Saving the world on a Sunday afternoon
Written by Judith O. with help from Andy G., Warren J. and others.
So, you’ve made it to Experienced GM, you’ve run at least one residential, and now you’ve got your sights set on running a whole campaign. As you may have guessed, everything you’ve learnt so far still applies; the bad news is that there’s still more to learn. What follows is not a set of rules – it’s a set of guidelines and things to think about that will hopefully make running your campaign a lot less hassle. It also won’t tell you how to run games – for that, go read The Newbie GM’s Guide to Running a LARP and The Experienced GM’s Guide to Running Residentials for general hints, tips and guidelines. What this will tell you about is all the extra bits that are the difference between a game arc and a year’s campaign, and how to deal with them as gracefully as possible.
Be aware that due to the nature of campaigns, this piece does get more than a little sarcastic or tongue-in-cheek at times. Unfortunately, these sections are also pretty accurate despite their cynicism, and as such the authors beg the reader’s pardon where appropriate.
So, without any ado whatsoever…
As with any other game, you’ve probably got to this point with a Cool Idea. Before you get too carried away though, you need to be able to answer the following questions:
Not all plots can work with low-level characters – it’s not a problem with the plot, it’s a question of what effects you can reasonably expect to be out there and for the characters to be able to take. If you have a Big Bad, is it something that you feel reasonably certain that the party will be able to take down (or at least thwart convincingly) at the 36hr? If it’s High Politics, why should a ragtag band of newbies be able to have any effect whatsoever?
If you think about it and can’t really justify throwing a rank 2 – 20 party at it, save it for a mid- to high-level arc instead.
A campaign is generally between 10 and 15 games plus a 36hr – even allowing for a ‘getting to know you’ game and some side tracks, is there enough meat in the idea to make it last coherently over that many games? The basic plot doesn’t have to be that complicated for it to work, but some stories do work better as a 36hr or mini-arc rather than a full campaign.
It’s rarer to have more campaign plot than games in which to run it, but it is possible and also needs to be considered. If it will take more than a low-level campaign, is there a point at which you can run the 36hr and then shift the rest to a mid- to high-level arc?
Even fairly trimmed-back campaigns take a lot of commitment. Traditionally a campaign is 10 – 15 games over 8 – 9 months plus a 36hr, which may not sound much except for the bit where you lose around 1 – 2 months to holidays and exams time so you’re looking at roughly two games a month. That means two games to plan, write, stat, make props for and debrief every month regardless of what else you want to do with your life, plus responding to player questions, complaints and general stupidity – and then there may be IC meals on top of that, and planning around possible outside interactions with other GMs for IC meals and the 24hr.
Even if you don’t do downtime, it’s a lot of effort, and really should not be combined with any other major commitments (babies, buying a house, final year of degree etc) if you can possibly avoid it.
It’s a sad truth, but there’s something about campaigns that brings the best and worst out in players. The keen ones will take up your time with questions that aren’t relevant to the plot, the powergamers will attempt to twink their way to the Ultimate Character, the snowflakes will attempt to shoehorn in angsty backstories that make absolutely no sense or else ask to play characters that under no circumstances would be allowed to patrol, and at some point everyone will complain at you.
If you don’t have the patience – and the ability to say No repeatedly in a firm voice – then running a campaign may not be for you.
It’s not obligatory to have a co-GM, but it does help spread the workload – and means that in the event of Real Life™ the games can still go on without you. Whoever you have as your co-GM – or co-GMs – you will probably be working with them for the entire campaign. It’s generally a good idea to GM a couple of games with them first, taking different relative positions, to make sure that you can work with them without wanting to throttle them too much. Your co-GMs are the main people you can talk freely about the campaign with, bounce ideas off and mutter darkly about the players to, so you need to be comfortable working together.
Your co-GMs also need to be sure they have the time and commitment to work on the campaign, and you all need to be sure from the start of what your relative roles are, be it anything from ‘full partner-in-crime’ to ‘monster GM on games only’ to ‘props and downtime wrangler’. You can change and evolve these later, but everyone knowing and being happy with the starting state helps.
