Mode, Not Genre or Type

We tend I think to classify or categorise campaigns into genres (fantasy, SF, horror) or sub-genres (high fantasy, sword and sandal); or into particular 'types' (hexcrawl, megadungeon, etc.). In a recent post, I suggested that there are a lot of 'types' of campaign that have not really been systematised in the same way that the OSR has managed over a course of decades to really finesse the matter of how to design and run a megadungeon-based, and to a lesser extent a hexcrawl-based, fantasy (more specifically, sword and sorcery) campaign.

It was suggested to me in the comments on that post that a better way of thinking about things is that there is out there a fairly limited number of campaign styles that might be said to function at a higher, transcendent level of abstraction and which each have a set of key principles that it would be worth elucidating. For example, the fantasy megadungeon campaign might be said to come under the umbrella of a larger campaign style that we could, putatively, call 'anchored raiding and looting'; the fantasy hexcrawl, on the other hand, might fall under 'roaming'. The advantage of thinking about campaign modes, as I will call them, in this way is that it allows us to come up with some principles for each which are transferrable between different genres or scenarios that fall under the larger mode.

Some suggestions for modes, and the principles governing them, would be:

• Anchored raiding and looting: a mode of campaign in which the PCs are self-directing rogues whose main aim is to amass wealth through plunder, and where the action circulates around an 'anchor' location. Key principles: biased sandbox (i.e. open-ended but with the assumption that a particular location is the focus initially); advancement chiefly through treasure accumulation; assumed high character fatality rate. Key tools: wandering monster tables; methods of stocking; location design principles; etc. 
• Roaming raiding and looting: a mode of campaign in which the PCs are self-directing adventurers whose main aim is to amass wealth through plunder, and the where the action is in an 'open world'. Key principles: genuine sandbox (open-ended wiith no anchoring location); advancement chiefly through treasure accumulation; assumed high character fatality rate. Key tools: random encounter tables; wilderness survival rules; travel rules; etc. 
• Merchanting: a mode of campaign in which the PCs are self-directing adventurers whose main aim is to amass wealth through trade, and where the action is in an open-world with a pre-defined or discoverable set of resources, trade-routes, and arbitrage opportunities. Key principles: genuine sandbox but with assumed relationships between geographical locations; advancement chiefly through profit; assumed low character fatality rate. Key tools: ways to calculate fluctuating prices for resources; rules for travel; ways for generating competitors; etc.
• Investigative: a mode of campaign in which the PCs are solve mysteries or unearth knowledge. Key principles: confined sandbox (in a well-defined geographical location or set of geographical locations); advancement chiefly through solving/unearthing; assumed low character fatality rate. Key tools: relationship mapping; ways to generate clues; etc.
• Exploration: a mode of campaign in which the PCs discover hitherto unknown (to them or to the world at large) places. Key principles: open sandbox; advancement chiefly through visiting new places; assumed low character fatality rate. Key tools: wilderness survival rules; detailed and exciting rules for climbing, swimming, etc.; random encounter tables; random map contents; etc.

And so on - there will be others. The idea here is that the key principles and tools are then elaborated and systematised in such a way as to be readily utilised. Each mode thereby becomes a kind of off-the-shelf set of principles that can be applied regardless of genre, or mood, or 'furniture'. Is it a sword-and-sorcery megadungeon or a campaign concerning cyberpunk PCs raiding a gigantic tower-block-cum-hive-cum-nuclear-reactor or one in which future space pirates raid a moon-sized space hulk? Well, these are all anchored raiding and looting campaigns, so the same principles can apply to each and the things that work in a fantasy megadungeon campaign can be ported into the others. On the other hand, is Call of Cthulhu, Unknown Armies, hard-boiled tech-noir, or something more like a Poirot novel? Well, these are all under the 'investigative' mode. And so on.

At present, I believe it to be the case that that the OSR has - to use a phrase from the dead world of corporate managementspeak - bottomed out the anchored raiding and looting campaign mode in such a way that its principles and tools can be used in any genre or setting. This is not as true of the other modes. And elaborating the key principles and tools for them might be an important project.