I’ve blogged before about making the one-shot RPG ultra-short, and also about how a one-shot can be slightly longer form. One of the things I’m pondering as we come to the new year is how I’m going to get more online gaming done next year (via Hangouts / Skype), and I’ve come across the crux of the dilemma (for me anyway, but I suspect a lot of gamers).

Thing is, I don’t have the time to commit to a weekly (or even fortnightly) game – either face to face or over G+ – and so an ongoing campaign seem unlikely. And my own limited experience suggests that one 2/3-hour online session doesn’t quite have the hit of a regular convention one-shot. The medium means you don’t get quite as much contact, even if you’re playing with folks you know in real life, and it takes a while for characters to develop and become enjoyable to play.

So, I’m going to propose myself a solution: the 3-session Campaign. Three 2-hour online sessions, preceded by a not-necessarily-concurrent chargen and setup session. I’m hoping that this format will let me get more online gaming done, and that it might work for people with similar scheduling difficulties to me. I should note that this is advice I’ve largely gathered from my experience running face-to-face for 3-sessions, but I’ve put it in the context of online play because I think it provides a useful solution to the scheduling difficulties above.

The Pre-Session: Chargen and Links

In this session, which I’d go over a chat app like Facebook Messenger or a private G+ community, I’d get my players to generate characters (or generate them myself with their guidance / support if they aren’t familiar with the system) and build links between the PCs. I’d try in generating characters to follow good examples from one-shot play to ensure, for instance, that there are sufficient differences between characters and the group fits together with some consistency, as there won’t really be scope for this to develop during play to iron it out.

While some games have structures for this (Dungeon World’s Bonds, Apocalypse World’s Hx splits) that require some turn taking, the order of these is mostly arbitrary, so there’s no real need for everyone to be online at once – or, if they are, they can be sat doing something else with the phone/tablet at their side carrying out the process.

For games without this process, I’d try and establish connections – maybe with focused questions, which could be as basic as “how do you know X?” or, for instance, “when was the last time you brought a PC back from the brink of death?” (for a cleric PC). While this is going on, I’ll scribble it all onto a relationship map that I’ll then share so everyone has an up-front picture of the rest of the party – it especially helps in online play to know who the face at the bottom of the screen is pretending to be. In terms of sharing resources, for online play I think it’s helpful to have a precis of the setting and access to at least the basic rules so that players can engage with these and be ready to go from the off.

Session 1 – Your Regular One-Shot

The structure I tend to use for 3-session play is the movies of The Lord Of The Rings; for this first section, you’ve already done a substantial chunk of the exposition in the pre-session prep chat. I’d follow the regular introductory one-shot format for this: a task set for them to do, a practice combat/action sequence (to clear out any rusty rules), some investigation, and a final conflict that can be a little harder and reveals the extent of the problem facing them.

Pacing is key here; although in my experience, while online play does demand more focus from the players, the interface encourages it – everyone really does have to listen to every other player speaking, because if you don’t pay attention, you’ll be lost. Any rules clarifications, pass them to another player to resolve in text chat – and feel free to make notes of anything in that chat as well. My best experiences of online play have been basic in terms of technical aptitude – there’s nothing wrong with letting players roll their own dice and telling you what they get, and I’ve enjoyed having that physical connection to the game rather than using a dice roller (until I have a run of bad luck – then I usually switch to the dice roller).

I’d also recommend Session 1 being fairly obvious in terms of what the PCs should do and what the campaign is about. Chekov’s Gun applies here as it does in all one-shots; if you introduce an NPC, a location, or a faction at play in Session 1, if the players are interested in it you should make sure it re-appears in Sessions 2 and 3.

Well, that’s how to set up and run the first session of a 3-session campaign; tomorrow I’ll look at Sessions 2 and 3 and the prep between them.