The Campaign Pitch or How to see what your players are interested in

The Stellaran nation is ripping itself to shreds. “The Dictatrix is dead! Long live the Republic.” cry the traditionalists after the assassination. “Burn the Senate and restore Imperial glory” is the rallying cry of the Imperialists. The vassal states see this as a chance for freedom while everyone else sees the opportunity for conquest and riches. The dogs of war have been set loose. You can choose a side or strike out to build a new power in the world.

Catchy, right? Well I think it is and it will be one of my campaign pitches for a game in a world that will lean heavily on classic tropes with the added menace of a Rome parallel Stella. If my players choose to play this campaign. I hope to offer them a few choices once my current campaign ends.

While thinking about what interests me for my next campaign. I wanted to write out what a starting pitch for a fantasy RPG campaign should look like. A campaign has to catch your players and GMs fancy. If people don’t like the theme, ideals, or style of play then you are going to have players constantly butting up against what you want to run and what they want to do which can be frustrating.

This means it needs a catalyst that drives conflict and shakes up the status quo so the players can step in and set things right or shape the world in a new way. A threat of war, or an actual one, are classic examples. These events make heroes and give them places where their actions ripple across the world amplifying their effects and grandeur.

It should give the players options. In my example above the players could be trying to set the Republic back on track, they could be involved in establishing the empire as an even greater nation, they could be vassal state citizens fighting for the freedom of their people, or they could be barbarians seeking fortune, glory, and a place to burn or conquer.

To be clear, different PCs could have different agendas. But I would try to look for ways to keep the party from having bother Republicans and Imperialists so I can cast the other side as a decadent self serving power hungry faction that must be stopped.

It should also leave enough room that you can shift the focus a bit if the party loses interest. An example would be if the campaign started with lots of political intrigue but after a while they decide they want dungeon crawling or other fights. The campaign can shift towards protecting Stella from outside attacks or finding artefacts to bolster a right to leadership or even to stop the treacherous acts of another faction.

It may sound democratic bu I'm not above gerrymandering.

I could run this in many different systems. I will probably run it in 13th Age’s Archmage system or 5E using rules and monsters from the new Theros book and Odyssey of the Dragon Lords. By hooking my players on the plot I could potentially run this in a system that my players are less comfortable with because the premise excites them.

My goal here is to find out what excites my players and me. It also gives me the chance to think about all the cool things I’d love to run or play. The goal is to make this a short elevator pitch that everyone will read. Once the players have picked a campaign I’ll work to flesh the campaign premise out into a couple of pages. This will let me add some details to inspire the players when they are creating their characters. Give them a bit more grounding in the campaign and hopefully inspire them to flesh out parts of the game as well to help keep them involved.

For anyone interested my other ideas, which still need to be refined, are:

“Behold a new god is born!” proclaim the oracles around the world. Some claim she will bring a new age of enlightenment to the world. Others cry she will destroy it while making something deserving of her. Atop of the Spire of the World the babe waits to be shown the world she has inherited and will grow up to make her decision over. The best and worst of are amassing armies to claim the land around the spire and take the god child so they can mold her into a weapon or salvation. Will you sign up with a cause or strike out on your own to shape destiny?

The dead rise. It is spoken about behind churches and among gravediggers. Even miners claim they can hear the shuffling tramp and ghoulish armies. Some even claim small villages and farmsteads have been overtaken and destroyed by this curse, or worse they’ve been dragged below to feed something worse.

The swamps are dark and cold. Hidden creatures stalk the darkness. It was slow at first but more and more have gone missing….are you ready to save Saltmarsh?

What's in a campaign?

What is a campaign? In D&D that question can have many answers and I think I'm going to change my approach the next time I start something new.

1) a campaign is a series of adventures that a party undertakes. It starts at low level and proceeds as the players level up. Eventually the PCs become leaders and the party decides if they want to continue or start something over.  If they continue then new adventurers the followers do a lot of the grunt work and the leaders do more nation building and help flesh our parts of the campaign world.  This goes on and on until interest is lost. Then new players are brought in along side some long term players or it is revived with new players but the world is the same the campaign continues.

2) There is a mega adventure that the party will undertake they will start at low level and proceed until the evil is stopped. WotC is making these campaign adventures as books. Almost every one of these is a self contained campaign. Sometimes one campaign book bleeds into another. But that seems to be the exception more than the rule.

3) A campaign is a goal the PCs set out to do. There might be several small adventures or just a large dungeon crawl that takes several attempts to complete. Think of this like a season in a television show. The season is a campaign and the series is a collection of campaigns.

I usually run something closer to option 1 that hybrids into 2 a little bit. I have an end goal the PCs can attain and once the PCs are sufficiently established as leaders they retire. Then I start up a new campaign at low level. The high level PCs are generally NPCs but they can be brought back in.

But I'm really leaning towards making Option 3 my new default even in a sandbox campaign. Give the PCs many options of things to do but once they start dealing with a village or large dungeon that is a campaign. After the campaign is over the PCs have a long period of "down time" as described in 5E and maybe as described by Matt Coleville. I'll take a month off work with the players off line and then start the process over again based on what the PCs want to do.


Also the formatting on my last post was went weird after I published it and made an edit. I've fixed that post if you want to try and read it.

Pax ludi and have fun.