Campaign Structure

[Deathwatch]

Judges, How do you structure your campaigns?

 

Are you the type that has the next 6 to 8 adventures ready to go with plot links in the stories or are you more of a fly by the seat of your pants judge?

 

What type of evil do your villains perform? Are they the smash and grab gang or more of the plotting evil?

 

How often does a Heroes Hunted come into play? Does any one hunted play a key role and why?

 

I ask these questions because I’m now developing a game to begin in 30 days or so and just wanted an idea of how some of you address these issues.

[Doug McCrae]

I like to plan many sessions ahead though I don't always manage it.

 

Variety is the spice of life as they say so I think it's a good idea to use lots of different types of villains and plots: Straightforward bank robberies and devious schemes. Mindless thugs and brilliant masterminds. Street hoods and alien conquerors.

 

Hey! It would be interesting if the brilliant mastermind was forced to pull a bank robbery or other obvious crime for some reason. Or the mindless thug somehow got ahold of, and enacted, a devious plot. Maybe he found the plans in one of Doc Doom's old bases, eh?

[Agent X]

I try to build up a series of villainous networks and a few other phenomena that I have though out what would happen independently of the heroes, kind of like a wound up clock. So, I have a loose timeline about what the villains and other NPCs would be doing over the campaign arc. Then, I set up the initial adventure for the heroes and react to their decisions. As they affect the campaign, I re-evaluate what the NPCs would be doing. It makes for a very unpredictable game that flows really well, tells a good story, and challenges the players. It also is a great deal of work to prepare but then it is smooth sailing.

[TheEmerged]

I have a system I actually developed for a Cyber HERO campaign, fine-tuned under Alternity, and am very please pleased with its results for my current NeoChampions campaign.

 

I try to allow the players to be more proactive than the norm; I have found it does wonders for motivating them. It does, however, work better for some genres (mercenary group, villain campaigns, and resistance war being the three best IMO) than others (probably wouldn't work well for a traditional superheroic campaign). Since "NeoChampions" is a villainous campaign, it allows the players to decide what they're going to do.

 

I present the players with a list of opportunities -- which also serves as a wonderful way to sneak background material to thme Here's the handout players received at the beginning of the current campaign... Initial Campaign Handout. Pay special attention to the "Specific Opportunities" at the bottom.

 

The players chose to investigate PSI, figuring that given the world's background of anti-psionic backlash they'd either make a handy ally or a dangerous enemy. The adventure included a run-in with VIPER. After the adventure, I prepared the next opportunity list (locatedHERE for the curious). I moved several of the other opportunities forward -- for example, notice how the sections on the IHA, Argent, and Champions moved forward. I also adjusted the descriptions for how this adventure affected what they knew (reference the segments on PSI, VIPER, and the Justice Battalion). I also added a few more new opportunites (Protectors, Esper).

 

I continue this pattern (I just realized I haven't put the most recent one up...). If the players don't react to an opportunity, I may decide for it turn fallow if they don't take it after a while (it's not like they're the only mercenaries etc. in the world...).

 

The situation might get more dangeorus if they don't deal with it. Had they not gone after the Defiants in the second adventure, for example, the Defiants would have come looking for them in their third or fourth adventure. I know they read the boards, but if the third handout was up you'd see that another one is getting close to critical

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

As to what kind of plots I throw at my characters... I tend toward situations in which the players have to deal with the conflicting agendas of NPC's. My adventures, if transcribed, would probably resemble an espionage thriller more than a typical comic book.

 

Check out my first Plot Seed for Victory ("Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot?") on THIS post -- scroll down and look for the puppy avatar

[Deathwatch]

thanks

 

so far so good ...

 

thanks for your input

 

currently i have several adventures set up for individuals and have a larger grand scale background story that the PC's will may interact with on several levels depending on motivation/risk.

[Insaniac99]

well, I GM almost totally on whim and with very little or no planning what so ever, for example i might say the PCs will get captured and have to bust their way out. but i never figuer how they are gonna be captured till last minute and for a better example i adjusted grond in my campaign, he is litterally a unstopbable force, the longest he has has been knocked out was an hour and that took a TON of tranqualizer (enough that, if put inot the city water suply, would KO everyone who drank the water) and the PCs generally have to calm him down some how, and he has the mind of a child anyway...

 

 

but i regularly throw my PCs into situations i don't know how they are going to get out of, and just let them give me ideas for how to get out of them....

[Enforcer84]

when I GM'd I fantasized about having a plan...

 

as a player, I would do things that would make my GM stop the game and

"Get Back to us " about what paradigm changes I had made to his universe.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Enforcer84

when I GM'd I fantasized about having a plan...

 

as a player, I would do things that would make my GM stop the game and

"Get Back to us " about what paradigm changes I had made to his universe.

