El Burro Volador

I am nursing my usual Wednesday gaming hangover (or perhaps it’s the unidentified pills I took out of Ezekiel’s coat pocket when he went to the bathroom and washed down with a slug of Jägermeister).  I thought I might write a few words about what I do with these miscreants every Tuesday.

So, I’ve mentioned before that we tabletop roleplay, and I thought I’d add a few terms to our lexicon.  First, just as a single serving of a tv show is an “episode”, and books are often divided into “chapters”, roleplaying games have their own sets of units.  Generally, a single, compact story (like a tv episode or short story) is called an “adventure”, or “scenario” depending on the system.  From the early days, it has been common practice to link a series of these adventures together to form what is called a “campaign”.

An example, perhaps.  If you wanted to tell the story of how a small band of travelers, hunted by sinister strangers, travel cross-country to a rendezvous with a powerful friend who can protect them, that would be an adventure, with the players each taking the role of one of the travelers and the game master controlling the sinister strangers and describing incidents that occur along the way, introducing setbacks or other plot twists to keep the players on their toes, etc.  With any luck the players would reach the rendezvous and meet their important contact.

Maybe, however, the group has decided to play an ongoing series of adventures.  In this case, the first adventure could lead perhaps to a second – our characters have reached the rendezvous, but their contact is not there.  Maybe they meet another stranger, somewhat less sinister than those hunting them, who knows their situation and offers to help them.  The characters have to decide whether or not to trust this person (decisions made by the players, but with an attempt to portray the personalities they’ve created for their in-game dopplegangers), and either way, they have to move on before their pursuers catch up to them – or do they?  Maybe they should sit tight and wait for their original contact to show up.  Depending on how this plays out, the second adventure could end in numerous ways, each of which the GM should be prepared for.  Let’s say they trusted the stranger, and the second adventure ended with this new contact leading them away from the rendezvous steps ahead of their foes.  More adventures follow, with their characters making allies, learning about their pursuers, and eventually taking action to end the threat once and for all (by throwing a ring into a volcano, perhaps?).  Hopefully, at the end of the campaign, they will triumph over the dark forces arrayed against them and reclaim their lives of peace – or claim new lives of heroism and renown.

As you may be able to guess, preparing the plot of one of these monsters is demanding for a GM.  Since some GMs are lazy, inexperienced, unsure of themselves, or unwilling (someone has to GM or the game can’t be played, which can lead to it being seen as a chore), a support industry has grown up publishing pre-made adventures and, more rarely, campaigns.  These are typically referred to, in gamer’s parlance, as “modules”.

For the past month or so, our group has been playing one of these campaign-sized modules called The Shackled City.  I am running it, both because I am lazy and unsure of myself, and also because, when I was inexperienced, I developed quite an addiction to reading modules, and having read this one, fell in love with it.  Ever since I read the first installments of it several years ago, I have wanted to run it for a gaming group, and I am so glad to finally get the chance with the best group I have ever had.  I am looking at this as potentially the crowning moment of my gaming career.

I’ll write more about it some other time, I just felt like it should be introduced into this space.