PinkFae Archive #28: How to GM Part 3: Designing Your Campaign (2nd of 2)

Last week's article was the first part of a two-part entry from the PinkFae Archives. So this week we will post the second half of that article. This finishes up Part 3 of the 'How to GM' series. It was originally posted on 5 August 2016.

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Last week, we began looking at the essentials of designing your campaign. It was a big topic, so I had to split it into two sections. Today's entry will finish what we started, as we look at the remaining three basic campaign arrangements. In case you've forgotten, last week we discussed the 'Episodic' and 'Set-Piece' design systems. Today, we will cover 'Branching,' 'Puzzle Piece,' and 'Enemy Timeline.'

One-shot, Short Term, Long Term: Campaign Length

I find myself rereading some of my Order of the Stick books again. Because, well, it's such a great story. There are five volumes of printed comics, plus two prequel books and a bonus book of strips that ran in the ill-fated Dragon Magazine and other assorted sundries. In addition, there are (at the time of this writing) 147 online strips that haven't yet been collected into printed volumes. Once it gets to the end of the current story arc, that will be volume 6. I predict there will likely by 7 total volumes, with a small chance that the total may end up at 8.

In Volume 3 of the printed books (War and XPs), author Rich Burlew wrote in his prologue that he used Babylon 5 as a model for how to write an epic-length story. He mentions the way that little bits of at-the-time seemingly irrelevant details that turned out to be super important bits of foreshadowing in the series' final episode. He refers to that show extensively as a guide for how to map out a long-term story.

On the other end of the spectrum, I will be running a one-shot tabletop RPG tomorrow. I expect it to last a few hours. In those handfuls of hourglass sand, there will be a complete story, with all the necessary elements: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement.