On Micro-Campaign
Matrakçı Nasuh. Detail from untitled map. 16th Century.
A couple weeks ago, we concluded a short campaign of The Electrum Archive. You can find my thoughts on the system, and an index of my session reports through that link.
I really want to emphasize concluded there. One of the goals for this micro-campaign was to run the game for 4-6 sessions - enough time to get to know the characters and get some stuff done in fiction, but not so long that the game succumbs to schedule entropy. I was partially inspired by posts like this one by Silverarm Press, though I didn't really follow their procedures. We ended up playing six sessions of about 3 hours each, roughly divided into two micro arcs with some downtime and intrigue in the middle.
What I want to do here is set down some thoughts on running this kind of short form campaign - what worked, what didn't, and what I would do for next time.
What Worked?
Inviting the right amount of people. I treated it a bit like organizing a dinner party. I tried to invite enough people that if everyone attended, I wouldn't drown, but if only half could, we'd still have a good sized group. For me that was 7 invites, cherry picked from among in person and online friends. We ended up consistently with 3+ players, which is really the sweet spot in my mind.
Picking a time and sticking to it. Once we had a group, we found a time in the week where everyone could make it. This miraculously worked, but if it didn't I probably would have just asked the one or two with conflicts to sit this round out or join us if something changes. I made clear that as long as one player showed up the session would go on. I even had some prep in case only one person showed up, but fortunately I didn't have to use it.
Handing out a map. This game was a "grid crawl" - a hex-crawl but on a map divided into squares with a very loose (or maybe high-trust) procedure for exploration. Most of the games drama came from the map, figuring out where something was or where someone was going. I never left a session without a clear understanding of where the players wanted to go next, which was a real boon.
Playing a game with some light progression. TEA ended up being perfect for this. Characters gained experience and changed over time, but they weren't so crunchy and involved that if a player forgot to level between sessions it became a massive timesink. I don't think a no-advancement game would have held up quite as well.
Writing session reports. With such a small number of sessions, I felt like I could commit to writing one per week. This became my "notes of record" for what happened previously, helped keep folks who couldn't make it up to date, and generally felt like it helped translate the events of the table into the stories told afterwards. I enjoyed writing them and will absolutely do so in the future, but haven't felt compelled to do so as much for my big server games.
What Didn't Work
Not asking a "defining question." This is an idea from that Silverarm Press post. It would be nice to frame the goals of the campaign in "Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound" terms, ideally during character creation. Asking a question like "what is going on with the mercury in the aqueduct at Bar Morvyn?" up front invites players to invent characters with some relation or interest to that problem. It also gives everyone some agency in shaping the mini-season of play we are putting together.
Over- and under-prepping. I made this map to hand to the players and intentionally left a lot of blank space, then had a rough list of some overworld encounters that were at specific locations. On that map, however, was a big ruined temple dungeon that I put some thought into that was never really relevant to the game. Conversely, I knew the action was always likely to funnel towards a specific scene, but didn't really have a thoughtfully keyed map for that space. This is more an opportunity of the structure and a place for personal growth on my part than a flaw in the overall schema.
Not drafting a list of dramatis personae in advance. We found out who the big players were through play, and I had some notes on a "who's who" of the region, but I think having a clearer impression of what characters I wanted to keep folding into the fiction would have been useful for making the sessions feel more dramatically connected without feeling on rails.
For Next Time
In a sense, my notes for future micro-campaigns are the inverse of all my "What Didn't Work" points - ask a defining question, prep concrete locations, make a list of characters to hook those locations together. I think it's possible to over-index on those concerns though and I want to avoid locking the micro-campaigns into ill conceived adventure paths.
Overall, this approach really helped keep me from getting burnt out on GMing and it felt like we told a somewhat narratively complete story with a clear ending. We proposed some questions that could point to future campaigns, but I don't feel like we left any huge gaps or had to rush through anything to complete the campaign within our window.
I'm excited to run the next one... which looks like its going to be Mausritter in November.