Serial vs. Unified Campaign

[jburneko]

I was just wondering how many of you played Serial style and how many of you play Unified Campaign style, which you prefer, why and how you most efectively used the style.

Let me define what I mean.

Serial Style - This is essencially how most TV Shows work.  Each session or few sessions there's a brand new story.  The main characters (The PCs) are the same but basically it's a brand new story.  Some stories may link back to previous stories but each 'episode' is basically self contained.

Campaign Style - This is one big gigantic unified story.  Generally this is one long continuous story with all the same elements.  The same NPCs, the same major villain, the same set of goals, etc.  And it's all working towords one major climax.  Generally these last several sessions but when it's over, it's over.  You either write a sequal campaign and use the same PCs or you write a brand new set of PCs and maybe even switch games.

All my life I've played Serial Style.  Our group meets every month or every week or whatever and each session, I as the GM would have a brand new story for the players to play through.  But I find that Serial Style gets kind of dull after while.  I find that it suffers from something I call 'X-Files Syndrom.'  Basically I find myself trying to use elements from previous 'episodes' and winching them into some sort of contrived unified timeline that ultimately doesn't work.  Things become disjoint REAL FAST.

I'm playing through my first real Unified Campaign right now and it feels so much better.  I have the entire thing planed out from the start.  I plan details before each session and I rework details as the players change things in the world but the whole arching thing has been planned for months.

This is of course my usual Simulationist (or Dramatist) method of play where I plan the major plot points and it's all heading towords a predetermined climax.  For you narativists I would assume that the Serial would involve generating a new relationship map/backstory every session and the unified campaign would be a LARGE relationship map/backstory with each NPC having deep and complex goals they are working towards.

Just curious.

Jesse

[Dav]

This may be a cop-out, but I tend to go for a serialized unification (ala X-Files)

There is a large, overall story, but it is broken-up by myriad smaller and less defined stories within the larger whole.  (Y'know, how X-Files only does a show dealing with the fact that aliens are landing and taking over every 3-5 episodes... though how they seem to ignore the HUGE spaceship coming out of the antarctic circle is beyond me... or for that matter, the entire movie... eh, well)

For the most part, though, I would go serialized (or at least mini-series), with the occasional full-length feature thrown in.

Dav

[jburneko]

On 2001-06-27 15:05, Dav wrote:
There is a large, overall story, but it is broken-up by myriad smaller and less defined stories within the larger whole.  (Y'know, how X-Files only does a show dealing with the fact that aliens are landing and taking over every 3-5 episodes... though how they seem to ignore the HUGE spaceship coming out of the antarctic circle is beyond me... or for that matter, the entire movie... eh, well)

This is precisely what I meant when I refered to the 'X-Files Syndrom.'  I don't believe for one single second that the produces and writers of that show have a unified vision for what's going on in that whole alien conspiracy thing.  I think they keep thinking up new cool alien ideas and then backward winch it into the overaching story to make it appear continuous.

What you've described is my definition of the serial.  Mostly independent stories with a few connected stories that appear to be part of a unified story but only because you've winched them in that way.  I find this method to be less than satisfactory and leaves too many holes in the plot.

Unless of course you HAVE planned out the whole story and are just feeding it to the players a little piece at a time mixed in with little independed scenarios.  In which case you do have a unified serial game.  Which perhaps is the solution to my current Deadlands game.

Jesse

[Mytholder]

The middle ground might be termed the "Babylon 5 syndrome", where the GM does have a five-year plot arc planned out, but plugs lots of little once-off plots which may or may not be related to the main arc into the game...

[Peter]

Thats pretty much what I do.

Well- let me put it this way: I consider the campaign/game world as my own character. In general, the goal is continuity; certain things can be episodic (like put a 5-10 year span between adventures with the same characters) but I want continuity.. and it takes me between 2 and 4 (3-4 hour) game sessions to resolve an entire plot, anyhow.

