Improvising a Campaign: Part I

In my recent review of Swords of the Serpentine, I mentioned that I like to use it for improvised roleplaying campaigns. I got a lot of questions about how I handle an improvised campaign, and I'm delighted to share because I think my improvised RPG campaigns have been mostly awesome—at least since I stopped thinking that improv means throwing the craziest, most surprising things at the players and figuring out how it all makes sense later (spoiler: you never really do).

This post has two parts: the first is a long-winded story about an improvised Vampire: The Masquerade campaign I ran in the '90s. The second part is a tl;dr with a bullet list of the ideas on improvisation that I’ve learned over the years (which the story in the first part attempts to illustrate).

My 90s Vampire campaign

Back in the '90s, when I used to run Vampire: The Masquerade at university, I approached improvisation without any fears. We played between midnight and 4 a.m. on Wednesdays at the university’s games club, often by candlelight. 

At the start of the campaign, I gave the players a pretty vague campaign premise: "You are vampires new to Paris, and in the first session, you'll present yourselves to the Prince." That was it. The players came up with great backstories. One player for instance was a preacher with True Faith who went insane after witnessing demonic vampires murder a woman. He was turned into a vampire by an insane vampire (a Malkavian) called The Jester, who gave him the mission to “defeat” the demonic vampires he had seen.  

I skimmed these backgrounds and formed a loose idea for a start of the story —a satanic bloodline of vampires (called Baali) would ambush the player characters as they approached Elysium (the Prince’s court, in this case, at the Louvre) at the start of the first session.

Now, the truth is, beyond the stats for the attacking vampires, I had no definite idea of why they were doing this. 

Inspired by the plot of some Doctor Strange comic I had just read, I decided in the second session that the Baali were working for an ancient Tremere vampire based on the historical figure of Count Saint Germain, who wanted to "disrupt the time continuum." I didn't know why he wanted to do that, or why the Baali were working for him, but "disrupt the time continuum" sounded really cool, and I figured I’d sort it out later.

So, we had a few sessions where the players fought this Baali sect. Only the preacher’s sire, The Jester (a Joker ripoff, but not so evil), believed them about the attacks. The Prince of Paris, paranoid as he was, thought it was the Anarchs trying to destabilise the city, and didn’t believe in the presence of Baali in Paris (or at least that was my excuse for the Prince not to send his own guys to figure out what was happening).

Meanwhile, another player character was Charlotte, a vampire living in Spain who came to Paris after sensing that her Blood Bond to her lover, Alejandro de la Vega (yes, she liked Zorro), was broken, indicating he was likely dead [The Blood Bound occurs when a vampire drinks three times from another vampire, which makes the drinker feel extreme loyalty and love towards the other vampire. In this case, they had mutual Blood Bounds]. She arrived in Paris to find out what happened to him.

I didn’t think twice about her subplot. I figured I’d do something cool with it eventually. But the funny part was, while the player pictured Alejandro like this:

I, the GM, pictured him as this:

(Yes, that is Vega from Street Fighter, and this will matter)

Eventually I decided that Charlotte, looking for her beloved, needed a breakthrough. I remembered my version of Vega—cage fighter, mask, claws—and suddenly, there it was: the party stumbled upon an underground vampire cage-fighting ring, run by a Setite vamp (those vampires who love to corrupt others). As they enter the crowded room, they see one of the contenders, masked, slash at his opponent with a steel claw. As he wins, he takes off the mask to reveal that he is Alejandro! He looks lost and confused, but it is him.

Clearly he has been enslaved, and our heroes spent the next game session rescuing him from the cage fighting ring and its evil owner.

In true soap opera fashion, when they rescued him, Alejandro didn't remember Charlotte or responded to their Blood Bond. But after some amorous blood-sharing and coffin-sharing, everything seemed fine—until my 2 a.m. brain had a stroke of genius. What if this wasn’t her beloved at all? What if he was... an evil twin? Enter Ramon de la Vega. The name just popped into my head. I always associated "Ramon" with being a bad guy, so sorry to all the nice Ramons out there.