I have taken it as a source of pride that I have never had to stop the game to figure out the ramifications of a character's actions. I have left a meaningful pause for a player to reconsider a stupid action and have stopped a few campaigns in their early development when I realized too many of my players did not respect the campaign or me or both. Those disasters usually happened at game stores with people I didn't know very well.

[cutsleeve]

i guess its fly by the seat of my pants for me

 

Basically ive run a whole bunch of games in the past and ive had some that failed completely and some that where wildly successful. the ones that failed for me where the ones i tried to plot out and fully detail. the ones that succeded where loose.

 

My entire GMing process now consists of a few lil rules.

1) write down the general plot for the adventure not where the characters have to go or where the shut off switch is for the thermo nuclear device, just the simple stuff like why is the villian doing villiany how does he intend to do it and all other small bits if theres going to be hostages who things like that

2) stock expendable badguys are essential theres nothing more satisfying as sending hordes of grunts off to attack the heros and its even more fun when the hero's almost die trying to beat them all. that is of course the villians whole reason for using henchmen so the hero's get a lil smacked around before they get to him and if the grunts manage to beat the heros hey order them pizza and beer.

3) Make all badguys and essential characters ahead of time and figure out why they are connected with the story. if you just created a cool baddy a week ago and cant figure out a way to reason him into the story edit him out hes redundant.

4) dont get to complicated because the players will always manage to unravel and unhinge your plot. sometimes they dont mean to but it happens. if you didnt make a specific detail in a specific sequence in the adventure then it wont break continuity when the players just happen to avoid it. and if its not solid then it can be changed and added into the story at another part.

5) your story should be as flexible as water: water can take any shape and can fill any container it can ripple gently over something or be sent crashing against it it can be soft and supple or solid as ice. your adventure should be like water.

 

after you've done all that all you have to do is sit back and make stuff up on the fly you have badguys and can throw them in at any time you want you can make up locations on the fly and many npc's in adventures dont need stats. NPC Doctor2 helps pc regain health then promptly gets shot by villian. seeeee easy character generation.

[Agent X]

Re: i guess its fly by the seat of my pants for me

 

Originally posted by cutsleeve

Basically ive run a whole bunch of games in the past and ive had some that failed completely and some that where wildly successful. the ones that failed for me where the ones i tried to plot out and fully detail. the ones that succeded where loose.

 

My entire GMing process now consists of a few lil rules.

1) write down the general plot for the adventure not where the characters have to go or where the shut off switch is for the thermo nuclear device, just the simple stuff like why is the villian doing villiany how does he intend to do it and all other small bits if theres going to be hostages who things like that

2) stock expendable badguys are essential theres nothing more satisfying as sending hordes of grunts off to attack the heros and its even more fun when the hero's almost die trying to beat them all. that is of course the villians whole reason for using henchmen so the hero's get a lil smacked around before they get to him and if the grunts manage to beat the heros hey order them pizza and beer.

3) Make all badguys and essential characters ahead of time and figure out why they are connected with the story. if you just created a cool baddy a week ago and cant figure out a way to reason him into the story edit him out hes redundant.

4) dont get to complicated because the players will always manage to unravel and unhinge your plot. sometimes they dont mean to but it happens. if you didnt make a specific detail in a specific sequence in the adventure then it wont break continuity when the players just happen to avoid it. and if its not solid then it can be changed and added into the story at another part.

5) your story should be as flexible as water: water can take any shape and can fill any container it can ripple gently over something or be sent crashing against it it can be soft and supple or solid as ice. your adventure should be like water.

 

after you've done all that all you have to do is sit back and make stuff up on the fly you have badguys and can throw them in at any time you want you can make up locations on the fly and many npc's in adventures dont need stats. NPC Doctor2 helps pc regain health then promptly gets shot by villian. seeeee easy character generation.

Do you think in terms of episodic adventures? I think in terms of "clusters" of activity that the characters can interact with. I don't bog down too much into detail but I have a timeline of a basic description about what each "cluster" will be doing if the heroes don't get involved. It isn't as complicated as it might sound and the players seem to enjoy knowing that the "world" is constantly "in motion" even when they take a detour.

[cutsleeve]

large story small parts

 

I always try to hash out the plot of the whole story then i design the adventures around the bad guys goals. Its best to think of it in this way i know who the major badguy is and what the major badguy really wants. Then i go and figure out how he intends to get what he wants. thats where the particular adventures come in theyre just small steps to his ultimate goal. sometimes theyre not even that sometimes theyre just plots that seem dangerous but are just to distract the heros from the less obvious but potentially more dangerous part of the plot that made the heros go "huh" earlier on. Even then its really all dependant on what overall goal the major badguy had as to how each adventure goes.

