On the Joy of Naming Campaigns
I think every good campaign needs a name from the start. It helps you point the campaign in a specific direction, helps you focus your efforts, and helps when you and your friends are talking about the game.
“Remember in Iron Dawn when we…”
“Hey, what was the name of that character in The Godfell Stone?”
“This reminds me of that time in The Deck of Many Worlds…”
I tend to name all my campaigns, and you should too. But how do you come up with a name?
Often, my names are based on a particular idea. I’ll base whole campaigns around a name that pops into my head. When I first heard “The Godfell Stone” in my head 6 years ago, I began trying to figure out what it meant. The name should be short, concise, and instantly evoke a mood. When I began planning a Star Wars campaign set around the fall of the Senate, I asked on Twitter for ideas, and got back “Diplomatic Impunity.” Perfect. It conveys the entire campaign idea into two words.
The campaign name can also help differentiate between different times in your gaming career. When I ran both Tiamat books, followed by Out of the Abyss, I had the campaigns named for me! And I had a few players who changed between those games, so talking to them I can differentiate between the different groups. “Oh, you weren’t in Tiamat, but Dave was.”
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, other than that I love to hear other RPG players’ campaign names. Even without context, they can provide really interesting insights into how other tables are played.
I name mine in “volumes”, as I always try to hide some Easter eggs in them relating them to each other. This, by the way, goes back long before MCU and AHS đŸ˜‰ As a subtitle, I try to make reference to some geek tropes. I cordially invite you to have a look, as I wrote about that a few months ago for the RPG Blog Carnival.
http://codexanathema.com/2017/12/30/a-book-worth-living-it/
Back when I started my homebrew D&D world in college, I didn’t name those games, but I have since applied names to them for ease of reference. At some point while planning my revisit to that world for 4E I gave my world the super unoriginal name of Einland, & dubbed all of my games there the Chronicles of Einland, but my 4E game was called The Age of Awakening (referring to the Chained God waking up & a lot of other metaphorical references), while Dave’s 4E game also in my setting was Might of the Inquisition & had a very different theme / style clearly related by the difference in names.
Now I’m running a follow-up called Sands of Tarturia which is a desert based / western / steamtech game in the same setting.
Obviously now I fully agree, naming campaigns / arcs is quite fun and helpful!