Strikeforce – Building Campaigns pt. 3

As Time Goes By …

Several systems use aging as a mechanic. AD&D over several editions included different age brackets for different races, from humans hitting middle age at 45 and old age at 60 and venerable at 90, compared to the longer lived races like dwarfs and elves reaching 250+ years. The DMG (and some PHBs) had penalties to physical stats and bonuses to mental stats for the aging categories and certain spells like haste and magic items like the staff of withering and some creatures caused unnatural aging effects. It did raise some gray areas like if an elf is middle aged at 175 then when do they go from diapers or get past their teen years and if they are starting adventuring at 100 then why are they only 1st level? What about a dwarf and a human who were ‘childhood friends’ even though the human would be a senior citizen by the time the dwarf was a teen? 5E cleared it up some, setting up each race as basically ‘ages as a human until young adulthood’ and setting adulthood (be it physically or culturally) at the different brackets.

Chaosism games like Call of Cthulhu and Ringworld treated aging as a core feature, CoC having a similar aging penalties / bonuses mechanic representing the often older player characters, while age in the science fiction setting of Ringworld determined starting skill points as in the book series, humans reached incredible ages due to the chemical booster spice. Similarly generating a character in science fiction classic Traveller aged a PC through the tours that built up the skills and benefits, eventually reaching a point where a dice roll had to be made to avoid the penalties of age (unless expensive treatments were paid for).

Pendragon did see more time passing, as it would have an adventure or two in a season before the downtime of winter. However, rarely do we see player characters age after creating characters. In my experience, most campaigns may last years in real life but only cover a handful of years in the game world. Levelling up in D&D is connected to adventuring, not to the passage of time. Most campaigns spanning 10+ levels take place over less than a year of in world time. (yes, I’m ignoring the old school mechanic of 1 week real world = 1 week game time, as I’ve already meandered all over the place for just an intro)

History of a Campaign

Strikeforce started as the follow up to a playtest for a review. The first session with the players sitting around and getting ready to play was a session zero, discussing how the PCs knew each other and figuring out the game mechanics. By the end of that session, the GM was already coming up with a reason for the heroes to stick together on a long term basis, a brute force approach of introducing an NPC as a motivation. By the third, there was roleplay of interparty conflict and more players wanting to get involved.

As play continued, so did world building by the players, some of them even taking on the role of GM and splitting up the world into different play groups. Then they started developing long term storylines, several multi session mini-series, players changing characters, and an enigmatic group as a plot tool to provide some mystery to be revealed at some future date as needed. Then a break was taken to take a deeper look at the players, what they wanted as characters, and put the game on hold before they burned out.

When they returned to the game, re-energized and starting to use blue booking to respond to some of the roleplay (mostly romance at this point). As time passed, so did the PCs grow in power and abilities and thus their challenges went from stopping local villainy to alien invasions and world threats. But there was also a need to close some plotlines. Characters aged, retired and took up new challenges as NPCs, confronted their arch villains, even had villains reform and take on new roles. Most importantly, being open to new directions, even ones that fundamentally changed the rules of the game world, to set up things for a truly spectacular finale.

Lessons Learned

A campaign is a long term commitment. Not all players want that kind of story or commitment. Sometimes you want just want an Adventure of the Week, maybe a recurring adversary or two. But it can be amazing what you can create with your players over a stretch of time.

It doesn’t have to be all built in a single session.

Blocks built of one shots and popular recurring characters can be set into a greater narrative later on. Listen to the players and their ideas, weave them into the story. There is no moment like the one when a player uncovers that their suspicions about the criminal mastermind were correct all along (even if you hadn’t planned it, but when the player suggested it you couldn’t resist, it’s a “yes, and …” moment). Watch for their interests (stars & wishes is a great way to check in) and talk to them about what they have been enjoying.

One Year Later

Often “One Year Later” is used for a campaign ending, to narrate the changes in the world due to the actions of the PCs, and for the players to narrate some of what they wanted as their own epilogue. But it doesn’t have to wait for the end.

Maybe not an entire year, but sometimes it’s nice to slow down a game and give the players a chance for their characters to go and pursue their own interests, shared as a story or blue booked and blogged about later. It’s an opportunity for revisiting a character and maybe redesigning them to better fit what the player wants instead of abandoning the character for a new one without the shared history in the party.

Sometimes an even longer break can be used as the springboard for the next game. I got to play in a game of Amber. It was a grand epic game, ending with a climatic confrontation and a final battle, resulting in a character death and the mystery of a new cosmos. Over a year later, we sat down and wrote up the children of those original characters and carried on play as the next generation.

I am a sucker for legacy stories. Comics like Justice Society of America, Teen Titans & Young Justice, and even Young Avengers (not to mention the great character arcs of Wally West in The Flash) are among my favourite to dig into. It was reflected in my own superhero games, having characters carry on a tradition and there being a preexisting history of pulp hero predecessors. I’m looking forward to bringing a game of Masks to my table someday, but it was Strikeforce that originally provided me the tools to start building those campagins.