Campaign planning is split into two phases – the initial phase before campaign submission is there to get the outlines of what you want to do in place rather than nailing down all of the details. One of the side-effects of answering the Big Questions is that by this point you should have an idea of the rough narrative of the campaign at the very least – if not, that’s the first step. It’s much like working out a game narrative – you’re writing the world in which a story can take place, and putting in events that should steer the characters along a particular story. As a very rough example, the Shifters campaign narrative went something like:
As you can see, it doesn’t have to be very much to start with, just a framework that allows you start thinking about the hows and whys of what you want to do. It also gives you a feel for some of the campaign ‘flavour’, which is a whole bunch of nebulous concepts that taken together are quite important. It includes things like:
The important thing to remember with all of these is that they are analog rather than binary – you don’t have to do one thing or the other, you can pick a balance that suits your idea. You can also vary the flavour for individual games in the arc so long as on the whole it all makes sense.
Now is quite a good time to take a rough guess at how many games you’re going to need to fit the narrative and when to put in key plot moments. Assume at least one game of ‘getting to know you’ activities which is fairly plot-lite, and aim for between 10 and 15 plus a 36hr to round it all off. Try to avoid cramming all of your key plot games into a single part of the year if you can so that if someone has a project or rehearsals or anything they don’t miss out too much, and remember that due to exams and term lengths you’ll probably have about a third to a half of your game slots before Christmas, and maybe two or three at most post Easter.
The next bits to consider are what Wibbly Stuff you may need to include to make your setting work, and what the consequences of the setting on characters is going to be. For example, if you’ve planned a campaign that involves moving people over a wide area via magical means, you need to either restrict barbarians/druids from joining in or you need to find a way for them to work around the magical effects (or at least not kill the mages/refuse the transport). For a campaign that’s set in isolation, you may need to work out how basic training is going to work (characters teaching each other or being taught by NPCs for a price for example) and if newbies get to go to the 24hr. There can even be restrictions on character background, such as ‘must be from the Kingdom’ or ‘must be considered competent’ (yes, that is a genuine restriction).
On the other hand, the setting may mean that you can allow people to play things that wouldn’t normally be available in the system, be it races (like ogres) or Guilds (like Darkblades) and be it from the monster manual or entirely new, or you may want to give characters a financial bonus for joining the campaign, or you may want to implement a soft skill that’s not part of the existing rules. Try not to get too carried away with specials, as they can have a side-effect of making characters unplayable after the campaign is over…
Whatever you do decide to include as specials or restrictions, you will need to be able to justify it to the committee, potentially the Character Refs, and possibly to the rest of the club (or at least the whiny ones) so be sure about what you want to do. You may need to negotiate the exact details later, so try to work out alternatives if you think it might not go down well. If it’s things entirely outside the scope of the rules, you will definitely need to have a long chat with the Character Refs.
There may be other Wibbly Stuff that affects the setting rather than the characters – the Planeshift ceremony, the Emeras ‘spider swarms’ etc. The same rules of making sure it makes sense and checking it with the Character Refs apply.
Lastly, the question of downtime. Some people absolutely love downtime, some utterly hate it. It really boils down to how much time you have, how much you want to do it, and how necessary it is to make the narrative work. There are a lot of ways to do it, the easiest is to make it heavily structured – look at the previous campaigns to see ways it’s been done before for ideas. The more requiring NPC contact (due to politics, training restrictions etc) the campaign is, the more you will need to have a good downtime system in place because you will get a lot of requests for NPC conversations and the like – and ideally extra people to handle some of the load if you can. You don’t need details for now, just a general idea of how much it will be available and how much it will influence the campaign. In a similar vein is IC meals – they’re not compulsory, but they do help characters get to know each other when people aren’t trying to kill them. Again, no major details, just a general yay or nay.
The request for campaign submissions generally goes out some time after the AGM, which is normally attached to the 24hr so is usually around the end of April. The method is up to that year’s committee, but will most likely be via email. The minimum amount of detail you’ll want to include will be covered by the request for submissions but is generally along the lines of:
The outline does not need to be very long, but does need to include the important shape-and-flavour details; for example, while the Blackgate campaign was initially presented to the players as being a fairly normal patrol, the committee submission made it clear that the majority of the campaign would take place with the characters as prison inmates. If you’re not sure what to include, think of it like a summary on the back of a book – you need enough detail to hook the readers, but you don’t have to give away the twist ending.
