Hot answers tagged campaign
20
Have everyone make notes, and keep a copy of everyone's. Likewise, take a photocopy of everyone's character sheets. Put them all in a folder. Keep that folder safe.
In the process of reopening, have everyone read their notes, and share some stories of past character deeds.
If you have time before hiatus, wrap up or tie off a bunch of loose ends, but not ...
16
If possible (you haven't left off the game on a very intense cliffhanger), move forward the campaign world by one month for every week that passes IRL. Write updates on what happens in the world, ask the players to sum up their characters' reactions to the events.
Example: "With the coming of spring the King falls quite ill, which gives rise to talk about ...
16
Your level is about how much experience you have so far. It says nothing about where you are in the story.
Consider the Lord of the Rings. At the beginning of the adventure, Frodo is a beginner, level 1, just starting his career. Aragorn, however, has been in many stories so far (even if we don't see them ourselves). When he joins this adventure, the ...
15
Absolutely. Apocalypse World (AW) is tonnes of fun to play for a single session, but it was actually designed for long-term play. The full possibilities of the character-development mechanics require several sessions to unfold.
There are three common lengths of Apocalypse World games.
Single session. These are fun, as already mentioned. This is a good way ...
13
This might be a good time to flesh out your setting and characters by collaboratively typing up a mess of details online. You can set up a wiki, share some Google Docs, or just start a big email chain. Then, ask each other questions. You can ask your players questions about their characters' goals and histories, and they can ask you for details about the ...
12
Finally, I had also thought about some kind of virus which would make robots turn against humans, in a society were security bots are the norm.
I find that the best plots are engendered by taking elements of current events, exaggerating the causal themes, and inserting a unique twist, then time adjusting it and inserting it into your baseline campaign ...
12
Does it have to be D&D?
My go-to game for introducing anyone to roleplaying is Fiasco, a game in which you create and play out a Coen Brothers-esque scenario.
You’ll play ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control. There will be big dreams and flawed execution. It won’t go well for them, to put it mildly, and in the end it will ...
10
It certainly sounds like you've covered the main points. Here are a few extra considerations to bear in mind:
The Council of Primogen.
This probably overlaps heavily with "local covenant leaders", but not entirely. Influential clan members are worth considering, and covenants with little local power may not have a representative... or may only have a ...
8
I think it depends on whether your family members have the interest and attention span required. Neither of my parents would play an RPG, but my brother would. I think there are several important factors for this - especially if you don't want to ruin your holidays!
It's got to be a fast game. You have to have a short, simple scenario ready to go.
You ...
8
The Dying Earth RPG, set in Jack Vance's Dying Earth.
Dark Sun, for D&D, where the world has been dried up by destructive use of magic.
Ravenloft, also for D&D, which is a dystopia, being the private hell chunks for 20+ über-evil individuals.
Several published settings for EABA. Greg's got a pretty dark streak showing.
8
There's lots of good answers here. I particularly like the first one of using stories from the news as inspiration. Here's some ideas that are still relevant, but perhaps were more obviously cutting edge 8 years ago: widespread use of drones, widespread use of mercenaries by both governments and corporations, and the use of child soldiers. For something more ...
7
First make sure you write down where you are ... the last thing you want is to go to restart the campaign, and realize that have no clue where you left off.
Depending on where you are currently at in your campaign, you may want to wrap things up over email, to bring the "open chapter" in the campaign to a close. This would allow you to be more flexible when ...
7
I normally follow this process:
Check with the existing group
Get everyone to meet somewhere neutral (coffee shop/pub) for lunch/dinner
Check again with the existing group
Sleep on it
I think it is important for everyone to have a say because the game does not belong to the GM but the whole group.
7
Quickly, I thought that my DM wrote this question, because we were in that exact same scenario. What helped us was:
The experienced players knew the material, and each took a pupil to help guide the new players. We're still having trouble actually "roleplaying" as a group. Most still treat it as a series of battles and not as an interactive story. We're ...
6
Cyberpunk is about a fast world overwhelming and crushing people. Pick a technological or social advance that occurs too fast and destroys the lives of a lot of people while catapulting a few others beyond humanity. Ideas:
A new affordable and safe source of energy (practical fusion power at last, maybe) threatens to upset the balance of power(=oligopoly) ...
