My Next RPG Campaign - Concept Refinements

When we last left off, I came to the conclusion I wanted to run a pulp heroes campaign. Today, I'll discuss refining that idea and some of the early preparation. I inserted a bit of lag time between when the campaign started and when I started writing these posts. I don't want to reveal everything before we play. But I do want this series to be timely and relevant.

Settling on the pulp heroes idea, I started to sketch ideas about it at all times. First I wanted a more concrete concept. I honed in on Artifact Collection Agency. Warehouse 13 was one of my favorite shows.¹ It took a bit to find it's groove but promoting Claudia to the main cast helped a lot. Also, who can say no to Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade?

With Indiana Jones rattling in my mind, it felt right to set the campaign against a backdrop of World War 2. I wanted the war to be in progress but without the United States involved. That left a few year span between 1939 and 1941. I planned to set the game in 1940 but we ended up moving the start date to September 1941.

As we inch closer to my wedding in July, my available time to prepare and run a campaign will decrease. With that in mind I want to make sure I wrap up this story before then. I settled on an ending date around late-March/early-April. With no play during December because of holidays, playing fortnightly meant that I'd have about 7-8 sessions. I'd spend the first session setting up the plot and introducing the rules system. It didn't seem like I'd have enough sessions to do a full three act structure. So I've divided the campaign into two books. One that happens in the United States and one that happens in Europe.

One particularly obvious lesson I learned from Time and Tide was about party cohesiveness.² There should be conflict within the party at times. But there needs to be a strong bond that keeps the party together. A second lesson was making sure I help players unfamiliar with the rules to make good choices by spending time with them before kicking off the game. With those in mind, I scheduled a character creation session for the middle of December.

Given the concept and task, it made sense to make their employment the strong bond. The characters are capable individuals who function as a team and have a good working relationship. There would be an innate trust of each other. I settled on two possible employers, a museum or the military. Initially, I had settled on the museum, the Smithsonian. As we neared character creation, I swung towards the military option. But I left the answer to the players as part of character creation.

So, we have seven characters employed by an organization chasing artifacts with magical powers in World War 2. This was something I wanted to run and a story I wanted to tell with my friends. They agreed. So next time, I'll talk about the character creation session and the characters that will be starring in this adventure.