 

The major rule still applies keep it loose so its easily moldable.

[JohnTaber]

Hi Deathwatch,

 

Neat question.

 

After 20 years of GMing I'm still trying to hone my skills. One of the things I am working on right now is flexibility.

 

A constant problem of mine is that I create one adventure then sort of force it on the players OR I make an adventure where the initial story hook is so strong the players CAN'T escape it. That type of stong hook might work for the first session but it gets kind of old in an extended campaign. With this mentality I would actually plan at least 3 or 4 games in advance. I COULD because I was sort of forcing the session along. Note that my players were still having tons of fun...they just complained every so often.

 

NOW I'm playing a bit more open. Here is what I am doing different with my latest campaign. [Note that I'm still anal under the hood...I'm just hiding it better. ]

 

I create two complete adventures and several plot hooks before the session begins. As the session opens I summerize the stuff that happened in the previous game. Then I set the mood for the first scene and let the players react. Sometimes one of the stories will trigger the PC sometimes the PC move towards the stories. While the story is rolling I'll intro other hooks. For example, UNTIL picks up an alien spacecraft which crashes in the Central Valley...the vigilante Raven has struck again...etc. Foreshadowing is a GM's best friend and the players love it, "OH...I forgot about such-and-such!"

 

I DO plan most of my games in a HIGH-LEVEL serial fashion but occassionally I'll throw in an episodic story. For example, in a given week 1 story might be serial and the other might be episodic.

 

Another area I am exploring is letting things "run" a bit more. Again...remember my anal-ness. [Ok...that might not be a word but you get the idea. ] This has REALLY been fun for me and the players! I am having MUCH more fun running games! For example, one of the heroes stays behind to help DEMON scientist escape from an extra dimensional base which is colapsing. The PC actually remains until the entire base is gone! In the past I would have said he grabbed the last scientist and dived through... Instead I let the PC fall into the other dimensional to appear at one of the mystical doorways in a smoking heap with black streaks on his back. [The PC is named Survivor and has Absorption to his defenses. ] Anyway...a few games later while boosting his power black streaks from his back cause him searing pain! What happened to our hero? How can he get healed? Etc. I ended up with a KILLER plotline because I was more open.

 

Anywho...good luck!

[Agent X]

Re: large story small parts

 

Originally posted by cutsleeve

I always try to hash out the plot of the whole story then i design the adventures around the bad guys goals. Its best to think of it in this way i know who the major badguy is and what the major badguy really wants. Then i go and figure out how he intends to get what he wants. thats where the particular adventures come in theyre just small steps to his ultimate goal. sometimes theyre not even that sometimes theyre just plots that seem dangerous but are just to distract the heros from the less obvious but potentially more dangerous part of the plot that made the heros go "huh" earlier on. Even then its really all dependant on what overall goal the major badguy had as to how each adventure goes.

 

The major rule still applies keep it loose so its easily moldable.

I think our approaches run along a parallel course with fundamentally the same view of how to keep the flow of the game going.

[Deathwatch]

Local Heroes

 

How do you address the idea of other heroes in your city ?

 

Are the PC's the ONLY superhumans in the city on the side of justice? How often do they meet other heroes? do they know of or have a rough idea of the other heros in the city when you start? or is the campaign so focused that other heroes are not seen?

 

Personally I am building a brief for the players to give them a bit of historical and Villain/Hero population information. it also has a map of the city with 40 or so point of intrest.

[Agent X]

Re: Local Heroes

 

Originally posted by Deathwatch

How do you address the idea of other heroes in your city ?

 

Are the PC's the ONLY superhumans in the city on the side of justice? How often do they meet other heroes? do they know of or have a rough idea of the other heros in the city when you start? or is the campaign so focused that other heroes are not seen?

 

Personally I am building a brief for the players to give them a bit of historical and Villain/Hero population information. it also has a map of the city with 40 or so point of intrest.

There are always some NPC Heroes, at least nationally. If there are any in the setting that could be interacting with the Heroes, I anticipate how they will interact with the other "clusters" in my game along the timeline as if the PCs weren't there. Then I wind it up and let the PCs bounce off of these and have the NPCs react to the new developments. I don't want the players to get the "dreamtime" sense where everything they do is an isolated event. I like the sense that I get as a player when the changes I make are actually significant so I assume my players do too. As to your other questions, it depends on the campaign.

