Creating Wargame Campaigns

Greetings once again, everyone.  Today's post will deal with methodology once again, but this time we're going to focus on one of the integral pieces of the Wargate:  the wargame campaign.  We have more of these every year than any other event, and I wanted to share my process for creating new campaigns and how we can expand upon the conventions we use.  This is based entirely upon my own experience, and is not meant to be empirical in any way.  This is simply how our club gets it's regular influx of wargames campaigns and scenarios.

Preliminaries and Metadata

One of the things that has been driving our campaigns lately is time restraints.  The first thing that you should consider is the number of games that will be played.  This has been both a set number and a variable number for us in the past, depending on the individual campaign makeup.  For our purposes, the three month campaigns have a target of 24 recorded games, while the two month campaigns will require 16...which is actually a more frantic pace.  However, we have also had campaigns that have lasted nearly a year, with an unlimited number of games.  The possibilities are endless, but you should consider your club's available time.

Once you have chosen your time frame and target number of games, then you can choose a narrative.  In many cases this might actually come first if the dictates of a previous campaign or game would naturally set the stage.  We have several narratives to choose from, especially for the more popular games.  Take a look at the world and factions doing battle.  What might drive that conflict?  For example, our Warmachine narrative focuses on the area near Caspia and Sul, because Cygnar and the Protectorate are the center of the map for players in our group.  However, Warhammer 40,000 jumps around in the narrative, but focuses on the Mardannon Crusade and it's main enemies - Warmaster Laserwulf and Boss Nokk.

Now, you have a time frame and a narrative.  What do you do with them?  Well, what sort of campaign do you want to run?


Choose Design Type

There are so many types of campaign types that I can't really be bothered to even uncover them all.  There are as many campaign types as there are campaign designers, and I don't pretend this entry to be the end-all-be-all of this discourse.  However, I can designate four main types of campaign that the Wargate uses:  League, Ladder, Map and Gamemastered.

Now, I am going to give a brief description of the types of campaigns I mentioned and the basic conventions that we use in each.  Of course each individual campaign is unique and has it's own quirks, so I this will stick to just the basics.  Really, I could write a whole series of Bone Method entries on each one.  Hmmm...

A League Campaign.

League campaigns are characterized by not having a map or any markers other than just the numbers involved.  For us, these are either open campaigns where any number of games can be played with any number of participants, or there are a set number of rounds, usually round-robin format.  Generally, this sort of campaign deals entirely with win / loss record over the season, with very little in the way of other structured rules.  We usually run Warmachine campaigns in this manner.

Ladder campaigns are traditionally played when there are only two sides to the battle.  Start with an opening scenario with two outcomes, one for each faction.  The whole diagram looks like a wedge with multiple nodes on it.  We haven't done one of these sorts of games in a loooong time, so regrettably I do not have an image to share.  It's hard to explain without a diagram, but basically it goes like this:  the number of tiers equal the number of games you want played.  Each team has one side of the diagram.  For example, Team 1 is Left and Team 2 is Right.  If Team 2 wins, the scenario played next time is one tier down (or up, depending on how you set your diagram) and to the right.  If Team 1 wins, the scenario played is one tier down and to the left.  The further the scenario map goes to one side, the more favorable for that team the battle will be.  At the bottom of the pyramid will be an extra set of nodes that denote campaign standing, which is reached exactly like all the other nodes.  The further to one side the final node, the more crushing that faction's victory is over the other.

A Multiplayer Ladder.

There are other sorts of campaigns that I term "ladder" that aren't actually set up like the traditional ladder above.  In this model, the number of games are represented by a sort of "sliding graph" meter.  As progress is made by one faction, that progress is represented on the meter.  I liken this to a ladder campaign since the rounds are measured out and once a scenario is played those points are lost.  This is best used when there are multiple factions or sub-factions to a fighting force.

A Map Campaign.

Map campaigns revolve around a campaign map that is manipulated for strategic advantage above and beyond the actual game being played.  In fact, this map wrangling can constitute a "game" in and of itself depending on how involved its ruleset is.  A map campaign often involves moving armies and resources around on the map and attempts to get an optimum position throughout the campaign.  Any number of factions can be represented on a map, and these are often the most looked for sorts of games around here.

Gamemastered campaigns are the odd bird.  This must involve at least two factions and an impartial, neutral gamemaster.  The gamemaster sets the scenario, delineates any armies or special units used, and has carte blanche to run the game as he likes to.  This is the old sort of gaming - back in the day, this was actually the norm for wargaming, where as today we prefer rather hard cut scenarios, special rules and victory conditions.  However, these campaigns are very rewarding for gamemasters who are fair and consistent.

It's now that you'll decide on what scenarios will be used in the campaign, and what special conditions affect which scenarios are played.  For League games, a set of random scenarios will suffice (perhaps linked with the narrative).  For Ladder games, each node is a scenario (remember to weigh them to the side that's winning in that node).  For Map campaigns, you can go crazy:  each type of terrain or special location can have it's own special scenario or set of scenarios.  In Gamemastered campaigns, anything is possible.


Determine Victory Conditions

Most of our campaigns use the same conventions time after time.  The main two of these are Campaign Points and Influence.  These two conditions are the deciding factor in every campaign.  Either one or both of them will be used, and this section explains how and why.

Campaign Points are used in games where multiple sides or players makes it useful to have multiple diverging scores.  A side can accrue Campaign Points in a number of manners, but playing games is the most common.  For a win, 3 points are awarded.  For a draw, 2.  For a loss, hey you still played so you get 1 point.  Sometimes, Campaign Points are the only thing necessary for determining campaign victory, especially where there are a set number of games.

Influence is your ratio of victory to loss.  The more you win, the higher your Influence score.  We began using this a while back, and though it can be used on it's own to determine campaign it's got a better use than that.  Influence can be applied to Campaign Points as a multiplier in games where there are many factions or sub-factions.  Thus you have the magic equation:  Campaign Points x Influence = Total Score.

One other convention we have used is called Battle Magnitude.  This imposes an Influence penalty on factions that don't achieve the requisite number of games.  Basically, the faction that has played the most games produces the Battle Magnitude, which is simply the number of games they have played.  All factions that do not meet this number of games suffers a penalty to Influence commensurate with the number of games they are behind.  Thus, you cannot win one game, get 100% influence and win the campaign - you have to worry about Campaign Points and Battle Magnitude.

Whatever the Victory Conditions for the campaign, you should definitely consider them before any other additions are made.  There are many extra ways to earn Campaign Points, through special events and conditions or other achievements.  However, playing and winning games is still the focus of most campaigns.


Designing Events and Conditions

It's perfectly fine to design a campaign without any bells and whistles.  In fact, it can be quite enjoyable, especially after just crawling through a long map campaign with all sorts of special conditions.  However, you may want to add in all sorts of changes to make the battles more characterful and in line with your narrative.

