I ever get the confidence to do so, and have the dedicated time to run one) I would go for epic campaign as I can see big cinematic story worlds in my head.
"My grandmother throws amazing bachelor parties" sounds like a sleeper agebt activation phrase.
Or the pass phrase to get in to a 1930s speakeasy.
I think you missed one.
"world building campaign"
the characters explore the territory and thus the players learn about the world. after a dozen stories, the players create new characters and enter an established world. the previous characters may be npc's or even used again. each time the characters interact in the world, the world expands. it's very rewarding for all involved to see the game world grow due to the players exploring and adventuring.
yes! I'm currently working on a Ravnica project with that in mind!
Yes that's how my Eberron campaign is. Exactly. And it's not exclusive you can have a mix of the other types.
I've been thinking to use Fiasco for this - populating the game world with juicy NPC villains, ones who (the same!) players will know inside out when dealing with them later in the main campaign. Never thought to spend more than a oneshot for that.
Seems to me this would be a version of an Open campaign. If you are simply exploring then your campaign, session to session, would be very flexible and you would have a multitude of choices in where you go and what you do as a player.
@Darren - I would agree, however the process of world building involves developing the npc's, politics and antagonists to the empire(s) the characters are interacting with. this is far more indepth than simply running around and seeing what the characters can find that Interests them.
I would cally campaign an "evolving campaign". It's kind of similar to an open campaign, but all the smaller story arcs connect to each other amd in the end move towards a singular conclusion and probably a singular BBEG. But neither I nor the players know the full story when it started. It just evolves over time.
"make it look like an accident" campaign
When a oneshot evolves into accidental evolves into open evolves into character campaign :D
I'm currently running a campaign like that too. Where every choice matters, as such they have defeated multiple BBEG's, killed evil gods that stood in their way. There is a world ending evil at the end of the campaign that the players are actively trying to keep sealed away. Started the campaign January of 2020, the players didn't want the campaign to end so they set up a guard over the seals and are running around trying to turn the world into a utopia. So the ball is in their court as when they want the campaign to end. Sorry for the rambling reply. ^_^
It is very possible to have a campaign that blends all.
This is how I run it, an overarching story with background details that hint towards a narrative, but the individual adventures are only loosely leading toward it until the end.
I kinda feel like the ideal campaign is kind of all of these, an epic over arching story set in an open sandbox that ties in the players histories. Like I am aiming for an open campaign that is character driven and includes a big bad at the end. But who that big bad is up to who the characters gravitate too.
Was about to comment this.
I find the easiest way to make a campaign like this is to give the PCs a sort of hit list of multiple BBEGs that they will need to defeat all of in order to accomplish their goal. Order doesn’t matter of course.
Exactly this. If you are not incorporating all of these things together it is going to be a bad time and players will be bored just following any single type.
Like he said epic is railroad and linear and players will want a break from this singular pursuit all about thwarting the BBEG.
Also they will be bored without any real goal to strive for in the future So having a over all story arc re appearing from time to time pointing them toward something is a must also.
And for the love of god you better include player driven and backstory throughout your entire campaign.
It doesn't have to be about them all the time because they will also get bored or feel pressured.
Also you don't have to tie everything together, that will give you a headache and possibly a heartache if it all falls apart.
Leave some unanswered questions and loose ends as you go this will allow you to tie or not tie things together.
A Okay DM follows a single campaign arc. This DM you will join because your bored and have nothing else to do.
A Good DM follows 2 of these campaign arcs This DM you would join again even if you have other things to do.
A Great DM follows all of these arcs. This is a DM you will be asking them when they will be running something again.
So, critical role
Lol
"I like big campaigns, and I cannot lie."
Thats because itty bitty campaigns get you sprung
"and you other players can't deny, when a orc walks in with an itty bitty wraith and a rondel in your face..."
Hahahahaha!
I like campaigns and i cannot like, the adventures can't deny, when the gm walks in with a decorated case and throws character sheets in your face you get SPRUNG. Cause you notice that case was stuffed, deep in the dm guide they're glaring, the other players can't stop staring OH DEE EMM I wanna roll with ya, and hear your scripture. The npcs tried to warn me but that campaign you runs got me so horny.
"My brother also likes big campaigns, and cannot tell the truth. Solve our riddle to open the door."
I run Character-driven epic campaigns. I take their backgrounds and develop an epic campaign that pulls in the stories they give me at creation.
I adore this approach and also favor it myself.
It's also possible to add a little bit of open campaign flavor if you have an arc where the goals can be done in different orders (kinda like most BioWare RPGs), or you can add little breather episodes here and there that may not tie directly into the either the players' arcs or the main plot of the epic campaign, but may earn them something useful to see those things through, like a powerful weapon or a base of operations.
I wish I would find a GM like that :0
I do this too. Some storylines will happen along the way, after need or development, and some will be an unrelated bad guy or monster - but the overarching arch is based on the player backgrounds or ambitions.
@@TheKansleren I try to be "a fan of my players" so I don't clown on them for crit fails. What I have been known to do recently is that sometimes a crit fail will reveal a new villain or storyline. It often happens with a psionic character that pulls unwanted attention with her telepathy.
@@storytellersteerpike4452 i cant remember who i got this from. But i have my players describe how they fail and give them inspiration when they roll a 1
I've always been fond of the X-files approach, where some adventures are one offs, but some significant number of adventures are geared toward learning of/dealing with the "big bad". This gives a certain amount of freedom to either experiment with types of adventures or to buy time when working on the details of what the "big bad" is up to next :)
I would say that I generally run epic campaigns, but I also like to dig into the player's backstories and narratives to weave them into the game as well.
I run my games similarly to games like breath of the wild or skyrim. There is an open campaign to play around in with an epic campaign in the background. The open campaign is used to strengthen the players via sidequests and arcs so that they can take on the epic campaign.
My friends have trouble doing one-shots. They turn from one-shots to adventures to campaigns, but the DM tends to link things up. They just thought we would get trough it faster. We spend the first couple of scenes just RPing between the players and slowly crawl through his amazing story.
Thx HTBAGM/Guy
My friends do the opposite... They take my plans for a campaign and they turn into a single brief adventure :(
My favorite type of campaign is a combination of thr first three. Think of it like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or any of those types of shows. Some episodes are "lore" episodes and progress the plot, but a good portion of them are just "monster of the week" episodes and some of the episodes explore the main characters more. You can do similar things in a campaign where some adventures are just random adventures the party is going on for rewards or other reasons, some adventures end up forwarding the plot, and sometimes the pcs have to face a rival from their backstory. Sometimes these adventures appear to be one kind of adventure, but are revealed to be another kind by the end. Doing a campaign like this is a lot of work bc it requires you to be at least decent at being all the types of gm, but it covers most of the weaknesses of the individual styles
My style of GMing is usually a hybrid between Epic and Character campaigns, usually with an emphasis on Epic elements. My last campaign was almost a Textbook Epic campaign, and everyone (including me) loved the ending, and some players cried tears of joy at the end. It was comparable to my Magnum Opus, D&D wise.
