Guest Author - Lloyd Brown III
What you decide to run a role playing game, you might make an assumption of the type of game you want to run. Some people assume that a serial campaign is the only type of game to run. Not so. Running a campaign can be a fun, rewarding experience, but it isn’t the only way to plan your game.
One-Shot
In this type of game, the GM provides the players with pregenerated characters with statistics and backgrounds. She writes an adventure specifically for the characters and possibly with specific players in mind. The game lasts for a single session.
Advantages: The adventure involves the characters well. It’s useful for experimenting with different games, genres or styles of play. If anything goes wrong, it doesn’t affect your game play next week. Issues like the balance of power between the characters are only short-term problems.
Disadvantages: Players feel little connection with their characters and often don’t care if they die. One-shots typically take up far more work per session than campaign games because the GM has to establish a new setting, history, and other details.
Episodic Campaign
In an episodic campaign, you use the same characters from week to week, and they play in the same campaign world, but events from one episode don’t necessarily affect the next week. You assume that characters are healed of all wounds, curses, diseases, and other mishaps. Think of the original Star Trek series for an example.
Advantages: You don’t need to keep track of exact dates and other details. You can place the characters anywhere you want within the setting. They could be in Busy Port City one session and Muddy Swamp Dungeon the next. If the actual adventure is what interests you and your players, and not a fictional reenactment of everybody shopping and traveling and other mundania, this style might be best for you. Replacing dead or absent player characters is easy with this style of gaming, too.
Disadvantages: You still have to re-create part of the campaign setting each week, like local characters and history. Players don’t get full immersion into the setting, since most NPCs they meet vanish by the next week. Role playing is secondary to overcoming the challenges of the dungeon (or whatever form the adventure takes).
Finite Serial Campaign
In a serial campaign, actions carry over from one session to the next. If the characters end one session passed out from poison gas, they begin the next session in the same condition. In a finite campaign, you play to a preset condition: maybe you wrap up the campaign when the characters end the dark elf threat, or when they overthrow the evil cattle baron, or when they guide the rag-tag fleet back to Earth.
Advantages: Players gain a complete role playing experience and have a definite goal to work for. The significance of the goal signaling the end of the game increases its dramatic value. It becomes important because you have stated “This is the whole purpose of our play here.”
Disadvantages: Players expect encounters and adventures to be relevant to the campaign goal. They might not enjoy those necessary encounters that aren’t immediately important. Players sometimes grow careless and inattentive as the end of the campaign approaches.
Infinite Serial Campaign
In an infinite or ongoing serial campaign, the game play is the fun. You usually have one larger storyline being developed through adventures, but you can choose to adapt minor encounters and popular NPCs into major storylines later.
Advantages: The players enjoy full immersion in their world. NPCs grow and develop over time. The setting continues to build as adventures add to it. The opportunity for player initiative is highest with this option.
Disadvantages: This type of play demands the most dedication from the players. Losing a player can detract from a storyline. This type of play increases the GM’s record-keeping burden.
