Running a Campaign

Coming up with an idea for a single session is a lot easier than coming up with a framework for an entire campaign. In a continuing campaign, the team needs both a reason to stay together and a reason to find themselves in horrific situations time and again.

The Buy-in Rule

At the beginning of a new plot arc, one possibility to get started is to present a hook and then have each of the players come up with a motivation for their character to get involved. For example, your hook might be: “Mutilated bodies keep turning up on Caikuang Station.” One character’s motivation might be “My cousin was one of the victims and I need to find out what happened to him,” while another’s might be “I’ve been contracted by station security to track down the killer.” This gets all of the characters involved and jumps right into the action.

Foreshadowing

At its simplest, each session in a campaign could be run as a standalone scenario. This, however, might leave the campaign feeling disjointed. One possible solution is to make sure there’s a scene in every session that foreshadows what’s to come. Try to make sure that this scene can’t be explained by the events in the current session. This leaves a dangling plot hook that can serve as the lead into the next adventure.

For example, while the party is fighting thugs in a dark corridor, a couple of the enemies in the rear are shot in the back by an unknown assailant, who flees into the dark before the team can finish the fight. Who was this mysterious killer? Why did she attack the thugs, or was she aiming for the team? This is a mystery to be solved in a future session.