Topic: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
Started by: jburneko
Started on: 6/27/2001
Board: Actual Play
On 6/27/2001 at 6:56pm, jburneko wrote:
Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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
On 6/27/2001 at 7:05pm, Dav wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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
On 6/27/2001 at 8:35pm, jburneko wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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
On 6/28/2001 at 9:02am, Mytholder wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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...
On 6/28/2001 at 12:07pm, Peter wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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.
On 6/28/2001 at 1:51pm, Dav wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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
On 6/28/2001 at 4:48pm, greyorm wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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.
On 6/28/2001 at 7:04pm, Paul Czege wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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
On 6/28/2001 at 8:05pm, jburneko wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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
On 6/28/2001 at 9:07pm, joshua neff wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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.
On 6/28/2001 at 9:55pm, Le Joueur wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
If you don’t mind a little editing with your answer:
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.
I think there are problems with either approach (as well as looking at the situation from such a dualist perspective).
‘Serial Style’ sounds like it will always suffer from never having ‘the big payoff.’ For whatever their stance is, the players might never have a big emotional investment in the conclusion and therefore, conclusion after conclusion, the game will begin to seem repetitive (and maybe boring).
To me, ‘Unified Campaign Style’ unfortunately equates to simply one longer more drawn-out ‘episode.’ The problem that can occur here is that long before the ‘big ending’ the players may have lost interest.
Ultimately, I do not think you can put this down to a dualism between ‘Serial’ and ‘Unified Campaign’ styles. From my experience these are merely realms on a longer spectrum. This spectrum runs from one-shots (games where all the action is played out in a single session), through ‘Serial’ (the same but in two to five sessions), out to ‘Unified Campaign’ (many, many sessions dealing with only a single complex circumstance), and beyond (a lifetime of playing the same character, seeking to sort out their life).
Aside from that, I also see that there seems to be some confusion with the idea of carryover. Simply because a set of characters and their circumstance applies to each ‘style’ depicted on the above spectrum, does not change its position. For example, you could play a long series of one-shots with the same cast (this is how you seem to refer to ‘Serial Style’) or you could make up different characters for each ‘Campaign Style’ game; this is not as foregone a conclusion as you imply. Also within this spectrum is the idea of making up new characters for every one-shot and playing the same cast ‘Campaign’ after ‘Campaign.’
The problem sounds like the frequency of your start-ups (being down at the low end of the spectrum) has made everything seem as I described above (repetitive). Now for the first time you are simply trying a game more up the spectrum and everything seems great right now. What potentially awaits you is like I also mention before (losing the players interest before the ‘big ending’).
I am a big fan of the intricacies of pacing. (My continued advice to new gamemasters is ‘pacing, pacing, pacing.’) While many of the other respondents have mentioned using a ‘Serialized’ system with a stronger ‘back story,’ I don’t think this is a solution either. I think you might be better served by looking at how the pacing of your games satisfies you and your players. Work on maximizing that. (The pacing of emotional pay-offs and ‘big conclusions.’) I worry if you focus on this as an issue of ‘Serial’ versus ‘Unified Campaign’ you may wind up losing the game in the process.
Another thing that brings me pause is how you have described how you are implementing ‘Unified Campaign Style.’
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.
I heard you writing that you will be fine-tuning the details as you go, but in the end, the end is planned months in advance. I can’t help but thinking that this will ultimately become railroading at some point. This is not as bad as many people think! If that is how things already work, then it is fine. If your ‘Serials’ have had their endings preplanned then it should be relatively the same (unless it was the nature of brevity that hid the ‘tracks’ from the players). I know when I need to railroad (very infrequently); I almost always only do it over the short-term.
The way I play sounds markedly different then what has been described thus far. Take for instance my ‘Armageddon Engines’ campaign; in it, there are basically two stories working themselves out initially without regard to the actions of the players. Both are relative to the concepts of ‘destiny’ in role-playing gaming. (I do not use destiny or prophecy to railroad, I have them weight the expectations and perceptions of the non-player characters.)
The first story has to do with what gives the campaign its name. Long ago, hundreds of years in fact, the five great powers in this realm were at war. For the ultimate conflict these powers each created one of five ‘Engines of Armageddon.’ Alas, things did not go as planned (the living island was lobotomized, the flying city rendered unto undeath, the burrowing engine powerless and abandoned, elfin tree city’s corporeal position whole but shattered [think warp-drive accident], and the mountain-sized dragon still slumbers). After decades fearing their reactivation, now the populous thinks of them not at all. (A city has even grown up all over the surface of the half-buried burrowing one, taking its name.) As of campaign time, forces begin to align (simultaneously only by dramatic license) to reactivate them, each separately and independently.