I ran a few adventures with my friends using The Strange, where every adventure is a different mission given by their boss (they work for an organization called The Estate). Each mission is disconnected from the others but some NPCs can reappear from time to time. I feel that this is the best way to run this RPG system and I've been having a blast so far. The fact that every adventure can take place in a different world definitely helps in making each of them feel more unique. I don't know if it fits the mold for Open Campaign or Accidental Campaign though, I have a hard time distinguishing the two.
I've been running a Player Campaign with Epic sprinkles for over 2 years now. Can confirm: tears at the game table are not uncommon.
Me and my table sometimes still get bad at our DM for killing the sorceress's cat years ago
I get you with the tears. One of our players plays a naive, big, dumb lug (with often surprising insights) but he tells these daft stories about mythical creatures that are really funny, until you read between the lines, and you realise it's about death and abuse the character lived through as a child and you just want to give the character a huge hug.
@@paulkemp8520 Woah I LOVE that!
I think TTRPGs can be very therapeutic for processing our feelings or examining how we react to the world around us, and it seems like this character is the embodiment of that philosophy.
@Luke McGovern I think it primarily depends on the group, and I'm fortunate enough to have a wonderfully tight knit group of friends as my players.
But as for what the DM can control? I would say:
- Establish a judgment free zone where players are really free to be vulnerable.
- Run a player focused campaign, as described here. My "Epic sprinkles" was when they realized that the overarching BBEG was responsible for tragedies in all their backstories. So be Epic, but make it personal.
- Encourage players to invest in your world. Let them have S/Os, get married, buy land. I'll draw art of their characters, and sometimes commission other artists to as well as a surprise!
At that point? They're in deep. Once an ethical delimma comes up, or their NPC lover drops to 0 HP in combat, you have players on the edge of tears and willing to sacrifice life and limb.
The only downside: my group of four PCs travel in a group of ELEVEN once you count the NPCs they brought along. So... I hope you have a lot of different voices prepared.
@@BigCowProductions ok, Im not sure how much it'll help, but the one I remember best came about when an NPC was telling us some gold was going missing. Muk says, "ah, sounds like a gold snaffler, nasty buisyness that", and we are like, "nah, it sounds like embezzelment, whats a gold snaffler anyway?". So Muk says "my family would work hard in the tribe all year, and would squirrell away all the gold we could in a secret place. Sometimes the gold snaffler would come and eat all out gold and kiddnap me dad. He could be missing for weeks but eventually he would come home. Strange thing is he would have new clothes, and stink of booze and perfume, strange thing that".
Sorry its the only one I remember
I'd love to see a colab between Guy and Johnny Chiodini from dicebreaker! See how they differ in their methodologies and stuff.
I would love to see that too, as long as they are both up for it.
On the simulationist thing, if you have the players for that you'll know. The moment you mention the difference in tax codes from location to location, or why the war has ravaged the economy and not bolstered it. You'll confirm this when they start working out how to abuse this by buying armor in one town for dirt cheap then upping the price as they get near the warzones or places which have crippled logistics chains.
I have a close friend like this and I'm that guy as well... our other DM who does Epic campaigns narrows his eyes at us in ways we can feel when we start swindling NPCs.
I've just started GMing! I have an epic campaign in the plot, but at session zero, learning the characters the players made, I realised I wanted to know more of their backstories and weave them into the plot.
Something you can do for this then is play it as a Player campaign for a few levels, then through those sessions note what makes the characters tick. After those first levels you can slowly work in the BBEG and transition in to an Epic campaign with Player elements. Not only can this help you players figure out their own characters, but the BBEG can be more organic and realistic in their motivations against the party. This also makes it possible for the BBEG and any associated lieutenants to have knowledge of the party and what makes them tick.
A good option is make an epic campaign, but every 3 or 4 sessions, depending on player count and other stuff, have a player orientated session. This way the characters get sessions where everyone is equally the main character, but then they also get ones where they are the side character and ones where they are the only main character. And if you can find a way to make their stories progress the whole plot that's even better. I played in one group where the GM was talking about one time a month having a bonus session with only half the players. And have them do a smaller story that affects them more specifically. It never happened because other things. Point being there are definitely good options and ways to combine the different styles.
In the intro, for a brief moment, when he said "I love campaigns and I cannot lie"... I thought he'd do a "Baby got back" parody
I've been running an accidental simulated open-epic-player campaign for years now.
Over the years they built their own guild, defeated a god, and traveled through time while playing as the bad guys.
Each new playgroup added to the story, some joining the guild, some going on their own way, but all painting the blank canvas I gave them.
They created a masterpiece.
that´s the same style I want to make. In my group we have two DMs for two campaigns (we both are new and so we can help each other and have breaks to plan ahead. I my Campaign will start I think Mai or June. at first the will the experience the emergency of all the Beastfolk-races (pretty much all Races which are part animal z.B Tabaxi, Lizardfolk.... except Dragonborn they have their own story) and after that I will see how they formed the world.
@@asrenshadowmoon9241 Good luck with it.
I hope your players also paint a masterpiece.
"Open" reminds me of the style that OxVenture uses.
definitely! It was an accidental campaign in the beginning, but it's definitely turned in "open" now.
Im trying to do an Epic campaign, but as a long time overseer of DnD at gamestores, I'm used to Open.
One weakness when it comes to the Player campaign, the GM needs to have good character players.
Simulationist campaign works very well for one particular scenario - 1. You have a group of players who are experienced in and thoroughly invested in your world (either because you've run a consistent world for a really long time or you're running a widely known world with few changes from established canon) 2. You've demonstrated a rigid adherence to the mechanics of your given game system so that the players can be confident that if they perform X action, Y result will occur. When this occurs, you get a group of players who act in the best interest of their characters working within a framed system to create some pretty amazing stories. If I'm being honest, it's my preferred playstyle, but It is EXTREMELY difficult. As a GM, you need to have so thoroughly developed the world that the players interact with that it is capable of reacting organically to both what the players do and what they don't do, often with little warning as to what that might be because they aren't following your plan. Nice players will give you some advance warning as to what their plan is. As players, you need to know the ins and outs of the system almost as well as the GM does, because the GM in this style will not hold your hand as you push against his NPCs. If your technical improv isn't up to snuff, it'll snatch immersion away almost instantly.
I love it, it's absolutely incredible when it works, but it's hard to pull off and easy to screw up.
"I ... love ... campaigns and I can not lie, D&D players can't deny, when a DM walks in with a gaming case and mean grin on their face we have ... fun."
Thanks for the outlet.
I'll see myself out.
Glad to know I'm not only one who thought this.
Dammit, you beat me to it. Well played, sir!
please finish it 👍
I love campaigns and I cannot lie.
You other DM's can't deny.
When there's a tear in your eye,
remembering all who died,
and the epic ballads the late bard has sung
I feel like, as the accidental campaign, many kinds evolve into eachother. I had an epic campaign planned which then turned into a player focus game as we went on and I found it was more interesting for my group when I involved their pasts.
