#14: Bait and Switch

http://www.rpg.net/columns/nextlevel/nextlevel14.phtml

Summary:

The benefits and pitfalls of a bait-and-switch campaign.

Go to the column for more information.

[Strange Visitor]

It appears you understand that this is a very dangerous operation to pull unless you know you're players quite well, but I'd like to mention one more risk you don't address: campaign elements players actively dislike, perhaps even loath.

As an example, if you have a player who dislikes genre mixing strongly, and you did your space marines and magic game as the original setup, you'd probably find out early enough to either try to assuage his concerns, or shift gears and do something else. Finding out in mid-stream is liable to be far more disruptive. Even players who are ordinarily amenable to such things might well not want it _now_ (say, someone who's in the middle of a Shadowrun game on another day, and doesn't want yet another does of tech-and-magic).

[Gaming Poet]

When I have run "bait & switch" campaigns, I have outright told the players that I would be surprising them with a radical change in the campaign. I didn't tell them what, and I agreed that if they all hated the change after giving it several tries, I would change it back.

This preserved the sense of mystery for them without making them feel as though they have been tricked and lied to.

[Pteryx]

Once, I was pulled into a bait and switch campaign that did quite a bit wrong. The poor execution of the bait and switch was only one of this game's issues, and the one that actually killed the game. Quite simply, we were promised a console-esque save-the-world campaign in a low-magic schizo-tech setting... then the GM sprung on us that we were supposed to become high-powered magical sentai, completely ignoring the facts that the one mage (my character) would suspicious of this unknown magic (and would have his entire party role mooted to boot), another character would reject using magic in any form, and the player of a third didn't like the whole sentai idea.

It's not as if he had no warning about the first two.

The additional lesson here? If your campaign is to be bait-and-switch, make sure the characters will fit the switched version, not just the facade. -- Pteryx