30 Days of GameMastering--Day 7!

It's Day 7 of Lindevi's 30 Days of GameMastering challenge--let's do it!

How do you prep for the start of a campaign?

As I've said in the past, I've been lucky to have a solid group of core players on Friday nights who are always willing to try out new systems and settings. We have pretty diverse tastes in aesthetics and mechanics, so we're always on the hunt for something new to scratch lots of various gaming itches.

When pitching a new campaign to my home group--and especially to any players that I pull from Wittenberg or elsewhere--I always make sure to have a solid "elevator pitch" to sell the idea of the campaign.  A solid elevator pitch has to be concise, enthralling, and able to hook a would-be player in just a few sentences.  If you can't describe your campaign world in three sentences or less, it's probably too complex or convoluted to hook your players.  As a GM, this also provides you broad generalizations that you can later refine through play.

Consider the following for an All For One: Regime Diabolique Game:

Dashing swordsmen and handsome rogues raise their swords in service to King Louis XIV.  However, the Sun King's reign leaves great shadows in his wake:  secret societies, ancient evils, and the machinations of Cardinal Richelieu have pushed France to the edge of darkness.  Draw your sword, salute the King, and swashbuckle your way through this mysticized version of the Enlightenment!

In the first sentence, you already know what you'll be doing in the campaign.  In the second, you learn not only about several of the major players, but you also learn about the adversaries you'll often be facing.  In the third, you're exhorted to action--join the game, and you too can be part of it.  All that in just 3 sentences!

After I've got a full table, I try to put together a basic outline for plot points that I'd like to hit.  When using a pre-made campaign, this is often already done for you, but it's especially important in terms of pacing and session prep.  If you know that there's a large dungeon crawl coming up in two sessions that will take up three sessions on its own, you can devote more time to preparing for that, specifically.  Having a campaign outline directs your own session-level prep, setting you up to be more capable on a week-to-week basis.

Great villains make for greater heroes!

Lastly, I try to come up with some great antagonists.  Every great story needs a fantastic villain to drive the conflict and campaigns are no exception.  When you're first starting your campaign, come up with 2-3 well-developed, rounded villains with deep motivations.  Make sure they provide diverse threats to the PCs:  if a crime boss in a superheroes game has no overt powers, ensure that he can threaten the heroes in other ways:  through their assets, through their identities, or even through sheer numbers.  Even better, if you can, tailor your villains to your PCs--provide opportunities for interaction, perhaps even making a villain into a foil of the PC.  That provides opportunity for great drama at the table for sessions to come!

In Which The Warlock Muses on the Future...

Last night was Wittenberg's first game night, which is always exciting for us.  It's spectacular to be able to meet a whole legion of incoming gamers and share with them all of the exciting events that the Guild puts forward, all of the events and systems that we run, and the cameraderie of slinging dice with your fellow man.

There's really nothing like the first time that you sit down to experience a game.  The 'first impression' that one gets just can't be replicated.  The first time I slung out the d10s and d6s in WEGS, for example, was a game unto itself.  The first time we broke out Arkham Horror, while frustratingly long, got us immediately hooked.  The first time we watched someone's dice 'ace' two and three times at a clip in Savage Worlds...it caught the eye like none other. 

What to write, what to write?!

But keeping that newness?  It's hard!  The longer one plays a game, the more apparent the flaws are in the system and the more 'rote' things become.  The Journeyman GM and I discussed this tendency on our way home from GenCon this year.  By this point, he had run his Blackbeard-based Doctor Who game nearly 12 separate times for various groups across the Miami Valley.  I'd been pinging my "WEGSthulhu" adventure and "Westbound on the San Juan Express" just as often.

As such, with the close of the convention season, it comes time for us gamers to think about what comes next:  what one-shots are on deck for the coming 2012 season, for the Friday Night One-Shot series at Witt, and what we're excited about.  But, that leaves me with a major question:  with so many options, what do I write?!

Obviously, my first and biggest option (and my biggest priority!) is my campaign of Cold Steel Wardens.  I'm running my alpha test--a campaign that I'm calling "Hard Rain"--at Witt this year, with my tentative players' Heroes making their way into the (ideally forthcoming) book as sample characters.  But, one-shots?  I have no issue running them at Wittenberg, but I'm not sure if the rules-set is ready for the convention circuit yet.

Last year, I built a series of Deadlands characters specifically for the purpose of using them on the convention circuit.  As such, I'm very tempted to bring back those characters for another go.  However, I'm at somewhat of a loss of what I'd like that adventure to look like.  I'm loathe to put forward another "train-based" adventure, and would like to lean towards something a little more investigative.  However, that's the furthest I've managed to think this one out.

The Laundry, similarly, is an appealing option.  While I'm more than proficient in the BRP Call of Cthulhu game, The Laundry has its own unique style that makes for a strange balance between absurdist comedy and deadly serious spy-drama.  But, that same balance makes it particularly difficult to GM appropriately.  Even for a skilled GM, it becomes difficult to shift gears so quickly between tones.  I'd been also thinking up a basic Call of Cthulhu adventure based around Shakespeare's "Scottish Play", but that's still in development.

Coming to a game convention
near you in 2012?

I'd also been thinking about potentially revisiting one of my all-time favorite heroes:  the Masters of the Universe in the role-playing arena.  However, I'm really not sure what system I'd use.  While I'd be tempted towards picking up Cartoon Action Hour, I actually think that ICONS would work really well for emulating the over-the-top action.  But, again, I haven't really thought out what the adventure would entail, or any plot ideas beyond the simple "He-Man and crew have to team up with Skeletor to take out a greater threat". 

And then...there are other options.  While I'm swearing off D&D for a while, my gaming stack's still full-up.  I'm planning on picking up All For One: Regime Diabolique in the near future, and I just found a copy of Wild Talents at Half Price Books for $5.  Also, The Journeyman GM still has my copies of Hell on Earth, while my regular Friday night group is chomping at the bit for some post-apocalyptic action.  Oh, and there's always WEGS, particularly with the Ultimate Dungeon Party out now, and the official printing of Dingbitt's Dunge-O'-Doom on the horizon. 

So many options, so little time, fellow gamers!  What should I run?  What would you like to see at WittCon, FOPCon, and all the rest in the next year?!