[Campaign] Getting The Band Back Together

My group of players and I are beginning regular sessions for MIDNIGHT TRAIN TO ARKHAM, my CALL OF CTHULHU campaign. I'm running the game for the remnants of the D&D group I created last year with some additional interested parties that have always wanted to play in RPGs but who have never really had the opportunity to do tabletop roleplay before.

I am always excited by having the newbies at the table. I think this is because so many of them have always wanted to play but because of a weird kind of push-back from people who already play they've never been able to. Because most of them have never actually learned “the way these things are done” you get a much fresher approach to the game and to role playing in general than you have with long-time gamers who've been taught a strange, silent, secret protocol as to how to say what, and to whom to say it to. I find much of this existing protocol stuffy and creatively stultifying, myself. The protocol serves its purpose, to be sure, but I don't think that the purposes it serves would be something that would be necessary in my circle of friends, and quite often it ends up strengthening the kinds of social divisions that the nerdy erect to maintain a kind of false-dignity that are largely unnecessary when you're actually playing with people you know well and aren't afraid of seeming a little foolish in front of.

You allow poop jokes in your HORROR GAMMME!? UNACCEPTABLLLLLLLE!!!

Yes, I'll say it – I do not play RPGs with strangers, nor am I really that interested in doing so. I'm not saying that this is a stance that's not liable to change in future, but, for the time being, this is one that I'm sticking to and I've got my reasons. On the two or three opportunities I've had where I've played RPGs with people that I've never done anything ELSE with, I've found there's been a strange kind of tolerance for interpersonal misbehavior at the table. This misbehavior comes from a particular kind of player who only seems to socialize well in a tabletop environment because their more antisocial aspects of behaviour are tolerated by others who are more interested in playing a game than in whom they play it with.

Now, I don't think that this is something specific to RPGs, at all. I imagine this is something that happens often in tournament play – whether one is playing D&D, chess, or Scrabble or Boggle – but honestly, my tolerance for it is rather low. It assumes that all of the Geek Social Fallacies are things that are not fallacies and frankly, ain't nobody got time for that bullshit. Fortunately, I have friends who share my interests, and this allows me the luxury of not having to do the adult equivalent of having to be nice to the asshole kid with the swimming pool to be able to swim at all. We've all been there, in one way or the other, at various times and various ages and whether or not any ACTUAL swimming was involved at the time. Again - let us all do things the way we want to do them with those whom we want to do them with. Roleplaying  is like throwing a party - why invite someone you'd rather not have there, or, much worse, go somewhere to do something at all if the people involved make you uncomfortable?

Peggy Hill - BOGGLE tournament champion and mother.
She probably disapproves of your role playing, too.

HOW TO START

Finding a venue for play can be tricky – my apartment is too small for any guests, really, but fortunately I live in a city that has a few options available. I managed to book a place that was a converted bank for a 4 hour session on a Saturday. I mention that it was a bank because we were playing in what was the vault there, once upon a time. Extremely private and appropriate for CoC because you can whisper at the table and everyone will still hear it.

I've decided to run a modified version of Keith Herber's "EDGE OF DARKNESS" scenario – one that the people who produced the newest edition of the game decided to retire from print, but one that I've always quite liked. I ran it once 20 years ago with another gaming group I played with and the folks involved let me know they all had a really good time when I did. I'm adapting it for use with the new 7th edition CALL OF CTHULHU rules, and I've considered adding a scene here or there both for local Arkham flavour and to make it a proper introductory scenario for my group.

Introductory scenarios for a campaign have a few things that they have to accomplish:

There are things you have to carry off with an introductory scenario that you don't have to do again once they've been established:

• you have to get the players together story-wise, as a group
• you have to give them opportunities to use the different game systems that are used in the game
• there has to be a clearly set immediate outcome – especially if the people you're playing with have never RPGd before
• you have to plant enough little seeds to get the players to investigate the world as well as the scenario you've dropped them into

I think "EDGE" manages to do this all very well without a lot of unnecessary padding. I'm tweaking the story a little bit so as to allow for the possibility of side trips to Dunwich as well as the possibility of a visit to a mental health facility (I want them to see what can happen When Things Go Very Wrong), and to add a few more layers to the mystery by doing so.

This, in any game, can be sometimes something of a challenge. Add to this the additional challenges of ANY role playing game:

• you have to be entertaining
• you have to give the players the freedom to make their own real decisions
• you have to encourage the players to look at more than what's listed on their character sheets as their options for what can actually be done.
• you have to whet their appetite for more.

My players are very well up to anything – I'm happy to hear that they've been looking forward to things for a while now (more on why next time) so all in all this looks very promising.