Events and conditions are really anything you want them to be, but for the purposes of our discourse an event is something that happens unexpectedly and affects your campaign progress; a condition is the effect of an action that affects your actual play in the game.  For example, in The Brightflow Gap, your forces can get a Spark of Hope at the beginning of your campaign turn.  This affects your campaign progress by adding a bonus to your Influence score.  Your characters can also find magical items to swap out, changing their condition - you might might have paid for a +1 Attack, but your new magic weapon gives you +3 Strength.  Nice upgrade.

One of the most heavily used conditions here at the Wargate is that of Experience Points.  When a unit gains an Experience Point (XP), then some modification occurs to the unit / hero and usually lasts until that unit is destroyed in the game.  For example, 1 XP translates to a roll on an upgrade chart in Brightflow Gap.  Results like +1 Weapon Skill (making this regiment better trained in hand to hand combat) or +1 Leadership (making these troops morale stronger).  The specific requirements to gaining XP is different for every game, but it's usually the result of a battle.  Warriors do not gain Experience Points if they do not gain experience. Not all games use XP, but the ones that do require a lot more paperwork.

Remember to keep everything fair and balanced.  Make sure the chances of something bad happening apply equally to everyone, and likewise the chance of anything good happening must apply to everyone equally - more or less.  Campaign conditions can dictate otherwise, but try to keep the metagame mechanics from unevenly  upsetting the balance of the campaign - unless the randomness part is one of the 'features' your campaign is focused on.

Keep things fair, but shake it up a bit - especially for large, complex campaigns.  Some locations might be worth more than others, or demand a certain army build or scenario.  Vary things from the tournament standard - but keep it entirely fair.  Try not to stack circumstances against anyone - a good rule of thumb is that only one event / condition should apply to any faction at one time (except XP), unless they have had to sacrifice some other advantage for the edge.  Likewise, that condition should have an equal chance of being good or bad, unless (as above) that faction (or their opponent) has somehow engineered it to be one way or the other by performing in another area.

If you played the same scenario with the same armies over and over it would get boring pretty quick.  Keep enough variables in the campaign that it will remain interesting, but not so many that it will overwhelm your players.  In each game there are a great many conventions that can be tweaked to produce a unique and interesting scenario for your battles - every single time.

Crowning the Victor

We have a big tradition here at the Wargate, and that's the Accolades.  At the end of every campaign, we award a prize to the victorious army, and chide the vanquished for how disturbing we find their lack of faith.  It's all in good fun, and one of the highlights of the season.  The victorious player wins a title, which he holds until the next year's campaign.  The title itself becomes something of a prize, but hey - we've given out real prizes too!

Dirty Greg won the first real prize we ever actually handed out.

It can be hard for smaller clubs to actually hand out any prizes without 'support'.  Most clubs or game stores run tournaments with prize support from a publisher, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get the swag.  Too many - one major caveat being you must be a retailer.  That's sort of a bad rule, truly - I think a lot of commerce goes through the club these days.  We don't really have the option of going to the game store for our gaming, anyway.

So what to do?  Give prizes or not?  As a small club, we actually have a few options.  I've actually had people I've invited to the Wargate tell me "but you guys don't have prizes.  I've made actual money at these tournaments!" and then they told me they didn't want to come over.  Whatever, I could care less - the club is invite only, and nobody wanted Fat Mike to come over anyway.  It was that the other statement, that he had made money, was a qualifier for his enjoyment of the campaign.  For real?  You'd rather get another box set than have months of ongoing games?

Well, personally I like both.  It's easy to take a collection for the prize pool at the start of the campaign, and you can get as lavish as you like.  We're not a store, and run entirely on donations to the club which are frequent and often lavish.  The most money the club has ever "made" has been on Magic: the Gathering drafts - and we haven't done one of those almost two years.  However, the club gives back a lot too, and all of that money goes back into the club in the form of supplies and new accoutrements and in few rare cases for Prize Support.  So for the best prize pools these days, our best option is the campaign "ante-up".  For $5-20 per player (depending on how jiggy you want to get with the prizes) this is cost effective and makes for even more memorable Accolades!

At the end of each campaign we publish the campaign log from the state of play on the main site, along with the names of the victors / vanquished.  There's a short story blurb as we tie in the narrative, all the fallout from the battles is discussed.  These have been getting longer and longer - wait until you see the log from Brightflow Gap!  The campaign log is the record of our campaign, not only for our imaginary armies but to keep some great memories for ourselves as well.

Well that's enough out of me now.  I wanted to go over some of the basic considerations we make for each campaign, and I'm pretty sure I hit on most of the major points.  Let me know if you have any questions, and we always like comments here on the site!  See you on Game Day!

Bone Method: How Do We Use Narratives?

From the Wikipedia entry:

A narrative is a constructive format (as a work of speech, writing, song, film, television, video games, photography or theatre) that describes a  sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled".

So there you have it.  That's what a narrative is defined as, and looking at the description you can see how roleplay and wargames we've been playing fit neatly into the constructive format.  Now, you've seen me refer to these "narratives" numerous times on this blog, so now I'm going to elaborate on how we as a gaming club can invent and use narratives to keep our events and campaigns fresh and exciting for years to come.

First of all, narratives give the given scenario depth beyond the mission description.  It's one thing to be taking a heavily contested objective, it's another thing when that objective is the Dragon Sword in the Rhovanion.  It takes things one step beyond the standard "league" organization to make things more personal, and for some, more epic.  When we first started the narratives for a lot of our games, it was a neat experience to be sure.  Now, some years into the whole ordeal, the narratives begin to layer upon one another to form the campaign histories of our club.

This is sort of an organic process, as every club has rivalries and tales of valor.  Yet how many of those clubs really take the time to put the extra detail into the scenarios and campaigns to make things worthy of not just remembering which player and army, but a specific time and place that has impacted the games the club plays from then on.  Story affecting events that become recurring themes in certain universes adds a level of verisimilitude that can't be achieved by roleplaying games or wargames alone.

It's when the wargaming and roleplaying come together that truly interesting narratives appear, almost spontaneously, from the histories that create themselves.  Let me illustrate with the following example, using our wars and adventures in the Mardannon Sector from all our Warhammer 40,000, Necromunda, and Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay games for the last few years:

