Comments on: Why You Can’t Always Go Home Again

By: Kurt "Telas" Schneider

Kurt "Telas" Schneider — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:06:05 +0000

There's a lot of activity these days around "plot point" campaign arcs. These are campaigns with metaplot events that don't happen at a certain time, but when the GM feels it appropriate. They don't have a set time limit, but you can definitely burn them out.

By: Swordgleam

Swordgleam — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:02:42 +0000

Here's a question: is Seventh Sea one of these games? I've been thinking about running (or convincing someone else to run) a game, but the system seems really tightly tied to the setting, and I don't want to invest a lot of time in a system that's only going to be good for one campaign. The magic looks cool, but the guys I play with love to turn everything on its head, and I know they won't be satisfied with "well you can't have that power because you're from X country and it's only available to characters from Y country." At least, not more than once.

By: Yax - DungeonMastering.com

Yax - DungeonMastering.com — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:22:50 +0000

I agree that Amber isn't an easy replayed game. Even some concepts in the system are way more fun the first time - like bidding against other players for your attributes.

By: Omnus

Omnus — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:15:17 +0000

Knowing the plot or metastory in a discovery game is one thing. There's an even better example: Paranoia. In Paranoia, a first-time player doesn't even know the RULES. All he does is generate a character by some arbitrary dice-rolling, is told the absolute minimum of the world, and let go with six clones to live or die (and die and die and die and die etc.) I offer that Paranoia isn't what I'd consider a "true" RPG, more along the sub-set of the beer-and-pretzels set of games, but once you've had your first time, the game changes for you. You become less of a victim and more of a lurker, waiting to catch the other players to advance yourself. It goes from wide-eyed innocence to PVP dirtbaggery in short order (often before the first couple of clones have cooled to room temperature). But the charm of that first experience is lost and is nigh-impossible to recapture. One way I find using the already-installed storyline to my advantage is to take the timeline somewhere the covered material isn't. Knights of the Old Republic, the excellent video game for the Star Wars storyline, went back thousands of years into the past, and, while using enough material to make you aware of the universe you're a part of, the material was fresh enough to make you want to see how it all turns out, because it was new, even while it felt familiar. Likewise, in my main campaign world of Antier, my prime gaming group knows the gist of the storyline, the overlying conflict, and who the movers and shakers of the storyline are. I can, if I choose to, advance the storyline to the point after their victorious campaign, where they would be the most familiar, and show them what comes after the lives and times of their retired characters, or take them back to a previous age to let them relive past lives of their characters. If you're not afraid to add on things to the behind-the-scenes or off the map, I think you can do all right to a discover-the-world scenario.

By: Scott Martin

Scott Martin — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:29:23 +0000

You do a good job of explaining the drawback to metaplot/mystery revealed games. I like the ideas you mention for trying to come back to a familiar game or setting, like remixing-- while you probably can't make it as cool as the first time, you might get something good in a different way out of your try.

By: Colonel Sponsz

Colonel Sponsz — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:37:31 +0000

Funny you should chose Con X as your example for this. Whilst we've been playing some games for a long time, Con X is the only one that has a continuity that has been running since the first game, nearly 10 years ago. We've had several of us GM campaigns and, as people have moved, it's now spread to three groups in different cities. We've had several approaches to the same background varying from a future war with the Saurians to a counter intelligence operation and several players (including one of my characters - when I'm not GMing) are running our own long term agenda as a side plot. Sure, we know about the aliens and how they operate - some of our information comes from the survivors of the future war who made it back to the present - but each campaign introduces a new situation. For example, in my last campaign an insider was passing information to alien sympathisers (Black Book) and had to be found and neutralised. Even knowing everything in all of the source books wasn't going to help there - which is really handy when some of the players own the source books from their stints as GMs. Setting and scope are purely limited by the imagination of the GM and players and I think that that this leads us to the real deciding factor in what makes something a one time game: How the group identify with the background and the system, and that varies significantly between groups.

By: Propagandroid

Propagandroid — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:53:24 +0000

I think there are some settings that work well as one-visit settings (not necessarily one game, but single-serving adventures or short campaigns). The Midnight RPG, for example, is an awesome campaign setting, especially the first time you play in it or run it. So many classic D&D tropes are turned on their head, you can get weeks of mileage just out of the "renegade" feeling of being a PC in that world. However, I'm not sure I would want to play it for years on end, because it can be really exhausting, and after a while I think the "hide from everyone" thing would start to get more annoying than interesting or fun. --Prop