The care and feeding of emergent campaigns
GreatWolf:
Our Friday group just completed our sixth chapter of In a Wicked Age. It’s been quite the campaign. Currently, our story spans 23 years, four major characters, and a number of minor characters. Chapter Six saw some major character transformation, and I think that we will discover that it was a pivotal moment in the campaign.
The campaign had humble beginnings. Originally, it started as a one-shot at the summer Go Play Peoria minicon. I had really wanted to squeeze in two Chapters, but we started late in the day and could only complete the one Chapter. It was a great Chapter, though, full of lots of fun color. We had Zahir, the arrogant strategist; William, the power-grabbing governor; and General Valkyr, who is really a woman, defending the town of Ninshi against Molly the Pirate Queen. Some notable moments include when Zahir was suavely trying to woo General Valkyr, as he was aware of her identity, and when Molly, her back to the sea, hacked off the head of a mutinous captain and, holding it aloft, charged the defending soldiers, howling her battle cry.
Pretty much the kind of thing that you’d expect from In a Wicked Age, right?
And eventually, the pirates were stopped, William was “promoted” away from Ninshi, Molly was captured, and Zahir was left alone to woo Valkyr, having manipulated the entire situation to his advantage.
Brian was playing Molly, and she topped the Owe List. He was from out-of-town, so he wouldn’t be able to continue the game. However, he insisted on preparing the next Chapter as if we were going to continue playing. So he consulted the Oracles. He selected Blood and Sex and chose “A happy girl, promised in marriage to a gentleman, naive to the danger he represents.” Someone sitting at the table said, “That’s Molly”.
My head exploded.
The rest of the group insisted that we continue playing. So, we have now seen Molly as a young girl, naïve and charming, the prize in a contest between a fertility god and a sorcerer. We’ve seen Molly in the years after the raid, now the Queen of Argonzed and mother of the heir, escaping the palace coup that took the life of her husband.
And that’s just one character. I haven’t talked about the gradual emergence as Zahir as an unlikely protagonist, despite his manipulative ways, and the conflicted sorcerer, Kiragalzu, who is in league with the powers of darkness yet has truly loved Molly ever since she was young.
The chronology rules are especially fun. In Chapter Six, we discovered that our world contains the Ashtari, a cult of sorceress-assassins. This means that Erishti, the murderer of the king, was part of this group. Why did the Ashtari want the king dead? I didn’t even know this was a question until last Friday. Suddenly, all sorts of new possibilities present themselves.
Now, those of you who are familiar with my normal Actual Play write-ups know that I usually include a lot more detail. But that’s because I don’t actually want to discuss our game per se. Instead, I’d like to discuss emergent campaigns.
There are a number of designs that are often pressed into service as one-shot games that were actually designed for episodic longer-form play. I’m thinking here of Dogs in the Vineyard, Trollbabe, 3:16, and, of course, In a Wicked Age. (I also wonder if games like Shock: or my own Legends of Alyria and Dirty Secrets would work well in this mode.)
The distinguishing feature of these designs that I want to discuss is this long-term episodic play. Each of these games produce units of play that are self-contained but are not intended to remain self-contained. So, while you can play a single town of Dogs, you haven’t really engaged the full depth of the game until you’ve run several towns with the same characters.
However, unlike games like Primetime Adventures, the games provide no formal campaign structure, nor are you really supposed to prep for a long campaign. Rather, the group simply repeats the episode structure until…well…until they’ve had enough, I guess. The campaign then emerges through play by connecting the episodes together.
And that’s what I’d like to talk about. What are good techniques to employ in these emergent campaign games to develop the campaign aspect of these games? Sure, we’ve gotten pretty good at developing Towns for Dogs, and I’m sure that we’ll continue to develop our ability to create Planets for 3:16. But what about techniques for the spaces in between? What about the stringing together of the episodes? How do you determine when to stop?
I’ll cop to a great deal of self-interest in this area. I think that this is a fascinating area of RPG development, and my next big project probably will be designed in this vein. Plus, of course, I’d like to consider how to play through our game of In a Wicked Age well.
So, how do we do this sort of play well?