1. 2009 - Space Marine (using rules from Dark Heresy) -  In this scenario, the Mardannon Crusade drops into planet Ordavis, an important planet in the Carpithica system.  Here rampaging orks are destroying the important hive cities, and only the crusading Astartes have any chance of turning the tide.  The players fought across the open plains of Ordavis in the waste zones between the hives on the superhighways, and eventually freed the governor from the clutches of the insidious Alpha Legion who had seized control of one of the last hives.
2. 2009 - The Battle for Ordavis (Warhammer 40,000) - Two tribes of orks, two chaos space marine factions battle the space marines of the Infinity Watch for control of planet Ordavis in a long map campaign.  Chaos space marines seize the resources on the planet, but leave it to the marauding orks.  The crusade recoils, and the Infinity Watch are dealt a terrible blow they have yet to recover from.
3. 2010 - Under a Vast Grey Sky (Dark Heresy) - A team of acolytes under the direction of Inquisitor Corvus Mandera of the Ordo Hereticus investigate the Watchers of Poul, a Imperial Cult suspected of grievous heresy, on the planet Lucruzu Prime.  The players interact with the most powerful men on the planet, and save the governor from an insidious plot to murder and usurp him committed by his own son.
4. 2011 - Brave New Waaagh! (Warhammer 40,000) - On the planet Nokk (known to the Imperials as Tangrus III) aliens battle for the right to launch a new Waaagh! into space.  Eldar attempt to stop the ork tribes from completing their fleet of ships and hordes of stompas, yet there were two giant hordes to deal with.  The Necrons awoke during the carnage, marking Tangrus as tomb world, but in the end it was the threat of the tyranids that depopulated the world.  Now it is a terrible wasteland of eternal war between xenos.
5. 2011 - Gangs of New Waco (Necromunda) - We visited New Waco once, and we return to the outlaw planet once again to determine the state of the world.  The Red Redemption flourishes across the sector, and New Waco is the center of the movement in Mardannon.  The Adeptus Arbites crush most resistance, but the infamous Band of Basterds (from Under a Vast Grey Sky) elude thier grasp - though many suspect their involvement, no one but our acolytes from Dark Heresy know they are really working for the Inquisitor Mandera...
6. 2012 - Horrendous Hordes (Warhammer 40,000) -  Planet Nydrazom is came under attack from rampaging chaos forces!  The Warmaster Laserwolf and the Umbral Stalkers Cabal have summoned forth Azu'kulman the Blood Daemon, and opportunistic Dark Eldar strike from the webway to drink of Nydrazom's suffering.  The onslaught did horrible damage to the Black Templar's Mardannon Crusade, and armor regiments from Lumis were likewise horribly mangled.  Nydrazom is now in ruins, and the pirates have fled back into their hidden lairs deep in space.

Now, 40k is big so we've jumped around a bit to liven things up, but all this has taken place in the Mardannon Sector.  This year has two more 40k bits coming that directly relate to our Dark Heresy game - the continuing adventures of Inquisitor Mandera's acolytes as they visit planet Kelphis, and we return to Lucruzu Prime in our Necromunda campaign later this year, aptly titled Imperial Crackdown - we'll be seeing the aftermath of said acolytes actions as the Imperium reigns in the chaos on this vital world.

Our Warhammer Fantasy Battles games and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay  games are likewise intertwined, although a bit more closely than our 40k games.  It's this inter-connectivity that keeps everything fresh and moving forward, and also the shared history of fighting in the campaigns.  There are four major campaigns since we started this Wargate, but we've been playing in the Warhammer World almost constantly.  Actually, these four campaigns account for over a year's worth of gaming in and of themselves.

1. 2010 - Into the Delve (WFRP 2e) - Our player characters establish themselves in Khazid Grimaz, ground zero for our narrative and home of the dwarves near Karak Norn in the Grey Mountains.  Terrible events lead to a long forgotten underground city, and the players battle tribes of orcs, undead monsters and chaos entities to free the newly discovered Delve from evil.  In the depths of the forgotten city under Khazid Grimaz, they players discover The Black Vein - a warpstone corrupted node of Gromril.
2. 2010 - Death in the Delve (Mordheim) - Everyone knows wyrdstone is worth something.  Recently, a large amount has been rumored to be in a secret underground city under the dwarf realm of Khazid Grimaz.  A chaos cult known as the Despoilers of the Blight beat out all comers, apparently securing a horde of wyrdstone for some nefarious purpose...
3. 2011 - Welkommen Zu Wissenland (Warhammer Fantasy Battle) - Our warbands campaign depicted the fighting in Wissenland during the months surrounding our last two campaigns.  The Herd of Fekul-Hoof won the day, and the dark pall of beastmen has hung over our campaign narrative ever since!
4. 2012 - The Doomforge (WFRP 2e) - Our latest RPG campaign is literally one session away from being done.  The Black Vein under the Khazid must be gotten rid of - but there is hope the star iron can be cleansed as it was in ancient days with a mysterious device known as the Runewell.  However, even with the Runewell's power, an ancient forge with mystical properties must be set alight to burn away the taint of chaos from the Gromril.  Will the players succeed in finding the long forgotten records and defeat the hidden threats to the Khazid's existence?  Or will the dwarfs be damned as they are overcome by hordes of orcs and beastmen?

Later this year (next season in fact!) we'll be seeing the next chapter of our Games Workshop fantasy narrative come up in The Greystone Pass War for Warhammer Fantasy Battles.  We've got a lot of adventuring to do here yet, and the story is just starting to get really good!

We can even create narratives inside canonical restrictions, as I've spoken of in other posts.  We see that blossoming our Warmachine games into rivalries, and more players are taken notice of that extremely cool game.  Later this year, when the Iron Kingdoms RPG comes out I'm sure we'll be taking a stroll through that as well, intertwining the narratives between the RPG and Wargame so that it seems like the same game really.  As new players (warcasters) join our battles, more narratives will form.  When we make PC's for the RPG, we'll be adding new narratives.  All these will blend together to create our very own gaming stew, that's just the right amount of flavor.

I appreciate everyone doing their part and helping out with the stories we're telling.  The narratives from our armies are growing, and I might even give them their own category to help out with finding our individual forces background flavors from the growing amount of stuff on the site.  As we go forward, a lot of the new stuff appearing on the horizons from our favorite game developers will go into the narrative bucket, and we'll get to see our newest narratives interact with the latest gaming awesomeness (such as Colossals for Warmachine) to help us keep pace with the best clubs in the world.

That's enough from me for today.  Remember - when you build an army for the wargate, you're building a character for our narratives!

The Raiders of the Ruthless East and the DM

In the vast and hugely marketed world of source books and scripts, Middle Earth is a prime place for adventure that is still fresh and unknown to many seasoned gamers.  Not only did this entire campaign happen in Middle Earth, it began simply in Mordor.  Thats right friends, Evil Roleplaying was happening from the start.

Using 3.0 Dungeons & Dragons core rules and various Middle Earth media, I shaped a dark land called Mordor into a the prime ground for evil roleplay. My name is Jerry Wargate, and I will take you on a crash course into my campaign (of Evil!).  I made this campaign because I was told it could not be done, that it wouldn't be fun, that Middle Earth was played out.  Most importantly, I made it out of a long love for Middle Earth.

The long and murderous campaign is now over, leaving in its wake a long list of dead PC's, permanently disfigured characters, as well as over half the party ending the game at level 1.  As DM and responsible master of this campaign, I wish to explain (and even encourage) this state of roleplay that is Mordor.

I started this campaign with the long time dream of simply playing the servants of Mordor, but I little expected the full blunt and hard hitting truths about such servants and the way of life that comes with being employed by the Dark Lord.  I opened with a talk to my players about what we all expected and tolerated in advance, but no one had any real clue of the madness they were entering.  I expected quarreling and tribal leaderships.  I tolerated most all PC interaction: be it fighting, stealing, cannibalism, ect.

