Mini vs full fledged camapigns

[Blake_Alexander]

I've rently been "taking stock" of my past MotRD campaigns and I've noticed that, for the most part, my campaigns have been more of mini series, rather than the full fledged campaigns that I run in other setting. I'm curious if other people who run MotRD have a similar habbit when they run their games in Gothic Earth. If so, why do you think we tend towards this trend? Is it because it's difficult to link our mini-series game into full blown campaigns, or is it because the game gets less threatening to the characters, and thus less gothic horrorish at highter levels?

I'd also love to hear about any campaigns that lasted for an extended time, say 10 levels or more. What made those campaigns work? Was it an interesting master vilian? Or an orginization that the PCs belonged to? Or was their an element it the camapign that made the area the PCs were in more prone to supernatural occurances?

[Jonathan Winters]

Hey Blake!

(I just have a few minutes and will write a longer reply later.)

Interesting question...

As far as my experience has been with MotRD, roughly 9 ou 10 sessions so far, it started out as a one-shot (!) because we didn't have enough players for our regular game and really wanted to play. And I wanted to try out the setting (which I had never played).

Our one-shot turned into a mini-campaign. Sort of. Those 10 sessions represent just a couple of days so far.

I have a very League of X Gentlemen feel to my campaign which the players really dig!

I think people are intimidated by the history aspect of the setting.

I have to go to ponder this some more (and get back to work!).

Patrick

[Jonathan Winters]

Let me try to give you a longer reply this time (as I am eating lunch).

It has been discussed in another thread somewhere, but I think the History factor really bogs down people. BUT, I don't think it should. Do you want a History lesson or have fun?

If any discrepancies surface, we smooth them out somehow. We rationalize them or try to explain it in-game: It is an alternate world, let us not forget.

Also, is it possible to create a longer campaign on Gothic Earth? I don't see why not. You don't need to stick to History or even have a storyline entwined so much with world events.

Your PCs could confront ''smaller'' evils: a lonesome ghost, a lost werewolf, a dying angry Fey, etc.

It doesn't have to involve Dracula or the Kaiser every time.

In my campaign, I inspired myself from the great Halifax fire of 1910 (I'm suddenly unsure of the date, sorry) and threw a meteorite on Halifax. A few city blocks have been destroyed, some pretty nasty creatures are coming out of the crater and an old Evil has come back to earth...

Like I said, we were only supposed to play once, so I wanted some shock value to the whole thing. Now, I have drastically altered the world. But is it such a bad thing? Events similar to the Halifax fire are happening 20 years earlier, that’s all.

Well, enough rambling.

I hope I made some sense (I slept about four hours last night, sick kid).

I will try to write up a small journal of my campaign soon.

Patrick

[Sylaire]

Although I can't speak from experience (not having played a MotRD campaign), I might suggest that the horror genre itself is almost better-suited to a miniseries, single-story kind of play than for a campaign. This would especially be relevant in MotRD, where the "ultimate evil" of the game-world is defined as the intangible, all-pervasive, fundamentally unkillable Red Death and in which the fight against said evil entirely takes place in the shadows of the gameworld, rather than in any way reflected in life. Toss the history factor on top of it (for me, at least, if history starts getting changed too drastically I start wondering why I'm bothering to play in the "real world" at all), and the defining factor for the characters is the personal tie, the roleplaying aspects.

That's not to say that an extended campaign can't work, but it would (almost) inevitably play out as either a series of independent adventures (Sherlock Holmes-style, or maybe Nayland Smith-versus-Fu Manchu), or as a "chained" kind of story in which each layer plays into the next, but the latter is hard to do well while maintaining good story continuity and the former basically depends on the PCs themselves being interesting enough to keep playing.

[Blake_Alexander]

My campaign tend to be motivated by real world events, but not the well-known historical events such as the Spanish American War, or Wounded Knee, but rather the small incidental events that happend...especially local folklore, and clippings from newpapers from the area that the adventure is happening in from the era. I have found a huge number of possible stories ranging from "dark secrets" from communities to actual cases of unexplained death, insanity and suicide. The problem I have is linking them into an on going campaign without forcing the PCs to be members of a qabal or other "special orginization" that has an affinity for the supernatural.

I sometimes modify the real world events in such a way that to the supernaturally ignorant would have recorded the events as they have been recorded by history, but for the spuernaturally aware there is obviously more to the story.

I've yet to find a way, however, to keep a camapign going...I find this disappoints my players, at least to a degree, because they become attached to their characters and would like to develope them further. This is further complicated by the fact that one of my player is rather chaotic....and tend to leave the PCs in less then advantageous situation with the local law

[Sylaire]

I like that--by working at the "fringes" of history, you can have your cake and eat it too! You get the solid backdrop of real events, and you can run with them any way you want without changing major historical events and ruining people's suspension of disbelief.

