Campaign Pitch

Before you start running or even preparing adventures, you need to find a group of people who want to play this game with you. You probably already have a group of friends in mind, so prepare a quick campaign pitch for them.

A campaign pitch is a document or a quick spiel you give to your players to make sure they're interested in the campaign you want to play. This helps them understand the sort of game you're planning on running and what's in store for them as players. If something in your pitch doesn't appeal to a player or if they have questions, you can address those concerns much more easily before you all start playing.

The pitch is all about communication. Nothing halts everyone's enjoyment of a campaign faster than a player not having a good time, so let them know what kind of game you want to run and what you're expecting of them. A campaign pitch allows a player to discuss any reservations they have, or even to gracefully bow out of the campaign before it starts.

If you can, present your pitch to the players before the first session, so they can be fully on board and thinking about the hero they want to create before it's time to put pencil to character sheet. Otherwise, present your pitch during your first session

Opening Overview

A campaign pitch starts with a few paragraphs of information that provides an overview of your campaign's theme, settings, and conflicts. Your initial overview should answer these questions:

• Where does the campaign take place?
• What major events important to the campaign's plot have occurred before the campaign starts?
• What kinds of adventures might the heroes have over the course of this campaign?

This overview doesn't give away any of the campaign's secrets—for example, that the key to defeating the boss villain is destroying the artifact known as the Mortal Coil. It doesn't spoil surprises such as the Baron of Dalrath secretly being a lich. Rather, the overview gives the players an idea of how their story starts and what kinds of adventures they'll go on. The best pitches leave players wanting to know more and ready to dive into the action.

Here's an example of an opening overview that Matthew Colville created for his gaming group.

Overview: Wards of the Last Emperor

Long before the time of Good King Omund, the lands of Vasloria and all of Orden belonged to the Caelian Empire. The last emperor, Marcus Octavius, held near-omnipotent power, which he used to protect his citizens and extend the borders of the empire. But his greatest general, Actius Vispania, betrayed him and schemed to usurp the throne.

Knowing he had discovered this betrayal too late to stop it, Octavius took his knowledge and his weapons and spread them across Orden, sealing them behind powerful wards. All this was done in secret. Even his closest allies did not know the location of the wards, the number of which is now lost to the mists of time. Were there seven? Nine? Legends differ.

The rebellion against Ajax begins here. Surely the wards of the emperor contain the power to stop the Overlord. The heroes must travel across the world and brave many dangers to find and unlock the last emperor's wards. Whoever does will wield the lost empire's power.

As you can see, this opening overview introduces the setting—Vasloria (see Orden and the Timescape in Chapter 1: The Basics). It also gives just enough history and background information for the players to understand their heroes' goal—to recover the knowledge and weapons of the last emperor, sealed behind powerful wards, in order to stop the tyrant Ajax.

Personal Problems at the Table

Sometimes a player might talk over others. Sometimes a player makes a snarky comment that hurts someone else's feelings. Sometimes a player might cheat on their dice rolls. When personal problems pop up at the table, it's best to talk about those issues at the player level rather than try to solve them by punishing a player's hero.

If the problem is serious enough, you can stop play and talk to anyone who needs it. If the problem is just an annoyance, you might wait until your game session ends. It's best to have these conversations with just the players involved to get their perspectives, rather than in front of everyone and increasing the chance of someone getting embarrassed and defensive. Most of the time, a person doesn't even realize they were creating a problem for the other players. Once the issue has been talked out, they get a chance to change their behavior and solve the problem.

Gameplay Breakdown

After your opening overview, you should break down roughly how much time you think the players will spend engaged in various types of challenges and scenes.

Gameplay Categories

You can break down your game into the following categories:

• Combat: How often are the heroes using violence to overcome challenges?
• Exploration: How often are the heroes exploring new environments that are difficult to traverse? How often do you expect the heroes to make tests using skills from the exploration skill group?
• Interpersonal: How often are the heroes using negotiation and conversing with NPCs to overcome challenges? How often do you expect the heroes to make tests using skills from the interpersonal skill group?
• Intrigue: How often are the heroes solving mysteries, finding double agents, and skulking about the shadows to achieve their goals? How embroiled will they get in the politics of competing people and factions? How often do you expect the heroes to make tests using skills from the intrigue skill group?

These are the primary types of scenes found in many campaigns, but you could also add your own. For instance, if you want to run a campaign full of diabolical brain teasers and traps, you could add a "Puzzles" category to your campaign pitch document.

Category Frequency

Give each category a rating to show the players how often you expect them to experience scenes in the campaign that involve that type of gameplay.

