How I run campaigns, and why it doesn't work anymore.

 There is a thing I do in my RPG campaigns. I give players arcs. 

Sure, I also try to give each character a bit of spotlight each game. I like to keep everyone involved and occupied. I think I manage it game to game with varying degrees of success. But that's not exactly what I'm talking about.

I like to try and give each character something going on in the larger world that either directly touches them or which they will want to be involved in. Further I will often pursue one player's arc from quite a while. If player interest drifts, I'll switch focus but generally I'll ride an arc until it concludes. Much of this is unspoken. It just kind of happens. 

It helps I have a small, long time player group. If was running at a local brick and mortar shop with 8 people who changed all the time, I would have a hard time maintaining arcs that are specific to each character.

The last set of adventures were very clearly the "Master's arc."  He was a druid, reestablishing the ley lines and bringing magic back into the land, all the while undoing the machinations of a power-hungry elemental lord, and the mistakes of previous adventuring parties. 

Before that was the Rik arc. An arc wherein Rik was sucked into the evil plots of his archrival Melvin Wheldon, as Melvyn attempted to control the thief's guild, assassinate a princess, and leverage two rival countries against each other.

Lastly, I need to state some of these arcs take literal years to play out. The Druid's arc was close to a decade and I'm not exaggerating. Keep in mind game to game the arcs would blend and intertwine. There would be digressions, and sub plots. Nothing is ever clearly stated as "hey this is yours!" It is all just what is going on in the game. There have even been arcs that I have put on the table and thought, "Thís is going to really catch so and so's attention!" which just never caught on. Those arcs get left behind or become background events.

So why doesn't this work as well as it used to?

It's frequency. We don't play as much as we used to.  The primary effect of the lower frequency of game is each adventure becomes its own thing. They adventures become more episodic, rather than one piece of a continuing whole. Each adventure has to be all things to all players. When a group is playing once in six months the game simply has to be exciting and interesting to everyone right away. 

The temptation is to truncate things. Get to the point while we have people at the table. This however ruins the technique. The whole charm of a story arc custom built for a character is that it plays out, at its own rate. The answers aren't handed to the players, they are discovered. If a GM tries to cram all that discovery into one or two games, the game becomes all climax and no build up. Nothing feels special at that point.

The solution is to embrace the episodic style of games. 

One GM I play with (Otto) is great at crafting "episodes." Each game session has its tight focus and how the characters fit in is based on how they approach the subject of that adventure. The games have a beginning, a body and an end (usually with a cool cliffhanger.) Ther's generally a grand story going on which the whole party is part of. However, knowledge of that grand story while helpful is not fully necessary to enjoy the game. I always feel a person could join Otto's game cold turkey and have a great time. I do not feel that way about my own games.

My question to myself now is how I blend the two styles more effectively?

My thought is to pencil sketch 5 "episodes" worth of games. Break the episodes into chunks with beginnings middles and ends. Map the worlds wider events into those chunks and make sure I hit those notes during the game. Allow the existing arcs to cohabitate and move the narrative towards a climax within the scope those five episodes. The problem with this approach is that it gets dangerously close to me telling a story that the players are only along as passengers. It's a bit too close to a railroad.

Alternately I could embrace the full episodic style of play and focus my energy on designing or planning cool singular adventures. I may try to link the episodes together. Like each episode of "Battle Star Galactica" is its own adventure, with "Find the thirteenth colony" The story arc.

I'm not sure how to change what I do and how I do it to dress this new phase of my hobby. I guess only time will tell.