Uncreeping the Scope (Patreon)

I've been slowly chugging at the Campaign Module. However, I realized it was being harder than expected, and that was early while I was still writing the simpler Episodes. Worse, a part of me kept saying it needed to be longer and have more Episodes, for pacing reasons, you see. 

The project was both growing out of control and lacking in certain areas, which is a terrible contradiction to have. This situation made me step back and reconsider all the component pieces of the Campaign Module, and see how well they adjust to the project's needs.

The needs of the Campaign Module are, in order of importance:

1) Give new groups a direction in which the game can go so they can use it as-is or look at it as an example and make their own.

2) Showcase the Campaign Setting and explore some of the aspects the core book leaves more open-ended.

3) Be easy to use and customize.

4) Provide a good story hitting all the major notes of what mecha fiction is good at.

5) Incorporate a variety of campaign styles to showcase what the game does well.

And the Campaign as it was at the moment (tentative name Gemini Rising, due to its focus on the Gemini System mentioned last post) did all 5 of those things... But in a vastly different order. It was more like 1->4->2->5->3.

Everything was on a rail and moved at a very fast pace, as the PCs are aboard a ship hurrying to deal with the current problem of each Episode Arc, and each Arc ends introducing a new problem that raises the stakes.

This might've worked with a standard story. The kind that does not win points for originality or ambition for the sake of simplicity and fun. The kind of thing any GM can run and any writer can, well, write.

But I'm not any writer. I'm an auteur-wannabe, and I like challenging myself, so instead of a simple and fun story, I wrote a plot dealing with themes like: Parental abuse, suicidal ideation, coping with grief and loss, gaslighting, betrayal, paranoia, unwanted sexual advances from an oversexed himbo, euthanizing your loved ones after they were brainwashed and fused to horrible death machines, and, also, the potential genocide of the entire human species based on whether you deal with all this shit in a way that inspires confidence or empathy from an alien intelligence or not.

Oh and, I forgot to mention, every NPC is some kind of pariah, outcast or fringe belief weirdo that doesn't fit in polite society, in a way that is intended to be both funny and sad at the same time. It's an elaborate commentary on how war is bad because it makes even well-meaning systems break down which in turn makes the people living in them break down as well, you see.

So, what that all in mind, I think you can see why my initial plot outline of 6 Episodes (which, I believe, is what I announced way back) to 7 Episodes, then to 9, then to 10 and finally I was on the verge of considering making it go all the way up to 12 to try and give all these items the time they needed to breathe, and also give most of the recurring NPCs in them some kind of meaningful arc.

Frankly, the pacing might still feel too fast for some people's tastes even after all that. But even I was capable of recognizing that going beyond that would be a straight up nonsense idea.

So, was Gemini Rising easy to run? Not remotely. It required GMs to juggle many components and adhere to a fairly strict plan. Additionally, that it also needed a skilled balancing of serious subject matter with fun action.

Compounding on that issue, it was also too long for an introductory Campaign Module. Twelve Episodes is a big ask for most groups considering campaigns usually die by the third session.

Finally, it was not customizable. Like, at all. I had interwoven all the various NPCs and episodic plotlines so deeply with each other in an attempt to make the story work that I forgot about the part where groups are supposed to come up with their own NPCs and plotlines.

Perfection is the enemy of good, goes the saying. And while it's true that a delayed game is eventually good and a rushed game is bad forever, scope creep straight up kills games by making them impossible to complete in the first place. Something needed to change here.

And so back to the drawing board I went. I did not want to be stuck with this project until 2024, so I was hoping to find a solution that didn't involve having to rewrite everything. Most things would get partially rewritten, sure, but not all the things. I definitely wanted to avoid having to come up with entirely new plotlines and character concepts. Ideally, I would keep the biggest winners among the Episodes and NPCs, simplify them a bit, and call it a day.

This took me a few weeks to figure out. Not because it was a super difficult puzzle that my mind couldn't fathom to solve but... Because, to be completely honest, I did actually like my plot and my characters. The hardest part of all this was telling myself that they wouldn't see the light of day. At the same time, when looking between the NPC entries of Gemini Rising and the ones in Monsterpunk Unleashed, I couldn't help but notice that the former are twice as long as the latter. They really were too complex for their own good.

So, having made the decision to kill my darlings, here's what I've settled on:

• Instead of a campaign with a beginning and end, it's going to be an anthology of standalone one-shots.
• The one-shots share locations and characters and have suggestions for chaining them together in a longer narrative.
• All the preplanned story arcs are gone and replaced with optional plot hooks.
• 90% of the sensitive subject matter that potentially made it a minefield to run is gone.
• I'm cutting it all down from 12 Episodes to 6.

The first four items are for a new GM's sake. Being able to pick and choose whatever Episode they want to do next based on what the group wants, or what their characters are good at, is a huge change. That the cast is much more customizable now is also a noticeable bonus.

The fifth item is for my own sake. Standalone Episodes in this system are difficult to write, because it is much more open-ended mechanically and character-focused narratively than most. Six Episodes gives me room to try and weave a coherent throughline with some recurring themes while keeping things varied, but leaving most of the work in connecting the various setpieces and plotlines to individual GMs.

So, to say that I'm a little farther behind than I'd like is an understatement. But at least this happened before I was nearly done and realized I had an unplayable mess in my hands.

Game design, like any iterative task, involves a lot of trial and error. You need to get used to failure, and to think of the many mistakes you'll make along the way as learning experiences.

Gimmick Out.