So I mentioned in a previous article that I have recently been through a wobbly time as a GM and had learnt some lessons. I took one of the more complex things that happened and broke it down.
What I’m left with is a series of observations and lessons I learned about the transitional space in a game, where the aims and goals of sessions might be a little less obvious as the formats of play conflict with the narrative. Places where what you are trying to achieve in a game might not be the same as normal and the expectations of the players might need to be managed.
How Not To Do Downtime
I recently announced to one of my Vampire: The Masquerade groups that at the end of the story arc, we were going to jump forward a year and a half in game timeline.
I then suggested we spent a few sessions playing through that ‘downtime’ just to fill in the blanks. But I made the mistake of not really explaining how this would differ from the normal campaign. So the players were still chasing up leads and trying to make political moves in these scenes. I don’t know what I expected them to do otherwise, it’s Vampire. But because I wasn’t ready to move the storyline on until the downtime was over, I found it difficult for the first session.
By the second session, I’d given up and decided which secrets I could leak for those players who were doing good play. So it became this lurching thing where players didn’t know if they could progress or not. By the end there was a real inequality to the amount of ‘story’ each player had made it through that I didn’t expect. Some had uncovered serious secrets and moved their plots into new places: others hadn’t had a chance.
I think the lesson is to be more conscious of what I’m trying to achieve with each moment and arc.
Just handing stuff to players with no clear intent can lead to some confusion and I’m left asking ‘Did I just expect them to fill three sessions with scenes about character talking with no progress?’. I quickly adapted but there was a lot of me thinking ‘How can I reward this thought process with something, anything happening?’ but having to make that judgement on the fly, which was tiring.
So try to be clear about what can be achieved yourself before you jump into player actions and make sure there is something that can happen and be worth it for the players to play through, otherwise skip over the downtime and come back after.
The Final Lap
My long term, playing-for-4-years-every-week D&D group have managed to get to the end sections of their campaign. They destroyed a Godzilla sized dragon god four sessions ago and now are in their ‘Return Of The King endings’ phase.
This is kind of the opposite of Vampire, where the players are leading the action because they have a clear goal: they want to tie up loose ends. They’re literally talking a spelljammer and flying to places on the world they want to resolve something with an NPC or situation they left during the campaign. While they are doing that they are spending time to talk to each other, to work out where they are going, counting their losses, working out how each important characters story ends. It’s working out wonderfully and is a sort of ‘final leg’ of story. Not only is this a good counterpoint to the previous lesson but it is teaching me something else as well.
Make sure you give room for a campaign to end. Don’t try to wrap it all up after the final combat. Give some lower stakes things in to resolve. Give us a section or two of seeing what happened to some of the group’s favourite NPCs. Hint at adventures that might happen to players in the future, off screen. Just give the final scenes time to breathe. They’ve been through the grinder by now and they earned the right to resolve things on their own terms.
Doing this has made this game easy to run even during the complex life experience. I’ve been able to kick back and let it happen to all of us, which feels like a reward for all us, including me. I’ve made sure the players transition towards the end is working well.
Talking Of Resolution
So, not only is long term D&D game ending but so is my other Vampire game I have therefore a managed to not only load myself with the pressure of finishing off two very long running campaigns in a satisfying style but also the players want to know what is going to replacing them.
So I’ve added the prep of two new campaigns to my slate. I’m effectively doing the work of ten games rather than the 8 I usually run. This has been a lot. I suddenly need to both research the World Of Darkness‘s version of Britain during the 90’s and 1930’s New England for Call Of Cthulhu. It’s…a lot.
So I think the lesson here is to pace yourself. I waited until the D&D boss fight before I went in hard on my World Of Darkness prep. And now the Vampire has I got to the last two or three sessions, I’ve started to step the cthulhu stuff. Because otherwise I’d burn out.
I think it’s really important to give focus to the end of a game you are playing. Give it time to just exist. Introducing new ideas for a campaign needs to happen slowly and give players a chance to build excitement.
Feel free to give people guides to the new game and but just make sure that you are doing it at a point that doesn’t distract from the last few moments of the campaign you are playing. One way is to introduce the idea few weeks before a climax, let the players get interested, get an idea of what everyone will be playing in the new game then go quiet on it for a bit while you work on finishing the ongoing campaign. This way people are comfortable with the idea of a new game but have worked themselves into a comfortable place and can focus on the end of the story they are in. And after that, you can move forward on to new adventures. Manage those expectations that while we are getting excited, our narrative must end satisfyingly for us to want to open another one.
It’s also crucial to make sure that you pace yourself in game prep. Make sure you’re not overdoing it. You owe it to yourself to occasionally take a breath and make sure everything feels like you can handle it. Don’t try to do it all at once. Making small progress often is better. Even in the middle of a game, knowing when you can do prep and when you haven’t actually got time for it is important.
Look after yourself. I’ve over-extended in the last few weeks and really begun to feel it. My love of the games has begun to slip, and I’m holding on until it returns.
Hopefully, by the time this missive reaches you, the balance will be restored. I’ll have managed to put the old games to bed and begun to move forward with new tales and new lessons to be learned. Until I see you again, I hope my notes from the field have been useful and help you run the transitional parts of your games better. Until next time.
Creative Commons art credit: Vampire by Harry Ellison, cmfsnarf,
Red Dragon by JRAitdInc and The Call by Skullbastard.