• High: If a category has a high rating, you expect the heroes to experience multiple scenes involving this type of gameplay during each session.
• Medium: If a category has a medium rating, you expect the heroes to experience at least one scene involving this type of gameplay every session or so.
• Low: If a category has a low rating, you expect the heroes to experience a scene involving this type of gameplay less than once per session.

Category frequencies aren't hard and fast rules. They're simply meant to give the players an idea of what kinds of scenes you'd most like to run for them. There might be a session or two where you skip a category type you marked as high or medium because the heroes do something unexpected, or because you and the other players are all having fun playing out the story in a different way.

Breakdown: Wards of the Last Emperor

The Wards of the Last Emperor campaign pitch has the following gameplay breakdown:

• Combat: Medium. The heroes might tussle with the forces of Ajax, guardians of the lost wards, and other factions who desire the last emperor's treasures.
• Exploration: High. The heroes must traverse Vasloria's most remote locations to find the wards.
• Interpersonal: Low. Heroes will likely interact with other NPCs as they track down leads on wards, but won't have frequent conversations or negotiations with them.
• Intrigue: Medium. Heroes will regularly contend with all the other entities who want the prizes hidden behind the wards, engaging in counterintelligence and sabotage.

Player Buy-In

After the gameplay breakdown, tell the players what's expected of them so that the group gets the most enjoyment out of the game. Let them know details such as how often you expect the characters to be traveling from one place to another, the types of rewards or accolades they might be earning, and what kinds of adventures they're about to go on.

You want to be upfront about what kind of buy-in you need from the players. So it's a good idea to let them know, "Hey, in order to get the most out of this game, you'll need to enjoy diving into ancient ruins." Or tell them, "This game has some horror themes. If you're not interested in playing heroes who have fears they need to face, we should do something else."

Buy-In: Wards of the Last Emperor

Visiting lots of different locations and cultures has to sound cool. You won't start in a town and eventually become the heroes of the barony, but will instead become legendary heroes across multiple realms. You'll constantly be leaving the people you've met behind, but you'll eventually have a base you return to after completing each quest. You'll have allies and enemies all across the world!

The buy-in tells the players that their heroes are going to travel to far-flung locations, and that it might take them a while to find a home. If a player is looking for a different experience, such as a game that takes place entirely in the city of Capital, they now know that your game isn't for them!

Player Option Restrictions

Some campaigns include restrictions on the character options players can choose. For example, a Director might be interested in running a game where the heroes are all memonek and time raiders who have come to Vasloria searching for a secret incursion of voiceless talkers. In this case, the Director might restrict all ancestries (see Chapter 3) except those two. A campaign about citizens forming a rebellion to take on a tyrannical leader might restrict career options (see Chapter 4) so that no one can take Aristocrat or Politician.

Put any restrictions your campaign has into your pitch!

Presenting Multiple Pitches

If you have multiple ideas for campaigns that you want to run, put together a pitch for each of them and ask the players to decide which sounds the most interesting. It's a good idea to have the players rank each pitch and tell you which ones they love, which ones aren't their favorites but they'd still enjoy playing, and which ones they definitely have no interest in. That way, if most people love two of your pitches but one of those favorites makes one player say, "No way!", you know which one to pick.

Discussing the Pitch

Once you give a pitch to the players, ask them to give you their honest opinions. If someone doesn't like an aspect of your pitch, don't get defensive. Hear them out. You might be able to accommodate them. You might be willing to tweak your gameplay breakdown or buy-in to play a game with your friends. You might be willing to lift one of your restrictions for a single player to add some spice to your campaign. For instance, an aristocrat who joins a group of farmers in a rebellion is an interesting plot point!

It's also okay if, after hearing out potential players, you're not interested in running the kind of game they want to play. This happens, and it's why we recommend that you pitch your campaign. There's no harm in having different interests, but there is in forcing people to play a game together that won't be fun for everyone. If you can't see eye-to-eye with a player, it's okay to agree that they or you should find a different group.

Pitching a Published Campaign

Writing your own campaign setting and adventures takes time! Maybe you want to save yourself some of that work and instead run a campaign in an official MCDM setting such as Vasloria, using our published adventures that take place in that setting. We also allow third-party publishers to make their own Draw Steel settings and adventures, so you might want to use one of those instead.

If you want to run a campaign built on published material, give that material a read, think about anything you'd like to change, and then pitch it as you would any campaign you create yourself. When you're running published material, you're still the Director. You can change anything you don't like or that you think isn't a good fit for your group.

If your players participate in other games of Draw Steel, it's a good idea to ask them if they're familiar with published adventures when you pitch them. Sometimes it's okay for a player to experience an adventure twice, but most adventures involve some sort of mystery or plot twist. It's best to run something new for your players, so it's good to know what else they've played before you pitch.