The Living Campaign: A Guide For Creating & Maintaining Tabletop RPG Campaigns

by John N McGowan

The Living Campaign is a guide that is intended to facilitate long-term, open world, sandbox campaigns that maximize player agency while easing the burden on the Game Master, such that they might avoid the ever-present specter of burnout. This book aims to make these campaigns a replicable occurrence regardless of preferred core rules by providing a framework that can accommodate most d20 systems - like Dungeons & Dragons (any edition), Pathfinder (any edition), and other derivative rule-sets.

The information contained within this book
- How to prepare to run a full sandbox campaign with full player agency
- Which aspects of the game are important for player investment
- Specific examples of how to adjudicate these rules around the table
- How to conduct mass combat and administer player statecraft
- An in-depth examination on why the above injunctions are sound additions to a Tabletop RPG Campaign

John McGowan aims to provide new and experienced Game Masters alike a suite of tools that they can add to their toolbox and so that they can have a more fulfilling campaign both for their players and for themselves!

152 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 30, 2024

Reviews

[Taddow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been playing Role-Playing Games (RPGs) since the mid-80s and a lot of concepts that I use for my RPG campaigns are described in this book. Most of my campaigns go 5+ years (my longest ran for over ten years and is still picked up every so often for one-shots) and my current two Dungeons & Dragons campaigns take place in the homebrew world that I created from previous campaigns (over twelve years and going of multiple campaigns material).

As the author points out, the introduction of players creating multiple characters, establishing a stronghold, and otherwise creating ties to the campaign world will fuel the campaign providing hooks and opportunities for the players and game master to both explore in future adventures. I’ve had player characters (PCs) get married, have kids, and retire only to have the player make PCs for the original PC’s son/daughter and followers to continue the campaign to act as agents for the original PCs. I ran a very long running (Fantasy Flight) Dark Heresy campaign where the players started with one character working for the Inquisition. This expanded into them making Deathwatch characters to deal with the eradication portion of the threats that the Inquisitorial Agents’ investigation identified. To their original characters rising to leadership positions in the Inquisition (still being played, though in a different role) to creating more characters to act as their investigating agents. Later a Rogue Trader aspect became involved and that opened another expansion on that campaign.

I also agree with the author about the importance of time. While I do not use 1:1 time, depending on the campaign I do keep track of time (some campaigns more precise than others). For example, in my current D&D campaign I have a calendar and I track the setting time for each session. I think this helps players with immersion, is a better gauge to tell how much game world time something is taking (especially if there is a timer for an event to happen) and to track seasons and holidays. I also think it helps to put past events into perspective so there is an understanding of the history of what has transpired and how past events may relate to the present.

Stronghold, kingdom, guild, company, etc. building is important to having a long-running campaign. Like the author says, this provides the players with ownership in the world. They want to protect their holdings/organization and their established game power (a castle, political or monetary clout, etc.) gives them the in to become involved in these things and to be sought out by others to become involved.

So, you’re probably wondering why only 3-stars? Well 3-stars still means I liked it. But I found that there was a lot of repetition spread out throughout the book that I felt could have been consolidated or trimmed down. I also felt that a lot of advice was aimed more for classical fantasy-style RPGs (like D&D). I know you could swap gold for money/credit or dungeon for mob boss’ hideout, but I would have liked to see more examples using different RPG genre types to really showcase how these methods could work in a variety of RPGs.

There are many more things that I could touch on, but I only wanted to bring up some highlights for the sake of brevity. Overall, there is a lot in this book that I agree with. The author does point out that this mostly works for a certain type of game and player, which is true. I don’t think that he (or I) is passing judgment on anyone’s style of play, but some players and games are more successful for running long term campaigns than others because a certain mindset and mechanisms are in place to foster that commitment and growth.

[Ross McClure · Rating 5 out of 5]

succinctly and directly (bluntly) describes the requirements for a living world

Do you want a decades long living world to be your RPG like Blackmoor or Greyhawk? John has condensed the sometimes vague and opaque advice laden with context from wargames into the tongues of modern TTRPGers. But here’s the thing, do you really want a living world? Because that will require some hard set principles and non-negotiable. John lays them out.

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this book. It made me understand 1:1 time which I quite honestly ignored out of hand because of the reputation of the BrOSR. I hope to put these ideas into practice in at least one of the games I run.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good advice and things to think about here. I'm looking forward to trying some of this out. Might be a little overwrought, language-wise