Ron Edwards:
Hi Seth,
My bid for training and developing such things was Sorcerer & Sword. I've found that each Sorcerer book contains an early-chapter insight that tends to make people go "spoo!", jump up and down, and cease to process anything they read in the later chapters, if indeed they ever do. The material in Sorcerer & Sword about how to build setting often falls into the hole.
Because that's what you're doing. The answer to what you're asking is, to build setting. But it's not like drawing a huge map at the outset like all those damned things in the beginning of fantasy novels (I am convinced that putting them in the front has had horrible consequences for the genre and for gaming; they should go in the back), it's about finding a thing to add with each new adventure, whether it's a new area in the setting, an organization, or a new situation and status for a given character.
That's what you did in this game. You know which character is featured, and given the elements from the Oracle, either she is transformed into a new shape/status by being identified with one of them, or she now has to deal with one or more of them in the form of new stuff. The point I'm making is that given four elements, you might transform the character, but you will add to the setting, and often in a way which clarifies/enriches what's already happened instead of simply tossing more stuff into the sink. The Ashtari is the perfect example.
As you may remember, all of that is codified in Sorcerer & Sword, exactly how you begin with a nearly-empty sketchy map at most, how you focus only on one precise spot for the first adventure, exactly how you propose the material (area, organizations) for itt and allow people to place their characters into it, and exactly how Kickers factor in. And then, most importantly, how you repeat all that somewhere else. In retrospect, I'm kind of sorry that I included the accurate point that you can even skip back and forth in time in doing this, because that was so sexy that people glommed onto it without buckling down to learn what to do, time-skip or not.
It's a bit surprising to read these questions from you because you're the one who developed those ideas into one of the best setting-generators-through-scenarios in game texts, Legends of Alyria. I've always thought of that game as the go-to for long-term play - perhaps your history of running demo one-shots with it has obscured what it does best? After all, what is right and wrong for the people of Alyria, in the long run? What is the fate of their tenuous (if surprisingly long-lived) presence on the planet? If they do survive, or one group does, then is that a good thing given what they might have become? I have always wanted to play multiple stories there and to present you with the map we generated, preferably drawn by someone who knows what they're doing.
Best, Ron
Valamir:
A correction my friend. William did not get promoted away from Ninshi...I know because it was in Zahir's Best Interest that he not, and I got all of my Best Interests in that first session; including most importantly that Valkyr fell in love with me -- even if she can't yet bring herself to admit it. It was Valkyr that got promoted thanks to my setting things up so she would be the hero who saved Ninshi instead of that foreign boob William. Ensuring that the king would name her commander of the armies was just a small token of my love and adoration. And yes, while Zahir is a ruthless manipulator...the look on Seth's face this Friday when he realized that Zahir's d12 is in "For Love" was priceless.
I'm especially fond of the dark, evil, and creepy (in the dirty old man sense of creepy) Kiragalzu. I so want to see the usurper suffer and die painfully, he's probably my favorite villain since Darken Rahl. This, inspite of Keith's repeated insistance (both in protests and in actions in play) that he is neither evil nor a villain. If Keith were playing him as a villain, he'd just be a caricature of evil sorcerer. But his trying desperately to play him as a good guy while the rest of us conspire to paint his every action in the worst light possible makes him all the more delicious as a villain.
I think the technique we've used most successfully in this campaign is to give the oracle a thorough thrashing and brainstorming before jumping into play...a couple of times we treaded a little close to playing before we played (this Friday especially) but we're experienced enough to recognize that and call a halt to it. But IMO its what really has driven play. I don't think anyone found this round of the Oracle's items all that compelling initially. But we hammered away at it hard enough that it reached a point where it felt like a right and natural chapter to follow on the previous ones. And as it turned out the main "plot line" that we'd wrestled with "before we played"...was never made explicit during play. I think it informed some of the decisions of who went after who...but the whole "seeking an alliance through marriage with a desert cult" story line got bypassed by the events of actual play partially because of the decision to make the actual desert god a character rather than using a cultist (because our game has something of a thematic history of using minor local gods as characters). Instead of arranging an alliance with the desert cult by marrying off the infant prince and heir to the realm...Zahir simply bound the god and contained him in a wine bottle...a rather spur of the moment decision but one that I don't think would have fit so well if we hadn't spent all the time in advance coming up with a reasonable justification for why Zahir (now regeant to the prince) was even there at that mystical way station.
I think a campaign of IaWA (at least how we've played it) follows very closely the way a session of Universalis goes. Initially there's lots of random stuff getting invented and thrown together and there's a joy in seeing all this stuff get jumbled up. Then at some point people's inherent story-sense kicks in and it becomes natural to start taking all these disparate pieces and finding ways to tie them together. Like in one story we had a fertility god imprisoned in a stone. In another story we had the main temple of some cult. It was absolutely natural for that temple to be the main temple of the fertility god who, having escaped from the stone in the earlier chapter, was now returning to his ancient center of worship to reestablish his cult. In the previous story the crazy prophet of the one true god had been revealed as Molly's father and had had fought with the pagan fertility god over her and wound up being eaten by a tree. In this new story the "father of a child possessed by a hungry spirit" obviously had to be that same crazy prophet, and the possessing spirit (which I elected to interpret as possessing him instead of the child by a judicious comma placement) was part of the spirit of the fertility god which had possessed him when they fought. So this new Chapter was essentially the continuation of the duel between this prophet and the fertility god from the previous chapter. The oracles fed us the pieces but it was our natural story sense that made the pieces make sense and tie together.
I think the discussions we have in advance of each session are invaluable to this, because they give us all a common aesthetic about "what this chapter is about" and "what's its role in the overall story arc". Without those discussions these would just be random disjointed tales that only minimally tie together largely by accident and coincidence and it would require someone like L.Sprague de Camp to come along and try to pick up these disjointed tales and forge them together into something recognizable as a coherent narrative ;-P
We now have a coherent story arc. The main story line (where "main" = most obvious not necessarily most interesting) is that of a kingdom over thrown by a usurping sorcerer. We now can see that one of our future chapters will have to involve the fight against the usurper and to that end Seth picked God King's of War as our next oracle. Everything else is tied to this story line. We see Molly transformed from a young girl, to a pirate, to queen of the realm, to mother of a child protected by Djinni. We see Zahir transformed from master of spies, to regeant for the hier under the usurper, to desperate patriot fighting to restore the throne (all the while diven by his...as yet...unrequited love. We see Valkyr transformed from a young girl, to an inspiring general, and I suspect it will be one of the next few sessions that will complete her transformation into the character that may very well prove to be the ultimate protagonist of the story. And we see Kiragalzu transformed from a aged sorcerer seeking power, to a powerful master of the dark arts driven by a desire to return to youth so he may better court the young Molly. In his pursuit of her he destroys a god and topples a kingdom and now stands poised to be the ultimate antagonist of the story...or...since IaWA leaves such things easily up in the air...potentially HE'S the true protagonist.
But all of that arc, I think, was made possible because we players a) love story arc stories ala Babylon 5 and Heroes and b) actively seek to recreate such in how we choose to interpret the Oracles.
I also think our group's previous experience with explicit Stake setting has proven invaluable to most all of our subsequent play together. Thinking back to the rousing success that was our PTA show "Eat at Joe's" I credit our use of negotiated binary stakes setting as being the moment where we all figured each other out as a group and really gelled. Before each conflict we'd spend a great deal of time hammering out the whole "if I win...this happens, and if I lose...that happens" aspect; often having a 4 or 9 box matrix of possible outcomes if there were multiple players opposing the Producer at the same time. That exercise, I think, really let us see what makes each other tick and what we find interesting and exciting and what we find boring.
Having done an entire series of PTA that way we can now come to a game like IaWA and apply those lessons. Our negotiations with the stick are often compelling and many conflicts have ended without inflicting injury or exhaustion because we offer the other party something they find compelling in the fiction instead. We can offer those things to each other, because we have a good sense of what we each find compelling. And we have that sense because we taught each other what we find to be compelling when we wrangled over setting stakes in our PTA game. I also noticed our ability to do this in our 9 Worlds game and also in our Grey Ranks game where we were able to narrate outcomes to conflicts that held everyone riveted...because we'd gotten good practice as to what people find riveting by playing that PTA game. In our current IaWA game I think only Raquel was not part of that Eat at Joe's series and I credit that with a great deal of our success at this. (Long Live the Explicitly-Negotiated-Binary-Stake-Setting technique!)
