New Year, New Game

Can I add new campaign to that?

The folks over at Gnome Stew have issued a challenge to gamers this year – run a new game. Most will take that challenge as a reason to go out and buy a new game system but in my case I’m using it as the catalyst to finally get off my rear and get a new campaign going (yeah, I know I’ve said that before).

I will admit there are a number of items that will make this both interesting and a challenge.

1. Moving to a sandbox style game

My group has been firmly grounded in the traditional plot style campaigns. The last major campaign I ran, Realms of Rylon, was of that type and centered around finding the lost pieces of a keystone. As I mentioned in my post-mortem, it was both a blessing and a curse as it locked in a lot of items but did give a chance for creativity.

With a sandbox game the players are more in control and need to commuicate what it is that they are interested in doing. From my side of the screen I better have a lot of material to pull from to make that happen (more on that in a minute).

2. Having a source of material for backstory

The campaign I’m working up will once again take place in the Realms of Rylon but during a period of time after when the last campaign would have ended (the last one died on the vine). So while a lot will be different I can use my existing notes and ideas from my last run to augment what I’m coming up with. It’ll also help lend a sense of history to the campaign, something that most of the players enjoy.

3. Lots of material to create

This is the big nut to crack – I need to get the whole campaign area up and running prior to the start of actual gaming. When you’re running a plot driven campaign you can leave a lot of the side details out, if it doesn’t directly realte to the main plot you can leave it off the table. This isn’t necessarily true with a sandbox – the more details and material you have at your disposal the shorter the downtime when the players decided the want to go “off map.”

4. Another shot at a long term campaign

It’s been years since my group has played in a long term campaign and while I can’t speak for others I do miss it. The development of characters, the reoccuring cast of non-player characters, the victories, the defeats, and of course the spoils are all elements I miss in the short runs we’ve done since Rylon was first run.

5. Running the game from the laptop

This one is a personal goal and an extension of everything else in my life. I’ve gone digitial with just about everything at this stage and I feel that I should be able to do the same with my gaming. This is also a tough nut to crack as once you commit to a tool you have to stick with it – or the tool has to provide an easy method of exporting your data into a form that you can take elsewhere.

So there it is, my thoughts and plan for getting back into the game.

Are you planning to run a new campaign or game this year? Why not share it in the comments below.

This post was written for the first annual New Year, New Game blog carnival hosted by Gnome Stew as part of the 2012 New Year, New Game challenge.