Run Long: Finding Inspiration as the Game Master
Don't be afraid to end your campaign when you feel it's done - even if it is far sooner than you originally planned.
If we go back to the race horse analogy, a campaign may sometimes become lame - and so, the pastures call. Or if we use another analogy I am fond of, think of your campaign like a television series. Envision game sessions like episodes, with twists and turns and the occasional cliffhanger. A series of session form a "season", and all your seasons together the entirety of your "series."
When I break down a campaign into these seasons, I try to find some element within the game framework to tie the season together. For Black Crusade it was each "pact" the players forged - in the rules, a pact is a long-term plan with with a scope and set of goals - what also set the scope of one season. In my current King Arthur Pendragon campaign, it's each pseudo-historical era in the game, from King Uther to the Anarchy period after his death and to the rise of the Boy King, and so forth. The exact length of the seasons vary, but the end of each season offers a chance to shake things up, or even decide to end the whole game.
When planning this, think of yourself perhaps as a television producer. After each season, you take note whether your show was popular, and what were elements that worked this season and which did not, and take this into consideration when planning your next season. Maybe emphasize a certain element, maybe use less of something else. You may have your "cast" change: after every season I try to convey to my players that this is a natural jumping-off point. If they want to stop playing, there's no shame in it and now is the good time to step back - and perhaps come back later if they like. And here you can also try and get new players to your roster, to be introduced as new characters when the next season of your game begins.
It can also be a good chance to announce that the show has been cancelled.
No shame in this, either. Some horses go lame, some television shows get the axe. Whatever your favourite analogy may be, there is little sense in keep running a game that you or your players don't find that interesting anymore.
We here at the photo editorial of the Superheated Room have been tasked to illustrate the article with stock photos. Here, the papers symbolize ideas worth letting go. The bucket symbolizes constraints the GM sets to their own creativity.
I've done this at least once, after some deliberation and with somewhat a heavy heart. My 2300AD campaign I ran in 2014 was around 10 sessions long when I cancelled it. I did have an advantage, with the game going on a break anyway, as I moved to another country for half a year. So I had half a year to consider whether to continue this game, and I did chat with my players whether they wanted to go back to this particular setting. Some did, some others didn't. But perhaps it was the half-a-year break that made me consider whether to go on or not, and with this relatively long time I had, I could see that running this particular game had become more stressful that I liked, and I didn't have a roadmap with which to make it enjoyable for myself anymore.
I luckily had the foresight to plan ahead so that when the last session of this first (and only) 10-session season was over, most ongoing conflicts in the game had been resolved, and the players were given in-game information of how much they had accomplished, and what sort of impact they had had in game world. (As noted before, their impact on the world was celebrated here, in the very last session.) So letting this story go was, in that retrospect, easy.
But I still had a heavy heart, as this particular campaign had some of my best innovations I have had as a GM applied into it, and, at its best, had a great sense of progress and accomplishment for me. A sense which at least some of the players seemed to share. And 2300AD is, as a setting, one of my absolute favourite fictional worlds in the gaming genre. I may write about these innovations I mentioned and about this wonderful sci-fi-setting at length at some future point, but now I will only summarize: the campaign had some the absolutely most memorable moments I've ever had as a GM, but as a whole, it just didn't have legs anymore.
So I let it go, and moved to something else. And I did this knowingly: the game ended, instead of just disappearing like many games do. In this way, I enjoyed a small measure of catharsis, and could let go of the lingering thoughts about returning to the game: the could-haves and should-haves.
But how, then, can you keep this from happening?
To return to the original point, to keep a campaign going for a long period of time needed to wrestle these mammoth games to the finish line, it must be interesting to YOU, the GM, to make it interesting to the players.
Again, there is no easy one thing here you can do keep yourself interested. And some GMs may not even consider this, as - and I, again, generalize here - the GM is the most INVOLVED of all the players. During your typical session, the GM is always interacting and engaged in the game, whereas some players may be left with nothing to contribute at a given time. The GM must listen to the players at all times, respond to their input and offer input in return. And during this intense interaction, the GM may not realize two things: that some of his players aren't very engaged in the story, and that the GM themselves may not actually be enjoying this very much at all.
Introspection like this can be very difficult due to the immersive nature of the GM experience. And the discourse here, in our gaming genre, doesn't traditionally consider this much. In the common discourse the GM is seen as many things, from an all-powerful antagonistic figure to a facilitator of the players' game experience. One discourse emphasises the GM's perceived "power" to make "rocks fall" wherein "everyone dies". Another discusses their "duty" wherein the long-suffering GM must put up with his "crazy" players "ruining his plots." These are gross generalizations here, I know, and based on genre-specific humour, again based on stereotypes.
But this is a game, and it is not so often consider that for all the duty and power the GM has, they are doing this because it gives them some measure of DELIGHT. As a GM, I must be a raconteur, a human calculator and a lawyer all at once and I would not do it, if I wasn't just ENTHRALLED by the experience; if I was not captivated by it.
The box is your campaign. The hat is joy you must find in running it. The man in the box is under your bed, listening as you sleep.
And I usually am. Running a fine campaign and seeing my players have fun is very rewarding. It is, I dare say, one of the best things in the world.
But this exhilaration of running a game must be found, lest your campaign become stale and boring. And this is where this comes so subjective, so reliant to each GM and their experience, that I cannot discuss it in detail. I can, frankly, hardly discuss it at all.