Evil Roleplaying in fantasy seems to be frowned upon by alot of gamers.  Myself I always root for the bad guy - the villian or henchman.  They are always more interesting and human than the heroes.  All rp gamers should experience evil roleplay once.  Its a great change-up of speed and makes for a lot of interesting roleplay.  A lot
of players tend to become set on a certain character or class that is constantly re-rolled for every campaign and session.  This can make the gaming stale.

Murder and Robbery were constant!  No loot was really looted correctly until someone died over it.  Only one magical item ever came into the groups' possession.  4 murders over many weekends, and all for a +1 sword.  I kept the magical loot scarce to increase tensions, and I think it did well.  PC's robbing other PC's became a daily routine.

I give a 5 star rating to the group for actual roleplay!  I saw alot of players realing making a good hard push to perform in-character roleplay, and somehow being a badguy is easy roleplay for our group.

I allowed the dead to reroll characters and return to the group at level 1 a few times (more than 10 times).  I believe only 2 deaths were from actual monster or questing play.

Everyone was pleased with that. The group lost three different leaders (bosses) during the length of the campaign.  All in all this was an awesome campaign I enjoyed it, my players enjoyed it, and I hope others will delve into this experience.

Additional Notes

Character Creation
I limited everyone to the Half-Orc race, followed with the class choices of Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian.  Simple and elegant, Middle Earth allowed no orc wizards, orc bards, or orc clerics.  With game integrity in mind, I wanted no magic users or heavy healers, as no over skilled orc ever existed.  I allowed virtually nothing as far as gear and items went, this was done to further the fact orcs are many and never well equiped often.

Player Disclaimer
The first night of play I left my PC's know what I expected and would tolerate. Backstabbing, robbing, murdering, conspiracy, mutiny, cannibalism, lying, ect. is totally expected and tolerated.  I wanted an orc mob that was by the books.  Evil turns on evil often, so why not let us delve into the darkness and depravity?

Game Play
In game the Dark lord musters his forces to train as a military force.  Our PC's were forged into a war party through their trials and tribulations.  Over the period of many weeks and many adventures we ended with 3 of 10 players surviving to level 3, all other players who died were allowed rerolls new characters as raw recruits.

DM Notes
I never could have expected so much murder and thievery, even out of a band of orcs.  The PC's seemed to enjoy the gameplay as much as I did!  No weekend went without some excitement or wild happenings.  Murder and mutiny, thievery and swindling!  It had it all.  Over 12 deaths occured... 90% were Player Killings!

I was also glad everyone roleplayed and then afterwards had no hard feelings on the game. This was a game to be played and explored, and I think it was worthy.  Absolutely not one named character from the book interacted with our PC's, no ring was ever found, and only the dead ones were the lucky ones.  Mordor forced some of the best roleplay Ive seen our club do in a while.

I think also this idealism has allowed my PC's to experience death on an epic game level.  Making a 3.0 character sheet is easy for everyone now!  And it has also taught the lesson.  Its just a game and I can have fun at level one, roleplaying, with absolutely nothing but my character.  I appreciate everyone who played, and I hope soon we can return to Mordor for more of this awesome gameplay.

Building RPG Campaigns

Out of all the people in the world, precious few are gamers.  Of those, only a small portion have it in them to actually coordinate an RPG game as the "Game Master".  A Game Master needs to be very prepared before he steps into the ring at the Wargate.  Having a strong campaign theme is critical, as well as having a good idea of how the individual game world will react to the players.  Today's diatribe contains bits of my methodology when creating new adventure stories.

For those that don't know me, I've been RPG gaming solid since 1992.  I've done lots of different genres, games and even been lucky enough to have a few players who've been with me for more than a decade.  Aside from that, I've run countless games for more folk than I can remember.  I've had hits and misses, and in this methodology article I'll elaborate on what I've found works best for me to constantly crank out adventure stories for our club!



A Million Systems
The first choice you will have to make is what system you are going to use for the campaign.  Sometimes this will be an obvious choice, as sometimes the system itself is what spurs you along.  Other times, there is an overwhelming number of options as to what you can do with the same system.  Do you run your D&D game in Dark Sun or in Ravenloft?

This seems like a "gimme", but choice of system is quite critical to the delivery of your game.  Certain schools of thought tend towards the "any game system can handle any genre", and to an extent that's true.  Online you'll find tons and tons of "house rules" that modify systems to more accurately reflect another genre.  D20 is a great commercial example of this, but remember - if significant conversion to the basic system seems necessary, you might want to rethink the choice of system.  There's not any reason to spend a lot of time changing minutiae of the systems to reflect some tiny thing that seems out of place - unless you want to make that the point of your project.

In particular, at the Wargate, we have TONS of games that are on constant rotation.  Dungeons & Dragons, World of Darkness, Warhammer Roleplay - all these games are pretty much known quantities to our players.  The rules are in firm grasp by everyone, and even new games take very little time for the group to learn.  Don't be afraid to introduce new systems, as they will be devoured by the members of the club quite swiftly and without any warning.

Personally I like to change systems every few months, but in practice few GM's will run more than one system or setting for a myriad of reasons.  For just as many reasons, this is actually a desirable effect within a large gaming club like ours - it allows each GM to "own" a different portion the world(s) / settings and specialize in that system!

There's lots of options even within a single setting to keep gamers coming back for years, and the amount of material available for each line is staggering.  Fantasy settings tend to have "Oriental" or "Arabian" type settings in addition to the standard sword & sorcery routine.  When beginning your trek to Game Mastery, think about the sorts of campaigns you'd like to run and decide which systems would be best for those campaigns.


A Million Adventures
Now that you've got your system in hand and your books all studied up, you can begin structuring your campaign.  For the moment, we're going to assume you aren't using any published adventures but will have the basic rules collection on hand - whatever you consider the 'basic' rules to be.  That is - I generally include all the 3e player's books (Sword & Fist, Defenders of the Faith, etc..) in my games of D&D 3e.  Not all GM's will include the same books in the same system.  The Smith includes Palladium FRPG books in his Megaverse games, but I stay far away from that planet - even though we both use Ninjas & Superspies as a basic rulebook!

So armed, where do you begin?  What sort of campaign are you going to run, within the system you have chosen?  Do you already have an idea, or just sort of a vague notion of something cool?  Do you have a theme you want to present?

I like to brainstorm campaign ideas long before I ever actually get around to fully fleshing them out, much less actually running them.  I keep a list of campaign ideas I've written down during brainstorming sessions where I sit and try to organize my disparate thoughts of destruction and adventure into tangible stories that make sense, and fit well with the system I want to use.  Try it out and see what sort of results you get - you'll frequently surprise yourself by coming up with new ideas, or new ways to use your old ideas.

Try this brainstorming excercise - begin with an idea list.  To start with you'll need, lets say, 10 ideas for different campaigns.  If you want to use different systems, divide it up however you like, but the idea is to get "slots" that you want to "fill" with an idea.  Blank slots are meant to be on the list in order to drive your creativity!  If you want to focus on particular supplements for your range, be assured you can get a whole campaign out of adding one book!

