Post date: Sep 28, 2009 8:44:1 PM
So now with two campaigns planned it is time to get down to brass tacks for this campaign.
Set in a time just before Fallout 1 really gets started. This campaign takes place in the region south of Salt Lake City, which has many interesting features from a campaign design perspective. So like in my other campaign the first thing I did was choose the map, then blow it all to hell. Decide what survived, then populated it with interesting places. Then decided why the players would need to leave the vault. Then flesh out more areas to enable that campaign to work.
Since this campaign is limited to exactly 6 session I really needed to plot out what each session was going to be doing and determine if there was enough time to do it all. As I get more and more combat experience with the other group I have grown to learn how long it takes to run a combat situation. So I have been manipulating the adventure to do so, moving items that were must do items to possible side quests. By also having a fairly fixed path, i was able to map out most of the places the PCs could choose to go. Of course they could just go in any direction they wanted so thats where improv comes in.
One of the challenges with this campaign is the limitation of 6 sessions, it makes you want railroad the players down a path, so how to do you give the illusion of freedom in such a situation? So I pondered and I realized the ultimate choices must be left up to them. Do they do what the adventure asks or do they go off on their own, so I decided to repeat on a smaller scale of what I did for the other campaign, to provide opportunities of side adventures and if they choose to do them, so be it. At the end of session 6 when the campaign MUST end, if they did not complete the main quest, so be it. I will monologue what happens and leave it at that. Even if they stick to the main quest, they must be given an opportunity to change their world and the players must make the choice and not the story. So in this campaign, around session 4 or 5, they get to make a choice that will decide the fate of their home. So while the lead up to that may be railroad in nature, I still feel that they will have plenty of player control over the story.
So while we were supposed to start in September, real life intervened causing 2 players to go MIA and 1 to say he was going to show up 2 hours late. I decided to cancel the first session, but come hell or high radiation in October we will start, with one or all the players, we will start.