Constant Campaign Calibration

My campaign’s only 2 sessions old and I’m already looking under the hood and checking to see if everything’s running right.  I’ve been told sometime before that I do far too much thinking about how I GM, and frankly, I can see why they feel that way.

Right now I’m really happy with how Deadlands is running, the Savage Worlds system is nigh invisible in play, only showing up a bit when it comes to combat.  It’s because of this invisibility that the players and myself as the GM end up paying a lot more attention to what happens in the story.

It’s a golden opportunity for me to actually work on my story skills as opposed to my tactics.  And so I’m currently working on my next session this weekend, taking notes, researching a location, and putting in as much as I possibly can given my busy schedule.

So far player feedback has been generally been positive, with a request for more character moments.  I can’t argue about that request and so I’m currently plumbing my mind to come up with enough situations and interesting NPCs to do the following:

• Engage Character Backstory – Each of the characters has a backstory that can be milked, there are unresolved issues that can and should come into play in order to further their individual storylines.
• Play up Character Strengths - Challenges oriented against character strengths play up their abilities, and make them feel that their characters count.  No sense in throwing a saloon girl in a wrestling match after all…
• Generate new plot hooks - As with most of my rpg sessions, I try to find a way to keep it generating plot hooks, unresolved npc issues, secret agendas and recurring villains are all good for this sort of thing.

This kind of calibration is vital to my personal take on running games, by keeping a pulse on the game by drawing feedback from players every session, I answer the question “What do my players want?” and can configure the game differently per session to keep my eye on the sweet spot and keep the game enjoyable for it’s 12 session run.