I can, however, say this: in a similar way you try and engage your players with the things they enjoy, you must try and discover the thing which gives you, the GM, a great measure of JOY, and keep that thing in the game, to keep the game intriguing for you.
I'll offer two things, one specific, one generic, of things that have given me joy as a GM, and have kept me running these very long campaigns to their respective ends.
The specific thing here takes us back to Rogue Trader and, yes, HUGE SPACESHIPS. I love those things. I really, really do. In Rogue Trader, the players' ship is both a character and a setting in its own right. The players put together their ship at character creation and for the most part, the ship serves as both their vehicle but also their home. This gives the space combat system in the game interesting stakes, as every time the PCs risk a space battle, they take their base or operations - their home! - to wage war, and possibly have pieces of it blown off.
And I was very fond of the mechanical system of space war in Rogue Trader. Planning encounters and testing the players' wits in besting the challenges I had planned for them was one of the things I enjoyed the most in running this game.
As I mentioned before, I ran Rogue Trader twice to two different groups. The majority of the other group shared my enthusiasm for the space combat system. They would tweak with their ship, plan tactics and maneuvers (up to the point they had NAMES for some the maneuvers they performed!) and had assigned roles to their characters during these engagements. This was ideal for me, as one the aspects of the game that kept me so enthralled by the campaign was also shared by the players. We had a lot of space war going on and we loved it.
The other group, however, just HATED this system. Every time I rolled out the battle map and my little starship tokens there was an audible groan around the table. Cell phones would come out as they'd check Face-Tweeter or Insta-Scope or whatever people do on the Internet these days. They were more attracted to the other game elements; they liked the campaign, but were bored by the game-within-a-game ship-to-ship combat which, to them, was just a chore. So naturally I didn't do this very often: I couldn't really enjoy applying this system I liked very much, because I was the only one really involved in it. So it was resigned to the background of the campaign. Luckily, there were many other things going on in the campaign to keep me engaged.
So do consider the game you are running, the systems and themes offered and pick those that appeal to you as a GM. Test them out with your players, and if the response is positive, work to include more of these enjoyable things into your game.
As for the more generic things to keep yourself as the GM involved - well: this is another occasion for introspection. There are no easy answers here that work for all but you can try and think back to your previous game sessions and attempt remember what it was there that had you most involved and, most of all, ATTENTIVE to what your players were doing? What was the moment you were at the edge of your seat, trying to keep your poker face, listening with great interest what the players and their characters would do next? Find that element and foster it the best you can.
Speaking generically, for me the element of SURPRISE has for long been the most sought-after thing in the games I run. Whenever something I never foresaw emerges from the in-game story I am just FASCINATED. In those moments it feels the campaign has taken a life of its own, and it challenges me to respond, to think of how the game world will react to this new exciting element introduced. The surprise may be a player character's unexpected decision, or something as simple as an unlikely die roll resulting in something novel and unforeseen. Be what it may, but I try and embrace these moments when I encounter them and weave them into the larger story in the game the best I can.
"Emergent stories" or "emergent storytelling" are terms often bandied about to describe this process of the collaborative narrative presenting unplanned developments. And I am a devout spokesman for this emergence: I try and never be afraid to just throw all the plans I have in the trash to facilitate unplanned but still meaty, interesting developments.
The goggles are emergence. The corn is ... your super-ego? We give up.
One of the methods I use to foster the element of surprise is the application of a "metagame" framework that feeds from and into the live role-playing campaign. Usually this means having a game that is played online in the same game world the player characters inhabit, with these two games interacting in meaningful ways. I will, I believe, write about applying an online game to enrichen the role-playing experience and to create an unpredictable, interactive experience. I will not write about it now, however. But I will say that after realizing how much I enjoyed being surprised, I created several different game frameworks that all but ASSURED that I was going to be surprised game session after game session.
When I run a game, I try to create what you could call a feedback loop between my two games, offline and online: a loop that all but enforces emergent stories. In many ways I have moved from being a GM that plans games to a GM that facilitates and fosters player interaction. I suppose that is why I often return to the TV producer analogy: I consider myself more like a "producer" of my games than the "star" or the "narrator" or the "writer" of them.
As an aside, this is CERTAINLY not an approach that always works for me, or is guaranteed to work for everyone. But it is much easier than it sounds, and it will continue to be a framework I will likely at least consider whenever I start a new game. And I do this because I know I love to be surprised, and this will ensure I will be surprised time and time again.
A commenter that read my previous article made a very good point related to the theme we are discussing here: they wrote that a PLAYER may also consider these things, and try and figure out what keeps their GM interested. And when this thing is discovered, the players can try and engage the GM by seeking out and indulging these game elements which they know will inspire the person running the game. It is a very thoughtful argument which perhaps not that many consider! Indeed, what is a better guarantee for a good game experience than to have a GM that gets to indulge in the things they love?
We're just going to have a good lie-down and re-think this whole illustration business.
I will, however, maintain my previous argument that the game master is a servant - a butler, as I wrote before - to the game experience, but the good Ladies and Lords playing the game will certainly be better served if their Manservant or Lady's Maid is inspired to provide the very best gaming experience.
To summarize: a long-running role-playing campaign must be a thing of JOY for all that participate. If this joy is shared by the game master and the players both, you can, indeed, run long.
