When we create a character in my campaigns, each character is designed to have a set of motivations, why are they adventuring. From there, each character has three plotlines attached to them. ... Thus the character and the player decides on what will be, generally, in the campaign.
I haven't tried that method, though I have read about it. Sounds interesting. I have a bit of a hard time visualizing exactly how it works though. Do you mean that before the game begins the Players say things like "My character wants to take on Pirates and defeat an Evil Mastermind"? Or how does that work?
This starts in the begining. See Starting The Campaign the MoonHunter's Way
http://www.strolen.com/content.php?node=1461Yes, all my big prep work is done in the one week between character creation and the campaign starts. In some ways, this annoys others. They ask me "When do I do all this prep work for the game," and I tell them, "This stuff? about 5 months ago."
2) Poll your players I: While I am presenting various campaign trailers to my troupe, I start to work on the actual campaign we will run. I ask each player for one to five "bits" they want to see in the campaign. Each bit is a campaign element, character types, major NPCs (or type of NPC), types of story lines they want to see, the kind of settings, type of adventures they want to see, types of opposition, important elements (magic, tech, skills), genre and subgenre. From these elements, I can usually tell which campaign trailer they are most interested in. Sometimes, I will create new movie trailers based on their answers. By doing this, I make sure that there are things in my campaign that will interest my players. So if they want to have "cool fight scenes", I plan to have conflicts in interesting./ exotic locations (and start watchign a lot of Kung Fu movies). If they want to crush Evil Wizards, I make sure there is an Evil Wizard working for the Bad Guys. If they want "City Adventures", we plot things in the cities. If they want romance, I make sure there is a pretty princess for them to woo. etc. etc.
7) Casting: We have Casting Parties. In these group sessions, we work out all our characters together. When we do this, it becomes a big idea session. The party becomes balanced. People weave their histories together and look for comonalities. We also make sure that everyone's character would be together.
First and foremost, all players must have a motivation besides being rootless waunderers without connections to the world about being involved in things. This provides their motivation beyond mere greed/ quest for xp. Characters without a motivation to be involved will simply be "left in the bar" and never involved in the game. The players are warned and make things appropriate.
At the casting party....
This is the time we create the plotlines for the character. In games with disadvatages or flaw or lifepaths, this is easier. They have this "something" in their past. That something should be involved in the game. You come up with a story about it. If not, the players have to dig in and create more of their characters than they are probably used to. I make sure the characters have ties to "the rest of the world", a religion, a clan, their guild, their mentor, the guy that their mentor liked better than them, the army, and so on. That way, they have links to the world, resources to access, and contacts to use... plus motivational elements to borrow.
So, you took a 20pt 11- hunted... okay.. tell me about them.
Oh, fear of snakes....GM begins to plan having snake people in a plotline
"Your Religion, okay. You are part of this sect. It is centered out of this city. Petros the Strong is the Head of the Sect there.. and he hates you."
Everyone has things they want to do or want their character to do. You simply tap into that.
"You want to marry the princess, well lets see.. okay, you can try."
"You want social challanges at court so you can show off all those social skills, contacts, and charisma? We can do that.
"I want to be the big Bad Ass of the area. Okay, well your chief rival for that is the Temple Guardian of the local Buddhist Temple.. so you just can't "call him out" without being disowned by the entire community.
So, at minimum, there is one plotline they come up with (and the GM agrees to), there is one plotline the GM says, you should take (and the player agrees), and one GM created plotline that should fit the game and the character, but the PC is unaware of it. This is that bit of "unexpected" to keep it spicy. There is also the Big Story Arc, the central one for the campaign. These character plotlines are woven into the Big Story Arc.
Okay, the Hunted are the primary tools of the big bad. They will have to spend some time at court, so we have romance the princess and the Evil Mastermind is there (though it will take some time for them to realize he is the big bad.) Oh The Big Bad can be the Courtier's main verbal sparring partner. No, better yet, they are on the same side... allies in court. They are against this pompous ass at court. Won't that be a turn of events. We hide the magical dingus everyone is looking for under The Buddhist Temple, so we will have people attacking the temple, and the PCs sneaking in.. so we can mix it up with the temple guard. In fact, the temple is being infiltrated by The Snake People. The Snake People are untrustworthy allies of the Big Bad. They have their own agenda, but it co-incides with his.. for now. And the magic Dingus in the temple, it control a Giant Monster. That will make Tom happy, he always likes Godzilla creatures in games.. even though he never says it.
From there, we make various key scenes for the plotlines.. each key scene having a purpose (like drop the clue about the snake people), something to do, and what has to happen before it can happen.
So by the time I am done, I have about 18 plotlines, each with about five key scene. Those 90 scenes make the game. Everything else is just to get them to those scenes (transitions, minor key scenes so they can get to the key scenes, fun things to do for distractions). Figure one to three Key scenes a game... 30 weeks of gaming fun.. all set up.. almost ready to go.. just after character creation.
(And remember, these are scenes to grab as appropriate to the game, the pace might change.. certain plot lines might get used up early.. others might lag. You do have to adjust your story pacing to what is going on in your game and with your players).
Now the party normally does it on its own, but some times I have to nudge. I make sure that each character has at least one primary relationship in the party and a secondary one. The primary link is their friend/ family member/ friendly rival that binds them to the group. The secondary one, is like the first, but it is another relationship in the group... should something happen to a primary.
This means, often times, you will be doing odd things "for your friend". "Why are we in sewers? Remember, Toth is our friend and he needs some back up on this "mission of his". I know, but is he "a slog through sewer" kind of friend or just a "I will help you bury the body" kind of friend?"
And every few weeks I poll the players (related to
, looking for things they want in the game. "Oh I like that NPC, I want to see more." I hated that guy, want him dead. I want more of those monsters, they were cool. I don't like this girl in my romance plot. Can we do something to her? We need more Giant Monsters. No we don't Tom. (evil GM smile).
This is related to the above section. So you will have about 12 things that people will want to see in the campaign. You can alter some of your pre-work, or jsut sprinkle things into your campaign as needed. You wont always be able to give them everything they want, but you have to try.