In my last posting Realms of Rylon Post-Mortem - The Good I covered those things that I thought went well or were well received by the players in my campaign. This time around I’m going to focus on those things that went bad. These are the things that with a few minor tweaks along the way would have been in “the good” category but just missed the boat.
As I wrote this I noticed a pattern, many of the items I listed as “good” also came up as “bad.” I realize that for a lot of folks this would seem a bit strange but on reflection it seemed logical. The Realms of Rylon had a five year run, saw many character changes, player departures and returns, new players added, scheduling issues and a few additions to the extended family (some of us had kids) so what started out well and with good intentions over time slipped down a few notches and ended up here.
1. Newsletter
While I did list this among those items that were “good” I also have to list it here as well. Despite the fact that it was well received and provided a lot of valuable information it became difficult to maintain a consistent schedule of publishing for a variety of reasons. Here’s another spot where a really good lesson can be learned - keep it simple! My newsletter included among other things a full listing of NPCs the party had met, not too difficult to maintain early on but as the list approached 100 it started to become a bit too much. The listing only had the NPC’s name and a brief tidbit about them but as the plot lines unfolded the list became inaccurate and less useful and I eventually removed it, a blessing because I didn’t have to maintain it but a curse as I still needed that information and it wasn’t all in one place anymore.
The other major item that contributed to the newsletter being placed here was the time factor. The newsletter only took an hour or two to compile and put out which in the grand scheme of things is pretty small, but when you factor in that I was working for a high-tech startup and in the process of become a father to a set of twins finding that hour or two does become a challenge so there were some weeks (or longer) where the newsletter just wasn’t published.
Lesson learned - keep it short, simple and easy to publish.
2. Plot lines
This is another item that I listed as “good” but it also has to be included in “the bad.” Why, you may ask? The answer is relatively simple, there were too many.
I started off with a basic plot line and then began to add, and add, and add. There were multiple plot lines for each character, red herrings, ideas that sounded good at the time, NPC plot lines, and the grand daddy of them all, I dropped a war in as a backdrop. The more plot lines I added the greater the depth of the campaign but it also meant the amount of work on my part and the players’ part went up as we tried to keep all of it in check and on track.
The result of all the extra plot lines was a campaign that became stagnant and at times lost focus. We had some really good plot lines run their course but also had many that were introduced and after a session or two got lost in the shuffle, never to be heard from again. The bigger issue was that with all these plot lines the main storyline, the driver for the campaign, became stagnant which ultimately contributed to the downfall of the campaign.
Lessons learned - keep the number of plot lines down and keep them moving.
3. Notes
This is the last item I’ll mention that falls into both the “good” and “bad” column. I think just about every GM out there knows the value of taking and keeping notes about your gaming sessions and I started off well but over the course of time I didn’t do as well. Initially I started out following the three part system I wrote about in my posting, A Guide to Session Notes. I had detailed pre-session notes typed up and available to me during the game complete with plot hooks, NPC and creature stats, trap and treasure information. My in-session notes had all the usual combat related items (opponents, round by round checkoffs, hit point tracking, etc.), results of interactions with the various NPCs, plot hooks picked up and any plot ideas that were generated out of the session - players are great for helping generate ideas if you listen to them. After each session I tried to get a read on the session from the players, note what items I hadn’t used yet that could be used later and the repercussions if any of the characters actions.
As I said above, things started out well but over time my session note taking dropped off. There were sessions where the extent of my notes was a comment about the monsters met and the round tracking - that doesn’t leave a lot to work from in the future and certainly contributed to the challenges with the campaign newsletter. In others there was little to no movement on plot lines so nothing was noted and in still other sessions I just didn’t put the effort in. I also started to rely heavily on my memory as opposed to writing things down as I was always thinking about the campaign - fine when you’re playing 3-4 weeks a month, not so good when you take 1-2 months off.
Looking back on things now I think a fair amount of the issue was actually GM-burnout. I liked the campaign, I liked running it, I liked the way the characters were developing but I think “the grind” of being the GM was wearing on me. I’m sure many of you can relate to the issue, the more something seems to drag on you the less enthustiastic you become about doing it. I’ll leave this topic alone for now and save it for a future post.
4. Improvisation
This one may seem a bit strange to see here as I think most would think that being able to improvise is a good thing, and I would agree with you, until you start to improvise and rolayly mess things up.
I’m sure some of players are reading this and I’m sure they will remember the encounters towards the end of the campaign. There were a number of them that were just too lopsided for the group to handle and I had to fudge some things, call off an attack or have an NPC save the day - none are good for the players and was a result of my running things off the cuff. A number of these encounters were to satisfy the group’s desire for combat but were poorly planned (easy to do in a low magic campaign) which is no one’s fault but my own and I hope to avoid this pitfall in the future.
The other major issue that I had with improvisation at the table was that I had a tendency to introduce things early without the necessary prep, or in my opinion even worse, before the characters were ready for it. The war for example was introduced a lot earlier than I had originally intended. As we were gaming things were going along well but had started slowing down so I decided to spice things up by introducing the war element - it was a good plot line to introduce and was well received but created logistic issues and impacted other plot line far more than I had intended.
The result was a campaign that became more than I could effectively manage and keep track of. The result was more improvisation sessions as I just couldn’t keep up - another sign I was burning out but didn’t see it.
Lesson - improvisation is a good thing, as long as you keep it in check and don’t go overboard.
I think that covers the major points I wanted to bring up, I’m sure there are others but these are the ones that stick out in my mind. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post most of these were originally items that were well received but over the course of time fell short; a classic example of starting out with good intentions. The main take away here is to pay attention to how things are going and how the GM is doing because as you can see, when GM-burnout starts to set in things start to slip.
That’s all for now, next up - The Relams of Rylon Port-Mortem - The Ugly.
May your dice roll well.
Be sure to check out the rest of the series:
Realms of Rylon - The Postmortem
Realms of Rylon Postmortem - The Good
Realms of Rylon Postmortem - The Ugly
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May 06th 2008 Posted to
GM Tips by Scot Newbury
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