[Dav]

Jesse writed:

"What you've described is my definition of the serial. Mostly independent stories with a few connected stories that appear to be part of a unified story but only because you've winched them in that way. I find this method to be less than satisfactory and leaves too many holes in the plot."

I responded:

"I never winch.  I never plan either, but I never winch.  My sideline plots always come about as players find they want to explore something I haven't thought of (which is just about everything, as I don't plan).  Then, I move that plot over there, and keep my main villain still twiddling his thumbs over here.  I think it is the only way to GM.  I can only run a (in my opinion) solid game when I do it on the fly.  When you run on the fly, you *have* to do side plots, just rules of the game."

That was pretty much how it went down.

Dav

[greyorm]

Unified.  I don't really recall any other style...never much liked serial, or serial tv shows (B5 was an eye-opener for me in regards to SF televison in that respect)...everything, or nearly so, is hooked to the main plot and uncovering, responding to, developing those events are what the game is all about.

At the end, I might start up some new plot, but often times we just change characters and begin a new story-arc.

This time around, I'm avoiding the blatant inter-relation approach I've gone with in the past, and am setting up background events that will evolve as the game progresses.  The characters may or may not affect these (frex, it will be rather difficult for them to affect the war in the far north, though they may feel the effects of it).

In this way, there's almost no real "plot" to the game, and it is more about the characters and what they want to accomplish with their lives, how the events around them affect them and what they do, than anything else.

[Paul Czege]

Hey everyone,

I had an interesting conversation related to this subject with my friend who's GMing our current Theatrix game. In trying to prep the next game sesion, he has sent a few emails to the players asking for what they want to do. Partly he was hoping for replies about NPC's we were planning to talk to. He didn't get any responses, which tells you something. The players don't know what they want to do.

Prior to the game, because he was interested in running a more Narrativist game, we'd spent time talking about Premise. He has said that coming up with a Premise was the hardest part about his early development on the scenario. But although he didn't tell me (and hasn't told me) the game's Premise, he was happy at what he came up with.

This contrasts interestingly with our recent Sorcerer character creation session. Scott laid out the Premise that demons are a de-Humanizing force in electronic media and we created characters who had a relationship with that Premise, who were positioned to comment thematically on that Premise through their actions during play. The players are set up to be actively creating various thematic narratives on the game's Premise.

With Theatrix, the GM is struggling to reveal his Premise through play. He wants to know what NPC's we want to talk to so he can figure out how to reveal that Premise. But we don't know what we want to do, because we don't know what kind of story we want to tell, because we don't know what the Premise is.

That's what we talked about on the phone. His concern is that if he reveals the Premise to us as players, rather than through play, that it would ruin the scenario. Without actually knowing the Premise he's working from, it's hard to tell him that's not true. But I'm getting the idea that he's trying to tell a specific story, rather than a story (or stories) exploring a specific theme. And it feels to him like he's dragging legless dogs. Not having all that much Narrativist experience myself, I wasn't confident enough to tell him to directly reveal his Premise to the players. Instead I suggested that he make aggressive use of Theatrix cut-scenes and flashbacks, foreshadowing and symbolism to "tell" us the Premise.

How is this related to the question that started the thread? He's been planning the Theatrix game as a 9 to 12 session scenario. When I explained to him how the game was playing out differently than I expected Sorcerer to, because he was trying to reveal the Premise through play, rather than up front, he said, "Geez, I can see how it would complete itself in five sessions if I did that."

Paul

[jburneko]

On 2001-06-28 15:04, Paul Czege wrote:
With Theatrix, the GM is struggling to reveal his Premise through play. He wants to know what NPC's we want to talk to so he can figure out how to reveal that Premise. But we don't know what we want to do, because we don't know what kind of story we want to tell, because we don't know what the Premise is.

That's what we talked about on the phone. His concern is that if he reveals the Premise to us as players, rather than through play, that it would ruin the scenario.