The second story has to do with a party of extremely high-level adventurers who once set out to destroy one of the engines (old-school fantasy novel style). This party was sundered by, of all things, a romantic triangle (did I mention I have women playing in my games?). Their lives left at centuries old loose ends (the bard, petrified, is now the center of a religion; the cleric, who actually never loved him, accidentally founded said religion in her devotion; the paladin, who secretly loved her, founded an order of protectors for that religion; the assassin went on to become the immortal avatar of the alley cat god in a nearby city; and et cetera) that the players unknowingly helped me create with their own character descriptions.
The player characters keep finding themselves expected to ‘stand in’ for the ancient prophetic party members from whom they drew their origins by many of the non-player characters they meet (and the now-fleshly bard non-player character constantly pesters the new cleric to marry him). This is a mixed blessing because of all the help they get when they ‘flow’ with these expectations.
Now, down to the nitty-gritty, what I have created here are effectively five loosely interconnected campaigns (one for each of the ‘Engines’). Since I have set them to activate within a week of each other (without intervention) if the players get ‘caught up’ in any one, the others proceed without them. Since the player characters are not in the power class to simply have done with any of these campaigns, I needed to break it down into elements that suit. For the first rank below, what I did was the ‘prophecy of the party’ level, a party whose activities could have (with luck) made a difference; yet this too was beyond the direct intervention of the player characters.
To allow the players to ‘make a difference’ in the scheme of things, I created the social connection between the prophecy and the actual party. How this plays out is entirely up to the players. Since I am (I think) a simulationist gamemaster with heavy narrativist leanings, I have a situation where I can work out relevant interventions by the players based on many variables unknown to them. (Like the time that everyone expected the new cleric to do something about all the earthquakes near the burrowing engine because someone had just set up a temple to worship her for her marriage to the divine – the now animate bard who follows her around.)
I start each session with a bit of interview to see what the players’ tastes are for that session and then I choose both what I will involve (elements and their permutations from the whichever campaign), and how I set the tone (which includes both presentation issues and pacing) based on that. With this menu in hand, I pick up where I left off. My approach to each session is fairly ‘Serial,’ yet my handling of the overall background is ‘Unified Campaign.’ (I believe I skew simulationist during play, but I choose what is ‘on the menu’ based on narrativist goals.) My goal is to keep the players engaged by allowing them some conclusions to problems or plotlines or whatever they indicate they are ‘in the mood for’ each ‘episode’ as they approach the conclusion of the ‘Series’ for the ‘Season Finale.’ (According to what I understand of my narrativist leanings, each succeeding ‘episode’ trends towards a more powerful climax.)
What is the ultimate outcome? Who knows? I certainly don’t. I know if the players do not act, the five engines will clatter to a pale shadow of the lives they once held and do battle (already the players have convinced the deep dwellers to take their digger and go home forever, so this cannot happen). Will the players slay the dragon? Will they restore the elfin tree city? Will the undead residing in the sky kill everyone? Will they open diplomatic relations with the floating pirate island? I cannot possibly predict that. What I do know is there is a dynamic, conflicted background that even the actions of newly minted adventurers can affect.
After each session, I spend some time thinking about the broad effects of what the characters have done (like the new ‘church of the cleric’) and how that changes the setting. This is how the campaign evolves, no planning months ahead. While I know what should happen if the players had never intervened, there is no ‘arching thing’ planned ahead; I certainly have no interest in destroying the world (you know...Armageddon), so I am rooting for the good guys.
As far as I am concerned, railroading at this point would only be an exercise in vanity on my part, because the campaign is not built for it. I do not see railroading as so hard to avoid that it colors everything, thus I don’t have much of a taste for how the FAQ puts all gaming down to how much it tries (or does not try) to not railroad. I think that there are numerous gaming styles that easily fall outside of the railroading (or not) dualism that the FAQ reads somewhat lopsided, but that’s just me.
Fang Langford
[ This Message was edited by: Le Joueur on 2001-06-28 17:57 ]
On 6/28/2001 at 10:57pm, jburneko wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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
On 6/29/2001 at 12:54pm, Le Joueur wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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.
