This Side of the Dice: Framing your campaign.

One of the most important things you can do as a Game Master is to properly frame the campaign for your players. Framing means giving the players information about the scope, genre, location, and theme of the game. Does the adventure run in a city or wilderness? Is it a one shot or a fully planned out campaign of epic proportions? Players also need to know information about frequency of play and at-the-table rules/expectations. How much out of character knowledge will you allow? How much cross talk at the table is okay? Giving this information to your players is vitally important because it outlines your expectations for character types and player conduct.

The purpose of framing your session before hand is to avoid as much player confusion and frustration in your campaign as possible. Players may have a misconception that they can play any type of character and often players will only get their first taste of what is going on once their characters are already in play. Imagine the players' horror as their party of thieves and murderers are summoned by the Priest of Elemental Kindness to right the wrongs being perpetrated on the orphans and destitute of the city. Letting the players know that you had a good aligned campaign based around altruistic characters before play started could have helped clear this up. Not to say that a “fish out of water” type campaign is completely out of the question, as a matter of fact it can be quite fun, but this is something that needs to be planned for ahead of time. Trust me, it will be easier for you in the long run.

Once you’ve given the general idea about the setting and theme of the campaign, expect to have a period of negotiation with your players. “But I really wanted to play a Vorox who eats babies!” This begins the character approval phase of framing. This is where you and your players talk out what they want to play, how they want to play, and how you as the Game Master can fit it in. The Vorox who eats babies might not fit well into your campaign, but a Vorox who doesn’t eat babies might fit fine. Find out what is most important about the character to the player. Find out their motivation behind creating the character they created. Sometimes players aren’t actually trying to be bastards.

Expanding on the example of the good aligned campaign where the players are doing quests of good and mercy for the Priest of Elemental Kindness. A player might want to play an evil character. If that player is looking to generally cause mayhem and destruction and rack up an enormous body count, then they are using evil as a synonym for asshole. Asshole characters (and players) are another topic for later discussion.

If the above mentioned player has created an evil character to act as a foil or double agent, that might actually fit in very well with your campaign. The player needs to have a clear understanding about what your policy is towards intra-party conflict. This is also a situation where you might have to reveal a little bit of the plot to the player if they’re working for one of the Big Bads in the campaign. This is also why you need to discuss this with your player away from of the group. Unless you have a group of experienced role-players, keeping the out of character information from affecting the way their characters act might be difficult for your group.

If all else fails and your players insist on wanting to play characters that exist outside of the frame of your campaign, you’re probably going to have to go back to the drawing board. We’ll talk about this in the future when we discuss campaign planning.