6
Seriously?...
Film Noire: Pick any of them, move the story into a cyber punk setting. Any 20/30 police thrillers will do nicely as well. It's gritty, dark, and contains corruption going sky high. Instead of prohibition, use forbidden technologies -- maybe nanotech would fit nicely making all that cyberware obsolete. Instead of corrupt politicians, use ...
6
This is pretty vague, probably too vague to answer - people will suggest just about anything given those parameters. Having said that, your minimal one-line description sounds like the overall plot of the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP from Paizo.
5
The non-cliche would be to build up stories about a neighborhood or sub-culture that the player characters can care about. When you get down to it there aren't that many things to do: get some(thing/one), protect some(thing/one), discover some(thing/one), escape some(thing/one), or affect somechange.
Rather than looking for some new fresh idea, build on ...
5
In Glorantha's (north) west are the Malkioni, who are a family of cultures with knights and priests, which is the part of Glorantha closest to mainstream medieval fantasy.
One of the strongest and most dominant cultures is the Rokari of the land of Seshnela, who provide a number of dystopic features:
They do offer peace and salvation to their peasants, in ...
5
Forget clans and organisations and bloodlines for now. Think of the vampires in a city as a large (dysfunctional?) family. There's the old generation, the ones that control everything. Below them, a large number of elders are vying for positions of either power or influence be it via direct or indirect means. They can use external or internal (re)sources ...
5
I almost invariably run sandbox games, what the players do is entirely up to them and the plot advances through NPCs no matter if they interact or not!
Before organising a big sandbox campaign where there are strategic targets I'd advise the following:
Talk to the players; see what they want from the game and enjoy. Do they like exploring? Fights? ...
4
A few thoughts to help you get started:
Pregenerated characters with limited options to customize (does the fighter want plate or chain armor? Sword, axe, spear, or bow? Who does the Cleric worship?
Run just the core rules (or as simplify the rules as much as possible). As a somewhat newbie GM, those rules sometimes are hard to remember unless/until you ...
4
You, sir, want Lady Blackbird, which almost precisely fits your description. By default it's not grim and gritty, but you could easily add some darker flavour to it. It comes with pre-generated characters, a starting situation, and a simple yet elegant ruleset, all taking place in a setting that's a mash-up for Skies of Arcadia, Firefly, and World of ...
4
WHile not having actually played BoL...
I've played many an equally simple game engine.
I've seen reports of campaign play.
I've read BoL.
BoL has character advancement options, and sufficient flexibility, to be able to sustain a 10-20 session campaign.
Assuming each session is a story¹, that's 2-3 Advancement points per session. (p. 40)
Which means ...
4
Try keeping the game fresh in players' minds by asking them to talk to about it: what has and hasn't been engaging, where they would like to see the story go, etc. There's no time like a hiatus to analyze how things have been going and make changes for when the game continues.
Take this time to build out the world, too. Write fiction, histories, details ...
4
I keep a campaign wiki for every game. If players leave the game temporarily (in your case that would be all of them) I occasionally post updates to the game world, events, that kind of stuff. If they're interested, you could ask them how their characters would react and weave that into the story. This assumes you just want to keep the fire burning until ...
4
I see this as two problems - keeping things fresh in the player's minds, and getting them excited enough to make the game a priority in their lives. Here's an idea:
Keep the World Alive
What if the game-world continued on around your PCs? Send out short weekly updates (news bulletins) about how the world that they all know and love is continuing while the ...
4
One technique I have used for a game on hiatus was backstory filler. If I ran into a player or otherwise had a long conversation with them, we would start filling in the details for their respective character and have mini-episodes. At least this way they could have more richness and a homing point to how to play the character.
4
This is another YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) answer. It worked for a small group who enjoyed writing. It might not work for most groups, but I don't see a problem applying it to most games, including D&D. I've never played in a "real" play by mail campaign, but this is how we did it:
We had a great Shadowrun game going through my last couple of years in ...
4
Tell them the campaign is ending, and ask them if they want to participate in the finale. Be up front about the risks of characters death, but leave it in their hands as to whether or not they want to "risk" their character's story ending in death.
If several of them decline to participate, consider adding player-run NPCs to the adventure to allow the ...
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