Campaign? We don't need no stinking campaign.

I recently published a review of Leder Games’ new hit, Arcs. In it, I praised the fact that I could play one-off games of Arcs without committing to a campaign. I love the fact that I can play a fully-fledged game with a bunch of people who’ve never played the game before without having to shoe-horn them in with a loaner character, and without trying to bring them up to speed with what’s happened previously.

I cross-posted my review to BGG where it got a great reaction, but also had some commenters questioning (on BGG and in social media replies) my playing a game without playing the expansion, and whether I even played the ‘real game’ because I only reviewed the base game. One commenter even called it the ‘Elephant in the room’. It got me thinking about how very different what one person wants in a game can be from other people want.

I read Cole’s designer diaries for Arcs. It’s true that through most of its development, it was designed as being a small-scale campaign game built on asymmetric pillars. That’s not how it ended though. The idea of splitting the game into two parts came late, dividing the game into the campaign and what Cole dubbed ‘arcade mode’, and as far as I’m concerned it was the best decision he and Leder Games could have made.

I have commitment issues when it comes to games. I have so many pressures - nearly all of them self-inflicted, I’ll admit - that committing to a campaign game is a big deal to me. Putting a ring on a big new campaign game isn’t something I take lightly. I have a review backlog, I work full-time, I have a family, I have a couple of game groups that meet intermittently. None of this lends itself to seeing a hundred-hour campaign through from start to finish.

The last campaign game I spent any real time with was Artisans of the Splendent Vale, and even then I never saw the end of it. I hate it when a story isn’t finished properly (shame on you, whoever is responsible for that ending to Umbrella Academy), so I hate starting a story in a game that I won’t get some kind of resolution from. My characters are lost in limbo forevermore.

It’s scary to me to think that had Arcs only ever been marketed as a campaign game, I might never have played it. It turned out to be my favourite game of the year so far, and I’d have missed out on it, just because it might never have been designed for, and marketed towards, one-off players. The ‘arcade mode’ players.

As much as I know game designers all have a magnum opus bubbling away under the surface that they want to breathe life into, please spare a thought for those of us who want to see the mechanisms and toys you’re creating for us to play with, but who don’t have the time or people to work through a campaign.

Arcs’ single-play design is superb, and the perfect antidote for people like me who find themselves despondent at yet another sprawling Kickstarter title which demands £100+ from me, in return for the promise of completion I’ll inevitably break. See it as a challenge if you like. “How can I create an experience which encapsulates the heart of this game, but presents it in a format someone can play at a convention or club night?”.

I understand that you might never turn a bog-standard game into a campaign game. Most of the time there’s just no reason and no obvious mechanism to do it. But if you’re making a campaign game, think about what you could do to take a snapshot of that experience and serve it up as a single experience. Can you isolate a moment in that campaign which represents what that game is when it’s at its best, and can you give that to the players?

Ultimately it would benefit your game and your sales. Imagine being able to take your game to a convention, set it up and take players through a game without any caveats. No “So this is halfway into the game. These races have done all of these things, and you’re currently in the middle of this battle. Normally you can’t do these things, but this is where we pick it up right now”. Imagine having a game that people love that they can take along to their local game night and let more potential customers play it. No jumping into the shoes of someone else’s character, no prior knowledge needed.

Can you see a way this could work with your game?

Cole, if you ever happen to read this, thank you again for adding arcade mode, and for making it work. Time-poor, middle-aged folks like me applaud you, and hope that you can make it work again if you ever have to. I can throw in Leaders and Lore to mix things up with the intended asymmetry, but that’s my choice to make, and I love you for it.

Over to you. What do you think? Should campaign games offer a full one-shot experience, or should they focus on the full story instead?

Have you played Arcs? What did you think? Would the arcade mode, single game be enough to convince you that you should buy the game?

Let me know what you think in the comments.