[TheTemplar]

Really, I have to agree that the best bet between Planning ahead and Flying Blind is a mixture of the two. I currently DM an online Neverwinter Nights campaign (CRPG based on DND,) and the first story arc was planned out in the sense of how it would start, and what conditions would satisfy the "end" of that story arc (success, fail, etc.) SO far, I've been very fortunate and things have gone more or less according to plan (aside from the occasional player not showing up) which tells me either I'm leading them by the nose too much, or I'm just REALLY REALLY lucky so far. However, many things have come up which lended themselves nicely to what I was doing that weren't planned ahead of time, so I just went with it. Several plot hooks from the players' own backstories popped up and I plan on really diving into those once this story has wrapped up. The one thing I REALLY suggest, just to keep it mixed up is have a good variety of Multi-session story arcs and single night adventures. Plan your big story arcs out ahead of time, and then take a couple of one shot sessions to spotlight a PC or explore some aspect of their character. Running BIG multisession adventures back to back to back too frequently tends to make players feel like they don't get to spend much time in character development.

 

And at least ONCE in a campaign, their base needs to turn against them, lock them in, and try to kill them. The technicalities do not matter, really. It's just great fun.

 

-T

[zornwil]

Re: Local Heroes

 

Originally posted by Deathwatch

How do you address the idea of other heroes in your city ?

 

Are the PC's the ONLY superhumans in the city on the side of justice? How often do they meet other heroes? do they know of or have a rough idea of the other heros in the city when you start? or is the campaign so focused that other heroes are not seen?

 

Personally I am building a brief for the players to give them a bit of historical and Villain/Hero population information. it also has a map of the city with 40 or so point of intrest.

 

The superhero team in my game meets other heroes from the same city (Detroit, no not at all Millennium City) somewhat regularly but virtually never "in the line of duty". Most run-ins are flavor and contact-building with occassional info sharnig. They were given a little info on the heroes around the Detroit area when starting.

 

They are actually in one of the more super-populated areas of the country. Detroit per capita has way more heroes, it's a sort of enclave for mutants (specifically vigilantes) compared to other cities due to the mayor's attitude as well as rampant pollutant and technology-driven mutation. There are 3 major heros/teams of major magnitude, Metal Men, Wilting Rose, and Flaming Carrot, and there's a developing Buffy with her gang.

[Deathwatch]

just a note

 

I am building this campaign for a small crew of veteran players an i myself have over 20 Yrs experiance. the real reason for this thread is the basic concept that i may after all this time fall in a rut. thus i wanted to hear the what and hows of some of the other judges out there.

[lemming]

I like to think I've got a structure to my game, but there is a lot of winging it. Though to the character's credit, they've turned a couple supers toward the side of good who could of easily been recurring villians. Actually, I was expecting one of them to have that happen and would of probably been a major villian.

 

I'm using several old PCs in an NPC role. More in a useful information role, though last game had a couple of them help out. Though if I had realized how well the speedster could plow through agents

 

I've got several subplots waiting for the right player to show up and some just waiting for one of the players to "activate" it.

 

Hmm, I need to get back to working on my campaign web pages. I'm like 3 adventures behind in posting.

 

Oh, and zornwil runs a great game. A bit on the strange time at times, but very cool.

[Blue]

Other heroes are just as good at enabling plots as agencies, the military, or any other group, including the villains. I have some in the campaign, but they are disorganized, with the PCs being the only organized and fully sanctioned group of heroes in the city.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by lemming

I like to think I've got a structure to my game, but there is a lot of winging it. Though to the character's credit, they've turned a couple supers toward the side of good who could of easily been recurring villians. Actually, I was expecting one of them to have that happen and would of probably been a major villian.

 

I'm using several old PCs in an NPC role. More in a useful information role, though last game had a couple of them help out. Though if I had realized how well the speedster could plow through agents

 

I've got several subplots waiting for the right player to show up and some just waiting for one of the players to "activate" it.

 

Hmm, I need to get back to working on my campaign web pages. I'm like 3 adventures behind in posting.

 

Oh, and zornwil runs a great game. A bit on the strange time at times, but very cool.

 

Thanks Lemming! I think your campaign has a pretty good structure, I always enjoy campaigns that wing it more than not, it's more interesting - like how we befriended Plastique. This isn't just a mutual admiration post but rather would like to point out to anyone reading it that when GMs roll with the flow it makes the game much more interesting than being forced into situations that don't quite make sense.

[lemming]

Originally posted by zornwil

Thanks Lemming! I think your campaign has a pretty good structure, I always enjoy campaigns that wing it more than not, it's more interesting - like how we befriended Plastique. This isn't just a mutual admiration post but rather would like to point out to anyone reading it that when GMs roll with the flow it makes the game much more interesting than being forced into situations that don't quite make sense.

*snif* I love you man! *snif*

 

With the current players, I don't see how a rigid style would work.

[Syberdwarf2]

There's a great Digital Hero Article in the DH archives. I think it was called "Scenario Design; a quick method".

I've used the method detailed therein many times, with great success. As others have noted in their posts to this thread, adventures IMO should be fluid and flexible "like water", because the PCs will ALWAYS do something unexpected.