The Anthology

This is the story of a set of tabletop RPG campaigns, what I planned to do with them, what actually happened with them and what I learned as a result. If you're reading this you probably are someone I know personally, and that will make a difference as to how you read this. If you don't know me, this might not be as fun to read. You have to know something about tabletop RPGs too.

This particular page is the narrative of my experience - you can skip to the bottom of the page to look at other material that might be helpful. Just click around the site and have fun reading my amorphous, disorganized thoughts!

In 2002, I ambitiously began what I thought of as a Gotham City "anthology" tabletop RPG game campaign The idea was that I would run different tabletop campaigns but each would take place in my own idea of Gotham City, with my own continuity, like the comics. Things that happened in one game would affect the other. I could use the noir but humanistic elements of Gotham City to tell a hundred different stories. I'd been inspired by John Ostrander's Gotham Nights and the many comics and pulp mysteries I'd enjoyed in my youth. I had never been enamored with continuity in actual comics, and it does pose a challenge when adapting comics to tabletop RPGs. But surely continuity would be worthwhile if it could be made my continuity.

In the first campaign, a classic "Year One" game of vigilante crimefighters in Gotham City, the players loved it. I loved it too. Punching the Riddler is always a pleasure. But the follow up games didn't materialize. I chalked this abortive attempt up to just the usual struggle of organizing regular tabletop game groups. To some extent I still do, though as I learned below, other factors might have also contributed. Unfortunately, this meant I didn't have a chance to try my "anthology" idea - bringing continuity between campaigns into the group.

Fifteen years later I tried the anthology game idea again, this time with an organized crime campaign, about a small time gang of neighborhood crooks facing their decline. Again, the game was an absolute phenomenon, beloved by me and my collaborators alike. This time I even was able to, reasonably promptly, bring together a follow-up game, one of undercover police officers trying to bring down a crooked police organization. Finally my dream of the anthology campaign was coming together.

But what the players in common between the crooks game and the cops game remembered from the crooks game wasn't the "continuity" I had tried to establish at all. Instead, they remembered details and ideas that they had brought to the table, not me! They even remembered some stuff that "hadn't happened", but which had been their speculation, discussion or propositions that had never been fully incorporated into the campaign. I was the only participant that cared about the events I wanted to bring into the next game - so when those connections showed up I was the only one that got excited, or even truly remembered them. I wasn't disappointed, exactly, but it wasn't what I had imagined it would be, and I didn't know what was going on.

I thought of a lot of very unsatisfactory answers, but I couldn't figure out how to beat this problem, until I realized, this wasn't a problem.

Instead, I had discovered an element of the collaboration at the core of the tabletop RPG hobby that I'd never truly identified despite playing for many years. In fact, this collaboration is one of the elements that makes the hobby such a great folk art form. The GM's control over "continuity" is much lighter than I had previously known.

Players are, truly, collaborators, and like all great collaborators, they bring their own loves and priorities to the project. GMs may see themselves as great creative directors, but what a player carries away from a project is based on their own priorities and ideas. That's what stands out to the players, just like my own "continuity" ideas had stood out to me and been highlighted in my mind.

It wasn't until the pandemic that I figured out the way to address this - to make the anthology work - was to more deeply involve the player in continuity, direction and the events of the game.

I decided the best way to do this was by combining two things: one I had resisted for a long time and one I had never tried. First, I recorded the sessions. And second, I played one-on-one, collaborating with just one single player.

By playing individually, I and the one player could, together, shine the spotlight on exactly what they wanted, give them exactly what they hoped for, considered or suggested. Their contribution would become equal to mine, we would work more in tandem. We would both be more invested in the continuity we created.

Then, I could share the recording to other players, and their investment in the continuity would be enhanced because they could listen to it like a podcast or a stream, engaging with the other players contributions as fans, rather than collaborators. Then the players would bring that fan energy into their own collaboration. I navigate a path with them together and given them exactly what they want. And more and more players join in as we go.

This site is my central clearing house to explain the campaign anthology specifically, to help people who want to arrange an anthology campaign of their own, and to give some idea of the ups and downs and thoughts I've had on the campaign.

• List of Games in the campaign anthology.

• My inspiration and John Ostrander's work on Gotham Nights.

• Supplements, game aids and other stuff I used in this series

• Possible new duet campaigns now that I know what I'm doing! (Or maybe one that you will try...)