This is actually what I was getting at down in the Sorcerer Forum under the Defining and Exploring Humanity thread.  And I fully understand where your Theatrix GM is coming from.

A lot of my games don't have a "Premise" as is oftened defined by Narrativists.  I run a lot of, "rescue the girl, kill the bad guy, save the world," type scenarios.  Just plain old adventure stories.  But when I DO have some kind of premise it's either something I REALLY believe philisophically or something that when it first occured to me through some long deliberation really had a deep impact.

I then want to impart that experience on to the players.  If it's something I really believe philosophically then I want to show the players that ignorant of the premise that premise still guides their actions given certain constraints of the game world.  If it's some neat idea I came up with over a slow dilberation then I want them to sort of experience a fictionalized form of that dileration and come to the same conclusion.

I feel that if I tell the players up front the Premise then there's really no point in playing out the scenario.  We might was well just sit around and talk about the validity/consequences of such a Premise.  As I said down in the Sorcerer forum telling the players the Premise feels like giving away the moral of the story at which point the telling of the story is almost trivial.  It's just icing on the cake at that point and I'm not very fond of icing.

Jesse

[joshua neff]

jesse--

well, as ron mentioned, premise is different than moral. even "rescue the girl, defeat the bad guy" stories have a premise. d&d dungeon crawls have a premise.

for example, if i were going to run a castle falkenstein melodrama, full of dashing fights, overblown romance, & snarling villains, there would still be a premise: let's say, victorian morality & heroism, & the cost of maintaining those morals. without letting the players in on that premise, i could only hope that they would create characters & help create a story that would address that. otherwise, you may end up with characters who are basically interchangeable with any character in any other setting. but saying from the get-go "this is a story about victorian morality & heroism, & the main conflicts will revolve around that", everybody's on the same page. is anything surprising given away? i don't think so. the nature of the conflicts & the outcomes are a complete mystery. but now we all have a starting point.
now, maybe your moral is "victorian ideals cannot be upheld without serious cost". you can still address that in the game without giving anything away to the players directly, while still clueing them in to the premise.

[Le Joueur]

quote]
On 2001-06-27 14:56, jburneko wrote:
I was just wondering how many of you played Serial style and how many of you play Unified Campaign style, which you prefer, why and how you most effectively used the style.

Let me define what I mean.

Serial Style - This is essentially how most TV Shows work.  Each session or few sessions...is basically self-contained.

Campaign Style - This is one big gigantic unified...long continuous story with all the same elements...working towards one major climax.
their<

On 2001-06-27 14:56, jburneko wrote:

All my life I've played Serial Style.

I'm playing through my first real Unified Campaign right now and...the whole arching thing has been planned for months.
Quote

On 2001-06-27 14:56, jburneko wrote:
I was just wondering how many of you played Serial style and how many of you play Unified Campaign style, which you prefer, why and how you most effectively used the style.

Let me define what I mean.

Serial Style - This is essentially how most TV Shows work.  Each session or few sessions...is basically self-contained.

Campaign Style - This is one big gigantic unified...long continuous story with all the same elements...working towards one major climax.
their<

On 2001-06-27 14:56, jburneko wrote:

All my life I've played Serial Style.

I'm playing through my first real Unified Campaign right now and...the whole arching thing has been planned for months.

[jburneko]

Fang,

According to your description I feel that your game qualifies for what I meant as Unified Campaign.  Each session may deal with some smaller aspect of your world but it all ultimately relates to the same thing.  Your campaign is essencially about 'The Five Engines Of Armagedon' and the players attempt to stop them.  Everythig is in someway no matter how tangentially related to this premise.

When I talk of the Serial game I mean that litterally each new session has a completely different story, having NOTHING to do with the previous or the next story.  Litterally the only thing in common is that the players have the same characters slightly improved from the last session.  

