Preview of Coming Attractions

by Gary Whitten

The three primary topics that will be covered in this blog are Local/Small-Scale Campaigns (LSSCs), Home-Base Campaigns (HBCs) and increasing campaign immersion.

LSSCs and HBCs may be some of the lesser-known or used campaign styles, so let’s take a quick look at them.

LSSCs are campaigns that, by design, are going to be run in a very limited geographic area. The one I run is about twenty by thirty miles in size in a location called the Valley of Aesri.

HBCs are campaigns that have some sort of central location at the heart of the campaign, almost like a meta-character. The campaign I mentioned above is also, at the moment, an HBC based around an abandoned and dilapidated manor estate whose owner perished in a battle between his loyal staff and those who wanted his money.

Campaigns run in either of these styles are not necessarily permanent, as it’s totally possible for a campaign in its normal evolution to change into one or both of these type, or to start out as one and morph into something else.

LSSCs lend themselves to increased immersion simply because the campaign is spending so much time in a small locale, so that almost anything the GM creates has the potential to be re-used any number of times. When this happens, the additional content begins to layer upon itself adding detail and depth to the setting, regardless if it’s one of your creation or if you’re enhancing one you purchased.

HBCs often are, but are not exclusively, also LSSCs. This is because the players are usually anchored to the central location to one degree or another. Like a campaign that is just designed to be in a small area, the GM of an HBC will often end up writing additional content for the setting creating better immersion.

Over the coming months, various things to help a GM with each of these types of campaigns will discussed.

Ok, so we talked about the campaign styles but what is Campaign Immersion? A gaming synonym you probably heard of is ‘Suspension of belief’. One on-line dictionary puts immersion thus: involvement, concentration, preoccupation, absorption – “long-term assignments that allowed them total immersion in their subjects”. Some people learn languages in this way, going into a school or even the society, where they only speak and live the language instead of just taking it in a class.

There are some really simple things that you can do to add to immersion to your game and in this blog, we’ll be talking about more than a few of them in the coming months.

All content Copyright 2009-2015 Gary Whitten