Getting The Band Back Together

In November, I paused my Mutants in the Now game because my campaign’s content clashed with the rising political climate, and I was not in a place where I thought I could run the game and maintain my self-care. Time has passed, and having done some work on myself to better protect and manage myself and self-care, I feel like I am in a place to run the game again. But that was nearly 4 months ago. So, how do you dust off an old campaign and start it up again? Let’s talk about it. 

Taking An Extended Hiatus

Plenty of campaigns take breaks. My group used to take a holiday hiatus between Thanksgiving and Christmas every year and restart our games in January. Others will take a break during convention season, during the semester, or some time when their day job has high demands. I think an extended hiatus is something that lasts more than a month; about the time for everyone to unload the memories and knowledge of the system and setting from their short-term memories. 

That is the challenge with coming back from an extended hiatus: at one point in time, the system, setting, and the ongoing story was fresh in your mind, but now that has all faded. How do you balance the game being new-ish while also being somewhat familiar? Take into account that this game has history, and you might not all remember it. 

How to Re-start A Campaign

Ok, so we are going to dust off an old campaign and restart it. Just how do we go about doing this? There is no true way but there are some things you should think about.

Interest Level

This was kind of assumed at the onset of the article, but to be proper, the first thing you need to do is to determine if your group is interested in returning to the game. This can be a simple discussion, nothing complicated or fancy here. Confirm that the group is excited about coming back to the campaign. 

If you have time, discuss what things are exciting about coming back to this campaign. Is it a chance to return to the characters? Is it unfulfilled stories from the original run? Is it revenge against someone in the first campaign? Jot down what these are, because they will inform you of what you should work into the restart. 

Re-learn the rules

Next up, time to re-learn the rules. Depending on how long you have played the system in the past and your level of mastery, you are going to need to invest some time relearning the system. Crack open the books and get reading. 

If you are restarting a campaign in a system that you play all the time, then this won’t be an issue, but if your campaign is in a system that you do not play often, you are going to restart your system mastery journey. Some of it will come back to you quickly. Some of it will take a bit more work. There is a good chance you will discover a mechanic that you were doing wrong in the past campaign. 

Review what has happened

At the same time or after you review the system, find your notes about the old campaign and review them. Depending on how you prep your sessions, your campaign management, your in-session note taking, and how your players took session notes, you could have few or many sources of information to review. Here is a short list of possible sources:

• Session Prep (what you prepped for the game)- this could also be published adventures
• Session Notes (any notes you took about the session while you were running it)
• Campaign Notes 
• NPC lists
• Player notes/journals
• Recordings (for those that record their sessions)

Go through those materials and make yourself familiar with what previously happened. Make a note of events that never had consequences addressed, NPCs who may have an agenda to fulfill, etc. These are things you can use in the new campaign to help tie it to the old one. 

Re-Orient the Players

Similar to the work above, you also need to get your players back up to speed on the campaign. You may not want them to access all the same materials you were looking at, so you may need to create some kind of summary for them or have a time when you can get together and recap what happened previously. 

For them to be able to resume play in the new campaign, it will help if they can remember details from the previous campaign. 

Clean up your campaign notes 

For those of us who do keep campaign notes, if they are not all neat and complete, now is a good time to do a little campaign maintenance and clean up your notes, write down any campaign elements that got created during sessions but never made it into your campaign materials, etc. This is also a nice time to perhaps do some world-building and create some new elements based on what has previously happened.

Start a new Arc

It has been my experience that after a long hiatus you should not resurrect an old story arc, but rather start a new one at a time after the previous one. If you were able to end that previous arc cleanly before your hiatus, then this will be the natural thing to do. But if your hiatus happened in mid-arc, you should still consider doing a new arc. The reason is that the tension you were building in the previous arc is likely gone, and any conclusion to that arc will be anti-climatic. Instead, get together and narrate an ending to that arc that makes sense, and then start a new one. 

I like to start a new arc after several months or years from the last arc. It gives you some distance from the previous (old) arc and room for some things to evolve. Also, it gives the feeling that not much has happened during the time you were not playing. 

You first adventure back

Having dusted everything off and gotten everything restarted, it’s time for your first session of the new campaign. Here are a few quick tips to make your return as successful as possible: 

Introduce the characters

Take time at the start of the game for the players to re-introduce their characters. Do it like you were playing a new game: name, description, role, etc. 

Introduce the setting

Your first adventure should re-introduce the players to the setting. Do a little of this up front with some kind of Previously in this campaign… But also work in various campaign elements (locations, events, NPCs) throughout the adventure. Let them go to their favorite locations, have a conversation with their favorite city guard, etc. Give them the time and the scenes to re-immerse into the setting.

Practice the rules

In your first adventure, make sure you take the rules out for a spin. Include all the base rules for the game: some skill checks and light combat. Give the players a chance to roll some dice, look things up on their sheets, and get re-familiarized with the system in a low-stakes (see below) story. 

Do a one-off adventure before your arc

Walk before you run. Have your first adventure be a stand-alone story before you immerse them in a new arc. Let them spend that first adventure getting reacquainted with the system and the setting before you kick off a new arc. This adventure should be like a tutorial for a video game: a bit of excitement but nothing too dangerous. 

Welcome back to the land of the livin’

Campaigns go on extended hiatuses for all sorts of reasons, and bringing one back requires a bit of care. Take time to refresh yourself on the story, setting, and past events. Help your players do the same. Take the time when re-starting the campaign to do a bit of campaign maintenance. Then for your first session back, ease the players back into the system and setting with a low-stakes one-shot that helps everyone to re-learn the game and setting. Do all that, and your old campaign may be new again.

Have you brought back a campaign from the past? How did you do it?