As for the supernatural-hunting cabal problem, I feel for you. My biggest pet peeve with the MotRD setting has always been the way the published materials make it seem as if there's some kind of shadow war going on between the diabolical minions of the Red Death and the heroic scholars of the qabals. It's almost like the scenario creators are trying to steer the players into qabal membership, like they're channeling the classic old horror RPG, Chill and its ubiquitous S.A.V.E. That may be interesting if played well, but it just doesn't scream "Gothic" at me. It's more suited to 1930s cliffhangers--I didn't mention Fu Manchu above by accident. The Red Death always impressed me, personally, as less of an intelligent plotter and maniuplator as it did a corrupting force of nature, pure evil seeping into the magical energies of Gothic Earth and from that corrupting the supernatural facets of existence and from there into the human soul, but never with a deliberate plot or scheme afoot. The notion of classic Gothic-horror villains like Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, or Mr. Hyde taking marching orders in someone else's play always irritated more than it appealed.

So here's a suggestion. I'm not sure how practical it is, since it depends somewhat on your players, but you could try basing the campaign not around the plots of the villains, but on the player characters and their histories and backgrounds. Make your players go into some detail in their character histories (or do so yourself if you provide pregenerated character roles) and write "Dread Possibilities" based on that material. Then reveal a bit of this metaplot a bit at a time (I'd suggest also that you tie multiple characters together, so you don't get into the position that you need a particular PC to stay alive or the campaign falls apart).

For example...and I'm kind of coming up with this off the cuff here, so bear with me for its crappiness...

Let's say, one of your PCs is a Charlatan. She originally started out as a fake medium, using stage magic to perform spiritualistic seances and so fleecing the rich and needy of cash. In order to provide the most plausible experience, she kept up with the latest literature in the field, until she stumbled across books of Forbidden Lore (tm). It was these experiences that taught her that what she'd used for mockery and trickery was in fact real, when a faked seance using genuine magical rituals went badly wrong and her partner-in-crime (the one who comes out of the closet to work certain mechanical contrivances) was killed. This experience was what taught her the concept of consequences, making her develop something of a conscience, not only regretting her past but seeking to make amends. As a counterpoint to that, she has also developed a fascination and curiosity about magic ("if only I had known back then, so much could have been avoided"). These twin motivations make her pursue supernatural threats. That's what the player provides you.

Now, you go to work. Most obviously, did the Something that "went badly wrong" actually get resolved, or did a creature follow her through to the other side? Is her partner really dead, or did his spirit live on? If so, how--as a supernatural horror bent on revenge? As a ghostly apparition trying to warn the character? As a still-living human, only twisted mentally or physically--did he, for example, learn that the magic was real before she did and fake his own death? If, as can happen, she said or did something careless in one of her fake seances and a grieving widow died, perhaps this person rises as a revenant and pursues the character--news clippings of a serial strangler following the PCs' path through the world can be inserted in adventures, foreshadowing what must eventually occur. If the character dies, perhaps the partner (if still alive and not evil) can become the player's new PC, or some other person from that ill-fated seance.

In this way, the characters themselves become the campaign metaplot. It's the same trick used in many of the most successful mystery and horror series to keep interest fresh even when it's obvious in Book #17 that the Evil-Critter-of-the-Week is going to be defeated.

[Blake_Alexander]

I like the concept of the "Dread Possibilites" based on the character's background. I've used some elements similar to this once or twice with some success. For instance, in one campaign I had an NPC niece to one of the PCs who the PC (Professor at a major university) was looking after due to the untimely death of his sister. The sister had actually actually been the victim of a vampire that visited her over several weeks gradually draining her into death. I was going to have the sister, now a vampire herself, come into the campaign gradually, until her threat became apparent.

I also had a second character in the same campaign that was a mortician. He was the assistant to another mortician in a small city in England. During the corse of the game, the senior mortician's teenaged daughter was killed by an zombie animated by an evil spellcaster who was trying to kill the PC mortician (he was getting to close to the truth of what the evil spellcaster was up to). My plan, had the game not ended before this time, was to have the father grieve the young girl's death so deeply that he secretly attempt to bring her back as a Flesh Golem, with the usual dire results towards the creator.

Although the latter example is less of a background story, I think it still shows how events in the campaign can lend itself to further stories and a continued campaign.

[Blake_Alexander]

Here is another questions along the same line as the previous one, for those of you who have run successful extended campaigns rather than mini-series, did your campaign involve a Lord as part of the plot line.

I've been giving it some through, and it seems that for a camapign to be successfully continued for more then just a few adventures you'd have to have something that logically kept the PCs togther. Unless your PCs come from a very similar background (i.e. same family, same employer, or some dedication to finding out some mystery you've placed in the game) I can not see a logical reason whythey stay togther. For instance, let's take my last mini series that I ran. It contained three character: An Irish American Criminal turned archeologist, A female doctor turned Mystic, and partically native American Shootist. Getting the PCs toghter in the first place was not hard at all, a simple haunting of the train they were on was a great beginning. Problem was why would they stay togther afterwards. I really hate when companionship within a group of characters seems forced.