The lost art of generating hype
Instant Campaign Builder Part VI: Hype
This article is part of the Instant Campaign Builder Project.
The Buzz
Most great events are preceded by an insane amount of publicity, which sometimes generates anticipation. I believe the Saturday morning D&D session can benefit from fabricated buzz and hype.
How to generate hype
- Constantly remind your players the game is coming up. If the DM is so obsessed with the campaign it has to be great!
- Leak information. Give your players information about the campaign inadvertantly. It’s like meta-foreshadowing.
- Create characters. StupidRanger’s better characters article is worth a look.
- Ask the players what they want and include it in the campaign.
- Prepare opening credits for the campaign.
Watch and learn
If you feel your game isn’t highly anticipated, watch sports news or entertainment gossip tv programs and observe how they generate buzz from nothing.
The danger zone
When purposefully generating hype you have to keep in mind that the expectations will be higher so you need to come up with a great campaign. If you follow the tips of the Instant Campaign Builder you should be alright.
In a large D&D campaign I played in the GM was crazy for making up props. There were puzzles, diagrams, illustrations (some original and some clip art stuff) that he would throw in all over the place. Some of the puzzles took months to solve since they required key information that we didn’t get (through being planned that way or us going off the beaten track) but we collected them all together in a journal with notes by various players. When the campaign (or sections of it) wrapped up we’d have incredibly good momentos of the game. Sometimes with clues half finished of course…