Storyteller musings: Embrace the mid-campaign reset

First, some context to help you understand the situation. I'm currently running a Fallout 2d20 RPG campaign. It's a heavily edited and adapted version of the official campaign Winter of Atom, tailored to the tastes and interests of my table. We're four experience players, plus a fifth who has been introduced recently to the genre. We'll call him Probee for this discussion. The campaign is divided into three chapters, we're now in the middle of the second. We took a few month breaks between the two chapters, this Storyteller had to recharge his battery. Since one character died at the end of the first chapter, and that everyone was now more knowledgeable about the system and the world, I offered everyone the opportunity to make a new character, something one person went with. The group is now half of the initial team, half of new characters.

I find this detail important, as the lack of cohesion within the group played a role in the events. I didn't make any ruling about the group, I consider it's a player's decision on how to integrate their new character to the group if they chose to. That's inline with how I run my games, I let the players take the center stage, my role as the Storyteller is to provide background information, make the world livable, hopefully believable, and generally react to the player's actions, or lack of.

Back to Probee. He's playing a member of the Brotherhood of Steel. Even if you don't know the Fallout universe, it's pretty clear in the RPG book they have a strict chain of command. I didn't insist too much on it, cutting some slack to an inexperienced player, until last week. The group was back in their hometown where Probee's character reporting officer lives, I hinted it would be a good idea for a little chat. The reporting officer asked for a report, was disappointed by what he was hearing, and even felt he was disrespected by the lower rank Initiate. Things went south, the officer expelled the Initiate from the Brotherhood, requesting he handed back the military fatigues associated with the organization and a basic gun. I thought it would be beneficial to Probee, cut this part of the character he didn't seem to enjoy, and circle back later on his now poor relationship with the Brotherhood. You can argue this is not how it would be in the Fallout cannon, I don't care.

Well, I must have struck a nerve. 😆

Now we have this ex-Initiate down to his underwear, pissed off by... I'm still not sure, to be honest. Probee bluntly says he attacks the officer. I ask him to confirm that's his wishes, considering that he is naked, the officer is armed and armored. Fight can be very deadly in this game. First round: the ex-Initiate is badly wounded. Second round: I allowed the other players to hear the fight noises and intervene if they wished. They badly wound the officer, thinking he was attacking their friend. The officer surrounded while trying to set the record straight, it's enough to stop the fight, but now the group has to choose whom to believe.

The next part I saw coming. 😉

One player had shared with me a list of principles his new character adhere to. Honesty being one important on the list. The ex-Initiate tried and failed to lie his way out of the situation, which resulted in later being shot in the back by the principled character. One character dead! Yes, I do let these kinds of things happen in my player-centric games, they are writing the story, I'm there to remind them of the consequences. After putting the ex-Initiate under the cairn the group had built to honor their past friends, the principled character walked away from the group. He could have come back later, but this was left vague on purpose. Character number 3, which at this point seems appropriate to mention, is a Super Mutant, blows some steam off, destroying the small cairn. The fourth character, new to the group and not really integrated yet, was scared away by the events. I mean, who would want to stick with an angry raging Super Mutant, right?

What do we have now? A disintegrated group. Probably salvageable to continue the campaign, but should we? At that point, I stopped the game and asked my friends what they wanted to do. Drop the campaign and play something else? Rebuild the group of characters? Continue the campaign with a brand-new cast of characters?

The last option won. My friends wanted to continue the campaign. I'll take that as a win for me, I managed to make them interested in the world and events. They also agreed a new team would be better, especially if we give them a reason for being a together beyond simply binding against the main villain of this campaign.

Here's my advice to other Storytellers: embrace the mid-campaign reset! You get to explore the story from a different perspective. The story continued to be player-driven and player-centric. Whatever you had planned could be repurposed, don't worry about it. You should not be planning too far ahead anyway, you never know where your players will go.