GM Tips for keeping a game going for years.

The holidays are upon us and some TTRPG campaigns go on hiatus for the season. Some, sadly, do not return from the break. There are ways to get the band back together even after a long break of even a year or more.

Family and friends are an important part of the holiday season regardless of what cultural traditions one embraces. Some of us don’t have a big family celebration and find ourselves with lots of time on our hands this time of year. Some GMs find themselves all alone for the holidays while their gaming group scatters to the four winds for the holiday break. Sometimes real life intercedes, and the group doesn’t come back together due to class, work, or other scheduling conflicts. It kinda sucks, but it happens.

Consistency is the key.

I do a lot of things to keep my campaigns on track. My ADHD makes it so I have to write a lot of things down. It helps with my fidgeting, keeps me focused, and makes it so I remember what happened from one session to the next. I’m also lucky enough to have a couple of players, my wife included, who take excellent notes during most game sessions.

I also have a campaign session log that I update at the end of every session. I think it’s an old Frog God Games Campaign Tracker, but I could be wrong. There are a lot of them on the market out there. It keeps track of session dates, a little of what happened, XP granted, who was there, and maybe a note about what they’re planning to go do next if they tell me.

I also track NPCs in my notes as the party encounters them. As much as I try to prep ahead, there’s always one stable boy, bar maid, fruit vendor, or mysterious cloaked stranger who I didn’t prep. I make note of their name, quirk, occupation, a couple of personality traits, maybe a combat stat if necessary, and whatever interaction they had with the group. The party tends to make friends or leave impressions on the townsfolk wherever they go, so it pays to remember who’s who in what village.

I find that writing down as much as possible before, during, and after each session goes a long way toward helping me remember what happened between sessions. If writing isn’t your thing, you might try recording audio or video as long as the group is cool with it. Speech to text programs can also be of great benefit before and after sessions. I think the key here is to have some sort of mnemonic aid. Just enough to trigger the GM’s ‘Oh yeah” response at the beginning of session prep or next session.

It seems I can never prepare too much.

I think the trick is to know how to prepare and how much. There are entire books on good gamemastering out there, and I’m not going to repeat all of them, but go poke around and see if anything sticks out. I don’t write down every single stat block for every NPC the group meets. I try to plan as much as I think I’ll need for the next few sessions.

I am probably guilty of obsessive over-preparing if anything. Could the group go off the trail into a forest for no apparent reason? Yeah. Make notes about the forest, random encounter tables, points of interest, and monstrous fauna. Are they looking for someone in town? Make notes about townsfolk, a few notable NPCs, the NPC they’re looking for, a couple of red herrings, random city encounter table, points of intrigue if any, the names of taverns, inns, etc. The good news is I’ve always got the info to fall back on if I need another town on the fly. I can always take what I didn’t use, shift some NPC descriptions, etc.

I tend to make a lot of random encounter tables even if I never roll on them. I feel it’s good for pacing and they can always be recycled elsewhere. Even though it’s completely random, it also helps me remember a bit about the area and what I was doing at the time in game.

Never throw anything away.

Yes, I’m an obsessive packrat and game hoarder. I have filing cabinets full of old campaign data. I have handwritten notes dating back to middle school in those files. I never hit delete on anything unless it is backed up on file somewhere else. It sounds a bit crazy, but it really helps with some things.

I once picked up a Deadlands game after a year long hiatus. I did the same with Werewolf the Apocalypse. I could convert and restart my old 3.5E Dungeons & Dragons game this week if I wanted to do so. Somewhere around here I have most of my characters from being a player for many, many games. I also have stacks of characters made out from trying new systems. It pays to keep things around as a pool of information to use with whatever comes next. Likewise, old maps and campaigns can be recycled in any number of ways.

Just because things look bleak for a return to gaming on November 22nd, or just because bad news arrives on January 8th, doesn’t mean toss everything in the garbage. Once in a great while the best happens, and one gets to start anew with the old campaign. Sometimes we get lucky and can add a couple of new members to the old group and keep the game going. Never give up. Never give the trashcan what could have been the greatest campaign ever.

Dealing with downtime between sessions.

Sometimes we get lucky and catch a couple of hours during the holiday season to plan for the next session. It’s a good time to look back into the campaign notes to stay fresh with what happened last time. It’s also a good opportunity to make a few notes about locations. It’s a chance to write a paragraph or two about a specific location or flesh out an NPC a bit more.

The hardest part of revisiting the campaign during downtime is trying not to overprepare. I do my utmost to focus on what is probably going to come up in game. There’s no sense writing a page long history about an NPC the group will only talk to one time. Maybe a couple of paragraphs about the BBEG might help, though.

It’s also a good idea to check in with the players during long breaks. Having the group with access to Discord, Snapchat, or even an email list for the campaign helps a great deal. Check in. See how things are going. Maybe inquire if people are still excited about the game. There’s no sense continuing to prepare for a game if the majority of the group isn’t coming back. It’s better to have a best case scenario and a worst case scenario when it comes to gaming groups.

Closer to the end of break is also a good time to get the schedule for game sessions fired up again. Sometimes school, work, or family schedules change. We’ve all been there when it comes to game nights getting cancelled and trying to herd squirrels, err… coordinate the game schedule with busy people. Please don’t overdo it, though. People tend to get annoyed if the GM is constantly trying to talk game session every day during break.

More on this topic to come in the future. We’ve had a lot of gaming industry news in the last 24 hours. I’ll have an article as soon as I’m done processing all of what happened. It’s such a mixed bag.

Thanks for being here today. I appreciate you. Hug your loved ones. Talk to you soon.