How to Keep your Campaign Personal

Written by Tyson J. Hayes on 2010/02/19 – 00:00 -

We can offer you all the tools in the world, but are they worth it if the game isn’t engaging? How do you make sure that your game has a personal touch and speaks to all of your players?

Don’t Plan Ahead

Focus instead on the here and now. What are the important tasks that need to be accomplished in a given session in order to drive the story forward? Now that you have that what would be the most fun way to get there? Come up with a couple of loose ideas and leave it there. Your players will chose what interests them and you’ll come up with the details from there.

Focus on the Players

If you allow them your players will always tell a more interesting story then you ever will. Paul related to me that one of his players, during play testing for our game, came up with far more interesting ideas for how things we done then we ever did. So we changed the game. By focusing on the players and allowing them to participate in the story-living we created a better campaign.

Tell Interesting Stories

While a bit of a duh it is important to make sure that all of your players are engaged. If you are focused on them and letting them the story as well this should be simple. If they need prodding check their character background, likely they’ll have a plethora of stories that can be pulled and extrapolated on. Another approach is having your players write some in-character fiction. Pull some of the characters they came up with and flesh them out as NPCs. This will keep everything nicely tied into the story as well as keeping it personal to the player.

What have you done to keep your campaigns more personal and relevant?


Tags: , , ,
Categories: Game Masters, Session Management |
Comments: Comments

Tips for Getting your Game Online

Written by Tyson J. Hayes on 2010/02/09 – 00:00 -

Last Sunday was my first attempt into trying to bring my Savage Worlds game into the 21st Century by moving it online.  Some of my players will be moving out of the state (and one the country) so we were looking to change our play to adapt to the new distance.  While I am big fan of internet technology and generally try to live more and more in the cloud I found the experience frustrating and bit off putting.

Set it all up your stuff a week in advance

It may seem like a bit of a duh but get all of the programs you’ll need to run your game setup well before you play.  I chose to use MapTools for our game as it was free, open source, and generally didn’t annoy me.  That being said it does have some quirks that are not apparently at first, unfortunately, these “quirks “held up the game for an hour while we tried to work them out.

1) Everyone needs to use the same version. Which was something I wasn’t aware of at first; fortunately some of my players also play in another online game and quickly pointed this out to me.  So save some time and use the same version.

2) Just because the program says it can be accessed from the internet doesn’t mean it’s not lying to you. I was never able to host the game.  While the internal tools told me I should be able to host the game no one was ever able to connect.  In the end I had another one of my player’s host the game.  I never figured out why it didn’t work, but I discovered some great port forwarding tutorials at PortForward.com.

3) Careful with maps done in Photoshop. While a minor quibble at this point it was frustrating to put in a map that had been lovingly crafted only to have it not fit the internal grid.  After getting everything is setup, make sure your maps work properly; it’ll really dampen your mood if it doesn’t.

Register all the accounts before hand

Most of my players either didn’t have Skype.  So we spent a good while getting everyone registered, futzing with mics, and generally getting us all on at the same time.  Save yourself some pain and assign some homework to everyone to get the accounts setup and registered well in advance.  Skype has a great built in tool to make sure the mic is on and that you can hear everything.  Use it.  It’ll save you time pretending to be the Verizon wireless guy.  “Can you hear me now?!”

Have you tried to make the transition to online play? What successes or failures have you had?


Tags: , , , ,
Categories: Roleplaying Tools, Session Management |
Comments: Comments

Start the Action off with a Bang!

Written by Tyson J. Hayes on 2010/01/12 – 00:00 -

“Ed jumps up on the table, kicks the gun out of his opponent’s hand, grabbing it from the air and unloading two rounds into the man’s face. “V” is a divine blood-wind, carving through four enemies at once with her samurai sword. Her kimono billows in her wake alongside arterial spray and blood-choked screams. Then everything pauses for a heartbeat while your enemies blink in disbelief. What do you do now?”

The next time you are running a game, try changing things up a bit by starting the session during the action. I’ve found this works best when the enemy is clearly defined, and your group enjoys less-than-diplomatic solutions to conflict. The effect is jarring, sure, but it grabs your players’ attention and drags them into the action instantly.

I’ve found to pull this off effectively you’ll need a proper setup. Make sure to inform the players about what’s going on by quickly surmising why they are fighting and establishing the enemy. A battle map may be essential to this, depending upon your descriptive skills, so when the players begin play they can quickly look for cover, cast a spell, or attack their enemies.

A good battle is like an action movie for the mind, but all great action scenes rely on a visual element and swift editing to imply movment. Have you ever watched a scene that just jumps into the middle of a fight? You have no idea why or who the characters are fighting, but the battle is freaking awesome that you let it slide? Assist this feeling by varying your descriptions of the action and go for that dynamic feel.

When you’re done the players should be worked up and looking for the next challenge to tackle. I’ve found that when used effectively, this method can quickly bring everyone’s attention to the table and the game rolling faster than the usual recap and slower introduction.

Do you have any effective tricks for getting your players attention when starting? Have you ever tried kicking off a game mid-battle?


Tags: , ,
Categories: Game Masters, Session Management |
Comments: Comments