Hey guys! It’s the GM talking and well, I need some help
I’ve been working on my campaign for a long time now and I got something I’m really proud of. My campaign is called Recognition and it has 7 arks (each ark being called something starting with “Re” because why the hell not). The party playing is also amazing and I’m so excited to get started!…. only issue is that I have the narrative down to the bone, but I haven’t thought at all about the actual game system and mechanics.
I love writing/storytelling and really, if I have the right to, I would call myself a novelist (words from other people who’ve called me that). If I get asked about Recognition, I would put everything in my life aside to sit down and ramble about it in a heartbeat. I love it that much, and all the possibilities and different stories within Galestine (the city Recognition takes place in) are so unique, I’m sure anyone can find a place in this story, and quite honestly, I could talk for hours about this campaign. But with so much lore, I have to find a way to implement the dice rolls, the intimacy and corruption moves, fights, decisions that my party makes and how I react to them, etc.
Basically, I have no idea what I’m doing
And this is the first game I’m ever DMing and I haven’t had the chance to play tabletop games all too often (because life has its way of draining all free time off my hands along with my energy once I DO have free time) so I have no idea what it’s going to be like. I also have the tendency to think that everything that I make has to be PERFECT. It’s a double edge sword I’ve wielded all my life. It makes me think down to the nitty-gritty details of my creations but it stops me from actually showing anything off because “It’s not perfect enough.” (If anything I’m going to probably show this to my friend and ask him if this is good enough to post)
But I’m not here to talk about my life’s biggest issues, I’m here to talk about my campaign! I need help figuring out how to incorporate all the fights and to know what to do during each “encounter” per say…
But I guess for context, the biggest villains of Recognition are the demons. (Not the tainted, for clarification. I mean straight up demons who are patrons in Galestine.) There will be many instances where demons will be a huge influence in the story, more specifically the fights and challenges that the party, (who go by “The Lobos”,) will face. For example, a fight that the Lobos have very early on in the game is a fight with an NPC who is a tainted hunter but is, plot twist, actually a tainted. (He is yet to have a name so we call him THT.) THT was just a goof that the party made, but eventually became the first fight in Recognition.
My idea is that he’s there at the start and he’s kinda what makes The Lobos realize that they work well together (or not; who knows) and he’s what starts this whole adventure, but instead of being killed, THT when (IF) defeated will end up really messed up and run away. He comes back near the end of the first ark, but he comes back as half-demon-half-human. His last encounter with The Lobos left him inbetween forms, so hypothetically, after a while of recovery, he’s gotten stronger and he’s harder to defeat.
I’ve gotten support on the idea, now what I need is to know how this is going to play out. I need to understand how do I make this happen without mucking it up.
Please, if I could get help, any at all, that would be amazing. Sorry for such a long post, but like I said, I could talk for hours about this. Thank you so much to anyone who helps me out!
-Brave
Sorry to bring it to you, but for playing Urban Shadows, GMs are not required to write campaigns and arc. Game is played with an approach “play to find out”, game is driven by players, what they want for their characters and results of the rolls (if you are going for more railroad experience the system will fight you hard).
As GM you have your threats and storms moving in the world, but those should be created from what players around the table find interesting.
You could easily take what you have and play it with more traditional system, maybe World of Darkness, system with more traditional GM style.
Other than that read the rulebook, it is excellently written, and “play to find out”.
World of Darkness might work for you. Have you considered trying to run your game Play by Post? Myth-weavers.com
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Hi Breeba, Bich! Theres a lot to unpack here but, first things first, Pawel Solowczuk is right. The whole point of US is play to find out, if you are struggling to find place for the dice, it sounds like you are coming at it from a direction that is not suited by this system.
But something in your approach kind of tells me its not really suited for tabletop roleplaying at all – it sounds like you’d rather want to write a novel.
Another thing, you have already decided what twists and turns the story is supposed to take. Why would the players play if the story is already set? What would drive them forwards if the arcs are decided?
If I where you, I’d frankly throw it all out and sit down with the players and have them make a group of characters who’d have reasons to help each other out and then build from there. Are they a police officer, her assistant and the ghost of the victim that he sees? Are they a tainted and a wizard who are struggling to remain friends in the cold war between two important factions?
After that, I’d pick up the stuff you made previously, see what parts fit with what you created together and use the rest to write that novel!