Ideas for a Long Term Campaign that Survives


Online Campaigns General Discussion


backdrop of my thought process:

As we have all noticed, most of the long term campaigns or AP’s that get started in the PbP forums die relatively quickly.
Many people do not play PFS games, so you may not have noticed, but they almost never die out. Yes, occasionally, RL happens, and it gets in the way. But that is not usually the case.

Now here is where I start ‘supposing’ on events.

I believe at least a big part of the reason the PFS games complete is because they are divided up into fairly short segments. No one has time to really get bored / frustrated / disappointed / etc… with it. If the style of a particular PFS game isn’t to my taste, I can keep going for a few weeks to finish it up and the next one is likely to be completely different. I have some PFS characters, that almost all of their experience has been on PbP games, but I haven’t been in a single long term PbP campaign that advanced a single level.

Now I know a lot of people don’t like PFS for a variety of reasons. It’s too much of a railroad. Feel it discourages RP. Can’t handle out of the box solutions. No elements of character choice affecting the future. Too short and simplistic. Don’t like the rules modifications. Whatever… Won’t say I always agree with all those opinion, but I see where they are coming from. I personally, like both PFS and the more standard campaigns.

I certainly can not fit another FtF home campaign in my personal schedule, but I can work with the pace of PbP long term campaign. However, it gets very disheartening to apply for a spot in a couple dozen before getting selected. Then just as I start to get into the character and story, it dies out. Then it happens again. And again. And … You get the idea.

I want a long term campaign, however I also want it to live. So, I’ve been trying to figure out ways to get the best of both worlds and minimizing the down sides of each. Here is what I’ve come up with so far and my reasoning for it.

1. Say 5-8 players. Large enough to be functional without being over whelming for anyone.
2. Rotate GM’s for missions, chapters, assignments, levels, etc… That way no one has to be GM for the next 5 years continuously and if a particular GM isn’t your favorite, well he won’t usually be the GM.
3. The whole group figures out some overarching plot element that will allow easy division into sections. The first obvious thing that comes to my mind is covert team working for Count Whosits. Then each GM gets to do a specific assignment. There are other ways to do it that will work just as well or better, that was just my initial idea. If each is kept to no more than a level’s worth of XP (I would have no problem with half of that), it should keep each chapter short enough to be completed.
4. If the particular GM wants to tell a longer story, he just waits until it comes back around to his turn before telling the next part. Maybe the next part has to wait until the sages finish some research before the party knows where to go next.
5. If someone doesn’t feel up to ‘writing’ an adventure, they can use a purchased a module or section out of an AP, just modified a bit to fit into our campaign.
6. I think with the knowledge that there are hard and rather short divisions, most people will be able to commit to completing a section. Then if they find they don’t like it, their character just retires or gets a new job. Then there is a known break that is convenient to find a replacement or other adjustment if necessary.
7. Use Golarian as the setting and generally Paizo rules for simplicity’s sake. No house rules unless everyone is 100% in agreement with them before hand.
8. Set it in an area of Golarion that hasn’t had any product detailing it. That way we won’t disturb what someone already ‘knows’ about the area, that someone else didn’t. Similarly, we could invent a new monster, but not significantly alter any existing monster. For example: I’m not a huge fan of the way Pathfinder does vampires. But if I wanted to have my vision in an adventure, I wouldn’t call them anything like vampires. I might have a nest of Mithrans that the party has to deal with.
9. I think we would have to have a gentlebeing’s agreement that the GM never puts in a reward that is specifically great for his own PC
10. Agree ahead of time how to handle the GM’s character, short absences, long absences, posting rate, bot’ing or skipping characters, how to handle character death (and the gear left behind), level of optimization, etc…

This list is not the rules laid down by god. This is a beginning to start discussions. I expect it to change and evolve. What do you think? Anything you disagree with? What would you add? What would you modify? Questions? Concerns? Ideas?


This sounds rather solid I think.
Some more thoughts:

I have been part of a game doing short-term battles followed by RP-downtime before the next (in a gladiator-like setting). It was epic, since each short battle was made to challenge you .... hard. By ever changing battlefields, monsters, environment - all designed to challenge the group. We had to fight on an island surrounded by amphibian monsters trying to pull you under water and drown you - and the island was shrinking as the waterlevel was rising. Another time the battlefield was changing it's shape every round with razor-sharp walls jumping up at random, forming corridors, cover or causing damage within a moments notice. I loved it! In that kind of missions you can really challenge the PCs and allow them to burn through all their available resources at top speed.