This channel is so good that I take notes while watching
i only ever made player campaigns, and i really liked how you described the problems i had every single time, players swiching caracter or not coming during their caracter arc
This was interesting. I actually typically run hybrids of these various campaigns and have run into just the various strengths and weaknesses Guy describes:
My first campaign (in my modern, post Eighties/Nineties gaming career, which kicked off in 2016) was a Starfinder campaign. It was initially *disguised* as an open campaign and the first few adventures seemed episodic, but I had elicited detailed backstories from all my players and within the structure of the *epic* campaign that I had actually planned, we had *player-focused* adventures in which everyone got a shot at the spotlight. Once we reached a conclusion to my originally-planned epic arc, it then became an *accidental campaign* b/c we wound up deciding to play up to level 20 (fortunately, I had seeded a backup BBEG for just this eventuality in the earlier adventures).
That campaign never felt too railroad-y b/c there was enough "play," enough give-and-take in the narrative and enough episodic interludes, to ensure that they got to do other stuff than just battle the BBEG. We did have players decide to switch characters, but it never felt like that derailed anything b/c player-focused adventure was only part of the general menu and no *one* character was ever such a focus that their loss could derail the whole campaign. It was built to feel at points like "open" adventure but never so open that our sense of purpose fell out, and their "open" adventures inhabited enough of a structure that they could see and feel the impact they were making on the world from one arc to the next. And the epic arcs delivered b/c they had enough breaks from the bigger arc that returning to it always felt fresh and urgent.
Not all of these things paid off equally, and it was different for different players. Some players really were there for the player-focused arcs and appreciated the epic inasmuch as it touched on that arc, but occasionally found the epic-ness to become a grind. Some players were really *not at all* there for the player-focused stuff but just wanted to be part of an epic narrative, and no-sold attempts to involve them in their own adventures. Some players tried their best to sell the player-focused stuff but it made them anxious, and they were really more at home in any of the other modes. Some of them were just happy to Do Cool Shit no matter what the adventure mode was. On average, I think it worked out.
I'm trying on a similar balance of elements in my follow-up campaign, but it has a much more specific "epic" rebels-taking-down-a-tyranny arc (and also a simultaneously scarier and more nebulous "there's-also-this-weird-alien-threat" arc akin to the White Walkers in Game of Thrones or, more accurately, the Consult in the Prince of Nothing and Thousandfold Thought books by R. Scott Bakker). The balance of elements still seems to be working okay and I have a better sense of who is into what (and some of the players have grown in confidence and are trying new things, which is always fun). I'm only struggling with one player/character, whose arc revolves entirely around Revenge for His Hometown Overrun By the Tyranny that the shape of party choices in the larger arc has kind of neglected. That's a concern, and there is definitely going to be no "accidental" element this time around -- we'll be lucky to get through all the story road we need to traverse in 20 levels -- but otherwise balancing a few campaign types against each other in a larger framework is still working for me.
I would argue that this parallels the way stories in television have evolved. A lot of them mix epic narratives, short-arc and episodic storytelling, "open" narratives and character-driven stories in just this way. That's actually where the idea came from for me. Be interesting to hear Guy's perspective on that.
The last three minutes of this video was worth the price of admission. This is why you are a top-tier professional in field.
The current campaign I'm running (currently level 3, almost 4) is an open campaign that I plan to have slowly build up to being an epic campaign. So during the lower levels they are exploring the world like a sandbox learning more and more about the setting until the big bad becomes the main focus of the campaign (plan on having that occur around level 7-9). I set up 4 different secondary big bads for them to discover and deal with in the meantime. Surprisingly they already dealt with one without even realizing it. They are current searching for the one they already killed and I can't wait to tell them that they killed him a dozen sessions ago lol
as someone who tends to make a mix of epic and player campaigns, can attest to the weaknesses. I had one that had a huuuge overarching story that needed all of the PC's to work and then one of them left for good and the game died two sessions in. _Two._ The one campaing I'm running right now is an open one, simply because I don't have a big bad in mind yet. Sure I have the PC's personal boogeymen up my sleeve and ideas for personal adventures, but no end goal.
I'm currently running a player campaign. One of the bigger difficulties is connecting character goals into something all players will be interested in. So I tend to connect the dots and always ask the players for their long and short term goals. If we're working on a long-term goal of one of the characters, I always try to make sure to give attention to short-term plans of others, so that no one loses interest. I have absolutely awesome players who give me great opportunities to connect their backstories. Example? We need to find an npc from character A backstory. To do that, we visit character B home island since the head of the state there is from the same guild as character A. And then in turns out that character C has relatives there. On the way there we meet long lost father of character D. When I plan the campaign I feel more like solving a puzzle than doing something from scratch, since my awesome players always give me some source material in form of their backstories. And if a player decides to switch characters, I have a guarantee that they will still be interested in finishing the current quest, because all of the stories are connected in one way or another.
My current gm is pretty great at making an epic campaign feel like a player campaign. He sprinkles in quests for our characters stories to progress all the while giving us a fantastic bbg at the same time
Just learned that my campaign i am running is a mixture of the first three types in this video, the players stories are woven into the epic campaign, with the occasional stand alone adventure thrown into it - never thought about it until i saw this video - thanks! :-)
For us this campaign format works best, one year in it, maybe another to go.
Absolutely the epic. I love tying everything together and plotting behind the curtain what the adversaries will do in response to the player's actions.
How about a mix of open and epic? Each week is a different baddy but you leave threads which lead to a grander narrative, maybe the first bad guy they beat comes back again more powerful then ever. Maybe the players will begin to notice that there is a wider conspiracy afoot!
That’s my favorite kind. The players go from quest to adventure solving all kinds of different problems, but they eventually connect the dots and realize that behind it all is a much greater evil threatening the world.
That describes tv better than his example
Sounds like the majority of anime. Introduce the characters/world setting with a monster of the week. Keep that going until around 1/2 through when a new, really big bad shows up. The final act is tying all of the threads together and the final resolution.
I definitely run Epic campaigns with Player elements to it. One of my favorite things during a campaign is to subtly place hooks in to a character without them realizing I have done so, then setting the hook suddenly with a couple well placed descriptions. I get a variety of reactions ranging from wide eyes and mouth covering to a player actually realizing the significance of what I am saying and blurting out, “Oh, shit. No. Nope”, to the occasional tear.
Yes when my entire family was murdered, I was VERY much motivated to become an orphan.
My husband is running a solo game for me, and it's been so much fun! Definitely a character game. We've had in depth talks about her back story. ❤️
One challenge I've found, having been running an "open" episodic campaign lately, is that there are minimal excuses available to reuse ideas/enemies. When I'm feeling creatively energetic it's great, because I get to do wild new stuff every episode, but when I don't have as much time or energy, it can be a little difficult.
My current campaign is a hybrid of the first three. Player focuses that bleed into an epic storyline and an open adventure that allows them to build thier personality and defines the setting that lets them understand the world and the epic setting.
The best campaigns I've been part of have been some combination of "player" and either "epic" or "open". We can weave in player stories along the way, or even as part of the central story in most campaigns.
