The importance of an over all goal/climax to a campaign?...

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by DwarvenHeart

Also, it seems that over time and end game climax might present itself through game play much the same way I hope to see my player's enjoy the newly gained strengths and weaknesses (adv/dis) through playing.

Let me give you a bit of history. In my campaign Manse, I did something really experimental: I had each player make up an aristocratic lineage with magical gifts and elaborate traditions, including drawing up a family tree, and then make up two characters of lineage, an adult and a kid, plus a soldier and a servant. Then I wove everything together into a unified setting.

Well, some of the players gave me unresolved business for their lineages: One had unaccountably lost some of the details of the magical ritual that helped preserve the integrity of the realm, and so the magical defenses were failing; one had a child whose father was unknown; one had a teenage girl who was in love with her mother's lover, a Hero of his house. And that provided most of the long-term storylines for the first two years of play. After than I brought in other material: A visit from a wandering carnival of magical folk with strange powers, and a series of attacks from an undead sorceror lurking in the caverns under the castle. But both of those partly grew out of the earlier material, in different ways.

If your players are creative with their characters, you can find inspiration for story on their character sheets. In GURPS, look at their Patrons, their Enemies, their Dependents, their Secrets, and so on. Have all of those show up to make demands or compel action.

Bill Stoddard