Welcome to the campaign diary of what’s been codenamed Fantasy Avengers. A campaign idea of superheroes in a fantasy setting has percolated within my brain for aeons. I occasionally pretend I’m going to run it, which no doubt gets eye rolls at best or engenders much disappointment at worst when I never get around to it.
This campaign diary will work through how the campaign gets to the table and then, with hope and a prayer, morph into actual play reports.
The image is from the comic Battlechasers, which is another influence in terms of its view of fantasy and technology.
Where we are at
We’ve had a short gap in this series of campaign planning posts, so let’s review where we are.
The posts so far have focused on the setting, its philosophy and how to frame it. We’ve outlined how Exalted originally inspired it and how we can approach world-building by putting the setting into zones. We further developed that by framing it into principles and lenses to complete the grammar of creation. We’ve also talked about getting over my hangup of things being acceptable. We also discussed how the protagonists aren’t exalted like in the role-playing game but are full-on superheroes.
The next step was to discuss choosing a system and then systems within that. I’ve decided to step back from that until I get a rulebook back that’s out on loan and instead focus on how I will probably approach planning the campaign itself.
Lessons from before
I have a ludicrously long gap between when I ran campaigns regularly and now. I wasn’t actively involved in the hobby from 1996 to 2000. In 2000, I started playing again, but it wasn’t until roughly eighteen or so years later that I ran something consistent.
That was Werewolf: Accelerated. A few things inspired me, and I’ve previously discussed how it went down before and after the dice dropped at the table. We will transfer some things from that, namely planning through structure.
Planning through structure is the same use of the common trick I’ve been using through all the posts so far. Actively plan strategically and remain flexible tactically. This way, the GM gets to have a significant influence on the campaign, as I believe active GM influence is very important to get the conflict and passion into things, but leaves a lot of the details to be figured out in actual play as most of the ‘writing in the moment responsibility‘ is with the players.
The key thing is that there is a strategy; all the conversations and playing to find out don’t feel ‘left field’ as they contribute to the established strategy. Everyone wins.
The campaign structure
I don’t think I will reveal an actual structure at this point. I will lay out the elements that may be assembled into a structure. There are reasons for doing it this way, which we’ll get to at the end.
Loosely, I’m looking at the below elements: –
- Scenes: These are scenes as we talk about them in a role-playing game. They’ll be split into conflict, exploration and transition scenes. They resolve specific things and are the primary unit of progression.
- Issues: The key thing here is issues are not sessions. You’ll notice sessions aren’t listed here, and we’ll return to that. An issue is a unit comprising scenes that resolves or progresses something. Its analogy in the real world would be an actual comic.
- Trades: A trade is an assembly of issues that completes an arc; in this sense, they are like a trade paperback in the real world. A trade has a complete beginning, middle, and end and a fancy title.
- Structure: However the structure is framed before or during the campaign, it will be a structure of how the trades relate to each other.
- Campaign: The overall entity will be a progression through several trades.
I’m not saying this is anything original; numerous superhero role-playing games right back to Golden Heroes have used comic book analogies to describe campaigns, even down to combat being described in panels.
What is great about it is it can be a very de-coupled structure.
It’s de-coupled because issues aren’t linked to sessions, but the primary de-coupling is around trades. There are two facts about Trades: Trades are essentially Campaign Fronts, and how the campaign eventually gets structures doesn’t have to involve serial completion of Trades, albeit it might. Theoretically, the campaign can simultaneously see the protagonists address issues across Trades.
A Trade is a Campaign Front
Fronts were introduced in the role-playing game Dungeon World. Like many role-playing game innovations, they are often a formalised way of talking about something people have already been doing impliedly. Campaign Fronts are an example of strategic planning. They are useful tools in this case as each Campaign Front can be a Trade lurking with the potential to be sorted out, encountered, or erupted onto the scene.
I may not structure my Trades exactly like Dungeon World structures its Campaign Fronts, but they would certainly serve the purpose as outlined.
Fronts are secret tomes of GM knowledge. Each is a collection of linked dangers—threats to the characters specifically and to the people, places, and things the characters care about. It also includes one or more impending dooms, the horrible things that will happen without the characters’ intervention.
– https://www.dungeonworldsrd.com/gamemastering/fronts/
We can even have our Campaign Fronts have trader paperback names such The Nine Eyes or A Victory of Fate (and, yes, I am making these up on the spot; they’re not spoilers – I’ve not got that far). Trades come with Campaign Front type stuff along the lines of people, places, ideas, their agenda or doom and portents as they work toward their aims.
Although I’ve not fully thought this through, what might be more interesting is that the Trades can be related to each other in a relationship map, whether pre-existing or formed as play unfolds. The great thing about this is that the Trades become an organisational tool that is non-prescriptive regarding when and keeps things focused on the relationship between people, places, and ideas, which is the ultimate foundation of a great campaign.
How can this play?
One of the challenges facing the Fantasy Exalted idea is the venue for actual play. It would be easy in more stable, pre-COVID times; it’d be petitioned as the next campaign in the regular gaming group timeline and off we’d go. That venue doesn’t exist anymore. This is why I’ve not explicitly mapped issues to sessions.
I’m assembling this because I want to do it and it’s interesting, but it’s entirely possible it won’t find a venue suitable venue. The two options now seem to be online or every month-ish, but we get 2.5 – 3 sessions in one day. The former is a no for a couple of reasons, and the latter is possible, but I still need to accept it internally!
This way of looking at this potentially allows me to think about it further into actual ‘campaign happenings’ without it being too prescriptive, flexible to change and disconnected from whatever the venue becomes.
And, Finally…
That’s how I feel about the campaign planning for now. A continuation of using structure as a plan to frame and plan without being overly prescriptive on what will happen. The key realisation is to use the concept of Campaign Fronts to envisage Trades. These are the major building blocks of the campaign, and a lot will depend on how they relate to each other, as there is potential meaning, emotion and purpose in those relationships. They don’t exist in isolation.
We’ve discussed these things as conceptual organisation tools that are primarily for my benefit, but I think they need not remain conceptual but be part of the experience. The Trades can be actual things with titles that are revealed. It’s possible there could be a sense of Trades being unlocked, completed or routed through. It gives a sense of progression like video game progress unlocking. Possibly, I’ve been getting too much pleasure out of Diablo IV experience tree unlocking recently.
That may or may not be a thing, but it’s buzzing in my head. It just may be hard to do it in a way that adds to the experience without making things too prescriptive.