On Using Published Campaign Settings

One thing that kind of bugs me is when DMs or GMs use a published campaign setting, but end up only utilizing the setting canon as backdrop for adventures mostly unrelated to the state of the campaign world. Sure, you might be in Eberron, and if you walk far enough south in Breland, you'll run into Sharn, but the story playing out for the PCs isn't tied to the movers, shakers, and critical events that shape the world. This big lavish campaign world ends up just being a short cut to believable geography should the PCs wander off the beaten path.

I have a few recommendations for using published campaign settings below that might help you have a more satisfying campaign in the world of your choosing. (I'll couch examples in D&D's Eberron as it's a personal favorite.)

The Status Quo Exists to be Altered - If you've purchased a campaign setting, you now have a big book sitting in front of you that tells you about people and places at a very specific juncture in time. Even if the setting doesn't bother to tell you what year it is, you're seeing the state of said campaign world on "Pause." The moment you drop PCs into that world, you're pressing "Play," No, better yet, you're pressing "Record." From that moment forward, the PCs are going to meddle with the state of the world and, if you're running the game to a high enough level of power, will change it dramatically. And that's exactly how it should be. In Eberron, the Mournland exists to be solved! Solved by the PCs in your campaign no less! The 4e D&D Eberron material actually does a good job encouraging this particular point, going as far as providing a Mourning Savior epic destiny for adventurers who would end their careers removing the catastrophic blight left by the Last War.

PCs are a Canon-Violating Force - "But Drizzt does that in book five of the 'Drow are Awesome' series!" is a crummy reason to have fate conspire against having the PCs make a particular change to the world. PCs in your game should exist in a timeline separate from any novels about the campaign setting that aren't already incorporated into the campaign setting as written, and their very existence sets the world on a different course. And beside that, if your PCs existed in the same timeline as novels in the setting, New York Times Bestselling authors would be writing about them, because your PCs are awesome!

Answer Unanswered Questions - Whether deliberately or accidentally, the answers to some questions about the events or nature of a campaign setting will be left unclear. Maybe the author is doing it on purpose, and outlines a few rumored answers to whet your appetite, or maybe he was four cups of coffee into that part of the book at 2:00 am and "It all made sense at the time." Either way, your players should not have to wait for expansion material or novels to fill gaps of information in a campaign setting. Hurl the PCs headlong into the mysterious situation and have them find the truth along the way. If later material contradicts your answer, strike it from your game's canon, or better yet, have that new answer be commonly believed across the world. Now you've got a whole new adventure in spreading the truth and dealing with forces that might be angered by what the PCs are revealing.

The bottom line is that I think you'll have a more satisfying time exploring a published campaign setting if you end up writing parts of it. The game at your table doesn't exist in the same universe as published novels or the play that happens at any other gamer's table. Make the setting your own through play.

Fear the Con 3: Reflections

First, apologies for failing to post last week. Between the launch of Final Fantasy XIII and the convention that weekend, I was thoroughly distracted from blogging. Here's to getting back on the wagon.

Fear the Con 3 was very enjoyable. Festivities started on Thursday evening with me knowing only two attendees, and ended (for me anyway) after some post-con tourism with visitors on Tuesday with a lot of fun behind me and a lot of new friendships.

I mentioned in my last post that I was signed up for all but one gaming slot at the convention, and that ended up getting me just about as much gaming as I wanted, but did so because one GM canceled and another no-showed at game time. Three slots of scheduled gaming ended up being enough for me, and gave me time to mill around, join pick-up board games, and watch a lot of play as well.

I definitely took home some good observations about RPGs for convention play. Con games are a very different animal compared to a one-shot game with close friends. If I end up running something at a future con, here are two of the factors I'll consider during prep.

Have events suggest a clear course of action - For one of the games in which I played, the GM gave our party a mission without providing clear direction on how to achieve our goal. We infiltrated a space station held by two factions while disguised as members of one of the factions. Our goal was to disrupt peace negotiations so that the two factions wouldn't trust one another, and would be easy for our true masters to subjugate. Unfortunately, we were given so much latitude in how to achieve our goal that we became paralyzed by indecision. When I prep for convention play, I'll make sure that a course of action is always suggested, so that if the players fail to be proactive, they don't flounder on account of that alone.

