Running a campaign for the second time
I’m doing something fairly new right now. Typically, we run 100% home-brewed campaigns and one-offs. We tell our story, then the game ends and we dive into a new campaign with new characters. We’ll go back to a familiar world to play a new game, but always with fresh characters and stories.
I’m used to just having one gaming group, running through story after story. This year, though, I suddenly found myself with not one, but four groups! That’s a hell of a lot of games to keep straight in my head, and to give myself a break, I picked up a game that I once ran for my core group — the one that I created and ran in From Dream to Dice.
In the book, I noted things I did wrong and things that I wished I had done differently — and now I have this new opportunity! I can take all those notes, and as I prepare for this new incarnation, I finally get to incorporate them. It’s a little different than the changes I made for Vampire. That was originally Erica’s campaign, so I did a fairly major remodel on the story, inventing new NPCs and changing a lot of dynamics — and that’s even before we brought a whole new batch of players in.
This Tydalus game, on the other hand, is one that I ran myself. So it’s a lot bigger a dose of déjà vu.
In some ways, I’m looking for places to change my own story, just so that I’m not running the same exact thing as before. I know that my players will be different, and they will all bring new characters who will have new stories and reactions than Safi, Kaikoa, Zoja, and Gavril did.
But I want to add my own changes. For one thing, we ran the original Tydalus in BESM, while this incarnation will use our new Snake Eyes game engine.
In addition to the system tweaks, I’m brainstorming on new scenes. When I ran the first version, we had a short timetable. I wanted a book that would fit in someone’s pocket, not a full-length novel. But this time, the game is just for fun, so I can take my time and maybe explore the warrior-city of Vanhome, or perhaps madness will strike one of the crew of the Iron Eel and become a new threat.
Whatever I decide, I’m looking forward to building on my first run of Tydalus and making something brand-new and exciting out of it this time around.
