Elements that makes a good campaign ?

[Joël of the FoS]

I'd like to know your ideas on what makes a good Ravenloft campaign ?

And not just a Ravenloft adventure, but a whole campaign in the plane of Dread?

Joël

[Coan]

Character strong NPCs.

Mystery.

The ability to expand on the player characters and develop them (sometimes if you have to have an adventure dealing with a PC's past life you have to have that adventure).

Give and take from both the DM and PCs. The DM has to give the players what they want for the game to work (if not move to a different group you can work with). But the PCs have to respect the DM and know sometimes things are going to happen that they won't like (their magic swords get stolen, their sister is kidnapped and is killed).

Communication between the DM and players.

Good role play

Connected plot with the occasional adventure thrown in to spice things up in a new direction.

Foreshadowing.

Use the PCs past. If they know or met an NPC in the past use that NPC.

[Jennifer]

Hi all,
I totally agree with all the points Coan mentiones. You can all read my campaign in the smoking room and this campaign still runs after more than a year to my and my players great enjoyment.

I think what makes the succes of my campaign is the time and effort the players have put in the development and background of their characters. Especially Samaels player deluged me with more and more motivations for his character and information on the decisions he wanted to make. This made Samael a very memorable character (and totally despised by me, I really hated Samael towards the end I must admit. I was looking for ways to really hurt Samael. I never had that before).

And then I honour the efforts of the players by letting their character background retrun into the game. That way the players feel they'll get something back for their efforts and pour more effort into the game, so the game gets better and better.

I feel it is also important for a DM to spend a lot of time on the NPC's, how will they react to the PC actions, what will they do in the PC's absence? If you spend some time on that, you can present your players with a believeable world.
I have studied the social sciences, so i feel it is very important to pay attention to the social political and economical background of the world the characters move around in, to make it seem more real. As the players feel the world is real, they will pay more attention to it, care for it and get really upset when something happens.

Jennifer

[Charney]

I agree with Coan's and Jennifer's comments.

I'll had emphasis on character background. The most successful (success being mesured by how much fun I and the players had) campaigns and adventures I ran had something to do with the PC's past. It could be focused upon one PC or several. It gives the main story momentum.

In the case of gamers who don't put a lot of time on their background, I invent it for them (the whole background for the main PC in my Goblyn fiancée campaign was created by me).

Also, it's always good to have an NPC helper in case your clues weren't picted up by the players or if they're going into the wrong direction. I don't say that you need to railroad them through the adventure, just make sure they go to Darkon and not Barovia for instance.

Oh and always give a little sidequest that the players crave for: some goood old mindless hack n'slash.

For my best campaign, I actually got applause from the players.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Another element that can make a Ravenloft campaign more engrossing is if you maintain a running moral theme over the course of the campaign. By this, I mean that you should pick out a philosophical issue from which you can derive some dramatic plotlines and ethical conflict -- "Revenge Is Justice" vs. "Revenge Is Inherently Futile", for example -- and then come back to that issue from time to time, expressing it through your villains, NPCs, and the moral dilemmas with which the PCs, themselves, are being confronted. You can have this moral theme encompass the party as a whole -- best for overarching plotlines and archvillains that hound the PCs throughout their careers -- or you can choose particular "theme issues" for each PC in the adventuring group, relating each character's theme to his or her personal history (e.g. revenge for a ranger who REALLY hates his favored enemy; trust vs. suspicion for a rogue whose last adventuring group betrayed her; etc), and taking turns between them.

With most game-settings this sort of thing often seems stage-managed, but in Ravenloft, moral/ethical issues are as much a part of the challenge of gaming there as the monsters. So it fits.

[Troile]

Think...would this make a good story?

Would I want to read it?

Think themes, symbolism, climax, chapters, character development...all the things that make for a good story.

[Darkknight]

The objective I leave with my pcs is the decision. You have two difficult choices, which are you going to choose. The fight against one's own darkness... I leave the pc's the long road of their own choice. Some have embraced evil only to find out near the end how far they have fallen and what price they have really paid.

Others choose too much goodness and realize that they have become just as monsterous.

A good campaign leaves the whole story in the hands of the pcs... I just apply the results of their decisions.

[Stygian Inquirer]

Tough decisions possibly requiring sacrifice on behalf of the PCs are good to build character and flavour to the campaign.

Having the actions of the PCs have an impact on the campaign can make it more realistic.

I also agree with Darkknight that a campaign needs the PCs to decide the outcome.

[Ivana_Boritsi]

I have a question. Whenever I run a campaign, inevitably there's one or two people that write 5 or 6 page backstories for their characters. But there's one or two people who also write about a paragraph.

Usuallly, I end up having to fill in the blanks for the people who give me a paragraph. But what happens is that those who wrote the long, long backstory get more "spotlight time" as it were.

I was thinking, for my next campaign, requiring people to write just 1 page on their character. So the challenge for the prolific people would be to keep it short and sweet. The challenge for the one paragraph people would be to fill in everything that they need.

[ScS of the Fraternity]

That's not a bad idea.

While backstory in generally good, it shouldn't be the most important part of a character. Backstory is there to help the player develop the character s/he is roleplaying - the backstory is not the be-all end-all. The events of the game should be more important than the stuff that occured in the background. No one wants to read a book set AFTER all of the interesting events occured.

Besides, a good character should be able to be summed up in less than a page. Even epic characters like Strahd, Soth, Vecna, and Elminster can be adequetly detailed in less than a page.

Should then, one PC, at the begining of the campaign, take more space?

[Joël of the FoS]

Me, I like it when players develop their background a lot, it gives me material to play with in the campaign.

However, as Stephen said, an undevelopped background doesn't mean the player will roleplay badly and develop his/her caracter later.

---

Should a campaign be intricately designed ?

Joël

[Wiccy of the Fraternity]

I also like it when players develop heavily detailed backgrounds to their characters, even if it takes some time for them to get them finished. Before I start a campaign I have each player give a brief background, usually listing their profession, immediate family, any rivals to the family and so on. They also write up a few paragraphs as to what led them to where they are now to fill in some more recent facts. It is also really nice when a few players work together on these to have their characters coincide with one another and continue to work on their backgrounds together, coming up with childhood friends and that they used to be bullied or bullied others as children and maintained those rivalries over the years.

A fighter in one of my games was from Falkovnia and was bullied as a child by a boy who later became a Talon when he grew up. The player had his character become a member of the resistance and joined a cell that contained a few other party members, all of them were later forced to leave Falkovnia after their safety became threatened. In the game I had the occasional hired thug of group of Falkovnian soldiers track them down to continue their involvement in their backgrounds. While it had little to do with the actual game at the time, it build up to something larger over the course of the campaign.

[Charney]

As a DM, I prefer it when players don't write heavy background from the start. If it's vague, I can take advantage of it to weave it within the campaign. If it's too detailed, it's hard for me to use it.

Basic info is required though, especially at higher levels.

As a player, I prefer to have a little background upon which I can expend during play. Often, I don't even have any background during the first game session with a character.

[Troile]

I'm of the heavy background sort.

The first session is entirely devoted to making characters.

The players get their ideas...I bounce some back...they come up with more etc.

Essentially they say what they want...and then I say how it is and it goes back and forth through the character's life until we get up to the present.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I'm a heavy background fan too, but when it comes down to it, there's only one really crucial part of any PC's background: Why did you start adventuring? Is it due to some personal tragedy that must be avenged? Stumbling on something you weren't meant to see and fleeing? Called by some higher power?

Whatever it is, that's where the best adventure hooks are hung, and that's the main thing I look to get out of any character background.

Other than that, I can only echo what everyone else said.