The Campaign Season: Length of Intended Play Affecting Desig

[Nicolas Crost]

M.J.,

Stripping the dull stuff out of the game may increase density; but it's an illusion to think that it is a distinction between one-shots and campaigns.

You´re absolutely right. My point was the following:

Of course, if you waste five hours of a one shot, you just don't play. So it's less costly to waste time in a campaign.

I simply don´t manage to play as often and for as long as I would like. So the density has to be high. And even though I don´t think it is necessary for a campaign to have lesser density than mini-series (with, say, 6 sessions), I think that the point made by Ralf applies to this:

The old school style I was specifically referring to above, is very much a lower density style because it very much builds in the assumption that you have to delay the cool stuff.

I would say that you don´t have to have low density campaigns, but that a lot of people associate campaigns with old-school D&D type play. Which often leads to delaying the good stuff (and me getting bored out of my skull).

To sum it up: I would love a game that was specifically designed to enable a shorter type of play with rules and explanations backing it up.

[Mike Holmes]

I think that what's going on here in terms of "compression" is that we're refering to the plot. What I see is that in most traditional games there are other sources of interest besides the plot. Hence when Ralph points out that making conflict resolution systems can be made to increase compression by doing resolution with one roll, this is true. But it may actually make the game worse by doing so. That is, for some people, the plot is of at best secondary importance, if not less.

For example, in D&D, the "high points" are, arguably, the combats. Each individually does very little to advance the plot. So plots as a whole tend to advance glacially. But that's not important, because if you enjoy D&D, you enjoy combat situations.

That is, we can't fall into the fallacy that "high compression" equals good play for all modes. Ron often points out how when narrativism is used, you get a much higher plot compression ratio - as he used to put it, more story happens in one three hour session than in five six hour sessions of other games. A 10:1 compression ratio. And while I agree, that's only good for games where the players are looking for narrativism.

So when Ron and Ralph talk about "moments that players care about" I believe that they mean for players looking for narrativism. Because I think that D&D provides "moments that players care about" for players looking for Gamism with about the same frequency.

That is, what's neccessary overall is to have the ability of the player to make relevant decisions to the sort that he wants to make with a certain frequency. We could call this "decision compression." Indeed, what to shop for, and how much it costs, etc, might be a high ratio of decision compression for a player interested in simulationism. So, for the Gamist player, the Gamism Compression should be high. For the simulationist, the Sim Compression should he high. And for the Narrativist, the Narrativism Compression should be high.

So, when we talk about plot pacing, I think that we're talking about high narrativism compression (or, perhaps certain sorts of Simulationism Compression). And Ralph's suggestions are all good for getting to that. But not the others at all - they're likely detrimental, in fact.


Campaign length has nothing to do with this at all, I'd contend. That is you can have a high compression long term narrativist campaign if you want. Using either episodic or serial styles of presentation. For episodic, just think about kickers being resolved in Sorcerer each night of play, and new ones always being come up with for the next session. Would be very TV, wouldn't it? For long term play, I'm doing a Hero Quest game that's a lot like a soap opera, with no end in sight. Well, not neccessarily - actually I intend to put a break into the game after about 20 sessions, about 4 from now. But only to give out advanced experience and start at it again from a new perspective. I'd like to play the game in perpituity.

Sim is probably different - that is, having a set ending would probably be too metagame. Oh, you could have an impending end of the world, but that would be viewed naturalistically from the interior, and pacing would have nothing to do with it.

Gamism, OTOH, is precisely the same as Narrativism in this regard. That is, having a planned ending means determining a "Winner." The ultimate Gamist metric.

Mike