Difficulties in Freshness in a Campaign

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Post originally by Ian Sokoliwski at 2005-06-07 09:44:44
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Great column! This deals with one of the biggest hurdles in any game system.

I've been keeping the concept of staleness at bay in my ongoing Hunter: the Reckoning game partly by introducing elements from right across the World of Darkness, and by making as many creatures and encounters first look like one thing, then ultimately reveal them for something completely different. (Actually, I'll be dealing with this type of misdirection in next month's instalment of my 'Winging It' column here :) )

Plus, being such a player-directed game, the players themselves have been primarily responsible for keeping things new and exciting - I keep asking for suggestions on stories they like, stuff they want to play out. They will let me know which elements they are less interested in, and which they would like to see more of.

Plus, the whole 'taking a break' idea works really well. Every so often, I run a D&D or Call of Cthulhu session (sometimes bringing in different players - I have two different circles of players for my games, and not all of them can make it to all sessions) just to completely change pace.

(Strangely enough, I really like how different the tone is between playing H:tR and CoC - they should be more similar, but end up being quite divergent. At least the way I run them :) )

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Post originally by Jethrow at 2005-06-08 02:02:28
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I agree that taking a break and playing a different game can help revitalise a campaign. Luckily for me, I GM several different games which share some players and not others. In my case, we use the same system for the different games (Harnmaster/Gunmaster) but the setting and style of the games are very different, helping to keep them fresh as we move between them. I have been running a Twilight: 2000 campaign for years and years, and a couple of years ago it enjoyed a huge revitalisation. For those of you familiar with the modules published for first edition T:2000, you will recall that they generally came from one of three areas - modules set in Europe, the USA and the Middle East. We spent a good couple of years, real time, playing through the European T:2000 modules and during that time a major point of conversation among the characters (and on a different level, the players) talking about how good it would be to get back to the ole' US of A, and getting away from WWIII. Some of the original characters did make it back to the US, through the Going Home module, and this provided a huge revitalisation. The characters (and the players too) were surprised to find that WWIII had done to their homeland much the same as what it had done to Europe, and although the game then featured much of the same sort of action, the setting was quite different and the military and political motivations of the characters changed as well. One interesting aspect was that the characters were by that stage so psychologically damaged from their war experiences that they ended up seeing many of their fellow Americans back in the USA as "The Enemy", and many atrocities were committed. Not much fun for me as a GM, I admit, as I really don't like having to role play NPCs who are torture victims and such. Ah, well, such is the life of the GM.

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Post originally by walt c at 2005-06-08 06:24:22
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Thanks, Ian!

I've had a lot of fun with misdirection in the past, so I look forward to your column!

I'll give you two examples from my first Witchcraft campaign.

In the first, I had an NPC who was a latent psychic. Sensing a tasty meal, a vampire seduced him and was starting to feed when a hunter arrived and killed the vampire. The NPC was sent to the hospital, but the shock and horror "awakened" his psychic abilities. When he mentally dominated a nurse, he believed himself to now be a vampire. The players found themselves on the trail of this vampire, but certain things didn't quite add up.

In the second, a bona fide superhero arrived on the scene, using his powers for justice. The players (a mage, a necromancer, and a psychic) had to confront this "superhero" and try to get him to accept the truth, only to find that he was something they hadn't met before (a True Immortal). His delusion about being an alien from another actually made some sense (in Witchcraft, True Immortals hail from ancient Atlantis, which for all intents and purposes would look like an alien city). He simply filled in some memory gaps with what he knew (comic books). The final encounter was very interesting!

Walt