Anybody doing episodic-style campaigns?

[Ghsdkgb]

In our campaign, because we all have busy lives and not everyone can be there every week, I've decided to make our campaign episodic, instead of the usual overarching plot that keeps building and continuing and never ends.

So, basically, we have the same characters and the same world we all drew up, but every week is a different story that begins, climaxes, and wraps up all in one night. Sometimes we have two-parters. It kind of sucks having to come up with a new story every week, but it's also kind of fun when you get one going.

Soon, after everyone becomes familiar (we're all pretty new to the system), we'll start rotating the DM, so whoever has a story for that week can take the reins. I think it's a really fun way to do things.

Anybody have experience doing it this way? Any advice for coming up with stories?

[kraaze]

My group is fairly new to DFRPG, we decided a few months back to give it a try because we had all read the books but we had zero FATE/FUDGE experience.  We decided to do rotating DM (I was first), with short episodic scenarios.  Since we only play short sessions, just a few hours a week, we typically shoot for rotation about once 4-6 weeks.  I think I had the longest GM stint at 7 sessions because I had prepped something too large, next GM had 5 for this scenario, and current one is in week 4 and looks poised to wrap up in one more.  It's worked fine for us so far.  There's no overarching plot, though we do feel free to share NPCs as needed.  When asked by the current GM I've roleplayed some of the NPCs from my adventure that the party wanted to get in contact with to solicit information or help, for example.  Sharing NPCs keeps it from feeling disjointed. 

The big advantage of rotating GM duties is that the scenarios seem more polished.  Since everyone gets an 8 to 10 week break between GM session then there's plenty of time to put together a very solid adventure without feeling like you have to crunch to stay ahead of the players.  I'm due up in the rotation again soon and I've already got the villain and some of the scenes I want to spring on the players worked out.  Having them early means extra time to ponder and tune them.

One last warning, the other thing to watch for with rotating DM is fluctuating party makeup.  This has been something of an issue for our group since we each retire our PC temporarily when GMing.  Hence the party makeup fluctuates a lot.  I have the only wizard or even spellcaster of any sort in the party and thus when I'm the GM the party is very light on magic and has to do things the mundane way mostly.  Conversely when the player of our best stealth/burglary/investigation character is GM the party becomes very light on subtlety.  When the guy with the mega strong werebull is GM, our party loses most of it's teeth (well horns) when it comes to brawling.  Each GM has to account for that in adventure planning. 

[Ghsdkgb]

We just shift our PCs to NPC status when DMing. That way, they're still there and can hop in, but I tend to make the campaigns to that the other players play to THEIR strengths, with my guy only chiming in to help move things along.

Ours are one-day, three-hour stories. Nothing too in-depth, but you can have overarching shadow-plots that come into play, where the thing you saw in this one campaign comes back ten stories later.

[admiralducksauce]

My campaign Highway to Hell is episodic like this, although I'm the sole GM.  My games run from 4-6 hours, so probably each of my sessions listed in that link above is like a two-parter for you.  Except for Bad Truck; that one was about 3 hours.

IMO it works fine; I like the monster-of-the-week-in-the-town-of-the-week setup, and we've had enough disparate adventures now that I'm going to start bringing back some recurring villains and plot threads.

When it comes to making adventures, though, I've generally been taking a PC's Trouble Aspect and working that into a monster idea.  I've got a PC who steals magic items?  Well, they find a magic item that's more trouble that it's worth but they can't get rid of it that easily.  And bad guys are after it!  Bad guys from another PC's backstory!

[sinker]

Yeah, I find that character's aspects are a great place to find ideas and I'll often look at the themes and threats for some help too.

We did the same kind of thing with rotating GMs back when we first got a burner copy from a good friend. We had a huge group (at least eight every time, but as many as twelve once) so we didn't have a hard time with disparate skill sets, but we often wound up playing sessions based on the GM's character (which was a convenient reason for that character to move to an NPC role). I would often involve a circle neuromancer connected to my character, another GM was building at a neutral fey power (her character was a fey emissary), another was using his own character to attempt to build a meeting place for minor talents, and another was building on a set of locations and characters that were familiar to him in real life.

Of course if you're looking for a "monster-of-the-week" feel then just immerse yourself in that kind of thing. I read BPRD and Hellboy a lot, also Lovecraft (but most people either love or hate Lovecraft). Fables is neat if you want a dark take on the nursery tales. Or reading the old Grimms fairy tales, they're really dark and fun when you get the old non-Disneyized ones. Fantasy and sci-fi anthologies are great for ideas (I try to pick up one or two every month partly for ideas and partly because it's a great way to find new authors while still reading the ones you love). Wikipedia or the internet in general if you're looking for legends and myths.