Character Goals

A character's motivation helps define the character and can help shape the story. Some goals will naturally occur during the game but those are largely GM created. Those type of goals help move a story along but they hardly motivate a character. It is important for a player to come up with a few goals for their character. These should range from a few short term goals and at least one long term goal.

Short term goals should only take a handful of games to complete. Short term goals could be a smaller step towards the long term goal or just another task they wish to complete. Having a few of these will give your character some extra motivation and a good GM will tie them into the story arch. This will take some of the pressure off the GM to try to rope your character into action while making the story more personal and more fun. Completion of short term goals should be rewarded with either additional experience points or an additional benefit.

Long term goals should take most of the campaign to complete. These goals should be something that a character would not possibly be able to achieve in the beginning of the game. Some larger goals could become the focus of the game and I encourage GMs to make use of this fact. Some larger goals might just tie into the end of the campaign and might be completed only after the story arch has ended.Long term goals will affect the game world in a significant way or at least the character's part of the world.  Long term goals are rewards in there own right and won't confer experience points or additional mechanical benefits unless you intend to use the character through multiple campaigns. Long term benefits should bring closure to the game and for the characters.

Campaign Length

When it comes to any form of writing, one piece of advice has always stuck with me: a story should be like a woman's skirt, long enough to cover everything it should but short enough to still be interesting. This holds true for rpg campaigns. Depending on what type of game you're running you will want to adjust the length of the campaign.

When most people think of an rpg campaign they think about these long, epic games with story lines that will take months to get through. Story lines like this usually consist of several smaller issues that the characters must overcome to complete their ultimate objective or dealing with complications that arise because of forces working against them. The ultimate objective will be difficult for a beginning group of characters to overcome but will be easier once the characters have more experience. These campaigns incorporate many different aspects of the game into the story arch and use the diversity to keep the characters guessing about what will happen next. This type of campaign is generally best suited for players that are looking to experience all aspects of the game or for large groups that need and can handle a large array of issue that arise. A GM working on creating a campaign like this will need to focus on establishing several plot points and key adversaries to keep up the level of interest.

My group has recently gotten into running short campaigns. They generally consist of campaigns that may last only a few weeks. These types of campaigns are usually more focused on a clear objective. The level of the characters tends not to be as important as the game will be finished before too much experience is gained. Campaigns of this sort tend to focus on one or two aspects of the game but explores them in much greater depth. This type of campaign is great for smaller groups that wish to really engage a particular part of the game. It is also nice for groups that tend to lose focus quickly but have no issue playing a game several times in different incarnations. A GM working on a campaign of this nature should do plenty of research into the various aspects the players wish to explore and keep the game topical.