So as Charlotte drinks his blood for the third time, an evil smile appears in his face, and Ramon reveals who he is (a Setite vampire) and that she is now his slave through the Blood Bond!!

Of course, I had no real plan for Ramon or Alejandro’s backstory, but I ran with it. Over the next few sessions, Charlotte had to deal with the fact that she was in love with an impostor who probably killed her beloved, and who now had the power of a Blood Bond over her.

Nonetheless, Ramon and his claw helped the party in their desperate fight against the Baali, and through the process his character softened a bit. I still had no idea why he was there or what happened to Alejandro (something-something revenge?), but it was fun, and I didn’t stress about what would happen next session.

As the sessions went on, the Baali kidnappings of vampires continued, with sacrifices happening in Parisian churches (because that sounded cool to me). Eventually, a player suggested looking at a map of Paris to spot a pattern. And bingo! I nudged the body locations just enough to form a pentagram, centred on Notre Dame, where the final ritual would take place. I may have fudged the geography a bit, but thankfully Paris has enough churches to make it work, and the player felt very smart for "figuring it out."

Eventually, the party failed to stop Count Saint Germain’s ritual in a battle royale at the Notre-Dame. And remember, I didn’t really know what the ritual was supposed to do, but I there on the spot decided it involved remaking the world to keep everyone stuck in the Middle Ages. Why? Well, because I thought it would be interesting to see the player characters react to completely different circumstances and surroundings. 

Suddenly, the vampires found themselves in mediaeval Paris as part of a wandering circus troupe. It was a twist, and it gave me the chance to explore how the players would react to losing their vampiric powers. Would our love-struck Charlotte still love Ramon now that the Blood Bond wasn’t forcing her? Turns out, yes, she did, and it was a fun character moment.

But then I realised the mediaeval setting had no real direction, so I started introducing surreal elements—a la Philip K. Dick's Ubik, which I was reading at the time—with flickering skies, talking trees, and flying mushrooms. Eventually, the world unravelled, and they snapped back to modern-day Paris, none the wiser.

To stabilise the story, I immediately ran starting next session a pre-designed adventure from a French RPG magazine (Casus Belli), which gave me some breathing room to reset the game. And the campaign went on, and on for years...

So, why, dear would-be campaign improviser, am I telling you all this?

Is it an example of what not to do?

Or a shining example of how to do it right?

Well, if you answered "none of the above," you're correct.

I did a lot wrong. I should’ve had a clearer idea of the factions’ goals—Saint Germain, the Baali, the Prince of Paris, Ramon. Instead, I just kept introducing "cool" things—throwing in mysteries and challenges without a plan. When you don’t know how to tie things together, you end up kicking the can down the road, constantly adding new mysteries to distract from the unresolved ones.

My players stayed engaged, sure. They’d spend hours theorising about the plot, trying to connect all the dots. But eventually, I started feeling like a charlatan. And you can only do this for so long before the players start to catch on. And while it is true that it can take a long time to catch on, if it happens, it sucks.

Remember The X-Files? Those conspiracy episodes would throw you for a loop, leaving you with more questions than answers, until eventually, you started to suspect the show runners didn’t know themselves what the endgame was either. 

Lost took this to an extreme—piling on mystery after mystery, until it became clear the writers were just making it up as they went along. They even resorted to the "time travel" trick (which I used in my vampire campaign!) and the classic "this is purgatory or heaven or hell" cop-out (the twin brother of the "it was all a dream" move). I remember recognizing it early, because it started to feel like my Vampire campaign.

The thing is, you can get away with it for a while if you keep things exciting. But eventually, the magic wears off, and your players might start wondering why they invested so much time and emotion into what turns out to be a surreal, nonsensical mess. They may become bitter and even forget how much they enjoyed it for so much time. It is in fact how I feel about the X-Files and Lost.

On the flip side, I must’ve done a lot right, too. Otherwise, my players wouldn’t have been so dedicated, staying up until 4 a.m. once a week and discussing the game for days afterward.

