Generating a campaign

[RyanW]

A thought I had to help integrate the PCs into a campaign setting, somewhat inspired by (read: blatantly stolen and slightly modified from) the Fate Core phase trio.

The GM presents, or the group works together to create, the basics of the setting and the planned campaign (say, a group of investigators trying to protect society and the supernatural underworld from one another). Then, they generate a few interesting elements to include in the campaign (elements could be individuals, organizations, locations, past or ongoing events, or circumstances, any of which might help or complicate the mission). Write those elements down.

Each player, in turn, gives their character a name and a central concept (former small time cop that saw one too many weird things to keep brushing it off as coincidence).

Now comes the meat: Go around the table three times (maybe shuffling the order, or reversing order after each time around). On each of these turns, the player will do one of the following:

• Describe a connection between their character and a previously described element.
• Describe a new element, adding it to the list, and explain how their character is connected to it.
• Describe a connection between their character and the character of another player that doesn't yet have a connection to them (with that player's permission).

By the end, every character will have at least 3 and likely 4 or more connections (given that other players may have made connections TO them). Every character should aim to have at least one connection that is generally positive (likely to assist the character) and one negative (likely to cause stress or complicate the mission). They should also be connected with at least one other PC, either directly or by both having similar connections to the same element.

Only then do you start filling out character sheets.

[Varyon]

Alright, for some reason my brain kept reading the first sentence as "I thought I had to..." rather than "A thought I had to..."

But now that it's working again and can thus make sense of the post, this seems like a really good idea. I've always felt the GM should be willing to use players' character concepts to expand their world, and this seems like a more formal way to do that.

[Anaraxes]

I usually enjoy it more when the characters have a stake in the world and develop some relationship to each other. Normally we manage that informally, mostly player<->GM.

The big disadvantage to securely anchored characters comes when the player gets bored of them or the character gets killed. When the PCs and their relationships are tightly woven into the story, it becomes hard to replace them. Not an insurmountable obstacle, but another thing to plan for if it's a life-is-cheap game or the highly simulationist sort of game where the dice rule.

[Bogie1494]

This sounds like a streamlined version of something I only discovered a couple years ago. There is a game called The Quiet Year that uses a similar process and a deck of cards to build a post-apocalyptic community of survivors over the course of 52 weeks. A podcast I listened to and now a few of my DM friends have adapted it and used it as a joint world building activity prior to an actual campaign. As Anaraxes said, it helps give players more of a stake in the world.

[Cpt_Clyde]

I like this idea and could see it getting very interesting building a space/sci-f setting with a group of creative players. If I ever get a group of more than 2 players I will be stealing this. Thanks for sharing.
Yoink.