What about a world/exploration campaign. Where the main focus is having the players slowly learn more about the world. Almost like the main character is the world itself? What you categorize this as? It seems like that's how many OSR games are played or styled after
I like to create campaigns where the world has problems and and secrets and let the players choose what they want to do with this information. That way even I don't know what's going to happen
I enjoyed the video a lot, thanks!
I'm currently running a "simulation" campaign where the party owns a company set to colonize a "new world". Session one began with them setting sail, and we've had seven sessions so far filled with ocean exploration. I ran this by creating an over-arching world, kind of like how you described making an epic campaign, but instead of one BBEG, there are numerous factions with their own motivations. Then I let the players have at it!
Something that's really helped is to create "epic" style villains for each faction (a leader and their captains for example).
The party finally landed last session, and I'm planning on running the mainland more or less as a hex crawl (6 miles per hex). I've created encounter tables for each of the faction territories to make them feel unique, and seeded each hex with at least one hook (a cave, ruins, etc.).
I think that a 'Simulationist' campaign would fall under the 'Accidental' campaign umbrella. The best I could link it to would be purely open world video games like Sim City or the like ... 'open world' games like Far Cry still have a narrative thread and even games like Surviving Mars have mission arcs or overall goals. I've never played a 'Simulationist' campaign (in either role) but I think it would be fascinating ... it would be heavily player driven, but not like the 'Player' campaign, but instead broader themes like 'I want to be an adventurer' and they set goals for themselves during the game, like 'this is a nice valley, what do we need to do to make it into a nice place to have a cottage?'
My campaign has evolved since it began last year.
It started as an accidental campaign meant to be a one-shot. We grew attached to the characters and settings and decided to continue in this world.
I wanted to build on one character's backstory, so that features significantly, but it also evolved from my original villain towards an epic campaign.
I also threw in some random ideas for adventures that I had that only retrospectively tied in with the main story.
Sometimes even one of the other players is DMing another story set in the same world and everything is allowed in terms of plot direction.
So there you go, an accidental player-focused open epic campaign 😁
I'm definitely an Open Campaign GM. I also play with Noobs so I help them with their backgrounds to nudge them in derailing my campaign! I could never run an Epic Campaign but I can give the players epic moments, and not just epic combats. I like the idea of a PC campaign and the players do have their own goals - then there must come a Choice - Reveal a Personal Secret, Leave the Party, Stay with the Party or Give up your goals at let Fate (the dice) take control. NO - I like my OC - A Broad Goal that the PCs can move in and out of with a potential Final Show with a host of different challenges on the way, some personal side quests, different guilds to join, World & Local events, plot twists, and as entertaining as possible. Thanks for this vid, enjoyed it all.
I am currently planning a large scale campaign that would mostly align with your "open" style, but also will include elements of "epic" and "player". My approach is to plan out the world and lots of plot hooks and give the players a lot of agency in choosing what to do and how to do it, shaping what will become the story. It will be made with the party in mind, so there will be lots of points made to involve character backstories, promote growth, test flaws and let them shine.
I tend to run epic campaigns, but I mix in the player campaign aspect of it by focusing on PC's goals and endeavors throughout the epic campaign. Everyone gets their time in the spotlight!
What about "Living World" Campaigns? A Series of mini campaigns (3-4 sessions) or a handful of one shots that develop the common world that your players play in. Each story takes place in a different part of the world, where the players help sculpt its history, customs, and legends. This is where the Setting is the star of the story.
That moment when every time he describes a type of campaign you go "oh so I think I'm DM'ing that kind? No wait, maybe that one?!"
I love running the transitional mixer campaign: a blend of all four. An open campaign that has an epic campaign that gradually unfolds as a slow burn sub-plot before exploding into a final arc. The campaign itself is largely structured around the individual stakes and goals of the players with their personal arcs being resolved along the way. After the final arc resolves the campaign continues on as a free-form sandbox where the players get to traverse the planes and explore the endless horizon. We've managed to run several games like this and have even had games that ran for years on this structure. It's really good for long-form games but involves a lot of cooperation between all people involved. Lone wolves don't do too well in these sort of games.
As far as playing (which I never will ever again) all four are really fun. I've had amazing experiences will all four of these types of campaigns. You break down the pros and cons of all four styles really well here! This was very useful in giving me some more perspective on how I might want to focus and structure my games in the future.
I'm an Epic/Player GM. My campaign itself is an Epic, but I weave player backstories into the campaign itself and into arcs within the overarching campaign to give each player the focus for 3-8 sessions. My players love it and so do I. It's a TON of work to pull it all together, but it's an absolute blast when it all comes to fruition with each arc. Lots of dopamine hits lol.
We've been playing for about 10 years in an open campaign setting, but then we integrate smaller campaigns dmed by different members of our group (because like this, everyone can play once in a while which is only fair if no one wants to be the forever-dm). The sub-campaigns normally tend to be epic, but at a non-world-threatening level. As an example: we are currently trying to get rid of a probably-mongol-inspired ork army north our castle that wants tributes every month...
We are using the caste we got as a home base and the currently-unused PCs are busy repairing the castle and turning the village into a metropolis. This itself also kind of is a campaign. First 30min. of a meeting is catching up with one another and deciding what will be built in the village. Maybe the farm that was burnt down by the orcs or a new storage building for the tributes... yeay...
I can really recommend this kind of format for groups in which everybody wants to play. If you got a dm that only wants to dm - great! Never let go of him/her/them! But don't condemn someone who wants to play too to only dming please. Also, this system enables to swap the DM if the current one is having a rough time in real-life and doesn't have the time to prep at the moment. He either finishes his sub-campaign or delegates elements of it to the new DM.
One of my longer campaigns, about 4 years, mostly every two weeks to monthly, started out intending an epic campaign but evolved into more of a mix of character driven & open because my big bad was ill conceived and remote and they revelled in picaresque adventures that were their own ideas. Sometimes adventures came out of their plans, sometimes I started an idea and ran with it. Lots of memorable stuff, but eventually died to group composition losses as people moved, broke up, etc.
I've been running a sandbox game for a few years now, and referring to it as a "campaign" even though I'm not sure it qualifies as one. The characters are free to roam within the setting (a large province populated by an ever-growing cast of NPCs and factions, with a bigger world beyond the borders waiting to be explored someday) and can follow whatever adventure hooks they like; BUT there's an evil world-ending slow-burn plot going on in the background and many of the adventures and mini-quests they've undergone have led them to uncover parts of it. There's a BBEG behind it all, even though they don't know that yet, and as they continue to roam they'll get ever-closer to figuring out who they are and what they're up to. Sometimes I'll nudge the party in the direction of one of these leads, but mostly I'm happy to let them figure it all out at their own pace, and have all kinds of random fun in the meantime.
So is that a "campaign", or am I misusing the term?
in a group i played several years with we were having an open campaign, but we took turns GMing after every adventure (but the overall group of player characters basically stayed the same). overall i can recommend to try out this approach, it has some really great benefits:
- everyone has different ideas, styles and narrative focus points etc., so as a result, everyone makes different adventures. so from a player perspective it was really cool to experience all these different kinds of creative choices and every adventure was vastly different from the one before.
