Like many others, I was away this weekend for the holidays and had a great time seeing my family. That meant (obviously) that things were quiet here in the meantime, so I apologize for that, but I’m hoping to get back on track here pretty soon.
My current 4th Edition campaign has been on hiatus for some time. There are a few reasons for the delay, but the position I find myself in now is not wanting to be in this position again (of not playing for months at a time). As it is, we’re still looking at another month or more of delays due to Christmas coming up, etc.
What I have decided to do is to put the “current” campaign on hold and instead start something new that is less dependent on having the same people show up for every game. My typical campaigns are pretty deep when it comes to the story aspect, and I don’t like to play a game if even one person is missing and I need to change that if playing regularly is important to me (and it is).
Of course, the first solution I think of is a “sandbox” game and while I like the idea, I’m not sure I would be the best-suited DM for such a game. Instead, I am trying to work out something in the middle – A kind of campaign structured in a way that 1) different players can feasibly come in and out of the campaign on a session by session basis and 2) there can be an over-arching story that the players can latch on to, but at the same time can skip from time to time without feeling left behind – something lighter than what I am accustomed to running, but not so simple that I lose the interest of players who like the depth (as most of them do).
I guess that pretty much describes a sandbox-style game, but I don’t have players (for the most part) that are self driven – and that’s one of the key requirements (or at least recommended traits) of players playing in a sandbox game. I also don’t like the hex-flipping exploration aspect – not that it’s a requirement of a sandbox game, but it’s what I imagine occurring in many games of that nature.
Anyway, I will be thinking this over and dropping my thoughts on it here. We’ll see what happens.
If you have any ideas, or any tips that you think could help me with this next campaign, please feel free to comment or send me a message on twitter!
Gamma World seems quite well suited to a filler; the background of overlapping timelines is an obvious explanation for missing and returning players, if they last that long anyway, and the “sandbox” can be somewhere eerily familiar to your players.
That’s true – Gamma World could work well for those reasons. In fact, I have GW and have run it a few times at this point (played on Thanksgiving in fact!) – but my players are big 4e fans, and I’m more into the fantasy aspect. GW is great for one-offs, but not so much for the prolonged campaigns my players and I are looking for.
Not to say GW doesn’t work for long term campaigns, but rather I don’t think I could pull it off, and I don’t think it’s what my players would want.
With that said, I should look at the reasons why GW is better suited for that, and think about how they can be manipulated to work for me in the environment we want to play in.
Thanks for stopping in!
You can always run a series of one shot adventures. Let the players create new characters, customize a pre-made character, or roll over a previous character for these. It’s surprising how much fun these can be if done correctly.
Try this one out, Mr. The Weem:
The PCs are members of an organization, such as the kings guard, espionage agency, university, mercenary company, or adventurers guild. The organization is big with a lot of different members. Members are assigned missions, jobs, whatever, by the organization leadership who choose assignments theoretically based on matching skills/talents/personality to the job in question (ala Mission: Impossible) but really base it on which players will be there that week.
Missions are shorter, episodic adventures, but some (or most) involve specific villainous organizations, locations, plots, or other things that tie them together. Each mission can be considered a seperate story in itself, but recurring plot elements also string together into a loose ongoing plot that is building toward something. For instance, numerous espionage missions implying a coming war. Or you can build toward a mole in the organzation. Whatever. Key is that the recurring elements are not so complex that missing out on one loses the thread of the story. They are more like rewarding little “eureka” moments. “So that’s why those brigands stole the orb of macguffin three weeks ago!” for example.
PCs switch in and out frequently for different missions and the organization/mission hub is close enough to the adventure sites that, in an emergency, reinforcements can arrive or PCs can return to make a report, resupply, treat injuries, or whatever.
For added fun, treasure can come mainly in the form of payment/stipends, players can earn honorary titles and ranks, magic item craftsmen and ritual casters are available through the organization to minimize the need for those feats, allow people to shop easily between games, and ensure that the ritual caster’s absence won’t screw up the plot.
Continued: you get an ongoing story, recurring characters, and a reusable setting that the PCs can feel at home in. PCs can come and go as they please, but they don’t have to be self-directed and “find the stories.” Sessions become more structured “briefing-adventure-debriefing” and non-adventuring stuff gets relegated to between sessions. Hope that helps.
Love it Mr. Angry 😉
I have always shied away from the idea of players being part of an organization as it felt like a forced thing (“yea, so, you all work together”) – I know you are not necessarily saying they all HAVE to be part of the same organization, but you get the idea.
With that said, it is a good solution to a problem I did not have when passing up such a structure previously.
This give me a lot of ideas already – thanks Mr. Angry – I’ll need to think on this one some more!
Actually, I kind of was saying they should be part of the same organization. But you don’t have to go that route.
And you’re right. Its forced. Thing is, you’ve got a changing player roster of non-self-directing players and you’re not able to build a strong, ongoing story. So, you need a way of keeping them on the same goal. They aren’t going to do so themselves, they can’t quickly build strong in-party relationships, and you can’t rely on aheavy plot to drive them forward because random people keep missing episodes. I don’t like the forced mission structure myself, but you need to force goals on them somehow.
Truth.
Thanks again for the feedback, I really appreciate it!