For example, take D&D 4th Edition.  No one at the Wargate has really put this one on the table, though the idea has been broached before.  Let's say I wanted to introduce it into our club's rotation.  Eventually, it will happen...so I'm going to brainstorm a few ideas for it.

I know that I want it to fit neatly in with our other D&D adventures that I'll be running...from AD&D 1e, through 2e and 3e.  I won't be exploring old school D&D (BECMI) or the white box.  At this time.  So, the "basic" rules for the campaign will be Player's Handbooks 1-3, the Dungeon Master Guide and Monster Manual I-II.  This is for no other reason that I think those books include enough material not to infuriate my players.

I also know that our club's campaigns tend to last about 15 weeks/sessions, almost 4 months of actual time.  I also know how the 4e games are organized into tiers.  So armed with this knowledge, I proceed to my list of 10 ideas for 4e campaigns, along with potential products I would be interested in obtaining as an RPG consumer.

1. Points of Light (Dungeon Delve + other published adventures for 4e)
2. Rise of the Spider-Kind (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
3. Into the Northlands (Neverwinter Campaign Setting)
4. Beneath the Icewind Dale (Underdark + Caverns of Icewind Dale)
5. Sands of the Serpent (Persian Flavor Homebrew + The Shadowfell)
6. The Orbs of Dragonkind (Draconomicon 1 + 2)
7. The Magical Mirror of Five Suns (Manual of the Planes)
8. Into the Abyss (The Plane Below + Demonomicon)
9. Dark Sun (published adventures for Dark Sun 4e)
10. Dark Sun: The Edge of the World

It took me about 40 minutes to come up with this list.  Most of that time was spent looking at the 4e product catalog for ideas, which I haven't really explored much yet.  Pretty nifty, there's a lot of campaign sets available.  I don't actually have any of this material, but it sure looks cool on the outside.  This is a totally top down experiment, as I've not done a 4e brainstorm, ever.  Well, I really wanted to run Dark Sun when it came out.

Colored sets represent ideas that can "ramp" into one another - that is, use the same characters when we reconvene for that game.  Other products I saw that I could totally brainstorm on include Hammerfast and The Plane Above.

If you have the idea for your campaign, then you're ready to proceed to the adventure building stage.  


What Stories? Keep it focused!
Well, you've had your system and campaign idea in mind all along, so how do you begin plotting adventures?

There are two broad schools of thought on how campaigns should be run:  Linear or Sandbox.  Linear adventure progressions occur much as video games do - sure you can change things around a little, but in the end the final boss is the final boss and he's on level 8.  Sandbox games sort of plop you into a realm and let you run into things.

I take a middle stance.  I usually use a linear progression for adventures (events) but allow the players lots of free reign to do what they like, within the context of the current campaign.  This is done with a set of Plot Threads, which I'll discuss later on.  There's all sorts of ways the linear progression will change due to player action, since I don't actually write the adventure until the week before the session.

The biggest problem is laying out a coherent arc that will resolve enough of itself within the allotted campaign time, which is 3-4 months at the Wargate.  It's difficult to present a coherent story without first taking the time to think about how the story will progress.  If you want your players to perform occult investigations and unravel the secret of the Witch-House, that's a great campaign idea and has a story arc - but you'll have to work carefully to present the arc.  You know roughly how long the campaign will last and have final say on how many sessions you run - so plot for between 12 and 18 sessions' worth of material.  Hmm...sounds like another outline...



Story Outlines for Campaigns
Who said nothing we learned in school wouldn't help us in the future?  Since RPG's are run mostly on the fly, with a little help from some reference materials, it makes sense that an outline can help hobbyists in almost every circumstance that could possibly call for one.  This is one of the reasons I like them so much.

This time, however, we're outlining the campaign itself!  Let's see...to continue with our current club model as an example, we know we need to plot for about 15 weeks worth of game.  Our sessions typically last 3-5 hours, so short scenarios are best for 1 night games, but longer adventures simply stretch over week to week. We are frequently resuming play where we last ended the session, like face down in the Electric Lizard Pool.

The chief goal of any RPG campaign (usually) is to present a coherent adventure story.  It has to make sense.  If your players can't reconcile in their minds that the strange scenario could be likely (given that people have superpowers or what have you) then you won't achieve verisimilitude.  If your players can't make logical leaps because the story is out of place in the genre, it will stop making sense to them.  This can happen when the "feel" of the game changes, such as setting or genre swaps, if it's not handled well.

To illustrate, I'll use an outline for a Dark Heresy campaign I ran last year - Under a Vast Grey Sky.  This outline comes from my adventure notebook, and is the first thing I wrote for it.  It was modified a few times as the game went on and PC actions altered events, so here's the final result.

1. Distress at Lucruzu - how the PC's come to Lucruzu
2. The Mission - base of operations
3. Death at Tithesgiving - Attempt on the Governor's life
4. Band of Basterds - Mercenary group is fingered, PC's go hunting
5. The Windswept Steppe - Chasing after Andrei, the PC's must cross a huge wilderness
6. Band of Basterds, Part II - Second portions of original adventure #4
7. The Pogrom - Moving back into the city, the PC's encounter the rough end of a pogrom
8. The Outlaw Torn - Meeting up with Andrei, the players expose traitors in his men
9. The Murderous Truth - The PC's confront the corrupt High Priest
10. The Steeple - PC's confront Liev at the Cathedral

In this campaign, agents of the Inquisition arrive on a world that doesn't welcome them at all.  An attempt is made on the governor's life, and the players begin a hunt for the perpetrators.  All is not as it seems, however, and the players must hunt one of the governor's own sons.  However, it is eventually seen that the other brother wishes to seize power by any means necessary, even by exterminating his own people.  The players confront the masterminds of the governor's overthrow while eluding the ruling houses' military elite as they work to restore the governor to his seat.

Neat campaign.


Outlining Sandboxes
Sandboxes present a little more of a challenge.  You still have to put the adventure thread in there, but it requires a little more lateral thinking, and focusing instead on what I call Player Character Plot Threads.

To begin with, you need your milieu...any sort will do.  Let's say, Smokefall Ridge - a western town in 1875 Indian Territory.  You want to do a sandbox your players can play with, but how do you design one that seems believable?

Start with the basics...a plot progression that is independent of the players.  They can interact with this segment of the campaign progression as much or little as they like, but you need a constant "timer" that clicks out time in manageable segments.  For example, the War of the Red Band (as it will come to be called) is going on around Smokefall...but the players have only encountered the Red Band in small groups.  Several campaign events hinge on battles between the U.S. Cavalry and the Red Band not far from the town, but the players don't have to seek out the war.  It still happens, though - and that gives you plenty of opportunities to throw new things at players and use the context of the changing world around them to create a sense of verisimilitude.

I'd start with five points you definitely want to use as adventures during the campaign.  If they have to occur in a specific order, be sure and put them in the correct order.  I'll use Smokefall as an example, so my players can consider this as the jumping off point to the next western campaign.  This game is run with World of Darkness and I'll still be using The Book of Spirits as my main supplement for this next campaign.