- from a GM perspective you have a lot of time in between two times you are running an adventure. this means less work/stress to prepare and a lot more time to be inspired, collect ideas and fluff material.
- it means everyone takes both roles. from my experience i became a better (role-)player by GMing and became a better GM by seeing things from a player perspective regularly enough. also, everyone tends to be more on the same page, i think it just feels more collaborative overall (though maybe i was just lucky with the group).
- it is a great chance for players to try out the role as GM if they haven't before.
- if someone wants to change their character mid-campaign, they can conveniently do so while GMing themselves: they are in complete control of what happens to the old character and they can introduce their new character in a memorable way that ties into their current adventure. e.g. one time a GM had his own player character being kidnapped and it was unclear whether he considered replacing that character with a new one or not. don't make it too wild though: as you know players can easily foil your initial plan e.g. you don't want your character to accidentally die during the adventure; that never happened to us though
potential downsides and how to address them:
- the group of player characters is constantly changing a bit which might seem a bit weird -> not really a problem in practice from my experience. there are many ways to deal with it e.g. just make up some random excuse why they are sometimes not in the party (see above) or have the GM play them as NPC (its their character after all) but then remember to actually treat it like a NPC and not steal spotlight etc.
- might have been the style of the group as a whole but nobody wanted to be "that guy who killed that character" while GMing -> just bring up the topic beforehand to clarify expectations. this also goes for any impactful permanent changes to the characters and the policy of how to hand out new magic items. for us it was not an issue but i believe it should be discussed in the group.
- a few times people were not prepared at all -> that is a possible consequence of having people GM that don't commit to it as much as "full time GMs" so consider adding the possibility for people to switch their next turn with one of the other group members. and of course people have to be open about taking the role in general, don't force it on them. e.g. if 4 out of 5 people take turns as GM and the 5th is always taking the role of a player character then that should not be an issue.
- adventures vary in length: different GMs have different pacing etc. -> i recommend that individual adventures should strive for 1 session and may take up to 2 depending on how things are developing. any longer than that and it possibly starts to feel like an actual campaign. depending on the group it might not be a problem but it can feel like it violates the contract of the group about taking turns.
My campaigns usually start at the "player campaign" station but eventually ride into "Epic Campaign" station by relating everyones backstory somehow into the Epic. Best of both worlds I say, gets the players invested, cause their characters are personally involved throughout all of it.
I think you are mixing up gamist (focus on game mechanics, strategy, and character optimization) and simulationist (focus on accuracy to a specific genre or setting and/or environmental realism). Your playthrough of Fabled Lands books would be simulationist as the adventures on based on exploration of a detailed world vs an overarcing plot or specific character.
Up until recently, my campaigns were almost all Accidental (I was a very reluctant GM who only did it if no one else was willing). Wasn't until recently that I started doing an Open one with hints of Player, and it's been interesting. A LOT more work, but it's been rewarding so far.
A player campaign also requires the GM to have more restraint than most. The GM and players have to be able to sit back and watch; one of the most memorable moments for me as a player was opening up about very private details from his past with the party member he didn’t just know the least but who he was the least like. I literally had to walk away from the table to collect myself.
You have like, the ultimate dm voice--literally you just sound like what I expect a dm should sound like? It's both hilarious and very pleasant
i usually run my campaigns as a mix of epic and accidental, i make a massive but extremely bare-bones plan with a final BBEG that delves into character backstory but none of the individual adventures have a real plan until about a week (or 2 hours) before the actual game. this in turn lets me make an insanely grandiose setting and larger-than-life evil, but also gives me the freedom to turn a heist into a ghost-busting adventure on the fly without destroying the plan or forcing my players into a rail-road.
As a new DM your words are supportive, inspiring, and oh so timely!!
Oh no, I somehow made all 4 campaign types. This is my first time DMing too. :'>
- It started as an accident from random roleplay that eventually required me to pause and plan for a while to develop a proper world without retconning much of what we had done.
- It's intended to be a bunch of increasingly more complicated quests that often have nothing to do with each other, from rescuing a lost girl who was being preyed upon by a sleep-inducing, carnivorous plants to guiding a mysterious, paranoid figure with a special magical item to the next town as they are tracked by parties of drow and their allies every night. They can find different adventure options by travelling to specific places on the map.
- There are small story elements and clues scattered throughout their roleplays, encounters and quests that on occasion point them towards plot elements and let them theorise at what connection each piece of information they learn has, which will eventually culminate into a grand final quest to fix an interdimensional disaster caused by an outsider god's scheme to gain influence over Ao through a secret organisation hidden within a bigger cult.
- Part of the planned adventures that they can experience travelling across the world include those intended to solve things related to their backstories, like the elven ranger from the Feywild who fled their home after accidentally leading a bunch of Fomorians to their village and is now too afraid of the consequences to even check the aftermath, or the aasimar cleric with memory loss discovering why they are undead and how their spiritual guide betrayed them in a time of need.
I think I run a players campaign that turns into an epic campaign.
The strength of this style is that you give the players the ability to flush out their character by giving them choices. By giving them half of what they want, or giving them direction to what they want, or imposing a cost for what they want, they feel heard and validated. They want to chase your next hook because they think there will be another piece of their puzzle.
Then you place the next hook in epic territory. You mash pieces together, do some light retconing, and make it so their quest was always part of the bigger quest.
This has the strength of the two, big grand adventure and player agency, but it also has both weaknesses. A player might want to retire their character if you give them what they think is enough. Then suddenly those personal hooks go out the window. It is also on the longer side for game length, and with sporadic scheduling and busy lifestyles you may never reach the finish line.
That said, I think a GMs job is to mash player stories with your own story in a satisfying way. Then adding a little more complexity every time you do it.
Me: sees DS9 on his table
Also Me: Likes because he is cultured
There is another, probably a meta style for this video, which is a mix of the first three which is more of a balance of them. Think of the Babylon 5 TV series though the 1990s as an example. There was an epic story line with episodic plot lines to the season midterm of 5 or so episodes along with those that are resolved in the same episode as resolved. The three types of plots are wound together through the series along with character growth focusing on the various characters where a plot line would be focused for a particular character. It is my job as a DM to weave these while giving a spot light to a character story plot line, keep them also moving along the main line goal as well. This allows the plays not to be bored on a single plot line while giving a different player there time in the sun. Yes, this took a bit more work, but gave a mix up to the players along with some unexpected twists.
I like the DS9 model in the background.
Accidental campaign here that evolved into an open/episodic campaign. It was meant to be a oneshot with monstrous races as the PCs where i sometimes could run missions for them if our main campaign had a slow month...this has now become a full blown campaign closing in on 3 years and is the one campaign we have that is going strong and close to finishing with an end in sight.
Due to the accidental nature the PCs didnt really get fleshed out backstories or gotten them weaved into the adventure so we put a lot of energy into the connections they build here and now instead.
Mini-Epic + Open World = Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel campaign. Each season has a Big Bad working up in the background, while there is a monster of the week fleshing it out. Monster of the weak could be completely separate, be sprinkled with clues, or be a mini-boss for the Big Bad.
One Big Bad per level tier, if you play that way.
Related to the above is what I call "accordion campaigns." With an accordion campaign, you have the beginning point set - you know where you start - and you have the goal of the endgame set as well - you know when you're finished. When setting up this sort of campaign, it's important to get the permission of the players, and ensure that they know, understand, and accept these two slices in the ever-expanding Dagwood sandwich to come, because that way you can all know when the campaign is over, and you and your players can decide when and how you want to make that happen. But in the between times separating the beginning and the end, the rest of the campaign is pretty open-ended, and you can just keep having fun until you start the endgame sequence.
A whole lot of shows on television are built like this, from 80's classics like "Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors" and "Dungeons & Dragons" (which are also great examples of what happens if you don't push to make the endgame happen eventually: everybody eventually has to move on with their lives, so the campaigns peter out rather than coming to a definite conclusion; better to end with a bang than a fizzle, I think), to the 90's classic "Gargoyles" with its many intricate plots and sub-plots, to the ever-running "Sailor Moon" series, which has Big Bads who would field a continuing string of monsters-of-the-week, to "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and its "Korra" sequel, which are pretty much exactly like an accordion in their ability to expand or contract their overarching plot to the needs of the producers.
I run long campaigns within a larger really really long meta-campaign.
In 1983 I started my own sandbox world. All set on one island. I was young and went with a basic trope, the Island had once been the home of the Gods where they walked among the mortal races in harmony etc etc... something happened a thousand years ago causing Mists to fall over the island, and all contact to be lost. Any ships or flying wizards who tried to find their way through the mists never returned. Now the mists have lifted... and every nation is in a hurry to get there and stake a claim to whatever is there.
Around the coasts towns that had been uninhabited for centuries were being repopulated and a sort of "Wild Frontier" was being established.
The first group of players to play in this campaign world were playing in a completely Open Campaign, they were exploring, and acting on behalf of various third parties to find and recover things, and found their nemeses along the way. There was no goal beyond "Find stuff and deal with it". Back then we had the rulebooks, Dragon and Imagine Magazines and the odd 3rd Party resources (Like Flying Buffalo and Judges Guild if anyone remembers them???). If you'd talked to me about "3 Act Structures" I'd have stared at you like a dog that's just been shown a card trick. I just wrote a dungeon... the players explored... found the dungeon, and killed everything in it... eventually one of them decided to find out why the Mists had fallen and set himself that quest... the others said, "Yeah... OK that sounds like fun..." so they set off and I had to start dropping bread crumbs, (and figuring out for myself why those Mists had fallen...)
We played that campaign for about three years, with about 1/4 of the map ever being fully explored. Toward the end of the Campaign I began setting the stage for the next one by hinting at one of the Continental Powers mustering a huge army to invade and take over everything. This was not initially an "Evil" plot, as this nation was monotheistic and viewed cultures who worshipped many Gods as devil worshippers and felt the need to "Educate" them through fire and pain. Essentially they were based on the Holy Roman Empire...
I never got round to running that campaign for the D&D group as we split up and went our separate ways after leavings school, but I still had all the notes, and we promised to get back together and run some of it at Holidays and stuff... In the meantime I got into LRP and most of my TTRPG gaming went into hiatus as I became involved in running an LRP site. After that closed down, a bunch of us got together to start our own, and a few of the people who played in my D&D games got on board and said "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we used our old game world and continued the Campaign???" So we did that, and during LRP Down time we used to Table Top events that were not possible to recreate in our LRP.
We eventually managed to get the conclusion of the Invasion and Occupation campaign down to one big final battle. At around that time we were also very heavily involved with The Lorien Trust who run "The Gathering" in the UK, and our group was essentially the same characters, with the same backgrounds... we explained the situation to the guy who ran the plot for our faction... HE had words with a couple of other faction plot refs... and we ran the battle... Live Action... 200+ people on each side!
It is impossible to over state how satisfying it is to run your "Final Encounter" of a campaign you've been running for over a decade to take place in such a fashion. It was also the first time I had absolutely no control over the outcome, and got to take part in the battle as a player!!! That was in about 1998/99. And since then I have continued to run L1-20 campaigns set in the same world... acting as a "Metaplot"
I have a basic template for a L1-20 campaign... in nine parts.
1. Introduction, runs L1-4/5 this gets the players together, throws some basic adventure types so any new players learn the style of play and house rules... seeds are sewn in the wider plot.
2. The Call to Action. The players first learn of the quest they need to go on. Either reputation, Prophecy, or simply lack of other options means they are the ones who must do the thing... This usually lasts till about L10-12. Throughout this section most, if not all, adventures are connected to the main plot, with various options along the way to reach the next step, to avoid being totally railroaded.
3. The "Oh Shit! This is worse than we thought!" section. At the end of part 2, a greater realisation dawns on them... this leads to even darker, more powerful foes and tougher objectives. Recurring NPC villains start to target the players friends etc... This runs to about L15/16.
4.The "We need the X to do the Y" this is where they now understand the situation, and must do something to prepare to deal with the final situation. They may need to assemble the Rod of Seven Parts, collect the hearts of one of each of the Chromatic Dragons to perform a ritual... something that takes a lot of time, and requires great effort. This will take them to round about L20
5. The Final Showdown... this isn't usually just one smackdown. It often requires finding the bad guy, or tracking down their lieutenants weakening the BB before that final confrontation. Eventually they come face to face, and all Hell is let loose.
Within that structure I also use a number of Story Telling techniques, to advance the plot itself, with the players often losing, and even as they succeed and grow, the enemy will also, always tipping the balance in favour of the bad guys, so that even at L18-20 they rarely feel that it will be an easy quest.
I mentioned NINE parts... well, I realised that players tend to grow weary of linear campaigns and feel that they don't get to explore as much as they would like. So I always find a way to insert a healthy amount of downtime between the main parts for them to do their own things. This is usually done by something simple like "The Wizards need time to decipher the lost scrolls you recovered before they will know where you need to go next, this might take a week or two..."
I've been running this 9 part Plan for about... maybe just over... ten years now. I've got 2 guys who have been in all of the 7 campaigns I have run using it, and neither of them, or any other player has ever realised that I have run that same structure 7 times.
I'm lucky... my players know what to expect from my campaigns. A firm story, and a largely linear structure. So I don't tend to get wise arse players, intent on fucking it up as the rest of the players will shut that shit down pronto.
For the past six months I have been working on what might be the final campaign within the game world I created 40 years ago... the one that will FINALLY explain why those damned mists fell in the first place. I mentioned I was working on it on Facebook last year, and have so far had over thirty five requests to play in it...
I think of campaign style as falling somewhere within a spectrum of story depth and cohesion. The further down the spectrum the campaign goes, the more it relies on large scale planning from the GM and consistency of player involvement.
