With this at three parts one would be lead to believe I might actually get my ass off the pine and onto the field but, hey, that’s me, Capitan Pontificate.

As I started thinking about this post it dawned on me that this site is two weeks shy of it’s first anniversary and that my second post was whether or not I am cut out to GM. Here I am full circle, not so much questioning my ability or motivation, as thinking about what has gotten me here and more importantly how I can draw upon real life experiences to better the game. Bit of a head scratcher as I struggle not to be distracted by shiny objects.

Writing a campaign is much like writing a story or, better yet, an improvisational play. There needs to be a distinct and compelling narrative arc, a cast of characters, a setting, and most importantly a motivation or motivations to carry the cast through the arc. Additionally, the space that the players will move through needs to be formulated and realized to some extent. In this regard, I am often at my laziest often falling back the notion a “fog” that obscures the line between the known and unknown. Development only extends so far as the cast is likely to see after that point it the world is populated by half conceived set pieces.

To help in organizing my thoughts I’m going to fall back on some tools from my MBA and days as a project manager:

Flow Charts - This would really be only used to begin sketching out the basics of the campaign and/or the adventures contained within. Essentially the major components would be assigned to a block and those blocks would be arranged to represent the over all trajectory to guide the writing. Think of it as more of a dynamic outline as those blocks could be rearranged as writing progressed. It does, however, form the foundation for the next two tools.

Decision Trees - In reality these are more like consequence flow charts but can help organize the branching and emergent nature of participative gaming. My worry during the first part of the campaign was that I was constraining the players too much in an return was giving them a game on rails. Ideally, I would like the details of the story to emerge from them in that I will provide the set, scenery, extra cast, and motivation and the rest is up to them. Decision trees can organize the game play from my perspective so that I can best approximate what needs to happen next based on their actions.

Gantt Charts - One of my favorite parts of PMing is the organizing the schedule where the trades are your orchestra, you are the conductor, and the schedule your score. These charts are great at helping you determine how long the project should take, what the dependencies are and what order they need to be in, and what resources are necessary for completion. Its use here would be to organize the overall goals and narrative of the story by outlining the major points from beginning to end and providing the necessary details for each milestone to be met (i.e. fetch key, rescue orphans, defeat boss).

Now, you might be thinking, “Damn, James! that is really anal retentive!” and you wouldn’t be too far off the mark. I have spent, and still spend, a good portion of my life swimming in chaos either of my own doing or others. By nature I am a very unorganized person and I struggle to define, categorize, and label things to maintain order. One of the challenges with periodic gaming is the tendency towards forgetfulness. What did we do last week? What happened last month? What are the names of those NPCs we are supposed to meet/greet/kill? For me, if I do not provide myself with a highly structured environment than the players are going to get mired in my own chaos and ultimately that is going to detract from the game. So I have learned that as a player and a GM an extra fifteen minutes spent organizing and cataloging information will save me hours worth of grief and frustration.

Hopefully, this will be my last chin stroking post and I’ll actually begin to write about putting together the next leg of the campaign. We’ll see how that works out.