Back in '81 I started in this crazy hobby with a nerd-inclined psychology and a copy of Moldvay's Basic D&D. One of the hardest concepts for my elementary school/junior high age group was the Ongoing Campaign. For the first couple years we pretty much played D&D like we did Chess or Stratego or that Star Wars boardgame my buddy Dave owned. We'd roll up some characters and I'd attempt to run them through the upper level of the Haunted Keep or part of the Caves of Chaos for an hour or two. Then we'd forget about the nascent campaign, lose the character sheets, and start all over again a couple weeks later.We had a crapload of fun during that period. When I think about those days I sometimes wonder about all the focus grown-up gamers sometimes place on persistent settings and preparation. How much stuff that DMs do is actually over-preparation? Imagine that an online acquaintance or one of your old gaming buddies calls you. He and a friend are in town just for a day and they want to play something later this evening. What do you do?
When something like this happened to me earlier this year I was able to throw together a fun run with maybe an hour or two of prep time. I wrote an initial situation, half-assedly stocked a dungeon map, we diced up some characters using the rules in the back of my OD&D adventure, and off we went. No big whoop. That session was a resounding success. And it went better than a lot of sessions where I prepared a helluva lot more or planned campaign arcs and crap like that.
So why don't I do more of this? Why don't we just get together to play an RPG, without sweating what happens after that one evening? Do I take the concept of the campaign too seriously? Or is it that I'd feel weird ringing up a DM and saying "Hey, run a one-off for me and some friends"? If, as Jamie Mal is always telling us, D&D has its roots in Pulp Fantasy, then how come we emphasize long form gaming when a goodly portion of our inspiration comes from short stories?
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That's an interesting post, Jeff. The pulp reference made me think of a comic I just read from the Eighties, "Wordsmith". It's about a penny-a-word pulp writer trying to crank out the pages for a last-minute assignment, and the process of him figuring out what his character is going to do on-the-fly to get out of the sticky situation the author has written him into had a very "RPG pickup game" type of vibe to it.
ReplyDeletePart of what's always appealed to me about RPGs is the ad-hoc, "jam session" kind of feel it ought to have, where everyone is sort of making it up on the spot. When the GM/DM/whatever puts tons of prep into it, I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of "This is his story and we're all just playing along" instead of the "let's all make up the story together as we go" feeling you're talking about here.
Anyway, sorry to ramble. Good post!
Because we enjoy it, Jeff, duh. Or maybe we just want to build something that lasts?
ReplyDeleteI dunno. I dunno. 'Cause you know I do it, too. I'm into the "pick-up" game model, as well, but I think that there's something about a continuing campaign that draws us to it. We want to see our creations develop over time. Characters, settings both.
Permanence. Maybe it's the same thing that makes gardeners run out to the hardware store to buy annuals?
The answer? HABIT!
ReplyDeleteWhy not try something different?
Fang
Scattershot Games
Because GM/DMs get tired of doing intro adventures!
ReplyDeleteThat point aside, great post. I've been waffling about the potential lethality of some death traps I'll be springing on my players next week. But this post clinches what I already knew.
In the words of Ivan Drago:
"If he dies, he dies."
And we'll write up some new characters and start a new game.
A bunch of preteens today playing D&D would have a vastly different game than a bunch of 30 somethings playing D&D.
ReplyDeleteSame thing could be said about movies or any other activity.
I remember that one of the appeals of RPGs to me when I started was the ongoing nature. It did take a while for me to get a stable campaign going, but once I did, I really enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I did, and still do, enjoy the occasional one shot.
Frank
I don't see why you can't have an ongoing campaign of pick-up games. They'd involve the same characters and back story, but new scenarios each time. It seems to me (and maybe I'm wrong here) that the key difference is in the attitude of the GM and players, and the prep time involved.
ReplyDeleteSo you'd say "All right guys, the Gray Company's ready for another adventure, what do you want to do?" "Let's go hunt a dragon!" "Sounds good, off we go!"
I dunno, man. There's a whole book about the joy of making shit up as you go along (and doing it well), called _Play Unsafe_, by Graham Walsley (if I haven't butchered his name). I like it a lot.
ReplyDeleteGraham's sometimes associated with the much-hated-by-old-school-afficionados "forge" indie RPG movement, but there's nothing specific to those kinds of games in his book; indeed, many of his examples and observations come from more traditional games.
@JEff Herbert: That's what I'd like my next campaign to be... Only I'll allow players to change PCs between adventures.
ReplyDeletehow come we emphasize long form gaming when a goodly portion of our inspiration comes from short stories?
ReplyDeleteSeems to me Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser had one hell of a campaign.
Their "hell of a campaign" grew organically out of individual short stories, *not* written in chronological order.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we are talking about two different things?
ReplyDeleteA series of unconnected one shots and a campaign that grows as it goes?
