Hello to anyone taking the time to read this, my first blog, and thank you for doing so. My name is John and I have been playing role-playing games for almost 20 years, most of which has been spent behind the GM's screen. I've been toying with the idea of keeping a blog to get out some of the thoughts that I have as I work on my campaigns and sharing some insight into things that I have learned and figured out. Sometimes it's simply what's been pointed out to me from someone else or something simple that took me far too many years to figure out. Either way I have wanted an outlet for some of this stuff, and have even gotten some support on places like the D&D forums to do so. So finally here I am! Before I get into the first blog I would just like to ask you all to bear with me as I figure out how to edit the page and add things and make it look the way I would like it to. I welcome any feedback with that regard.
Goldfish Campaigns. No, I am not talking about a strange new indie game or a crazy one-shot I ran for my poor players. What I am talking about is the often referenced offender of short attention spans and poor memories. Like those ill fated fish who are distracted by bubbles and then food and then forget what was happening entirely, I have found that GMing can be a very similar experience. Perhaps some of you fellow Game Masters disagree and I congratulate you on maintaining one game or even one setting for long periods of time. However, I speak for myself and for those like me, that there is a reason for our madness and I plead to players to try and go easy on us when we go full on goldfish mode.
In one respect the PCs have it easy. They only truly have to worry about playing themselves and what their character is concerned with. Notes can be taken, or not, and strategy involves a specific and consistent set of personal variables and teammates (mostly). Players have the chance to act out a role, an archetype that can react and change to the setting. They can come up with background and expanded stories and other such things to help weave themselves into that world. Inspiration that comes to a player can often be worked into a character's history or feelings, or used to act or battle in new and unique ways.
But, the GM doesn't have a single character to do this with. Instead their "PC" is the world in which you play in. A PC with more stats and notes than you can fit in any one three ring binder. One in which the player's react and change and (as often as not) skip over entirely. A lot of time is spent on fleshing out this world, especially if home brewed. Not all of it may be written down but I can say that while you're at work planning your rogue's next charismatic conquest, we are at work planning the plot hooks, side quests, details, NPCs, and threads that may never see those CHA checks. That is where there is a fundamental difference between a player and game master.
Inspiration can lead a player to, at most, try out a different character (something that is probably not too difficult and in fact easy should the character have died). To a long running GM, inspiration can be bubbles or fish food or bubbles....Off and on this has been what GMing is like for me. I see something in a movie or read a book and a idea pops into my head. One that causes an avalanche of settings and events, peoples and gods, full blown campaign worlds to explore. As a result I not only have books for almost a dozen systems sitting never-utilized (yet!) on a shelf, but there are notebooks of random ideas, folders of short campaigns, and many hand drawn maps in my archives.
I want to say that for the most part my goldfishiness has been maintained to planning stages, but I know without a doubt that I have in fact run 2-3 different campaigns at the same time with mostly the same people and up to 6 different rotating worlds/systems. I do apologize for those periods guys, sometimes ideas just can't fit on paper. But understand PCs of the world, it is more exciting, easier, more fun, and potentially more fulfilling as a GM to try a whole new world. To watch you make something new. To see you react in new ways to new situations. And sometimes that cannot be achieved with a side story in a running campaign.
On top of all of this there is another endemic problem gaming groups as a whole face: time. Group dynamics change, work schedules change, relationships change, people move, etc. These can often kill campaigns. Half of a party may not be enough to continue one campaign. A side campaign for fewer people may be the result. Eight levels in a campaign may be too much for half a party to catch up on, time to start fresh for all. Hell, a total party kill may be too much for PCs to go back to that world. All of these and more can be responsible for character re-rolls.
So go easy on your Goldfish overlords. Work with them and become inspired enough in their story to inspire them to focus on it. I have run a number of short campaigns over the past few years (and dozens in my 2 decades as GM) for a variety of the reasons above, but there has been one, ongoing campaign that has reached its 18th month (21st if you count when the world started building itself in my head). There as been a lot of group changes and scheduling conflicts and new ideas on my part, but the main campaign has persevered. The short side games and great players who are really into the campaign has really kept it going. But the itch never leaves and I do have a number of side games to run, but they won't, they can't replace the big one. The next time your GM says to you, "Hey we're going to roll new characters, because and get this....." remind him of the plans you have for your main character, ask her about the setting of the other campaign, help make that campaign as much fun for them as it might be for you!
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