So, what did I do well?

For one, I created exciting situations, unexpected twists, things that made the players think WTH?

Moreover, I knew the Vampire: The Masquerade system inside-out, so I could improvise conflicts and vampire stats on the fly, keeping things moving without breaking flow. 

I also knew Paris well and had a detailed map of the city, tracking which vampires controlled which territories. 

And cheesy as the Alejandro/Ramon twist was, RPGs often thrive on those operatic, expressionist plotlines that players love being at the centre of. In fact, RPGs should be more like opera than realist fiction, and that is a good principle to play by. 

But more important than anything, the players felt their characters were at the centre of the story, and that their decisions heavily affected the narrative. And I listened to their discussions and tried to move things in the direction of what they wanted to see and experience. Not having anything pre-plotted ensured that I never felt the need to railroad them or push them in a specific direction.

In future posts, I’ll dive into two other improvised campaigns I ran—one for Swords of the Serpentine and another for Call of Cthulhu. But to wrap up this post, I’ll leave you with a tentative list of tips for running an improvised campaign, which I’ll revisit after the next post on this topic (yes, this list is work in progress).

TL;DR: Tips for Improvised Campaigns

• Create some NPCs and factions before the game starts. Check the character backgrounds and find potential allies, friends, rivals, and enemies for them. Give these NPCs and factions clear agendas that can connect with the characters’ stories. Don’t overthink it, but make a list of who wants what and how it ties into the players' backgrounds.

• Keep sessions short—around 2.5 to 3 hours. This gives you room to improvise without getting too deep into something that might not fit the overall plot. It also gives you time between sessions to smooth out any inconsistencies that pop up.

• Give the players plenty of agency. Let them take the lead on what they want their characters to do. And listen carefully to their plans and theories, as they might come up with better ideas or solutions than you’ve considered. It’s totally fine to incorporate their suggestions. And some times they point out and even figure out solutions for the inconsistencies your improvisation created.

• Use a system that supports fast improvisation. You won’t have time to pre-generate stats for every NPC, so choose a system that lets you quickly whip up stats on the fly. Being comfortable with the system is key to smooth improvisation, but some systems are naturally easier to work with. Remember however that in the end the most important thing is that you feel comfortable with the system. If you know AD&D v2 as the palm of your hand you will probably use it better than a simpler, more sophisticated set of rules or the latest “narrative”, player-facing system.

• Have a map ready. Whether it’s a real-world location or a fantasy setting, maps are your friend. For modern scenarios, Google Maps is often enough. Using a map helps anchor the action and reduces the mental load of keeping track of locations.

• A name generator is your best friend. It helps avoid repetitive NPC creation. If you want to go a step further, use a random background or physical description generator too. Or just think of an actor or character from another story and use them as a model for your NPC—just try not to reuse the same actor twice in the same campaign!

• Don’t worry too much about always giving the players something to do. Players often come up with their own goals. But if they get stuck or the session drags, don’t hesitate to drop in some danger. Always keep in the pocket a rival or a villain who can justify a sudden burst of action.

• Look for opportunities to introduce a surprising, shocking, or thrilling event. Don’t overdo it—once every couple of sessions is enough—and try to time it near the end of a session to give you time to figure out how it fits into the plot. A good cliffhanger works wonders! Often, these moments can arise from faction agendas; you just need to nudge things a little. Don’t be afraid to make things up, but be mindful of not creating too many loose ends.

• Challenge the characters' emotions and values. Pay attention to what the players say about their characters and their backgrounds. Look for emotional strings you can pull to keep the story lively and engaging.

• Keep prep time short. On average, you shouldn’t spend more than half an hour prepping for each session. I rarely spend more than ten minutes, unless I really need to connect some serious loose ends from the last session.
• If everything else fails, you can actually retcon: just talk with the players and tell them you screwed up. If you do this, try to make it as short and simple as you can. Convoluted retcons can only make things even worse.

Please let me know what you think.

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