Take my Deadlands game.  My players are session after session wandering from town to town to town encountering a brand new cast of NPCs and brand new problem, none of which have anything to do with previous NPCs or previous problems.  Occasionally I'll throw in an adventure that relates back to previous adventure but that's only every 4 or 5 games.

So by my definition your Engine Campaign is a Unified Campaign.  It has a definite ending either the Engines will destory the world or they won't and everything relates to these Engines and these specific Heroes in some way.

Thank you for that detailed response though.  It was very insightful.  I envy your ability to think in terms of large world scale.  I usually can only think on a small localized scale.  I'm not a world builder. I'm a plot writer.  I think of people and their goals and what they need to achieve those goals.  I have trouble extrapolating the ramifications of those goals out beyond the individual.

Jesse

[Le Joueur]

On 2001-06-28 18:57, jburneko wrote:
Your campaign is essentially about 'The Five Engines Of Armageddon' and the players attempt to stop them.

Honestly?  None of my player think, want, or even conceive of stopping them.  Players can be funny that way.

On 2001-06-28 18:57, jburneko wrote:
Everything is in some way, no matter how tangentially, related to this premise.

When I talk of the Serial game I mean that literally each new session has a completely different story, having NOTHING to do with the previous or the next story.  Literally the only thing in common is that the players have the same characters slightly improved from the last session.  

Take my Deadlands game.  My players are session after session wandering from town to town to town encountering a brand new cast of NPCs and brand new problem, none of which have anything to do with previous NPCs or previous problems.  Occasionally I'll throw in an adventure that relates back to previous adventure but that's only every 4 or 5 games.
my<either this or<

Quote

On 2001-06-28 18:57, jburneko wrote:
Thank you for that detailed response though.  It was very insightful.  I envy your ability to think in terms of large world scale.  I usually can only think on a small, localized scale.  I'm not a world builder. I'm a plot writer.  I think of people and their goals and what they need to achieve those goals.  I have trouble extrapolating the ramifications of those goals out beyond the individual.

[Knight]

Could I ask for some brief clarification on your facinating background - you described the five elemental armageddon devices, and I was wondering how some of them were intended to be used as weapons, e.g. the tree city.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi everyone,

I believe that we are missing a third concept in this discussion.

1: the totality of all the sessions
2: each session
3: any unit called "story" in the loose sense of the word (ie. not necessarily Narrativist)

So, if I'm not mistaken, the original basis for the thread was to ask, who equates #3 with #1, and who equates #3 with #2. This is a good question, but I agree with Fang that these aren't really the whole range of choices.

For instance, my groups and I usually achieve #3 in (say) four or five sessions. We then either drop that system and set of characters completely, and move on to another system entirely; or we move to a new story about these characters after some in-world time has passed.

I used to run Champions in five-run blocks of story arcs, for instance. Full contuity applied, but if we stopped the game at the end of any of the blocks, the "story" itch would have been scratched. Also, each and every session presented SOME kind of conflict and resolution, in story terms. (Please note that this was back in my railroading days, permitting my scheduling to be so rigid.)

My current Hero Wars game is very long-term for me - we just finished session #23 and have no intention of stopping. However, closer scrutiny reveals the blocks - two fairly involved "stories" have begun and ended during that time, one in the first ten runs, another in the next thirteen. Also, as in my Champions experience, nearly every run presents its own mini-conflict and resolution.

All this was a lengthy way to say, "#3 has a wide variety of relationships with the concepts of 'single session' and 'all the sessions.'"

My IDEAL way to play is [1 game system + characters for that system + solid story, with resolution] played across several runs, usually from 3 to 10 depending on the details. Sometimes this even means a 1-session story, like our recent fun with All Flesh Must Be Eaten and Dead Meat. However, I don't consider these shorties to be one-shots in the usual sense of the word - they just took one session, that's all. Nor do I consider my longer-term Hero Wars game to be a campaign, in the usual sense of the word - it's just taking more sessions, that's all.

Best,
Ron