Just let me state for the record, in the ‘Armageddon Engines’ campaign, my players wander from town to village to city each ‘episode,’ encountering whole new casts of characters, solving brand new problems, building a larger and larger reputation. Very little of it has to do with any previous solution or adventure. Let me see, on only three occasions did the players ever return to a town they had been to previously. And in addition to the ‘New Temple of the Player Cleric’ ‘episode,’ I think only a few games ever related back to anything they had done previously.
This is what I am talking about. Because all of the game is thematically related to overall background and I keep good continuity (my player expect it and aid this), you keep classifying it as ‘Unified,’ yet when I sit down and run it, it fits every part of your description of ‘Serial’ to a ‘T.’ Again, you are turning things into an either this or that dualistic relationship, connecting things that are not necessarily directly related.
This also means that I forgive virtually everything ‘left hanging’ from the previous ‘episode.’ The only things the episodes have ‘in common’ with the previous are the things I have concluded have affected ‘the world’ and then only their ‘after effects.’ Only very rarely do I do something within an episode with the intention of it affecting another later on. (I find that leads to railroading clearly in hindsight.)
On 2001-06-28 18:57, jburneko wrote:
So by my definition your ‘Engine’ campaign is a Unified Campaign. It has a definite ending, either the Engines will destroy the world or they won't, and everything relates to these Engines and these specific Heroes in some way.
That’s just it. I created the whole premise of the game to illustrate I point I made to the players long ago. These stories (the way I run them) do not have definite endings. Take the engines themselves; in all cases, hundreds of years ago each of their ‘plotlines’ ground to an ignominious ‘non-ending.’ The same is true for the ‘legendary party’ of adventurers; in every case, their stories had no clear endings (except death in a few cases). All examples were crafted specifically to underscore the idea of ‘things left unfinished.’
The same was expected of the players’ incursion into the narrative. What they do has no specific beginning and will not come to a definite ending. (Even now one of them is plotting to usurp the lich-king of the flying island, and that could create a very long story indeed.)
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.
I am a poor world builder as well. In most cases, I created the engines to fulfill a five-pointed balance of magic (each represents one of the five elements, earth, water, air, and et cetera). What became of them was a result of thinking of the plots that brought them into existence and whose specific goals the met or could be bent to. (For example, the assassin is an elfin prince whose family was crushed in the bid to create the tree-city.) Likewise the ending of each was related to the goals and plots of the generals commanding them (and the internal intrigues of some of the resources that created them). I did not compose them from ‘whole cloth.’
The same is true of the ‘legendary party.’ I did not set out to create this party at first. The player of the cleric decided that her character had been kidnapped to a monastery, consigned to be ‘married’ to a statue. When I asked for a description of this most intrigue sculpture, it sounded more like a bard than a god to me. So I started with a petrified bard in a monastery; next came the cleric whose ages old devotion to the statue led to the founding of the monastery and some explanation for the warrior-guards used to contain the player cleric. This created a love triangle for me; the pursuit of which was the plot and goals of its victims.
So actually the goals were extrapolated from the ramifications set out by the players, not the reverse. In fact, I had no idea that there would be such a ‘legendary party’ when I began. This idea evolved with the campaign, as I needed to explain (to myself at least) the goals that led to the ramifications I experienced along with the players. (This comes back to what I was saying about railroading too, obviously I had no idea where this was going only the intention to tie everything back together eventually; thus no railroading.)
I hope this finally communicates my point about taking your ideas out of the dualism framework (either ‘Serial’ or ‘Unified Campaign’) and helps you see how they are not so mutually exclusive.
Fang Langford
[ This Message was edited by: Le Joueur on 2001-06-29 08:56 ]
On 7/1/2001 at 8:52pm, Knight wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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.
On 7/2/2001 at 3:21pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
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
On 8/20/2001 at 3:43pm, Harri Tusa wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
I believe this is my first post to the forum.
Being quite interested in creative writing in general, for years, I've been running a very plot-oriented, and sometimes quite long, campaigns with definite beginning, middle and end. With the classic structure of any story.
Lately, due time constraints and as our gaming group has pretty much scattered throughout the country, I'm beginning to adopt a new method of running games, I call:
The OVA Method
As you anime fans know, OVA stands for Original Video Animation. A straight-to-video anime shows which tend to be a lot shorter and with bigger budgets than serial TV shows. And they all have an independent plotline (being anime, cohesive isn't probably the right descriptive word). And how this relates to roleplaying games? Simple.
