This piece is republished from an article I wrote for Games Quarterly Magazine.

The way roleplaying campaigns work is well enshrined: A group of people play a series of games to tell a continuing story. One gamemaster creates the story and runs the game, and the same (more or less) cast of players play the same characters in session after session. Notwithstanding a few exceptions like Ars Magica — where the gamemastering duties can rotate and the players share some characters in a common pool — there’s been little innovation in the basic campaign format over the years.

This article proposes a new campaign format. Called the mobius campaign, it’s theoretically endless and puts a half-twist on the traditional RPG campaign setup.

Here’s how it works: One person — why not you? — chooses a roleplaying game, creates a single adventure to kick-start a campaign in that game, then creates a single player character who fits the adventure. Then that person finds a player — just one — to play that PC in that adventure. The two of them do it.

After that, the originator’s work is done. Forever. The first game’s player becomes the second game’s gamemaster. He creates a new adventure in the same campaign and passes the same player character — the one he just played — to a new player. Those two play the new adventure, the new player becomes the next gamemaster, creates a new adventure, finds a new player, and so on, ad infinitum.

Ta-da! The mobius campaign. Not a whole lot like the campaigns you’re used to, it is?

Some game systems, playing styles, worlds, and player characters work better than others in a campaign like this. Probably the most important consideration is that the campaign be set up for serial adventure. In a serial story, each story is self-contained and has little to do with previous ones. It avoids long-term story arcs where the protagonist is enmeshed in an ongoing situation featuring the same locales and non-player characters in game after game. A serial campaign might have recurring NPCs, but they’ll typically be mentors, patrons, or technical consultants with an unchanging and generally peripheral role.

The ideal protagonist for a mobius campaign is easy to grasp and fun for lots of different play styles. The character should have a strong, obvious motivation to do some specific type of thing again and again. Some good examples might include a mercenary who’ll take any job with a big enough paycheck, a paragon who’ll help the downtrodden no matter what the challenge, or a victim of betrayal who’ll stop at nothing to get revenge against everyone in the crime family that screwed him over. With an obvious and unchanging PC motivation, each new gamemaster can easily figure out what kind of adventure to create, and each new player will always know what he’s trying to do.

For obvious reasons, though, a character whose goals have an obvious end point is no good. At some point, a character searching for a long-lost sister might actually find her… and then what? Another protagonist pitfall is complicated, difficult, or uncommon abilities or powers within the game system. Each new player will have enough new things to think about when he sits down to the new role. He shouldn’t have to master new rules subtleties as well.

There’s one final piece to the puzzle: Continuity. With a rotating cast of gamemasters and players — and a prohibition against any of them continuing on — what keeps a mobius thing from going off the rails?

Decent written records — the story of each adventure, preferably contributed by each gamemaster in turn — are a must. In the 21st century, the Internet is the tool to get it done. Whoever sets up the campaign should also set up a website, blog, discussion board, web group, or wiki where the protagonist and his adventures can be chronicled. There are many free services perfect for the task that require little or no technical expertise. Poke around at Jotspot (www.jotspot.com), Yahoo! Groups (groups.yahoo.com) or Blogger (www.blogger.com) and the possibilities for chronicling a mobius campaign will be obvious. [Since the original writing, Jotspot’s been bought by Google and become Google Sites, and other online options have multiplied. Suggest your favorites in the comments.]

Using a web site as a central hub also offers a role to people who are interested in the campaign in the long term. Though they can’t play the campaign’s adventures again and again, they can play “host” at the continually evolving site, keeping all its corners spiffy and clean.

If you’re thinking about starting a mobius campaign but you’re not sold on the idea, here are some advantages you might want to consider:

Short-term Commitment: With a mobius campaign, you’re on the hook for at most two sessions of play, plus the amount of time it takes you to create a single adventure.

Try New Games: Life’s too short — and there are too many great RPGs — to play the same campaign year after year. The mobius campaign lets you try lots of new games.

Both Sides of the Table: Running an RPG campaign is a commitment that, in most cases, precludes playing. This setup allows every participant to both run and play.

Renew Old Friendships: If you’ve got old gaming buddies who live far away, you can’t feasibly set up a long-term campaign to relive the glory days. But you probably can manage to play a single session with an old friend, especially if you schedule it for an evening during a vacation or holiday trip.

Of course, there are some disadvantages to the mobius campaign as well. If any of these sounds like you, you might want to think again before starting one up or getting involved in one:

Character Builder: Some players love character creation even more than actually playing. If min-maxing statistics and lovingly assigning just the right personality quirks is the main reason you roleplay, a mobius campaign probably isn’t for you.

Control Freak: If the thought of creating a campaign and then utterly giving up control of where it goes gives you hives, a mobius campaign definitely isn’t something you should try.

Hopefully, this article has given you something to think about. Even if you’re not interested in creating or playing a mobius campaign, with any luck the idea has challenged your assumptions about what’s involved in a roleplaying campaign. Perhaps it will spur you to think of even more new styles of play to enliven your roleplaying life.

[These were sidebars in the original article.]

Mobius Mortem

What happens to a mobius campaign if the main character dies? Is it over? Here are a few options:

Not Possible: A clever setup can avoid this problem entirely. A Highlander style game where the character is literally immortal is just one example.

New Character: If one character dies, the player responsible can be tasked with creating a new character to carry on the cause. This might be a former NPC who must now take center stage, or an entirely new character in the world.

“He’s Not Dead Yet!:” The gamemaster who killed the character invents some twist of fate by which the protagonist actually survived whatever grim fate seemed to have claimed his life.

Variations

Here are two variations on the mobius campaign:

Renewable: Rather than forbidding former players from playing again, you could create a loop rather than a never-ending chain. Select some group of players — six to eight is probably a good number, but it could easily be larger — and define a loop around which the campaign travels. Eventually, the last player creates an adventure and runs a session for the player who created it, and then the chain continues around the circle.

Sidekick: Three players at a time could be involved if a second player were added — a sidekick to the main hero, for example. In such a set-up, each new player would play the sidekick for a session, the main hero for a session, and then run an adventure for the pair of players who’re coming behind.