1. Red Band Warriors only go where the spirits tell them.  Eventually occult players will have to deal with them.
2. Simmons Lumber will be moving into Smokefall.  Disputes over land are likely to arise.
3. The town may soon have a new Locus in the Lodge, if those two hooligans keep at it.
4. Twin Pines Fine Horse Mall will need plenty of top-quality horses, and lots of hands!
5. An alarming number of outlaws pursue outlawry right to Smokefall Ridge.  That's where the PC's live.

Ok, so I can get a good night's game out of each of those items.  There are other things to mention though...Player Character Plot Threads.

I run them in non-sandbox games also, but find that they work best to direct the action in sandboxes very well.  Basically, a Plot Thread is a subplot involving that character, and tailored to that character.  These can vary wildly from character to character, and when they are resolved you replace them with another Plot Thread.  For instance, take my players in the above western game.

• Samuel Brady - Interested in bringing land reform to the Indian Territory to help the "Red Man" enter civilized society.
• Ignacio & Seamus - Founders of Twin Pines Fine Horse Mall!  It's sort of like the Ponderosa, but in the Twilight Zone.
• Juan Ortega - The Goat Herd of Juan has many strange properties...
• Doc & Injun Hoy - Following ancient Indian rites, these two mystics are about to cross the line between normal and paranormal.
• Caleb Tinker - The best gunsmith in town will invariably be placed for unique intrigues, especially as the town grows.
• John Skinner - A large number of tales involving this enigmatic and seldom seen mountain man have begun to surface.  There's no telling how many are true, or how many folk believe them...

These are all Plot Threads the players have given me.  Not like, filled out on a paper - but by designing their characters and playing in the first few sandbox sessions.  I can see where they want to go, and can imagine the path.  Keeping track of them this way helps when writing the night's adventure, as I can weave them into the games throughout the course of the campaign.  In this way, you have to design your sandbox sort of ... lateral instead of linear.

Need a few more things to make a full circuit of 12-15 weeks, but these two short lists can be developed into at least 10 weeks of gaming scenarios.

Using Published Adventures
Published adventures are fun for a number of reasons.  For one thing it sort of both sets a standard and brings something new to the table almost every time.  If you're going to be using published adventures during your campaign there are a few things you should keep in mind.

Keep in mind, it's hard to judge how long published single adventures will last. A good rule of thumb is 2 full sessions.  Only very rarely will we be able to finish one in one night, but we might get close enough to finish too early in the next session.  That's why if you make your "game plan" and stick to it, you'll never be out of material!

Depending on the module, it will vary wildly how long it takes us to finish one of them.  The best thing to do then, is to be ready to run the whole adventure.  If we have to break too soon, be ready with a small side quest for the next session to pass the time if you aren't ready to start the next adventure in the middle of the session.

Make sure to reconcile the locales of all your published adventures, or be ready with the explanation of travel in the downtime.  That is, if you run your old school Greyhawk adventures, you should probably focus on one area of the Oerth at a time.  Continent hopping adventures are cool, but sometimes it's hard to suspend disbelief if your players are overly familiar with the map of the campaign setting and too much time and space have passed.  Another option is to alter the presentation of the locations in the adventure, which is another great idea.  When doing this, be very familiar with the material in the module - remember to change all relevant setting references during presentation.

Most importantly - research all the published material you want to use and make sure to present it in the correct order!  Most of the time this is self evident, but when you mix module lines it bears mentioning.  You might run two Wizards D&D adventures and one by Mongoose, so make sure that when you present them to your players is appropriate.  If the Mongoose adventure is L5, but so is one of the Wizards modules...some changes to the plan are in order.  Either find a different campaign for that module, or change the difficulty somehow to better match where your players are in the experience progression.


Closing A Campaign
Almost as important as running a campaign is closing it down.  When the campaign winds down, you'll want to have your main plotline for that campaign resolved.  That is, if the Hobgoblin King in your sandbox is the bitter enemy of the players and has been sending them stews of boiled cabbage, if you want this to be the focus of the campaign you should set events in motion to resolve the conflict.

Closing the campaign here at the Wargate doesn't necessarily represent retirement for the characters involved. Indeed the opposite - depending on how far you want your players to advance, you can vary the amount of experience gained per session (in the 15 or so weeks), or you can simply continue the PC's adventures when you reconvene your game.

For instance, in What Lies Below, Bignutt the DM brought our characters up to around level 3 or 4.  His last campaign ended earlier this year, but he's up for a new game as DM in a few months.  We'll be returning to our last characters, to continue with the adventure path and up the experience progression.  I can't say as to how high of a level he will eventually take us, but I'm pretty sure it will be at least L20.  And that's just the one set of adventures - we've already spoken of the Oriental Adventures and other setting details they'll be releasing for Golarion.

That said, you can also finish a campaign up for good.  Some World of Darkness games might be suited to one campaign, and some Call of Cthulhu scenarios pretty much make sure it will only be one campaign.  Decide how you want your campaign to wrap up, as we usually make some sort of deal about these things.  Consider contributing to the Wargate, as we like to post items from the DM before, during and after the campaign.

Well that's enough for now.  It's a bit long, I apologize if you read the whole thing.  Leave us a comment on your own methodologies for building campaigns below!

Bone Method: How to Build An Adventure

We're having plenty of game here at the Wargate! And no visible shortage of it, either! This is great - we'll get a chance to play several different games, experience several different stories and Game Masters, and share our own stories with our closest friends through the interactive medium of tabletop gaming.

However, it's not always easy to get the game you want out of a system. Sure, the story is in your head, but the players have no idea about anything...sometimes it can become a serious hassle to keep "player information"(that what a player knows about the scenario), "GM information" (that what the GM knows that the players do not) and "character information" (that what a player's character knows about the scenario) separate. Multiple plot threads come flying around and unwound due to PC actions, and sometimes you can see your carefully crafted adventure go straight down the tubes, all because one of the players really really, really, really wanted to hunt those buffalo.

I'm going to share with you a few methods for building adventures I picked up along the way to the Wargate. Take these few rules of thumb to heart, keep them in mind when designing your scenarios, and you'll reap the benefit of a smooth running, fast paced game.

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So, what's an 'Adventure'?

Sometimes you hear them called by different names. Sometimes they are called Stories, or Modules, or Scenarios...by any name you call them, RPG scenarios will always be "adventures" to me. I like that name...it really says what it needs to be. An adventure...an exciting scenario for your players to roleplay through.

An adventure can be as long as it needs to be, spanning multiple play sessions or character levels. For the purposes of this article, an adventure is simply a single portion of a campaign...or one chapter in a story.

For an adventure to be successful, it is dependent on a number of things. Basically, these are simply the elements of a story linked together through the medium of the RPG, which is like no other form of storytelling because of the open-ended nature. This is the most important aspect - if the story is not open ended, with several possible outcomes, it becomes GM Railroading. This is a term used to denote where a GM attempting to run a scenario does it too rigidly, or doesn't allow for enough player choice in the scenario.

