How To Stop Santa Killing Your Campaign

Every year, my group faces the same problem:
Santa kills our campaign.

This year I am determined, as GM, to work damn hard to keep our campaign on life-support, even if I know I can't compete with family visits, the demands of wives, the needs of children, and the fact that everyone buggers off for December.

Life happens, dude. Get over it. Deal.

Harnassing Technology

I'm using two tools to keep my game alive: our existing OOC chat forum, and Realm Works.

The plan is simple: keep the players engaged, keep yourself engaged (as GM), and thus keep the game played. 

We all have online access, even when away, via SmartPhones and the Interweb. Let's use it!

OOC Chat Forum

I've set up two threads for the players to access:

1. An IC (in-character) thread, focused on the scene immediately after the last in-play game scene.
2. An OOC thread, focused on setting the players some challenges and asking questions.

The IC thread is aimed at keeping the characters on life-support. The biggest killer of campaigns is the inevitable loss of identity with the heroes over an extended period of dead-time. By holding an online IC chat, I hope to help the players stay in-role and enjoy some roleplaying time.

The OOC thread is aimed at two things which really add up to one thing: helping keep me engaged as GM. I'm asking the players questions. I'm setting challenges (with XP rewards) which are about adding details to the setting.

Taken together, the idea is that we keep talking about the game. Along the way, I get some assists on my prep, while the players get another hit of that wonderful drug, "Setting Investment". The more I ask the players what they want from the game, the more I use their ideas, then the more chance there is of keeping the campaign alive. It's like adding an IV drip to the patient who needs life-support: without it, they'll probably die.

Realm Works

My other tool for keeping the flame alive is using Realm Works to document (properly) the setting and events so far. This is about keeping me engaged plus making sure nothing gets lost and forgotten.

Realm Works is an excellent tool for campaign management. By New Year it'll probably be available to everyone. As a Backer, I got to play with it months ago. Now I need to really get down to harnessing its powers.

The problem? I've been using it badly. My realm is a mess.

The solution? Well, actually, I feel it's time to re-do my realm using the best-practice advice.

That's not a ball-ache, though, because (aside from the software being very easy to use) it allows me the opportunity to also tie in another project that needs doing - namely, writing the Tikhon setting background book. 

So, while I tinker away and re-build the setting database in Realm Works, I have an excellent opportunity to write up the stuff long-hand too. What better way to keep me engaged with the setting, while adding depth and detail, over Christmas?

Game on!

Of Tikhon and Realm Works

As a Backer of the Realm Works Kickstarter last year, I have recently become privy to the Beta testing.

While I can't talk about any of the specifics of the software, I wanted to comment on how incredibly cool it has been to work with it over the past couple of weeks.

Tikhon Campaign

As you're probably aware, I've recently been GMing an ongoing campaign set in the collaboratively designed world of Tikhon. 

Our "Mortenburg Chronicles" game is several months old now... but it's been amazing to see how much more detail I've been crafting in response to Realm Works.

All I've been doing is entering information to the database for my own realm of Tikhon, but the way the system works has helped me to both see how much we've created already and what comes next.

Session Prep

Over the past few days I've been prepping for the next session. Only a month ago I took the time to create some templates to help streamline my prep... but these are already obsolete due to Realm Works.

Yes, it's tedious to input data to what is (in reality) a highly-specialised database. Yet... as I've been progressing through the outstanding notes from last session, I've found myself adding and tweaking in response to the various fields in Realm Works.

What Realm Works does really well (apart from linking all of your notes into a coherent, encyclopaedic whole) is prompt you on stuff you could do with fleshing out further. As a GM, this is invaluable because it helps me to be less lazy and prep in more depth than I might otherwise be tempted to do. It also makes prep quicker because anything already in the system can be accessed, or even recycled.

Player Access

The Beta allows me to show players information that they have learned. The next step for me is to test this out during a gaming session. I aim to set up a second monitor and show players partially-explored maps and summary information live in-game. Although I'm not used to having a PC at the table, I suspect that this will quickly become a "very cool" feature of having taken the time to codify my realm using Realm Works.

On my wish-list for the software will be the ability for the software to create both a GM-only and Player-only version of the data, presented in something like a Wiki. Pointing my players at such a resource, generated automatically from the data in the system, would be priceless.

I might also like to see Roll20 integration to allow the players to see Player-only views on screen across the web too.

What's Next?

Having nearly finished inputting the data from my paper notes into the system, I aim to spend time detailing new locations, characters and stuff for the campaign. As it's all so easy to manipulate using Realm Works, I think that prep might just become a lot more fun.

If you've not backed the product, fear not! It's due for release later this year and will have most of the kinks ironed out by then, no doubt. My tip: start re-organising your notes and check out the Kickstarter video: