Campaign Crucible

Campaign Crucible is a method of collaboratively brainstorming a fantasy world, ostensibly for an RPG campaign. Each participant brings a single word or phrase, which they come up with completely independently and in secret. The Crucible is a collaborative discussion where these Ingredients are combined into a single cohesive setting.

The Campaign Crucible can be a "session zero" of an RPG campaign, or may be simply a fun game in itself.

Good Ingredients

A good Ingredient for the Crucible should be simple, clear, and one "thing". It should not be overly broad, nor too wordy. The word or phrase can be ambiguous itself, but the player who brought the Ingredient should be prompted to clarify what meaning they intended.

Examples of good ingredients:

• hats, bugs - simple noun, great! (generally will be plural)
• magnetism, glowing, telekinesis - doesn't have to be a noun. If people generally agree that "X is a thing", it's probably good
• hobbits, police, astronauts, martians, Imperials, Australians - most any people group is good
• space, New York, bathrooms, skyscrapers, shopping malls - places (and types of places) are good

On the other side, a bad Ingredient is one that is difficult to think about, or to combine with most other Ingredients. While you could probably make anything work as an Ingredient if you try hard enough, some types of Ingredients will not be as fun, or will likely result in ideas that are lame.

Examples of bad ingredients:

• "ominous" - this is not a "thing". It could be a Theme, but not an Ingredient. Most anything that could be a Theme is not an Ingredient. Better ingredients: "doom clouds", "timers", "ravens", "bad news"
• "red" - this is also not a "thing". Better ingredients: "red moon", "turning red", "Red Robin", "red riding hood"
• "Paul Revere" - Specific people should mostly be avoided. This could be an ingredient, but it would be a very difficult one. Better ingredients: "riders", "colonial America", "revolutionary war"
• "Star Wars" - this is a whole world of its own; any pre-existing world setting is way too specific to be an Ingredient; that's more like a buffet! Better ingredients: "the force", "space ships", "weird alien species"

Process

One person (probably you, since you are reading this) should be the "host", to direct questions, and encourage participation.

1. Ask each participant in turn for their Ingredient (see "Good Ingredients" above).
• Always echo back what the Ingredient is, to make sure it is clear. For example, if you hear them just say "chests", you say "Ok, chests, containers for pirate gold or the humble pajamas alike." This gives them the chance to say "No, I said Chess"; whereupon you say "Ah, the game of Chess". Now everyone is on the same page.
• Interpretations - give some time for all players to try contributing some different points of view on each individual ingredient.
2. Combinations - start brainstorming how multiple elements might be combined together.
• For example, combining "mugshot" with "penguins" could be that Emperor Penguins now live among us and commit crimes; or maybe a computer virus infected the police departments computers, and transformed all the people in their photos into penguin-equivalents of the humans; or maybe all of this world's society is just penguins, and the players for this game were all falsely arrested for a crime.
• Some Ingredients will be much easier to combine, feel free to combine any ingredient to any other ingredient, until you find a way to link them all together.
3. Themes - discuss what the Themes of this game could be; like "mystery", "good vs evil", "survival", "social injustice", "militarism", "prosperity", "invention".
4. Locations - try to identify some places where interesting things will happen
5. Organizations - what are the important groups of people in this world? Most organizations should be specific to this world, and may not have any reasonable counterpart in ours.
• If you get really stuck, a fall-back that probably applies to most things you can imagine is some type of law or rules enforcement system, but try not to use this a lot, especially if you play the Campaign Crucible multiple times.
6. Player Missions - what activities would the players spend their time on during a game session?
7. Player Archetypes - what are some important roles for the PCs to have in this world?
8. Game system - what rules would best fit the activities and tone of these Missions and Archetypes?
9. Name - finally, come up with a fun name for the game world as a whole.

It is ok if some steps overlap; especially Step 2 through Step 5, which are all general "world building".

Credit

The "Campaign Crucible" was a format created by the NPC Cast podcast; see

https://npccast.wordpress.com/tag/campaign-crucible/

To my knowledge, this never resulted in an actual campaign for the "NPCs" involved.

Constraints - Time and Rules

I am starting an RPG campaign with a specific set of constraints, as a fun experiment. I will try to blog here about how it goes!

Time Constraint

The first constraint is that each gaming session will be a fixed, relatively short period of time, once per week.

As adults with responsibilities, it has been extremely difficult for my gaming friends to find any regular time during which to meet on any regular basis. Additionally, when we do game, sessions often run until after midnight. This in turn discourages more frequent game sessions -- if you can only find time to game on days when you can stay up until midnight, there are a lot less days available.

Also, with a limited time allotment, my hope is that the energy and enthusiasm will be increased. When you only have a little time to play this week, you have to make each minute count. I have been in many game sessions where much time was spent a on bookkeeping, pointless encounters, and indecision. I love hanging out with friends -- but if we are not going to play the game, I would rather be in a different place, not sitting around a table with funny dice and a character sheet.

We are starting with a 90 minute session, each Sunday evening. After 90 minutes, wherever we are at is where we stop until the next week. I plan to be available 15 minutes before and after the official game, but no in-game actions will take place outside of the 90 minutes.

Rules Constraint

All aspects of the game, including most rules, will be decided ad hoc during game sessions by the players. As Game Master, I will have general veto power over any attempts to make rules that are out of line with the world, or unfair to other players.

I expect to have some basis for rules -- use the core mechanics of an existing RPG system. But there should not ever be any "consulting the rule book", no tables of damage, etc.

This could be called a "rules constraint", a "player defined" constraint, or maybe "Extreme Rules Light", but I believe it is close to what I have heard called "hippy gaming" or "pass the story-stick".

My hope in this constraint is really "player engagement", that ugly buzz-word for enthusiastic participation. I want every minute of the game to be fun, to as many players as possible.

One major part of this is that the world creation will be player-defined, with a Campaign Crucible as our Session 0

Success

Every experiment needs conditions by which to measure success (or failure). In this campaign, success of this will be measured by:

• regular attendance of all players - at least 80% from every player, at least 90% average
• punctuality - all players logging on before start time
• increased energy and enthusiasm - I hope to see players trying to top each other, and come up with plans between sessions that they try to enact in the game
• inventive gameplay - seeing players come up with actions and solutions that do not fit into standard RPG rule sets