Mini-Campaigns
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This is something I’ve heard discussed by Chatty in the past, and I’m sure a few other RPG Bloggers have done it as well: Mini-Campaigns.
I was thinking about the long, drawn out DnD campaigns that have been run by my group over the last couple of years: Points of Light, Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and realized how steadily bored we got. During Keep on the Shadowfell, everyone was energized and into their characters, and it steadily just dropped off.
Which is why Bridget and I have been talking about the idea of mini-campaigns: 4-8 week sessions of a particular game with a distinct beginning, middle and end, before moving on.
It really got our gears going as we imagined the different campaigns we could run. Bridget is super excited about a Stargate campaign, while I love the idea of running a Battlestar Galactica campaign.
The great thing about a mini-campaign, is that if you have a player in your group who isn’t interested in that particular genre, you can easily just have them sit this one out and come back in a month when the campaign is over.
Have any of your given mini-campaigns a try? How well do they work for you?
Oh how funny – I’m actually designing a mini-campaign for 4e right now. I find that the more specified timeline (I’m planning a 6-8 session campaign, ~3 encounters per session) is helpful on a variety of levels:
1) from a storytelling perspective, it’s great because, as you point out, the story moves very quickly, sort of like a movie or a play. With a long campaign, the plot can ramble a little more. This is good in its own way for gaming groups that have time to do it, but a tauter storyline is a bit more consistently exciting I think. Plus as a designer, you have to think really carefully about why you’re having a particular encounter in the game – if it doesn’t more the story forward or establish themes, feel, etc, you just don’t have time for it in a mini-campaign.
2) from a game design perspective, since we’re not worrying about things like XP and gold to keep up with monsters over the long term, I can have a greater variety in my combats (there’s less pressure to make them level-appropriate every time), and I can focus on fights that move the story forward (see #1).
3) from a roleplaying perspective, it’s a lot easier to give PCs conflicting goals or beliefs, and set up situations where a PvP brawl is they only way to go, when players are only going to be playing those PCs for a short period of time. Conflict creates drama, drama fosters emotional investment, etc.
4) from a mechanical experimentation perspective, you can test out alterations to the rules and your players only have to live with it for a short time. For my upcoming campaign, I’m implementing the monsters have 50% hp, do 2x damage house rule that’s been around the interwebs. I’ve also developed a wide variety of gambling-themed mini-games (billiards, darts, card games, eladrin insult-duels, mumblety-peg, etc) using variants of existing 4e rules.
5) from a logistical perspective, it’s awesome for gaming groups made up of people who have other responsibilities. I think that since the mid 70s, the average gaming group’s average age has increased significantly. I’m certainly older, anyway
(okay, technically not born until the 80s – but you get my point) . And with age comes responsibility, and with responsibility comes less free time to go slay dragons (tragically). A mini-campaign is good for filling the occasional low-intensity periods in life when you have a bit more free time, without potentially messing up the flow of an ongoing game when your life inevitably gets crazy again and you have to leave.
So, I would obviously encourage you to give it a shot. Best of luck!
I ran a mini-campaign last summer. One of our players was gone the entire summer so I took the rest of the party on a side campaign during that time. It involved the githyanki invading the w prime material plane using a war between two neighboring superpowers as a cover. The PCs were duly appointed buccaneers fighting for one side of the conflict; very much like Sir Francis Drake. When the game started, none of the players knew anything about the story other than: they were buccaneers fighting for the Queen against another company; should they be captured, they wouldn’t be held as prisoners of war but tried and executed as criminals; and that their airship captain would send various of them on missions from time to time.
The players actually got to rotate through a bunch of characters, I even kept the guy who was gone for the summer involved by putting him on “monitor duty” (like in Justice League). Each week I’d send him a brief overview of the mission and he would pick five characters from the pool submitted by the other players at the beginning of the summer. On our store’s forum he would then post a short story in which the captain of the ship hands down orders and provides intelligence. It was a lot of fun, everyone who had been playing the same character for almost a year got to stretch their creativity and scratch that itch to try other classes. Our departed player got to stay involved in the game and he really got into the character of the captain. He also enjoyed putting together a bunch of really crazy party builds, as each week featured a different selection of the crew. The craziest was a party of four strikers and a warlord.
The story arc followed the crew of the airship as they raided various outposts, captured high-ranking officers, rescued (well, tried…) a spy, etc. We never got to run the final mission where the players head off to seal a giant breach through which the githyanki were traveling. Eventually it was revealed that the githyanki were invading because their home, the demesne of a dead god, was finally collapsing and falling apart as the last of the god’s power faded away. The githyanki simply needed a place to live.
.-= PK Sullivan´s last blog ..Errata and Game Balance =-.
For several years, some friends and I would take a series of Fridays off over the summer to role-play together all day (this allowed one friend who didn’t have time on weekends to play). They would run for 4 weeks and have a definite end point. It worked pretty well for the three that we did. The key is not to be too ambitious in estimating what the players can accomplish in each session. It’s easier to fill in than rip out.
[...] stuff, and you NEED to stick around after the credits) I’ve been thinking about running a mini-campaign in the Marvel universe once I [...]
I’ve never tried a mini campaign, but I had to comment just to ask – where did you get that awesome illustration of the first level of the Keep on the Shadowfell? Boy, it puts the crappy versions that I’ve done in Gametable and OpenRPG to shame!
.-= Michael´s last blog ..Fourth Edition for people who prefer earlier editions =-.
[...] been blabbering on and on about Mini-Campaigns and their benefits. I know, I know. “Move on!” you say, “we get [...]