Instant Gratification: Starting the Game

Campaign starts can be difficult. Players are looking for a quick start to get involved with the characters and be transported into the magical new setting. Game masters are trying to get the players involved in the storyline as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the vision of the ideal party by the GM and what the characters bring to the table after character generation can be quite disparate.

Time for the GM to step up and in the words of Greywulf “Have fun and make shit up”. The original vision of a campaign rarely gets played due to the randomness of the character concept. GM’s are stuck with a collective of individual ideas and need to find a mechanism to transform them into a cohesive party and get the play under way.

If the campaign is going to be running for weeks or months, slow starts are easy to overcome. If the game is a one shot session or in a small time window, the game needs to start with a fury. Instant gratification for the players and the GM. Getting a single character engaged at the outset is hard enough but to get the entire group involved instantly seems intractable.

Instant starts are possible but all the players must be interested in the setting and the plot. The GM needs to start the game prior to character generation. The essence of the game has to be explained or be something immediately obvious so the players have a focus during character generation. Most importantly, the players need to generate characters with significant depth and history.

The goals, motivations, and history of the characters provide the necessary hooks for the GM to transform his initial creation into what the player’s want to play. More importantly, character backgrounds provide the GM with the information to exploit psychological triggers.

Triggers are the tripping points in a background to put a character into action. Force the character to react to a situation based on raw emotion, not cognition. Reverse the rule of think before you act. Put them in a situation that invokes an emotional response. To do so, you’ll likely need to know the players well. Great players with good backgrounds will respond even when it isn’t a significant event for the player but is for the character. If you know the players well, you can assume a trigger for the player will spill over into the character more often than not.

The easiest of the emotions to trigger are rage and anger. Violate a character’s sense of love and loyalty. They will respond. Any transgression against a character’s family will be met with a response. Appointed by their local kingdom to overcome something? Kill the king or invade the country. Find and identify the element in a character’s background you can exploit. If the character doesn’t have them, fall back on the player’s motivations.

A singular gut-check, raw, driven response by one character is usually sufficient to get everyone on board. If it isn’t, change it up. Encompass the entire group if you can.

Quick starts are accomplished by the players knowing what the GM has in mind. Then the GM being a prick. He’s not evil, he’s just poking buttons to get you engaged. May an orc eat me if I ever hear “you meet in a tavern” ever again.

Tags: Game Mastering, Ramblings of Mark