Gabrielle:
Something else that I think is important to campaign play is the valuation of the campaign over one's personal character. I really liked playing Dumuzi, the fertility god, and he's on the Owe list, but I don't think he has much more to add to the over arching story. So in my mind he's more of a resource sitting to the side, a possible advantage die to grab some time in the future. Before we played last time we had a conversation about which characters we thought were the main characters and it was remarkable how much we all agreed. So the characters that aren't main characters should be played like that even if they're your favorite.
At the same time, if you have a main character it's important to play your character in three dimensions and really push for his best interests. Like Ralph said, the only reason Kiragalzu, evil sorcerer and creepy old man, is of any interest as an adversary and possible antagonist is because his player keeps insisting he's a good guy. The rest of the group has decided he isn't, but we all agree that he is a main character so Keith should be pushing for him to get what he wants. It's what makes it interesting.
I'm not playing a main character and so I've tried very hard to give my characters closure at the end of each chapter so that they don't have to come back. It's not about them. They need to walk on stage and do their part and then walk off. If they happen to come back for another chapter as in the case of Bel-Danesh, the Djinn who had bound himself to the baby prince, the chapter should push forward the bigger story and not just his personal story so the rest of the campaign can carry on focusing on what it's about. Whatever that happens to be.
Gabrielle, the player of secondary characters with really cool exits.
GreatWolf:
Quote
A correction my friend. William did not get promoted away from Ninshi...I know because it was in Zahir's Best Interest that he not, and I got all of my Best Interests in that first session; including most importantly that Valkyr fell in love with me -- even if she can't yet bring herself to admit it. It was Valkyr that got promoted thanks to my setting things up so she would be the hero who saved Ninshi instead of that foreign boob William. Ensuring that the king would name her commander of the armies was just a small token of my love and adoration.
Doh! You're right. That's what I get for working from memory.
Quote
And yes, while Zahir is a ruthless manipulator...the look on Seth's face this Friday when he realized that Zahir's d12 is in "For Love" was priceless.
Yeah. Actually, Gabrielle and I were talking on Saturday, and we realized that there's really a fine line between Zahir and Kiragalzu. Either could have worked out to be the antagonist. But what made Zahir more appealing to the table (at least, to our section of the table) is the verve and style that Zahir brings to what he does. I mean, being a manipulator is cold, but Zahir is just so darn cool when he does it that it's hard to hate him.
Reminded me a bit of Eero's tips for surviving Zombie Cinema by making a character who is sympathetic to the other players.
Quote
I think a campaign of IaWA (at least how we've played it) follows very closely the way a session of Universalis goes. Initially there's lots of random stuff getting invented and thrown together and there's a joy in seeing all this stuff get jumbled up. Then at some point people's inherent story-sense kicks in and it becomes natural to start taking all these disparate pieces and finding ways to tie them together.
I agree. The same kind of thing happens in Dirty Secrets. But, what I'd like to know is how to instruct someone else's "story-sense" to help this sort of play along. How would you explain that story-sense to someone who is not as awesome as we are? *grin*
For example, this:
Quote
I think the discussions we have in advance of each session are invaluable to this, because they give us all a common aesthetic about "what this chapter is about" and "what's its role in the overall story arc". Without those discussions these would just be random disjointed tales that only minimally tie together largely by accident and coincidence and it would require someone like L.Sprague de Camp to come along and try to pick up these disjointed tales and forge them together into something recognizable as a coherent narrative ;-P
I totally agree, and I would point at our conversation last Friday as having been an important synchronizing of our creative vision. In general, I think that we were all on the same page, but it was good to "check in".
But, there can be a fine line between coordinating our aesthetic and "playing before you play". How would you explain this line to someone else?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page