The ‘anything else’ list is quite important, and usually a good place to answer the other ‘standard’ questions that crop up. You don’t need to write much as long as you cover all of the important bits with enough detail for the committee to understand and make a decision. If you want to include anything that needs Character Ref agreement, you will need to do a separate submission to them at the same time.
Even if yours is the only campaign submission, you will be expected to have a chat with the committee about it because there will always be questions specific to your campaign. If you’re lucky they will give you a list in advance to think through, if not you’ll just have to hope you know your plans well enough to roll with it.
Once you’ve been (un)lucky and the committee have given you the campaign to run, you have approximately three to four months in which to get as much pre-campaign planning and organisation done as possible. There’s a fair bit of it, so avoid leaving it all until the last minute!
You will probably find that regardless of what you agreed with your co-GMs at the start drift in roles will start to happen – don’t worry about it. Keep communicating, have chats in person when you can, trust them to get stuff done and try not to get offended if they get carried away. If need be, work up a jobs list, put names on the jobs that absolutely have to be done by a specific person and leave the rest up to who has time when. Having a central documents store of some sort, or sending draft copies of documents/emails to players to each other, will help keep everyone in the loop.
If you can’t even manage that at this point, you won’t survive running the campaign itself, so it’s definitely worth sorting yourselves out as much as possible now.
How much information you want to give the players is largely up to you and partly dependant on the campaign, but people will generally need/want to know:
Once you have access to the relevant bits of the website, you can create as many or few pages as you feel you need to cover the player information. It’s generally polite to wait for the last campaign to finish before putting your pages up or getting character details, but it’s still worth doing as early as possible to give people time to think and argue with you.
You will also need to supply the webadmin with a picture of the GMing team for the Committee page, and if you want an IC board or boards you’ll need to make arrangements for that to happen.
Start by finding out when your campaign can start and when the 36hr is going to be – the committee should be able to tell you when they have a site booked for the latter, and between the University website and committee plans for introduction stuff you should be able to work out the former. The University website will also tell you when exams and holidays fall, and you and your co-GMs will hopefully have an idea of any dates you won’t be available.
From this you should be able to work out a very rough starting timeline for when you’re running games and when to fit in any key plot events (uptime or downtime). You don’t want to try and work out the details of every game just yet (unless you really don’t want character action to have any effect on what happens), but it is a good idea to do some rough what-if planning based around decisions made at key plot points – for example, when the players were given the three options of what they could do on the Shifters campaign, rough plans were made for each of the three following arcs, as were plans for if the players chose to do something completely different. It will also mean that you can start discussing game dates with the committee – assume that by the beginning of August they will probably want to know your plans for up to Christmas as a minimum so they can get the calendar updated. Where possible, try to have a limited number of games in a row (no more than three) to give yourself breathing space. If you’re including IC meals, think about roughly where you want to slot them in as well – include them as one of your n-in-a-row.
The games you do want to plan and stat properly in advance are the first two or three; you’re going to be doing a fair bit of newbie-wrangling for these games, so keep them simple and plot-lite. A ‘getting to know the game mechanics’ game isn’t a bad plan if you can justify fitting one in for game one (training camp, initial check on the area etc) as it gives a low-threat way to get newbies used to the basic system, and not getting too plot-heavy to start with gives people a chance to bring in characters a little late (because they’re newbies or because they want to start above rank 2) without missing out too much.
You should also by now have a good idea of whether there are any particular NPCs or monster types that the players are going to encounter repeatedly. If you can, now is the time to get the initial bash at the stats done to save you aggravation later. If you have a guaranteed monster (someone who has no plan to play a campaign character), ask them to check said recurring roles for logical inconsistencies and ‘obvious’ questions that your monster crew will pick at.
Now is also the time to make/commission/acquire any props and kit that you want to have available during the campaign, as chances are you will have limited time and brain later on. The club has a campaign prop budget for props that can be reused once the campaign is over, find out what they are willing to fund.