Throughout the article I will be providing specific examples and even show you how I generate adventures with my tried and true 10 point Adventure Method (patent pending), wherein you basically make an outline for a term paper or short story for creative writing class. It's very original. The key here is that you establish the three things that every story needs for your adventure - that is, a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Above all, do NOT let your players "sandbox" for very long. This stagnates the game and players begin to drift away when you play to their whims.

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Finding the Story

The first thing you, Adventuresmith, must do is uncover your story. You may have a premise, but it's the meat of the story that counts. When writing campaigns, I'll often have a story arc built into a certain number of sessions (say, for example...ten) with notes about the general plot of the adventure. We're not going to focus on campaigns this time, but if you have a story for your campaign, the stories for your adventures should occur quite naturally.

An adventure has several elements that you should not ignore as a writer or GM. I cannot stress this enough - you must spend time preparing. In fact, the Game Master is the person who must actually devote time to preparing the game. This is his responsibility, and by taking up the mantle of Game Master you are telling us you are ready to handle it.

To that end, it truly pays to come prepared for more than you'll conceivably need so that you can access new information on the fly. Also, writing things down tends to cement the thoughts in your head. If you know the story, how the NPC's will react to certain stimuli or what will happen when the characters decide to go off-course there won't be any room for plot holes or inconsistencies. It also clears up instances of ret-conning due to inattention or strange actions by the players. It is for this reason that games that are run mostly "by the seat of one's pants" tend to run out of steam or collective purpose. The very same applies to "sandbox" games. Without any direction, your players will wander - perhaps even away from the table.

When writing a new adventure, I always start by writing a short synopsis of the plot. The synopsis should include at least two possible outcomes to the scenario (success and failure). Once you've written this part out, you should have a really good idea as to the tone of the adventure, and can begin to write in earnest.

Once you have your synopsis, you're ready to add character hooks. Character hooks are the starting points of the adventure - they provide the player characters with reasons to do the things you want them to do in the scenario. It's not a good sign when the hardest part of the scenario is getting the players to work with each other and to pursue the scenario goal. Simply having someone who outranks the players command them to do something they would not normally do is alright for some scenarios, but it can quickly become bothersome if used excessively (unless that is the gist of the campaign). If your campaign features player characters that are not military oriented, do not create military adventures - it's a lot of hassle that could easily be avoided by writing an adventure more suited to your player's characters, or by decreeing that player characters need to be military in concept.

Options are always better, unless the players have warranted being commanded (Quest-ed) by the NPC's by way of their own actions.

Usually character hooks are easy, but sometimes it takes some conniving to make it fit where you want it to in your story. There are many methods to hook a character, but the easiest is to show him that something he wants is at the end of a particular course of action and let him decide to engage it. Heavy handed methods include arresting player characters, drafting them, placing a Geas spell upon them, or simply murdering their family. Hooking characters is hardest at the beginning of a campaign, but in some cases you can snag characters with a hook that binds them to the entire story of the campaign in the first adventure.

Example: My adventure is about trolls from Dollytown eating all the township of Springburg's cabbage. In this adventure, players will travel to the hamlet of Springburg, where they find a famine brought on by this lack of cabbage. Character hooks include basic sympathy for the plight of the people of the village, or perhaps a village elder offers the player gold, renown, a magic item, knowledge or any other critical item that could provide a reason to do the extreme things adventurers do all the time. If the players are successful, the people of Springburg will be rejoiced and throw a festival in their honor, but if not, most likely they were eaten by trolls.

Beginning, middle and end.

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Adding Encounters

In the early days of my youth, I got my learnin's at the Dungeons & Dragons School for Beating Player Character Ass. Tuition was steep, but I got my degrees in Dungeoncraft and Game Theory, as well as finishing my minor in RPG History. I took some courses in Gygaxism as well, but like all those ancient philosophers he wasn't right about everything.

The term encounter comes from that game, but I have used it for every game, ever. It's useful. It's basically just what the original RPG game used to denote different sections of a scenario. Encounters weren't codified with ratings until the YEAR 2000, with 3rd Edition's release. So don't worry...you can still use encounters in other games.

An adventure simply consists of several Encounters put together in a chain, though you probably got this from your old Dungeon Master's Guide. Of course, an encounter is a portion of the adventure where your players interact in some way with other characters or with the game environment. Setting up these encounters and timing their execution is critical to sustaining the "fun-factor" of the game.

So what goes into an encounter? What do you put in it? How do you start it?

There are two main methods for beginning encounters. When you create your adventure, you must decide how many encounters will be site based and how many are event based. A site based encounter happens when the characters arrive at a certain point (usually a dungeon room or some other fixed location). It happens whenever it is triggered (such as the door opening or the alarm is raised). Event based encounters happen whenever some event occurs in game, regardless of where the party is. An example of such an event would be one day after the characters emerge from the dungeon to regroup and heal, the General of the Empire will arrive in the city with two hundred fresh troops. This happens no matter where the players are, but sometimes an event happening miles away can trigger another encounter, or even change the descriptions of site based encounters.

So now you have a couple of ideas, but you really need to get started. Let's get out our pens and composition pads (I'm old fashioned) and simply make an outline. You know, like they taught you to do in high school when you had to do that nightmarish term paper (or had to pay someone else to do it). I begin populating my adventure with encounters by drawing a small, numbered list from 1 to 10. In those 10 points, I write down where in the pacing of the adventure that I want my "key events" to take place. Once my "key events" are in place, I can then build the rest of the encounters around them safe in the knowledge of when and how each particular encounter can occur. These key events define those things that the story MUST have: a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Example:

1. Arrival in Springburg (the pc's arrive and become involved)
2. ?
3. A Big Ass Hole (the pc's negotiate a yawning chasm to find trolls)
4. ?
5. Encounter with Trolls (the pc's find trolls!)
6. ?
7. ?
8. Battle for the Cabbage Fields (only force can drive out the trolls!)
9. ?
10. Celebration in Springburg (Rewards handed out)

Here, I have mapped 5 encounters. These are the encounters that must occur if my story is to come to completion, thus they are the key events. Now I can add flavored encounters or encounters that address plot threads woven by the players that don't fall within the strict parameters of the key events. Let's say I have a paladin player, and he's totally about to fall out with God. I could alter my encounter list to include an encounter specific to this storyline. Or you can create new ones. I figure we can do both...

1. Arrival in Springburg (the pc's arrive and become involved)
2. ?
3. A Big Ass Hole (the pc's negotiate a yawning chasm to find trolls)
4. The Devil Wears Owlbear Skin (demonic servant approaches paladin)
5. Encounter with Trolls (the pc's find trolls!)
6. ?
7. ?
8. Battle for the Cabbage Fields (only force can drive out the trolls!)
9. Ol' Crippy (one legged man tells the story of treasure in the land beyond Dollytown)
10. Celebration in Springburg (Rewards handed out)

What else can we do? It's a good idea to mix random or optional encounters into the mix that don't necessarily have anything to do with the rest of the story, and do not have to be completed or executed in any way, like optional encounters. This is to maintain a sense of verisimilitude - that is, that things are happening in the world the pc's are in. It makes the game feel more alive if you can breathe that into how your encounters are sequenced.