Be prepared for wacky play - At a convention, you'll often be roleplaying with people who you don't know very well. When people first meet, it's common for them to make small talk, and the RPG equivalent of small talk seems to be craziness. Expect players to play their characters in a one-dimensional fashion, blowing the smallest hints of personality into behavior-defining characteristics. If you're using a system that shares a lot of narrative control around the table, the story will likely take a turn for the comedic very quickly, and if you're playing an action packed game, don't be too surprised if the characters die in a blaze of glory. After all, the players have no long term investment in their characters since they won't see a second session.

I'm still turning over the events of the con in my mind to see if I can produce any more nuggets of wisdom. If I come to more conclusions, I'll make sure to post them.

Reiterate This!

One mistake I see from a lot of GMs (and one that I've been guilty of before) is failing to reuse NPCs and places from previous adventures. This is a very easy mistake to make in the epic fantasy genre, which sees a lot of play. When you imagine an epic fantasy journey, it might sprawl over several continents, down into underground passages, and across multiple planes of reality. That said, it seems natural to leave behind the people you know from one place as you go to the next. After all, most of them are likely not adventurers and would be ill-suited to life on the road or in the abyss.

Fight the urge to leave people and places that the PCs know behind! Even in the limitations of a fantastic and sprawling journey there are still ways to keep the familiar around. Make sure to include an NPC now and then that's as capable or mobile as the PCs. A traveling merchant can reappear anywhere halfway reasonable (and if your group appreciates occasional silliness, the occasional unreasonable extra-planar location as well), and a lone wolf bounty hunter, while generally unwelcome in a cooperative party structure, has an excuse to show anywhere adventuring types might go as well.

Revisiting old locales is a snap as well. Hostile locations can be repopulated and modified by their new stronger inhabitants. Peaceful places can invite heroic adventurers back for a celebration on the anniversary of the region's liberation from the grip of a tyrannical warlord, which provides opportunities to revisit NPCs that aren't filled with wanderlust.

Revisiting past content has a number of benefits for both the GM and the players.

PCs can form relational identities - Whether players have come to the table with pages of history for their characters or just a sheet of numbers and gear, relationships with NPCs can provide opportunities to flesh out PC personalities. If a rescued orphan grows attached to a PC, for example, revisiting that NPC can be a tool for exploring the character's identity. What does the PC advise when the kid says he has a crush on the baker's daughter? How does the PC respond when he hears that the orphaned kid has been caught stealing twice since his last visit? Scenes like this forge a character's identity by revealing his opinions to the audience (the other players and GM).

Familiar context increases immersion - How many times has a player asked a GM at the beginning of a campaign, "Would my dude know this?" about one thing or another? Well, when you revisit old content, players know exactly what their "dude" would know about a place or person, because they built their familiarity with the content through the experience of play. It becomes easier for the PCs to stay in-character when they don't have to get context for their existence every few minutes.

GMs get more mileage out of great content - If you've taken the time to craft an intriguing locale or memorable NPC, shouldn't you get as much out of that effort as you can? It's easy to get wrapped up in showing the players the next new thing, but if you have any sort of life outside of the game, revisiting past content is a shortcut you shouldn't pass up. Any time you see the players have a strong emotional reaction to a piece of content, make a note that it would be worth revisiting.

Increased impact from the unfamiliar - If everything the PCs run into is always new, the impact of newness will slowly drift away. New becomes par for the course, and that's definitely not a good place for your game to be. Let your players take a break from the new now and then. It can get exhausting to craft new images in your imagination constantly for several hours straight. After some time spent with classic content, newness will recover the freshness and excitement that it should carry.

So next time you're strapped for game ideas as a GM, go back to your notes (or memories if you don't keep notes) and play your "Greatest Hits" album to your players. They'll enjoy the blast from the past and they'll remember how far their characters have come.