Instead of running a serialized or a plot-intensive campaign, I mix them both. A series of mini-stories each lasting three to five gaming sessions. When one ends, I begin the next one, probably with the same characters. It'll allow a lot of room for me to maneuver but still enables me to build strong plots with recurring NPCs. To set the table up and slowly build for the climax. Once the mini-campaign is completed I can throw the characters across the galaxy into an entirely different mini-arc. Best of both worlds, I would say.
On 8/20/2001 at 4:58pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
Hi Harri,
And welcome to the Forge. What actual game and system are you using?
Your described method of play is very familiar to me, and I agree with you that it works far better than either of the usually-mentioned extremes.
However, it comes in two flavors, both of which have been discussed carefully on the Forge, so I'd be interested in which flavor you tend to go with.
1) Set up the major antagonists and get a strong idea of the climactic confrontations before play, so that "Rome" will eventually be found, no matter what the characters do. This is the way I used to run Champions.
2) Having the players do most of the authoring during the sessions themselves, so that I do pose questions/scenes and build complex back-stories, but settle on far fewer specific scenes and outcomes before play. This is the way I tend to run things now.
Which method do you and your group tend toward?
Best,
Ron
[ This Message was edited by: Ron Edwards on 2001-08-20 12:59 ]
On 8/20/2001 at 8:55pm, Harri Tusa wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
Currently in my gamemastering menu is Big Eyes, Small Mouth,which in its nature suits well for mini-campaigns, being anime flavored, and L5R where I try to fit my own creations into the flowing metaplot. Mini-campaigns makes that part of the job a lot more manageable.
And when it comes to the two choices regarding the method of play, the answer is simple:
We alternate. Some of the mini-campaigns are meticulously plotted in advance with all roads leading to the eventual Rome, but sometimes I let it flow rather freely. By not telling to the group which method I'm currently employing, I'll keep them on their toes and second guessing the consequences of their actions.
As a GM, it gives me strange pleasure to see when my group pats themselves on the backs for results that would have happened no matter of their actions. Or better yet, thank me for a well-planned campaign which actually was inspired on the fly based on their input. Strange beast, this human mind.
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Harri Tusa
It's the art, not the artist.
[ This Message was edited by: Harri Tusa on 2001-08-20 16:59 ]
On 8/21/2001 at 8:47pm, George Pletz wrote:
RE: Serial vs. Unified Campaign
Hi everybody.
Well I am going to venture into this with the intent of explaining my preference. There will be some overlap,I'm sure, with earlier posts by others.In the interest of statement over refuting, I'll just strip this back to the basics.
Serial or Unified? Why?
I go with the serial but not at the expense of continuity.
I play an intrigue heavy type of game so there is always lots of plot hooks lying around.
Since I focus alot on GMC relationships and set locations, it doesn't always have that closed endedness. There is lots of spillover.
For example, I am running a UA adventure right now. Before every session I rewrite the basic plot to conform to the choices and actions of the PCs. Of course this idea will get morphed quite bit.
In the first three sessions, there have been plenty of things which were set up to happen that didn't. From me improvising in the moment off player reaction and character action.
When you throw down a lot of hooks, there is always something that just doesn't get picked up. Many of those hooks are solid points in the setting which will move on regardless if the PCs pick them up. So it is very possible that an earlier hook may reappear latter in an altered form.
Let's say that there is a rising young thug doing his best to jockey into a power position. While investigating something PCs totally miss that carefully deposited clue which would lead to a meeting with said criminal. No sweat.
I don't ditch the crook, I just have him go on as he would.They may go the entire adventure and never meet the guy. That GMC becomes part of the setting until either the players or me bring him back into central focus. An important thing to note I never make it so the PC is punished for missing the hook. I just reduce its level of importance.I have had GMCs that have never made it out of my notes before. Some storylines just vaporize.
The interesting thing about my current adventure is that it started as sort of a closed thing but the ending was blown wide by character actions.
So right now the lines between a finite and unified have gotten blurry. I do what I can to create contained blocks of story but the players pretty much tell me in what order they want to do things.
Admittedly, things get a little weird sometimes when I am in the flow of things. The line between what is the current arc and what is not becomes unclear. There is an end to it, we just haven't decided where it is yet.
This is not a bad thing to my way of thinking since, playing out on that specific ledge is what I enjoy.
All that said, I have found that with games with less intrigue make more concise serial games. When I was running Feng Shui in a round robin GM setting, I found it easier to create discrete units of story which could be completed in four to six sessions.
g.