I prefer the later. Throw the PCs into an adventure and let the campaign world grow as it needs to, rather than planning it out in advance. Need a high level cleric? As it happens, the Grand Cathedral of Xixik the Unwashed is in the next town over.
I do tons of both (pickup games and campaign games). I've never done anything but tons of both; I don't think I could survive doing anything but tons of both.
ReplyDeleteCampaigns satisfy my heaviest fantasy leanings, which are character-focused leanings ... I like quests and choices and getting to know NPCs and running gags and all that.
Pick-up games and one-shots satisfy my need for variety and cure my "wandering eye." If I need a bit of Cthulhu or a splash of Gamma World when I'm otherwise engaged in a Buffy campaign or whatever, they scratch that itch. They also let me try any new game that piques my interest and they fill gaps in campaign time when a key player can't make it (a missing player never stops a session from happening when I'm the GM -- it just means we do a pickup instead).
Anyway, wouldn't want to live without both.
Their "hell of a campaign" grew organically out of individual short stories, *not* written in chronological order.
ReplyDeleteR.E. Howard's Conan campaign was the same way, so it's a time tested tradition. ;-)
My point, though, is that I don't see a dichotomy between D&D's being inspired by pulp fantasy (most of which were short stories) and its general emphasis on campaign play (starting with OD&D, which explicitly states that its rules were designed for such). Personally, I think the genius of D&D is that it transcends its inspirations by making a hash of them -- and that applies equally to the literary form of the tales that inspired Gygax and Arneson.
funny thing is Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are exactly who came to mind :) Conan too :) Long mythologies, short stories.
ReplyDeleteI'm a big fan of pickup games in general - they're great for impromptu gatherings, a shortfall of players, or to fight burnout after a long campaign or heavy sessions. :)
I do love the idea of a campaign of pickup games too....hmmmm.... :D
I do love the idea of a campaign of pickup games too....hmmmm.... :D
ReplyDeleteIt's what a lot of campaigns functionally are :) Certainly, the best campaigns I've ever played in and run have been strongly "episodic," following the same characters through mostly-unrelated and strongly-discrete adventures. This gives a constant sense of achievement and variety, and avoids what modern gamers might call the "Battlestar Galactica Effect" of a single tease-line being stretched across multiple sessions because it's easier than coming up with different scenarios ;)
... and actually, given the D&D-centric nature of the discussion: the single best AD&D campaign I've ever played in was when my buddy Dan decided he'd just run a pile of his favorite Dungeon Magazine adventures for the same characters, just picking the next scenario as he went based on whatever level we'd got to.
ReplyDeleteThis was, 100%, a campaign, because we were "sweating what happens after that one evening," but we were sweating it in very different ways each time, and it was not only a poster-child for the value of episodic campaigning, it was also a poster-child for the use of premade modules, because using the work of a stack of unrelated and dissimilar writers gave the campaign a sparklier variety of tone than most I've ever seen.
Dude, I love a fixed campaign. It gives me a place to unwind differing parts of myself that I don't often get access to and a reason to do it. I do play pick up now & then, but not nearly as much as about any 20 other gamers I know put together. I think time has a lot to do with it. The other is probably system *whispering* I don't like D & D .
ReplyDeleteMy husband can do either but is famous far and wide for his "pull it out of my A*& mode" - even in consistent campaigns. You may remember his every slot at WW year a few years ago- almost none of that was planned. In fact, the last 2 events, he was cramming Coke and scrawling on char sheets moments before the events. But all in all, I think everyone had a good time. I still hear about it, so that says something to me. I know that conventions are around for people like you- so you're not alone.
We often played FASA's Star Trek this way, though in truth our very first game of it did lead to an ongoing campaign. It was much more about, "Hey, I like this character. I'm gonna use him again next time!" then any concentrated effort to produce a campaign. In those days, world creation was accidental.
ReplyDeletePlaying short games is a great alternative when
ReplyDeletea) you, the DM, don't have enough time.
b) you, the DM, have too many players.
And when we find ourselves in a situation where both applies, running short games becomes a much more manageable task then outlining a whole campaign plot. The keyword is just plain good old FUN!
All we have to do is design great, fun and dangerous encounters while slapping them on with a typical hook, plot, climax and treasure narrative.
It keeps the focus simple and gets more math crunching than plot fluffing.
It was quite impossible to do this in 3.x but I hope the easier design of 4E would let us play games that were meant to last an evening worth's of gaming from start to end rather than a whole night marathon just to roll out one encounter.
I like continuing campaign worlds. All my D&D games have been set in a single campaign world for the last 2 and 1/2 years.
ReplyDeleteBut PCs are a dime a dozen. I couldn't care less if the players roll up new PCs each and every session.
A tempting idea, but I hear Kyle Schuant's voice echoing in the back of my mind: "Mate, why wouldn't I just start up Diablo?"
ReplyDelete