Campaign planning, part II

OK, after a bit of a chaotic part one where I came up with no fewer than three campaign briefs and new tags while trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I figured it was time to take a step back, slow down just a bit, and figure out how to do this with a little bit more planning. Luckily, this is all theoretical right now rather than real, although doing stuff theoretically makes me wish it was real; maybe I'll stretch out my stiff, unused GM muscles and try to round up a group again. I doubt it'll be the people I used to play with; we're just too scattered to the four winds in more ways than just geography, so I'll have to reach out and find new players. Which isn't an impossible task; I do know a handful of other friends that I know game, although we've never gamed together, and I know where to go to meet potential new players too. I'll worry about that at some point a bit further down the line, though—for now, I'll continue to go through this exercise as if I were writing a column about planning campaigns rather than as if I'm actually planning a campaign. If that makes any sense.

Because I like all three of the campaign briefs, I will probably actually develop all three of them. After all, my campaign development is a format that doesn't require tons of extraneous work; most of what I develop for one could, if necessary, be easily adopted to another campaign if it comes down to it. Plus, I want to do so anyway. But I've got these three campaign briefs; let's assume that I'd pitch all three of them as options to a group, and let them discuss among themselves and decide which one they would want to do. What else would they need to make an informed decision and be ready—upon deciding—to show up, make characters, and start playing?

The first thing I note is that I've migrated a bit away from requiring my group to read the rules. Because the game is 1) of my own authorship anyway, and 2) quick and easy, I think it'd be a lot easier if I didn't require them to read it, and only made it available in the "endnotes" if you will of the pitch, for those who really want to dig into the details. I wouldn't have any expectation that anyone necessarily would, though. Because of this, I think I need another one pager, that describes at a very high level the game and the setting, and gives them enough information to at least pick a race and class and know what it means in the context of the setting. This 1-pager would be a setting and game 1-pager, and would not come in different versions, but would rather be the same regardless of which of the campaign briefs the group favored. 

I also think that I need to provide the smaller maps for each of the campaign proposals. I'll need it anyway to play, and why not let the players see it, so they can have some basic geographical context that their characters should have? Plus, I know different people get excited about different things, but there really don't seem to be a lot of fantasy fans who don't think a good map is fun to look at, as well as something that stirs the imagination and gets them excited wondering what the names and images and icons would be like "on the ground."

An easy way to keep this stuff organized would be to create a wiki or website. Luckily, I have a Google Sites page that I'm not using for anything really that would fit the bill perfectly. I know; the name isn't perfect; I named it a bit on the early side, but still—it was always meant to do basically what I would be using it for now anyway; I just never got around to it. I'll go ahead and add the link, with the caveat that it doesn't have any new content on it yet at all, and the content that it does have is a bit out of date. But still; here's the link. If nothing else, it'll remind me to go update it if I see it linked here: https://sites.google.com/site/timischburg

So, I'll update the wiki; for now, it'll be a quick and dirty introduction to the setting and the game, offer links to the game rules, and offer links to the campaign briefs and (once they're available) the maps. From a player-facing perspective, that's probably all that I want for now, although once campaigns were to ever start, I'd want to add links to the characters, and quick and dirty session summaries. I'd turn it in to a proper setting wiki. 

One this is done, I can regroup again and start doing fronts and planning adversaries for the various campaigns, as well as a few bullet points on what I think are likely events that would happen later down the road in each campaign, assuming that I have the ability to predict any of that. This material wouldn't really be player facing, at least not yet until they've uncovered enough information in play that they would know it. 

EDIT: For whatever it's worth, I've updated the rules to a new rev level, by adding a brief rule for using combat advantage, as I've discussed here, as well as cleaning up a number of other little minor details that were either rambling and unnecessary (especially in the opening words) or out of date, or unclear. I've also made minor tweaks to the campaign briefs by not having any of them use hardcore mode after all. And, I've updated the front page for the wiki, although right now that's all it is: an introductory one-pager to the setting and game. I'll add links to the campaign briefs too, and that's probably all I need to do for now; it'll be updated sometime in the future once it's actually being used for a real game instead of a theoretical one.