In the same game there was a kind of achievement system in place. After each battle the players would vote for one/two player(s) to receive one achievements points from two categories (best RP, best performance). Also the GM will offer an achievement point for the player he liked most (for whatever reason). After one PC gathered a couple of achievement points (say three for example) the GM would offer him a tiny bonus (a medal to mark him as a champion - providing RP boni, a heal-pot, above-average medical treatment before the next fight, whatever) as he rises in the favor of the chief of the Colosseum.
I found that EXTREMELY cool, rewarding and motivating. I guess you could do something similar in the setting you are envisioning. Also the voting and reviewing of the past experience is rewarding in it's own and causes increased group cohesion (as far as I can tell)

To Pathfinder rules: I would highly recommend house-rules for increased freedom and player creativity. I did not play a lenghty Pathfinder campaign in PbP yet, but even in my RL campaigns, I have the feeling that playing the same character for a long time ... gets boring with time - since the ruling of Pathfinder is so inflexible (especially Combat Maneuvers - the major source of creativity in a fight - and you cannot do it as long as you do not totally optimize your character on doing it)

Greets


Thanks.

I wouldn't want to just do nothing but gladiator fights, but some of them could be cool.

Swordwhale wrote:

...

In the same game there was a kind of achievement system in place. After each battle the players would vote for one/two player(s) to receive one achievements points from two categories (best RP, best performance). Also the GM will offer an achievement point for the player he liked most (for whatever reason). After one PC gathered a couple of achievement points (say three for example) the GM would offer him a tiny bonus (a medal to mark him as a champion - providing RP boni, a heal-pot, above-average medical treatment before the next fight, whatever) as he rises in the favor of the chief of the Colosseum.
I found that EXTREMELY cool, rewarding and motivating. I guess you could do something similar in the setting you are envisioning. Also the voting and reviewing of the past experience is rewarding in it's own and causes increased group cohesion (as far as I can tell) ...

I'm not sure if that would be easier or harder with multiple GM's.

Swordwhale wrote:

...

I have the feeling that playing the same character for a long time ... gets boring with time - since the ruling of Pathfinder is so inflexible (especially Combat Maneuvers - the major source of creativity in a fight - and you cannot do it as long as you do not totally optimize your character on doing it) ...

Personally, I think that is fairly dependent upon character build. While all my PC's have at least one thing they are particularly good at, they always have multiple choices of what they can do. Just as a quick example: UMD a wand of True Strike and nearly anyone can make a credible attempt at a combat maneuver.


I just ran across this, and I will not lie, this is the format we us for our FtF games with my group of friends. We rotate gms, different stories, maybe the same characters, but different places and times


This seems like a decent list.

I've got a thought on how you could have a higher quality game, which seems like it belongs here even though it doesn't really address having a longer running game directly. Because a better game will last longer and uh...be better.

One thing that I have trouble with in PbP is that you can't say too much in a post. I was in this greek play once where every time there was a debate, both characters would start with like two pages of text. They would go on and on making different points and elaborating on what they'd said, and as the other character in the scene it was weird to not be able to say anything. That's basically what every post in PbP is like, since you don't know how the other person is going to respond to each of the things you say, unless you're willing to have about six posts each just to have a basic conversation, which is hard for its own reasons. it's a tough balance.

I'd advocate for also giving each player some control over each other character. That way I can write the conversation between two and have it actually be a conversation. Obviously this creates different problems, like players not understanding the characters of others and taking actions which they wouldn't. I don't think I'd mind this too much, since everyone would get pretty good at understanding the other characters pretty quick. You could even run it traditionally, that is, no player can put words in the mouth of a character that isn't theirs, for the first month or two to get a sense of everyone. Plus, when it came time for you to be the GM, you'd understand everyone's character real well already, and would know what things would lead to interesting RP situations.

The other benefit is that it would create a natural feedback system. Player A wants to have Character A and Character B converse, so they do. Then Player B is expected to provide some feedback on Player A's handling of Character B. Feedback is good, feedback is the difference between Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion, which if you don't know one has a generally higher quality of writing than the other.


Hmm... Not sure about that Gaurwaith. I think I could handle it, but I know a lot of players would be totally against having other players control their charcters in any way.

I will say some of my characters have had long in-character conversations/arguments in PbP. It just ends up looking strangely like the conversation takes place over a week. When ever we posted anything, we would just include a separate section for the ongoing conversation.
...
And another thing you need to remember, is that a cur such as yourself would never even be allowed through the front door of the ...

We just told everyone else to not hold up the game for our discussion.

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