1. Arrival in Springburg (the pc's arrive and become involved)
2. Big Gay Al's Magic Wand Superstore (players encounter wizard npc in town)
3. A Big Ass Hole (the pc's negotiate a yawning chasm to find trolls)
4. The Devil Wears Owlbear Skin (demonic servant approaches paladin)
5. Dances with Trolls (the pc's find trolls!)
6. The Frog Caves (giant frogs in a separate cavern near the trolls - site encounters)
7. Oi! The trolls are coming! (pc's can warn outlying farms of incoming troll attack)
8. Battle for the Cabbage Fields (only force can drive out the trolls!)
9. Ol' Crippy (one legged man tells the story of treasure in the land beyond Dollytown)
10. Celebration in Springburg (Rewards handed out)

These new encounters don't have to be ran at all, but are extra content that your players can earn or find if they manage to. They are non critical, but nonetheless relevant to pc interests...giant frogs always have piles of loose change and magic swords. One encounter is an npc encounter whom the players may eventually earn as an ally, who can also perform magic for the player group...for a fee.

I have included another small dungeon within this adventure! The Frog Caves are just that...inhabited by giant frogs, but it's very close to the troll lair...unwary pc's might even mistake it for the troll lair. In this instance, I would map a small frog cave, label the areas as you would any dungeon map and jot it all down in my book under the section labeled The Frog Caves. I usually include mapped areas simply as encounters all their own - though technically site based entries like these might actually contain several more encounters depending on what exactly suits your needs.

The third encounter is sort of a bonus. If the pc's are good, or just worried about their own skin, they may attempt to gather the families of the outlying farms into the defenses of the town proper. This is sort of a bonus round...extra awards may be given for a significant number of townsfolk getting to safety. Conversely, if this were an evil adventure, you could replace this encounter with something diabolic, like luring the trolls straight to the mayor's house.

Remember also that encounters do not strictly have to take place in the order they are originally ordered, due to any number of events brought on by active player characters. For example, if the players didn't go down the south road (or whatever) after the Battle for the Cabbage Fields (encounter 8), then perhaps Ol' Crippy doesn't see the characters until the Celebration in Springburg...if even then. Everyone could be dead by then, you know?

Note that 10 encounters is by no means a hard and fast rule, but rather a starting place to find how many encounters you need. Encounters can be as long as they need to be in order to address what they are designed to address. Encounter 10 can only happen if encounter 8 is successfully completed, and if encounter 5 goes bad it may also affect how encounter 8 is executed, even if only by altering the number of enemies, representing the trolls regrouping after defeating the players. A failure on any encounter that is critical could alter the title of the last encounter to "Sorrow in Springburg".

Now, we have us a proper adventure that can entertain the entire group for an entire evening. Preparation rules!

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Rewards of Adventure

So, now that all the trolls have been defeated, what do the players have to show for it? Lots of cabbage? It's unlikely the townsfolk have piles of gold to part with, if anything at all. The players in this example adventure will probably get a pittance of coins, free room and board until healed (which is likely quickly) and some extra rations on top of experience points. Why so little for so heroic a deed?

Rewarding the players for their actions is actually a very tough job for a Game Master. You have to balance risk vs. reward or something, right? If you're new at it, it can be tempting to dole out craploads of everything in an attempt to please your audience. I could wax lyrical about the whole deal and address every side of the story, but since this is my blog I'm only going to seek to promulgate my own philosophy on the subject. The secret is, the teeter-totter of player satisfaction is actually tilted in the Game Master's favor. The players are not satisfied with extra treasure or skills, but rather the game itself. Therefore, for the vast majority of adventures the players will get only what they need to continue the campaign (and maybe just a little more) in terms of rewards.

I have always seen the campaign as a game with a climbing difficulty. That is, it gets harder as you go on. Giving out too many rewards clutters the future adventures with extra crap. Also, sometimes players tend to forget they used things, and you might forget they used them...especially with tons of notes of equipment and coins. It is critical that the game remain in the control of the Game Master, and depriving the players of ridiculous gains of money, power and influence can help you direct future adventures and encounters to develop along the lines of your story. Not that players cannot direct the story...rather the extra bonuses you have given them will not.

However, it is important to make each adventure a stepping stone for the next, harder adventure. In general, expended menial resources like food or water should be taken care of, even if it is in the form of enough coin to bed down in the next town's inn. In general, if the group is small, 1 upgrade can be given to each player. In larger groups, you need to be stingy - the players already have an intense advantage in numbers. The more players there are, the more tactics they can execute. That said, if you know the party will need a certain amount of magic (or satchel charges, or power armor, or political influence or whatever) then make sure at least one or two members have the opportunity to gain the needed item.

The basic rule is:

Don't give more than what they need.

Ever.

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Linking Adventures

Where to next? This is an important question...if you can give hooks in one adventure, the next session doesn't seem so forced - in fact the transition will come quite naturally. You don't have to do a song and pony show about how the players get to the next town, because last week they would have told you they were going to get the treasury Ol' Crippy talked about.

If you do it right, it might be hard for the players to distinguish where one adventure ends and the next begins, especially if you never reveal the titles of your adventures to your players (thereby denoting them as separate stories). The players will be walking along doing their own thing.

While I make notes about future adventures, these are subject to change. I knew a Pastor once, who wrote his Sunday sermon every Saturday night. He had a book of notes, of things he had thought of to talk about someday...and when Saturday night came he would retire to the den with a cup of tea, take his "thought-book" along with a plain orange pad, and write his sermon. The reason he did this is so he could make sure his topic for that Sunday would resonate with the Congregation.

I'm not deliberately comparing our Sunday meetings where we all gather to listen to one of our number talk passionately and loudly about something we all care about to going to Church. Rather, I learned something from this man I once knew, and he happened to be a Pastor. That thing is to never write your adventure until the last adventure has been completed. Kind of a long way to walk for that piece of advice, but let me tell you, it is gold.

If you don't write one adventure until the last is completed, you can work and rework the gist of the adventure to take on any story developments that previously occurred and thereby achieve yet another level of verisimilitude. More importantly, it allows you to control encounter composition and difficulty.

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In Conclusion

If you reduced this article to it's basest points, I really only offer a couple points. First, plan your crap out. Second, make the crap hard. Third, don't make the crap a straight line or a squiggly line, but a line with a couple of squiggles instead. Fourth, don't give your players crap. Fifth, make sure your players have plenty of crap to do. That's it.

Sorry for the long, long post guys. I hope I made all my points clear, and would love to further discuss adventure design with anyone who is going to be running a game! Of course this was just a basic primer that basically just showed my method for creating an adventure, and I'd love to hear how the rest of you cogitate your games!

If there is a point anyone wishes to examine further, don't hesitate to send me a shout out!