Role-Play: Campaigns

Role-Play: Campaigns Role-Play: Campaigns

Don't bite off more than you can chew. Many GMs have gotten burned out by grabbing as many players as they could, and then planning an epic adventure that would span countless sessions, leading their heroes off to parts unknown. The best adventures are often those that can be brought to a good "stopping point" within a single session. You can always pick things up again later, building upon previous events, with whomever happens to be online.

Keep things moving. If you are running a plot for a single PC, and he doesn't show up for a given session, it's not such a big deal from the player's perspective. He'll pick it up when he's available again. However, if you have multiple PCs involved, you should figure out what you will do if one or more PCs are missing any given week. This can be quite frustrating if the PC or PCs that do show up, expecting to play, just have to sit around because one other person isn't present. As a GM, it is best to have a "Plan B": some sort of excuse as to why that missing PC isn't "on camera". For the sake of your players, you should be prepared to give them something to do, if they're making plans to show up at a given time.

Keep things regular. If you're running a campaign, it's a good idea to set aside a certain time at a certain day of the week to run a session. Of course, "real life" happens, and sometimes there are absences, but for the sake of keeping things moving, a regular schedule is best -- especially if you have multiple PCs to get together. If you just hope that on any random night, you'll all just happen to be on at the same time, and have some time to play, it may be quite some time between sessions.

Keep players out of "limbo". If you lose interest in running a campaign, as a GM, it's your responsibility not to just let the players dangle. If you just stop showing up, or keep coming up with excuses why you can't GM for the players this week, then they can't really do anything, because some other GM can't just move in and take up where you left off, without permission. Try to get another GM to take things over, or else come up with a workable "closure" to the plot -- and an excuse to get the PCs to a point where they can conceivably join up with other plots again.

Plan ahead. Finals might be coming up for your players, or maybe it's getting close to the holidays. Before you embark on an epic campaign, make sure that you aren't going to immediately start off with a big "vacation" before your PC can play again -- especially when it's really early into the campaign. You're usually just laying the groundwork and giving the PC some facts in the first log or so, and if a whole lot of time passes between that "foundation" log and the time that the adventure actually begins, the player is bound to forget a whole lot more than you (who wrote all this to begin with) do.