Expanding the Idea of "Campaign"

Campaigns are a staple of tabletop adventuring. You and your pals gathering together regularly to tackle challenges in the same game world, session after session. Campaigns can be a great way to explore a tabletop world and your characters' place within it. That continued development and growth, along with the familiarity of that particular fantasy world, is likely what draws us back again and again. When you hear the term "campaign," there's a good chance you picture something pre-made like Curse of Strahd or Ghosts of Saltmarsh. You might think about the running live plays of various groups such as Critical Role, Acquisitions Incorporated or High Rollers. If you’re lucky, maybe your game has a wonderful custom campaign your GM created themselves (or you created if you're the GM.) (Websters' defines campaign as a "white sparkling wine made in the old province of Campaign, France.")  What does it really mean to be "in a campaign," though? How can we broaden that definition and expand our idea of what a campaign can be? - A

A: For a player, being in a campaign probably means following their own character’s personal story and growth, the stories of their companions  and the overall story everyone's sharing together - the story of the campaign itself. That isn’t always the case though. You might play in a style D&D terms "Adventurers League," where players can move between groups from adventure to adventure (pending their GM's approval, of course). In any TTRPG, you’re always the bearer of your character’s story - ultimately the only person to know it completely. In a sense, your character is traversing their own campaign over the course of their life and the lives of others they encounter. These are all connected adventures, though, not only across the play sessions themselves, but also according to whatever overall story WOTC may be pushing at the time. This connection with the publishers could be fleeting, though - it wouldn’t be surprising if, between COVID and the One D&D kerfuffle, the official Adventuers League dies down over time. That doesn't mean you can't use the concept for campaign stories of your own, though! Similarly, you might try a Western Marches style game where players and GMs drift in and out, but the core world stays the same. The story may end up a bit more disjointed, but is, in a real sense, still a campaign. You’re still following your character’s story, and the story of your companions and the world around all of you. That word does keep coming up though: "story." There are many ways to tell a story, but all of these TTRPG campaign “types” are still pretty similar. Bugsy, what do you think might there be a a different way to "campaign?"

B: We had one of our gaming friends over the other night, and the topic of RPGs eventually led to us going through my entire itch.io collection to see what games might be collectively interesting. Along the way, the idea of a "system tour" came up: trying various intriguing games as one-shots, ideally, to cut down on overload and prep time,  trading off GM duties. (Or, in the case of GM-less systems... "Facilitator?" "Rules Knower?" "Primary PDF Peruser?" Something like that.) I'm intrigued by the idea of thematically unifying the "system tour" into a cohesive campaign - something like the "themed anthology" concept of short story collections you see with genre fiction, especially sci-fi and horror. Just thinking of books I've owned, I've had anthologies centered around themes that range from underlying concept (steampunk stories, or stories about transhumanism), story hook (women fighting monsters), to specific plot points (stories about aliens and humans existing in a single body).

An "anthology campaign" offers some real advantages to testing out a variety of TTRPG systems, especially if you're trading off who's running the games. Everyone should have at least some starting point for story ideas and, as the campaign goes on, a reference point for what a group likes to see and engage with. It's probably a good idea to not do systems that are too similar mechanically over the course of a campaign, or at least to space them out, so that people don't get confused about how to engage in a particular action. Depending on the scope (or at least, your awareness of) your game library, you may choose your campaign theme first, then decide which games would best fit that, or you can look at the games you want to try and see what theme might unify them. In either case, a preliminary planning session will be necessary to decide what's interesting for everyone and to divide  up labor, possibly even drawing up a schedule - kind of a meta "Session 0." "Session Infinity," maybe?

The kinds of themes to explore, and even what defines a "theme" will naturally vary from group to group, not to mention the games available. One group might consider "games about youth confronting the flaws and mistakes of their parents' generation" a unifying theme, another might go with something like "fantasy games based around a Renaissance, rather then medieval, setting," still another might do "games where you play as animals or have animal companions." The great thing about the modern era is that there's a TTRPG platform for just about every idea, and, if there isn't one available yet, a wide variety of generic systems so that you can find a a playstyle appropriate for however you want to approach a given theme. Divided out among a group, the theme can act as a prompt does in writing exercises: a common starting point from which everyone diverges into their own path based on preference and experience. Taken to the next level, there are even some possibilities for greater continuity across different systems, maybe characters crossing over from game to game or even a story that carries over or starts from the same point, only to get redefined according to the particulars of the system and who's running it. Most of all, it gives everyone a chance to try something new, which is what gaming is supposed to be all about. And who knows, just as the short stories from themed anthologies can be developed into larger works, the brief stops on this tour might be further explored in a more traditional "campaign" down the line. Ventures into the unknown are easier with a group of friends, and road trips are a lot more fun when you all take turns driving.

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