1. Accidental Campaign
2. Open Campaign
3. Simulationist Campaign
5. Epic Campaign
6. Player Campaign
7. Epic+Player Campaign
This last form, I consider to be the greatest narrative achievement that can be reached but relies heavily on thoughtful and creative planning by the GM and players being committed for the long term. In this form, the GM takes into account both an epic world story they want to tell and dives deep into their character's backgrounds. They craft major personal quest arcs that also advance the plot of the epic story. This offers the greatest level of player engagement and narrative impact.
My campaigns tend to be a mixture of all 4 types. I tend to get ambushed by friends to run campaigns, so I often have to start with no clear idea what's going on (accidental), but I get players to write backgrounds to give me something to work towards (evolve to player journey), then with a bit of momentum, I'll start throwing out seemingly random evils (Open), and once I've done enough sessions and sown enough player and npc seeds, I start the old plotweave ball of twine rolling and link things that seem unconnected together in a way that - to my players - looked like the plan all along and thus the true nemesis is unveiled and the Epic phase begins. My current campaign is somewhere between player goals and random evils at the moment, but the true villain has started to form in my mind.
Nice thoughts! I think there's another dimension relevant to this matching between the GM's and campaign's types: how much the GM can commit to a campaign. As you said in the begginning, life sometimes get in the way and we may abandon that awesome story the group had been building.
I've been favoring open campaings recently for this reason. We can enjoy great adventures in short spans and the GM can and should throw their best ideas ASAP while there's a low cost of abandoning the story after any one of those adventures. Also, if you eventually find yourself running a long term game you can always find a way to tie everything up and give it a nice conclusion: if you ran a series of loosely related adventures, you can conclude the story as an epic campaign but if you linked the adventures through PC's story developments, you can conclude it as a player campaign.
What I like to do (especially with new players) is to create an epic campaign (beforehand I talk to them about the basic structure to see if we are all on the same page) with fixed characters which can be swapped for a very good reason (death, growing apart from the group, achieving the main personal goal etc.) and then create oneshots within the same world which kind of overlap with the main story (just had a oneshot which played thousands of years before and the "main event" which broke the continent didn't happen yet and they as players met a character they knew from the main story). The oneshots can even sometimes tie in with the main story so that you might have a session where one player plays two characters which can be a lot of fun for the players imho. This approach does two things for me: players can try out different classes and characters and you can drastically change the style, alignment and setting of the game. For me, this prevented a certain fatigue with the players main characters because you can try out new stuff and experience something fresh but you are also happy to come back to your main character. This hybrid-model of the campaign imho takes out the main weaknesses of the epic campaign style both for the players as they get to try out new stuff and for me as a GM to get a break from the sometimes overwhelming main story.
Communication though is - as always - key. Be open about it (it sounds so simple but it happens so fast that communication fails).
i'm an open gm. I've never been very good at linking plot points together and i've never really used the player backstories except in the few systems where the backstory has a mechanical function or unless i'm trying to give that player a personal nemesis. So most of my games are episodic and sometimes use the same villains but usually is just a different threat every week.
What if an Open world has links between adventures and Epic goals, villains of various natures (are they really villains?) and Players can explore however they want?
I was honestly unaware there was anything more than an epic camping. But now that I hear Guy talking about them, open campaigns sound really fun
This video although consisting of stuff I thought I already knew actually gave me a revelation as to why I didn't enjoy the session I played in earlier this week. Thanks.
I think a good concept for a simulationist campaign comes from tabletop story of "the all guardsmen party". While i its certainly not a simulationist campaign, the start can tell a tale with a bit of work.
Playing a game as the boots on the ground solders from disperate sections of a massive meat-grinder war as you struggle and die again and again can really tell its own story. I think both within the 40k framework and outside it you can make these stories about how soldier lives affect those around them.
I would really suggest checking it out (plenty of TH-cam let's read videos on it) and i think you could easily see the potential there if your a fan of this channel.
I did hit that like button. You earned it again, Guy. Thank you for helping me to better understand my own habits and why my games all run like one shots. I wasn't aware there were so many accidental GMs either until I saw that poll you posted.
I am an additive DM, I generally allow my players to do what they want (with limitations), while also disregarding UA (I hate that play test shit), we generally use reasonable home brew for new things and we never take anything away (I will never change the base rules), instead I let my players know that they will be testing things and it’s prone to change if something I didn’t account for would come up.
I find my style instills trusts in both party’s and it gives me a respectable relationship with my players.
I am running a "I'm a new DM and am stitching together a campaign in reaction to the crazy choices my characters have made" campaign. Our current campaign is "Ghosts of Saltmarsh flavored", with about 60% homebrew to fill in the gaps and move the PCs between modules.
Oooh character campaign focus is scary. I always seed and have missions and interactions merging due to character's backstory and work hard to make sure the PC feel and are part of the world in the midst of my hybrid open/epic campaign.
My DMing style of campaign is like a Frankenstein version of all four of those. I start the campaign with a big bad in mind, but rarely plan out passed the next few adventures in how the party gets there. This lets us go on crazy side-quests that bloom out of nowhere and try accomplishing some of the characters personal goals along the way.
I wouldn't describe my recent campaigns as "open", but it is functionally the same, a small adventure with decent stakes whether it be the fate of a city, the fate of an abandoned nation, the fate of a small ruin, etc. There's no specific path I'm leading my players to, but they are lead via suggestions by the NPCs they help or by the most obvious destination based on the direction of their movement so far. I try to not focus specifically on any player if I can, and having learned from my early DMing, I've gone away from central BBEGs for the most part. My main focus for my campaigns is going around a theme: a flying fortress at threat of crashing, a cult of dragon like creatures in a ruin, a mysterious murder at a lord's home, the like.
I was actively learning using your channel as my guide from the very beginning, so I have weaved my natural tendency to do player-focused campaigns with epic ones.
It's all about linking it all together. Inclusion of characters and their personal stakes had increased their buy in.
As for simulation, I'm not a person for numbers, however I am a programmer, so I believe that simulation can create a great story, given the right configuration. Dwarf Fortress had created histories using procedural generation. So I believe that an epic campaign can be ran inside a simulation-style campaign. It's less likely to personally weave into each PCs back story, it might not challenge PCs character flaws, but it can be truly epic, considering that anything can happen. Easy ways to beat the boss using his vulnerability, difficult enemies in a starting location, and many more things that players will be making stories of
Thank you Guy. This was exceptionally helpful for me to think about how I run, when my campaigns succeed and when they peter out, why they do so. I would note you didn't give a DM style for 'accidental' campaign, which I would consider a GM who relies heavily on extemporaneous talents and reacts to the others at table.
Regarding simulationist play, your channel is and always has been about narrative play wherein the players (via the PC personas) descriptively solve situations and (at least theoretically) the clatter of dice could never be heard. Simulationist play focuses on how the players use the rules-defined abilities of the PCs to outwit the rules-defined abilities of the NPCs with a fortune mechanic to mix things up. To compare the two is to carefully judge between a penguin and a giraffe.
Thanks again and I look forward to more great content.
I've been running a player based game where the story is actually based on the GAPS in my player's backstories. They think they're just going to a far away city to make a guild but the Artificer is the decedent of the god of technology, and the Fighter's family abandoned him years ago so nobody would realize he holds one of the 5 fallen angel souls inside of him. Instead of basing the campaign on what they said in their backstories, I based it on what they didn't say and it's been going amazing for several months now.
Enjoyable and informative. I tend to run a hybrid of sorts. My campaigns start as open until my players reach a certain level and then I begin introducing the BIG BAD and move into an epic campaign. It did take practice to figure out the balance and knowing when the players are ready to move on. Just like different DMs there are different players and play styles. Great content.
My current campaign touched on almost all of these. The DM at the FLGS that I'd been playing at had a job change after 2-3 months. I hadn't played ANY D&D since 2e in the early 90s, and had played 5e ONLY at the store......but I took over as DM.
I got this! It's only three players! Did it as "level zero" (using Treasure Hunt from 1e). A couple of weeks at it was good. Added one player. Then two. One backed out, but two other new ones came that week. One came back, one didn't, but two more joined again. I was at like 8 or 9 or something at that point. Eventually it ballooned to like 12 or 13.
People Asked Questions and so of course I Gave Them Answers. Then, they wanted to find out How Are Things Connected? This caused my brain to produce more answers, causing more questions. A happy go-lucky accidental game need some structure...so I started coming up with a BBEG, a reason Why They Were Here, and had to start playing the long game.
After almost a year of that chaos, the group split, and I was down to 7-8 really core players who were great. We moved it to my house, and kept playing. A couple personal issues happened, and we lost one player. Then, we took a break twice (once for my health ) and someone DM'd Dragonheist, and another time someone DMd Curse of Strahd during another player's personal Stuff.
The lost player and the player with personal issues were times I made the campaign around the player for a bit. You know, give it some focus, some pull. And then right at the point when the spotlight got on them and my next SEVERAL sessions were wrapped around them...they had to pull back (or leave the table completely). Never again. No big story arcs like that for me.
Now, here we are, a long way from fall of 2016. The former level 0 players are now level 12. They are about a couple months in real time sessions from getting their spelljamming ship that I initially promised they'd be IN SPACE by 11 or 12. I have a really solid BBEG fight in mind for when they hit 20ish...and it's gonna be brutal.
Now, I just have to STOP myself from planning the campaign after this, it'll all be OK.
I run simulationist campaigns for Aquelarre, a TTRPG that attempts to simulate a historical Iberia where all myths are true. The point is that the world exists wether the players want or not, but they influence it. Even if they do not interact with an NPC, it still does stuff. For instance, they met a starving carpenter, who they took in for the journey to the nearest town, leaving him very grateful. Some months later, on that town, there were troubles caused by gnomes, a type of demon able to manipulate one cubic metre of dirt or stone at 120km/h (it was the fault of one of the PCs for messing an important roll), and he saw his saviours slay the foul creatures with naught but their wits, one of the PCs lost an eye, another an arm, the third became a tetraplegic, and the fourth caught leprosy. Inspired by such bravery, he started carving wooden sculptures of the heroes, and selling them for very little margin, but rolled so many natural 1s (d100 system, so crits) that he became soooo rich. The following year, when they came back to the town, they found out there was a festival on their honour, and a legend made of them. That carpenter was now the richest man in town, there were pilgrims, everyone wanted to see the sculptures and relics of the gnome mummies, as well as the items the heroes used. So after years of journeys, maimed, broken and shattered, the characters settled down on the town, to peacefully live the rest of their days. (The campaign lasted 8 more sessions since they loved the politics of their town, and they wanted to become hidalgos). The point is, by creating and living the world, you're not forcing an objective, they create their own. You don't design buildings to be a place where adventurers go and have fun, you put yourself in the mind of the architect. Rather than go "I need more rooms, with more baddies", you go "where would the guard sleep? what do they do during the day?" and since the system has random characterization, each NPC is different. Maybe Guard#3 is called Roderico, has a wife with two lovely kids, but has a bit of a stutter that gives him a fair bit of insecurity. Maybe Guard#2 is shortsighted due to his age, so instead of a sling he charges with a pavís. Maybe Guard#1 is an unlucky man who forgot his club at home, so he'll use other stuff around. Etc. It's a world where the next adventurer group the players make, can live after the first group retires. Since it takes weeks to heal, timeskips are natural, so they see the world change. The first campaign we did, was set in 1045, we're now on 1365, we still track the family of the first group, and cared deeply when the black plague hit them that hard. It's an inmersive joy.
I'm running an Epic campaign with bits of Player campaign sprinkled in. Of course, since the entire party didn't know each other, it started out as an Epic campaign, but I made sure to lay the groundwork religiously each session, then BAM everything that happened so far? IT'S ALL CONNECTED TO THE CHARACTERS SOMEHOW.
Watching this video, I'm realizing that my campaigns tend to be a mix of these different styles. It's not an equal mix of course, probably 50% epic, 25% player, 15% open, and 10% accidental. I definitely agree that each one of them has its advantages, and I try to employ elements of each because I think it makes for a fuller and more fun campaign. The epic aspect is the most satisfying part for me as the DM, but the player's backstories and personalities have factored strongly in the story and have changed its course on many occasions. I also lightly flesh out areas of the world that are outside of the story's bounds in case they want to explore in a more open-world type of adventure (however I've noticed that this is something they seldom do, they seem to prefer following the story line). And then the accidental aspect seems to me as more of the in-the-moment improvisation when the players hit you with something unexpected.
Thanks for this video, it has helped clarify for me how to make a better campaign for everyone involved.
My players have a strong preference for open campaigns. I've run multiple epic campaigns, and the feedback partway in is always that they want something more like an open campaign. Even short epic campaigns (think 5-10 sessions) tend to fizzle out, with one adventure ending and the PCs wanting to jump ship rather than pursue the next lead. The dwarf nail salon hit home.
My campaign is almost a player campaign, except I have tied all their backstories to a single big bad, but its also pretty open as I am building it as we go. The only thing I really plan ahead is the npcs in the town they will soon be in. I pay attention as we play so that I know when the moment is right to turn their world upsidedown. My players are very roleplay heavy and are very happy to play several games in a row without any fights, so haveing many npcs is the core if my game. I have done a lot of research on making a story as we go, but having it feel like it was always meant to be. I think the key is to know the goals of your NPCs and your players. Lots of communication, and being open. My players know they can attempt nearly anything, but there are consequences. Good and bad, and they are currently getting the joy of experienceing a new city with a strange culture, with the goal of getting the underground of that city open to fencing for a pirate friend of the party. They have very little info right now and will have to find that information through interacting with the npcs, but last game everyone told me how excited they were for the next game, and how much they liked Coffee the tiefling Coffee shop owner. (Wich clues me in to give him more than surface goals and troubles, maybe even have one of my baddies come after him, that the party met but didn't kill yet.)