prospectus conundrum

[subplotkudzu]

I'm giving another pass to my upcoming prospectus and ran into a problem. The goal of this prospectus is to shake things up a bit, since my groups will already be shaken up by babies in both groups in January 08. Thus an open voting that might well slot the players into different groups for 6-7 months of entirely episodic games before we settle back to our original groups (once the babies are older and their parents are likely getting more sleep). 

I planned on 10-12 options, but as I read over them I find that many rely a lot on player input - more setting ideas than fleshed out campaigns. for example, the prospectus entry for Blood Red Sand says PCs are settlers on Castle Falkentein's martian desert, but the game changes a lot if they're Civil War veterans looking for a fresh start , or if they're an Irish family tying to make a place for themselves and their celtic magic, or if one PC is a mad scientist looking for a place where his experiments will go unnoticed while another is a Prussian agent mapping the landscape for conquest.

Sometimes this works fine and the player ideas gel into what sort of plot I'll develop. Other times they don't gel and the campaign fails early, even when everyone is abiding by the same initial concept. I'd hate to have an already episodic short term campaign fail, because I don't know where I'd go from there for those players. 

Does anyone have suggestions? Should I trust that this work work? should I force shared PC creation sessions (and somehow use mind control to keep the players from developing PC concepts in advance of that)? Or should I tighten up the campaign premises, making them more sturdy while denying myself the energy that a clever PC concept or two might add to the mix?

Comments

[ladegard.livejournal.com]

I have great faith in your mind control abilities.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Only because I made you say that.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

For my short-term campaigns, I tend to have fairly explicit constraints. The characters in Junior Achievement are low-grade demons and hellspawn sent to Earth to compete in tempting people as part of a reality TV series made in Hell. The characters in The King's Men are the newly recruited Watch of the Kingdom of Lancre. The characters in Salle d'Armes are students of a French smallsword master. In the first two cases there is a clear mission statement, and in all three there are clear constaints on character concepts.

I also insisted on group character creation sessions for all three campaigns. In fact, the players had often worked out a lot about their character concepts before the session, but there was interplay among them as well.

I think that short-term campaigns need to have more theme-setting and less theme-finding, unless your players are willing to take theme-finding itself as the victory condition, and accept that just getting their characters onto the same page is a meaningful accomplishment.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

I think that short-term campaigns need to have more theme-setting and less theme-finding, unless your players are willing to take theme-finding itself as the victory condition, and accept that just getting their characters onto the same page is a meaningful accomplishment.

I agree. I'm willing to accept theme finding as an accomplishment, but not for a game that's designed to be wholly episodic. If I can rely on all the players from being there month by month, I don't want to have success be based on general negotiation session by session.

[40yearsagotoday.livejournal.com]

Considering this is a short, episodic campaign, I would limit the PC concepts more than normal. These characters aren't likely to be developed to much depth. Might as well keep it simple.

[kriz1818.livejournal.com]

Hahahahaha! You don't know us very well, do you.

[evynrude.livejournal.com]

What about the way we did the 1001 Arabian Nights game? It could give you some control, us some control and still leave us room for creativity?

Ok, I'm also still in love with Captain Faasad!

Don't get me wrong, I like creating my own character's with there crazy flaws and all, but...

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

What about the way we did the 1001 Arabian Nights game? It could give you some control, us some control and still leave us room for creativity?

That is a very good thought. I think I will end up using that for the games that are more setting based, to give me a greater degree of control over what directions the players go haring off on for characters. It also prevents people coming in wedded to their not quite appropriate character concepts.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I don't know about that campaign, of course, but I'm always willing to learn about new GM tricks. Do you have time to describe this one?

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

It was the method Steven described in one of his editorials. http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/login/article.html?id=4637

For the 1001 Arabian Nights D&D 3E game I had 4 players and therefore 4 stacks of character bits: Childhood Background & First Level; Adult Background & Level 2-5; Race & Stats (calibrated to make every combination viable for every available class); Major Magic items. The result was an workable character list who all had interesting quirks but fit the setting, with the players having more input than they would on pre-gen characters.

I've also used the technique for a pair of one shots - a horror game set on a lunar space station and a Vampire game - both for 3 players. In those cases I made 4-5 options for each stack to give the players more leeway. In the horror game the unused options became the 2 other members of the space station crew so that all of the necessary pieces would be in play for the locked room monster scenario.

[(Anonymous)]

What about this: after the players have picked the campaign, get them to send out character prospectuses -- three or four character concepts they'd like to play. Either the GM picks out a set which look good, or the players themselves thrash out who's going to be who.

Bonus feature: if this doesn't give the GM a trail of breadcrumbs for coming up with plot, I don't know what would.

JLC