Come As You Are [Part 1]
Asking prospective players to "just trust me"
Starting a mini-campaign in the coming weeks, or what I call a “pilot mini-series”. A handful of sessions, heavy on the improvisation, with if not a tight beginning-middle-end, then at least a satisfying one. The ask? Beside the system (GURPS), content advisory (NC-17), and a few short sentences on building a character, here is all my would-be players know.
A non-stop flight from Bangkok to New York City is taking off from New Bangkok International late on September 22, 2023. You are on that flight.
“Just Trust Me”
I have a system for when I recruit for campaigns. I run campaigns online, so my table composition can vary from campaign to campaign. Most of the time, it’s a regular. Other times, it’s somebody who hasn’t played with me in a while or at all. In either case, I prepare a document: this is where the campaign is set, this is the genre, etc. A second document, the safety document, follows on the first document’s heels. My games run dark but even the regulars like to look over the safety document and see if they’ve changed their mind on such or such topic.
This leads into Session Zero. Here, we build our characters, go over the safety document, and perhaps do a few establishing characters scenes. It’s a very familiar cycle for my regulars that establishes expectations and tone before Session One.
But every so often, I scrap tradition and give my players nothing but a few crumbs. I say, “Here is what is happening when the campaign starts. Build your character. Take a leap of faith and trust me.”
Something Gained
Since there won’t be a Session Zero, prospective players (and those who just want to give character creation a shot) spent an evening whipping up characters and sharing their progress. The flight being international widened possible archetypes immensely.
A handful of players decided it’d be fun if they were all in an orchestra traveling back to New York City. Within that group, we got:
a Serbian piccolo player who is a massive bully (but deeply scared to be alone)
a cocaine addicted pianist
a music prodigy from Tajikistan who lights fires to blow off steam.
Beyond that trio, we got an Indian bioengineer from Boston (ask them their opinion on early Islamic caliphate history) and a physician from Vienna suffering from partial amnesia.
The amount of thought players can squeeze into skill choices when they’re just building Somebody can be amazing. As I write this, I noted a character’s Current Affairs skill would be a great way to feed them and the party hooks in a normal campaign. The player replied that those skill choices make perfect sense: their character is a passionate NYT crossword player to the point of taking four points into Hobby Skill (Crosswords). Keeping up with current affairs? Complementary to their true passion.
Something Lost
This started with me asking prospective players (also known as “friends of several years”) to trust me. When you make a character for Dungeons and Dragons, even without guidance, the average D&D character is going to be usable. The guy who knows how to swing a sword can sleep safely knowing they, very likely, will swing a sword in any Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
But here, I’m asking players to design “normal people” without telling them what is going to happen, or even the genre of the mini-campaign. People with a wide-range of interests and hobbies and points invested in those interests and hobbies. No character is optimized for what I have in store, and navigating possible frustration when a character has a bunch of “useless” skills hinges on players buying into that possibility out the gate.
In other words, it hinges on players being willing to put 10% of their character points into “Hobby Skill (Crosswords)”.
A Substack Mini-Series
When the campaign starts, I plan on doing a whole little series on this blog about it. There aren’t a whole lot of AARs for GURPS, and definitely none from the perspective of a PBTA GM running GURPS. That means, shocker, this blog will be updated more than monthly!
Make sure you hit that Subscribe button to keep in touch. I’m honestly a little shocked by how many subscribers I’ve garnered already. You’re telling me two dozen people read something and said, “Yeah, I want more of this.”? Incredible; I appreciate it.