How to End a Campaign: With a Whimper

This is the second post in TT’s How to End a Campaign series. Each post will cover one approach to ending a long-running game, including pros and cons.

Ending a campaign is rarely going to be easy, and it’s something a lot of GMs struggle with. In fact, it was one of the two most common answers to the question “What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do as a GM?,” which was asked as part of our GMing profiles thread.

Today’s approach (more of a non-approach, actually): Ending things with a whimper.

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Worldbuilding PDF From Bards and Sages

World Building is a new PDF from Bards and Sages.

According to the blurb, “Instead of offering a step-by-step blueprint, this product provides writers with a way of thinking in order to insure that your fantasy setting is realistic, consistent, and playable.”

Not having a demo available drives me nuts (why do PDF publishers do this?), but it does sound interesting.

Update: Julie Dawson, of Bards and Sages, has made a preview available.

How to End a Campaign: With a Bang

This is the first post in TT’s How to End a Campaign series. Each post will cover one approach to ending a long-running game, including pros and cons.

Ending a campaign is rarely going to be easy, and it’s something a lot of GMs struggle with. In fact, it was one of the two most common answers to the question “What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do as a GM?,” which was asked as part of our GMing profiles thread.

Today’s approach: Ending things with a bang.

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Hitting the Goldilocks Spot: Campaign and Story Arc Length

Most RPGs address the idea of breaking your game into discrete blocks, typically one or more campaigns, each of which is composed of several adventures.

Some groups play multiple campaigns with the same PCs, with each campaign having a distinct endpoint. Others play one long campaign, with smaller endpoints throughout. And there are games that have definite endpoints built right in (many indie RPGs do this).

There’s a sweet spot in there somewhere — the Goldilocks spot, if you will, where each story arc or campaign is just the right length for your group. So how do you find it?

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XRP’s Christmas in July Sale

Expeditiout Retreat Press is having a Christmas in July sale. They publish all sorts of products for GMs, including A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe and adventure seeds for a variety of genres.

You can also snag the city chapter of A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe as available as a free download, and it’s a sterling resource in its own right (I found it very useful for my last city-based game). (Via EN World.)

For those of you in the States, happy July 4th!

Rich Burlew on Social Contracts

Ten Baseline Assumptions About How the Game is Run, by Rich Burlew (game designer and creator of The Order of the Stick), examines ten things common to many games (but especially D&D) that are often not discussed before the game, but should be.

Rich never actually says “social contract,” but if you discussed all ten of these topics before your next game, you’d have a pretty solid social contract all set up and ready to go. (Related TT posts: Social Contracts for RPG Groups, Active vs. Reactive and the social contract section of our GMing wiki.)

Battlegrounds Software for Online Play

Battlegrounds is a virtual tabletop for playing pen-and-paper RPGs online. It’s set for release by July of 2006, and it looks pretty robust. (It also just looks pretty, too.)

At $29.95 for the GM Client and $14.95 for each Player Client (which I think is how it works), it isn’t cheap — but if you’re interested in visually appealing internet gaming, it’s definitely worth a look.

GMing Content on ars ludi

Usually when I find a new (to me) site with GMing content, I link to one specific article or resource — but with ars ludi, by Ben Robbins of Lame Mage Productions, there are just too many good choices!

Screening Player Characters is thought-provoking. Making the Party: Instant Consensus is full of useful ideas. NormalVision (and parts two and three) sounds like a blast.

This just became one of my favorite RPG blogs, and I think you’ll enjoy it.

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