Monday, October 15, 2012

An Epic Campaign Comes to an End

I’ve game mastered roleplaying games a lot over the past decade or so, but I’ve never had a satisfying conclusion to a campaign – until now.

Let me see if I can tell you how my previous campaigns ended. In the first few campaigns, I had in mind some much larger story to tell. We would play a few sessions, and then everyone (including me) would lose interest. I had one mid-length campaign in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game Revised Edition. In that one, we actually played through an entire story, but it ended very poorly. What happened was the player characters seemed to grow unreasonably powerful as the campaign went along. I would try to give them challenging encounters, but they kept breezing through them like they were nothing. So, for the final battle I figured I would have to make the main villain ridiculously strong in order to even challenge them. Turns out, I made her too strong. Within a few rounds, half of the player characters were dead and the other half were hightailing it out of there. Lame ending. Since then, I’ve GMed a number of other games. Mostly, these just fizzled out like the others. On a couple of occasions I switched to a more episodic format for my campaign. This made the loss of interest less disappointing, because it wasn’t like an ongoing story was left unresolved, but it was still a little lack-luster.

Fast-forward to three weeks ago, when my Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition campaign, “Flames over Iridonia”, came to its dramatic conclusion. After about nine months of biweekly game sessions, all of the mysteries were finally unraveled, all of the secrets were uncovered, the villains were defeated, and the heroes saved an entire planet from destruction.

So, what made this campaign a success, where so many have fallen short in the past? First, I had a really great group of players. Everyone was really fun to play with. People were interested in the story, and they became invested in their characters. Second, I really think I’ve improved as a game master. A little over a decade of experience has sharpened a few of my GMing skills. Helpful advice found online and in various RPG products made a difference, too. I still have stuff to learn – I learned a lot from running this campaign – but I think I’m definitely a better GM than I was when I got started.

In the future, I’d like to share some of the highlights of this campaign and talk about some of the lessons I learned as a GM. I want to thank all of my players for the great times I had with you guys. (Thank you guys!) I’ll be taking a short break from GMing while I adjust to some important life changes in the coming weeks (moving and getting married), but I hope to get back into gaming soon with another great campaign.

10 comments:

  1. I really loved playing this campaign and had was also impressed with the way the final session was handled. Anxiety kept me from enjoying it as much as I would've liked, but I really admired the way everything was organized and having three battles going on at the same time. The way you had initiative organized, there was never a dull moment for anyone!

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    1. I'm glad you enjoyed it! I knew I was taking a bit of a risk having so much going at once in that final session. I'm glad to hear that things stayed interesting for everyone.

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  2. First of all I didn't remember our campaign had a name. I think you mentioned it when we started but I forgot.It was really approprate(sp?) considering the final disaster we had to avert. Anyway I'm glad you had a great time and that you let us develop our charecters and take ownership of them. As humandisater said, sometimes I found our encounters really stressful and that sapped my enjoyment a little but we always managed to work it out in the end.

    I really want to see you post stuff that happened during the campaign. I'm trying to write a story based on my charecter and my memory's fuzzy on some parts. But other parts I remember fine so let me know if you want help with highlights. You know, when you can break away from the old married life routine. ;-) Congrats!

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    1. Thanks! I'm looking forward to writing some more about our campaign. I'd be curious to hear any thoughts on how to make encounters less stressful, but still keep them challenging so they don't become boring.

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    2. Personally I was just feeling anxious because of my own problems with feeling anxious. It wasn't really the game's fault.

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  3. Buenos Dias y Bonjour people!

    Nice to hear about the successful results. It's definitely been quite the challenge by the sounds of it. Did any of you have favorite momoents for the whole campaign?

    I'm still developing characters for Mercenaries. I have been trying to at least produce 20 in total. The ability I'm thinking of for the next one is that they are affected by the nation they are picked by (i.e. If it's their homeland, they get a boost). Whether any of you like it or hate it, let me know.

    Finally, Congratulations, Felicidades! When is the wedding? Will you be changing congregations or staying where you are?

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    1. Thanks! Wedding is this weekend. We will be changing congregations. Looking forward to seeing your ideas for Mercenaries. I should be posting about that project again soon.

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    2. Hmm, well from the last session there was a fairly major reveal about the back story of one of the main player characters. It explained a lot of little things that had been bugging me in the back of my mind almost the entire campaign. lol

      We also had a fairly epic escape from an exploding/crashing ship at the end of one session. That was pretty fun.

      I think toward the end I got to enjoy more the interactions between us as characters. I'd actually developed a little so that Alyssa and I were on friendlier terms. I was even starting to get on speaking terms with Ssiriss before he went and did some stuff that got me really mad, then I was on punching-him-in-the-face terms. I really liked situations that upped the drama and tension between us as players, versus us and NPC's that we got to interact with.

      I also really liked it once I started developing my force abilities more and could do things like Force Slam my enemies (or occasionally even my friends when they were getting out of line and disrespecting me). lol

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    3. Yeah Force shoving people *ahem Ssiriss* was fun. How did Dasani and Alyssa end up getting along? Plot twist or did I just get surlier as time went on? :-D

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    4. lol Hmmm...I think Alyssa and Dasani ended up working together a lot toward the end and that probably helped. I've always felt that Dasani's anti-social nature stemmed not from her hating everybody, but more her lacking trust in the kindness of others (and yes maybe the occasional anger management problem). I felt like after having the childhood she did, and then abandonment by her Mom, that someone as kind acting as Alyssa was supposed to be would probably register very suspiciously on Dasani's radar. But as she got to really work with Alyssa more she got to actually like her (at least enough to be talking spa days and mani/pedi/hornicures, as well as spying on the masters together).

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