Some campaigns, notably Vampire at its best, pretty much run themselves. Granted, the GM still needs to be present, to run the NPCs and their plots, and the keep the game balanced, but there's little to no preparation work; the players do most of that for them. To get to this hallowed point in a campaign, certain things need to be done:
1) The players have to have characters they are comfortable playing, have to be interested and involved in the plot, and have to have at least some prospect of succeeding in their efforts.
2) There has to be plenty going on in the setting, and plenty of NPCs to interact with. Granted, this is a lot of prep work, but it should be done before the campaign begins, not between sessions.
3) The factions can't be too monolithic. If there's a clan war going on, there need to be several vampires on each side, each with a subtly different agenda. Some can be turned, and some can't, and some can be trusted and others not. The key thing is that you should never meet a "Red Shirt" vampire, unless he's destined to die in the next hour or two.
4) The NPCs have to be active without PC intervention, but not so overwhelming that they dominate the game. That is, if the PCs just sit things out, things should happen in the setting. However, if the PCs apply their efforts in a particular direction, this should seriously alter the outcome of the game.
5) The game needs secrets. Lots of secrets, and the players need to know that there are secrets, and be motivated to find them out. As a rule, every NPC, every faction, every plotline and every institution should have an associated secret, be it a secret power, a dirty little secret, or an undisclosed alliegance. Perhaps the Ventrue primogen is secretly Blood Bound to the Malkavian primogen's pet childe. Perhaps the Gangrel is secretly a Tzimisce agent, sent to drive the city into chaos?
6) The GM needs to keep a very close eye on the powers and dominions in the game. Make sure the PCs don't get their hands on a method to reliably kill NPCs, or more explosives than you're willing to have them use. Otherwise, the game will rapidly degenerate. It's okay to let them kill their great rivals, but ideally that shouldn't happen until they've put in the leg-work necessary to make him vulnerable.
7) The PCs need to be set against each other, at least to a certain extent. If everything is sweetness and light between the PCs, the likelihood is that they can eliminate any NPC threat with relative ease. This is fine, but it means the GM will have to run the game, rather than have it run itself.
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteVery good points. I'll comment on them in the order they were originally written.
1) I think this is the main point, if you have someone who is not interested in his character, this person will also not care if the character lives or dies. And usually won't be bothered to do anything unless directly confronted with a problem.
2) I think one sub-plot per character is the minimum here, perhaps also having some shared plots for the players to tackle together. Of course it depends on how close you want your group to be, I for one rather dislikes full out player hostilities, but I do encourage minor infractions. Having two players trying their best to blow each other up isn't much fun, but having them trying to discredit each other can be interesting.
3) If one side is clearly winning there is no concievable way that the players will back it, unless they are forced into it. Which brings us to the standard do this or die horribly not a great way to motivate the players to do anything on their own.
4) Every NPC should have some action plan, something they will do unless the PCs intervene, obviously this might entail some GM work as a NPCs plans change due to PC involvement,but it should be pretty minor. If you have lots of time preparing you might want to try to second guess the PCs and prepare some alternate plans of action for the most active NPCs.
5) Agreed
6) One thing to avoid is to care too much about the NPCs, or PCs for that matter. If you want to have a game where the PCs handle themselves they need to be able to come up with a good plan and get away with it. If the plan is really good, and well thought out, the plan should work. There is nothing more irritating than to come up with a good plan and then having the NPC get away due to GM fiat. But on the other hand, sending clear signals like: 'Explosives won't work, stop trying to blow everyone up' is fine if you dislike having world war 3 in your selected city.
7) There is a fine line between 'PC bickering' and 'PC blowing the shit out of each other', if the line is crossed you run the risk of having the game disintegrate. If the PCs don't have any reason to work together you have to spend more time running NPCs, which might mean you have to spend more time thinking up things for the NPCs to do. On the other hand, if the PCs are busy trying to mess each other over the game will run itself quite well. Again, the PCs shouldn't all out hate each other enough to kill, that just brings about a messy campaign.