The degree in which you get involved with Freshers Week and the Chat’n’Stat is largely up to you, but this is the point at which the Freshers get to find out about your campaign. It’s worth talking to both the BLADES and BathLARP committees to find out what they’re planning and fit your bits around it.
At the absolute minimum, it’s worth helping to produce flyers to hand out for Freshers Week (especially the Socs Fair) and being present for the Chat’n’Stat – the former will mean that newbies in theory have an idea of what’s going on and where/who to ask for help, and the latter means you get a chance to meet (and vet) the characters they come up with. You should also try to fit in a section in the Chat’n’Stat where you go over the campaign and answer questions on it.
From some point shortly after putting up the character submission information (or even before if a committee member is being keen), you get to start dealing with the fun of character submissions. These come in three rough groups: sensible, incomplete and ‘did you even read the brief?’
Sensible ones will generally fit the campaign setting, will include all the relevant information, and if they need it will be accompanied with sign-off from the Character Ref or affected players. Even if they are weird, they will still make sense – all you need to do is be sure in your mind that you are happy that that person can pull off that roleplay challenge before saying yes.
Incomplete ones will sound okay, but miss out some of the information that you’ve requested – this tends to be most worrying if it looks like it needs a sign-off from the Character Refs or another player. If you’re lucky, these can be fixed by asking the player to resubmit with the missing details – if they get it sorted, win, if they argue (especially if it’s those sign-offs) then it’s worth getting strict with them sharpish as it will lead to fewer arguments in future.
There’s a limited amount you can do with the ‘did you even read the brief?’ ones, as these are the ones that really just don’t fit the information they have been given. The only suggestion I can give is to give them one chance to redeem the character by making suggestions to fix it (if at all possible) – if the player is willing to change or discuss, fine, if they argue or sulk then just reject straight off because it’s not worth the hassle.
The corollary to the above is that sometimes there’s information that you don’t want to make public that automatically discounts a type of character or makes playing them very, very difficult; if a submission like this comes up, it’s worth having a quiet chat with the player without going into details to see if it’s possible to tweak or if there’s an alternative character idea that works better.
Be aware that you will get a disproportionate number of: antisocial loners who reject authority, parents/lovers killed by Tragic Backstory, child prodigies, inexplicable amnesiacs, rightful/prophesied rulers of foo, time travellers, blatant rip-offs of existing fictional characters, characters who have absolutely no reason to be allowed to patrol and combinations of all of the above. There is nothing you can do about this except choose to use the Reject button for the really silly ones, pointing the perpetrator firmly at the character submission guidelines you’ve already given them, and otherwise talk the player down to a sensible compromise where necessary – it is possible for a character to have one or more of those traits and still work perfectly well in the setting as long as the player has thought it through, has the roleplay skill to pull it off and doesn’t descend into wangst/stupidity (or at least is willing to accept good-natured mocking if they do).
You will also sometimes get a “make/choose my character for me!” request. How you handle this is entirely your own prerogative, and will probably come down to how nice/evil you’re feeling vs. how much time you have. There is absolutely nothing wrong with pointing oldbies at the submission guidelines and telling them to stop messing about.
Expect to be checking over and accepting/rejecting characters up until Christmas and possibly even after, depending on players making up their minds.
The period between Freshers Week and Christmas is usually the most difficult time for the campaign. You’ve got newbies to herd of varying levels of keen and competence in varying numbers, you’ve got oldbies of varying levels of keen and competence misbehaving and trying to game the system, and it’s at this point if you’ve never run a campaign before that you realise just how big and relentless the job actually is.
It does get better after Christmas – you can largely stop worrying about new characters appearing, the number of newbies will have settled down, and the oldbies with short attention spans will start dropping out. You’ll also have had enough practice to get into a routine, and in theory will have fewer games to worry about.
It’s impossible to cover every aspect of newbie wrangling in one place, as every newbie will have their own set of random issues and enthusiasms. So, to keep it short:
By Christmas you will have probably had at least one massive argument with your co-GMs, possibly even to the point of not wanting to talk to them ever again come campaign end. Do not worry, this is normal, and will generally improve after Christmas as you settle into routine.
The dynamic between you and your co-GMs will continue to evolve, and the best thing you can do is relax and let it happen. Keep talking, don’t assume telepathy, and split jobs as fairly as you can – including giving tellings-off to players and monsters that need it. Anything that involves a written response may be worth passing through all sets of eyes before use to make sure everyone’s happy with the feel and substance.
Discuss games as thoroughly as you need to beforehand, and at least all be sure of what the really important bits are and what’s going to happen with them. Bounce ideas off each other, make sure that downtime results make sense with the plot.
During and after each game, keep each other apprised of plot tweaks, important player actions, problems, spur of the moment decisions and anything else that will have an impact on the arc.
In short, communicate and work together. If in doubt, make time for a chat about how to make things work better rather than struggling on regardless.
Keeping on top of the campaign is a bit of a pain. If you’ve been careful about spacing out games it does help by giving you time to breathe, and it’s worth using long holidays as time to work on doing full overhauls of plotarc and public/private information and email archives so you can find things quickly when you need to. Make yourself a checklist of what you need to do between games and keep referring back to it – the full list may go something like:
If it’s sensible to do so, having an initial rough draft (i.e. narrative without specific encounters or stats) of the game after next ready in advance is not a bad plan, but bear in mind that player action may kill it off or radically change it before you get to use it – use your judgement on whether it’s worth putting in the work.
Regardless of how well you organise and plan, there’s a good chance that at some point during the campaign you will come up against one or more of the following:
There’s either no one who wants to lead or several who do but are all incompetent/heartily-disliked. The question is, have you limited yourself into only having Defender-led missions, which means that the Guards always get to be leader?
Easiest option, when available, is to have your NPCs appoint different people as leader because it’s a mission led by Guild X – or to have your Defender NPC appoint someone as Acting Defender for a mission. Failing that, you may just have to let the patrol sort itself out – eventually someone will have had enough and take charge, and it’s usually someone competent.
There’s a character who, for whatever reason, rubs everyone up the wrong way. If it’s purely IC, then any consequences should also be IC; if it doesn’t come back in reports that they’re being an arse, or if they’re beyond the reach of reports, then the patrols will have to deal with it in whatever way they deem fit.
If it’s an OOC problem, in that the player doesn’t understand why people are getting upset with them, it may be worth asking around to get reasons then offering to have a chat with the player to discuss what the problem is and possible ways to fix it. It is tricky, and it’s not always appropriate to step in like that; if you don’t, the problem may sort itself out by the character (and thus the player) getting excluded from patrols or discouraged from playing OOC.
You need to have a serious talk with yourself about what makes you think they don’t care.
If it’s that they’re not chasing downtime, people may be busy or they may feel that they’re not getting anything out of it. Talk to them, and try not to get offended by the answers.
If it’s that they seem bored on games, ask them why – they may secretly be enjoying it, or it may be that they don’t feel involved for whatever reason. It may just require a tweak in your perspective or running style to make it more interesting for all involved.
If they seem to be failing to have any interest in the plot while keenly chasing all sorts of other randomness, don’t panic – this is entirely normal, and they generally catch up by the 36hr. That said, it may be your plot is a bit too subtle or obtuse, and it may be worth throwing a line out here and there to give them something to latch on to.
Most importantly, you have to be more concerned about the overall group than any one player – yes, you can tweak things on an individual basis, but you can rarely please everybody.
Firstly, huzzah for them being keen and enjoying the campaign!
If it’s a downtime issue, you may be being too extravagant at downtime. Cut down your responses, or else see if there’s a friendly permanent monster willing to help out, or if feasible apologise and stop doing it – the games are more important.
If it’s uptime, you may need to acquire more co-GMs, or rope in the permanent monsters to help out.
And don’t forget – there’s a 36hr to finish on. Give yourself as much time to organise it as you can justify, and use The Experienced GM’s Guide to Running Residentials as a reminder list. Don’t be afraid to let player action determine some – if not all – of what happens in the 36hr, and be prepared to run a tidy-up game if it all goes a bit wrong and the players don’t manage a ‘win’ condition.
Pat yourself on the back. You’ve made it. There are a few tidy-up jobs still to do, sadly.