Writing that spotlight and watching the shows that I'm currently watching got me thinking about World of Darkness. I started flipping through my old crap for the system. My mind was racing with ideas for a campaign. Something I thought World of Darkness was meant to portray was a sense of fear (for mortals) and helplessness, something I thought would be perfect for this campaign idea.
I found a conversation I had with another GM online that I had saved. I remember why I saved a part a of it, but I don't know why I saved the whole thing. I won't quote it, but basically we were arguing about game-mastering. I was telling him that the players having fun was the goal of a GM, and he was saying that having fun was not part of his job, but instead to provide people with things to do, whether they were what they remotely wanted to do or not. I told him that a take it or leave it philosophy was the wrong approach. It ended with both of us telling each other to quit complaining, and nothing was setting.
In my opinion, after ten years of game-mastering experience, fun should be the ultimate goal of any game. When planning a game, you have ask yourself "will this be fun?" or even "would I find this fun?" This is where knowing your group helps. My group loves a good fight (twenty-seven vs eight was a little overboard, but I think they all enjoyed themselves... okay, yeah, it was overboard, but it worked out), loves getting the loot, and hates no-win scenarios. Sometimes, providing too much challenge makes the game no longer fun.
However, there is the other side of the coin. You, as the game-master, have to have fun too! Your players need to know what is fun for you. I can tell you right now, managing twenty-seven enemies wasn't exactly fun, but I didn't find it hard either. One mistake I kept making was that I would literally skip one particular dire wolf's turn over and over, but you gotta roll with it. I know I have fun when I challenge the players, when I create a storyline and succeed in making the players want to pursue it, and I love character interaction. The latter is difficult over the tabletop, sadly.
So, when does challenge make the players stop having fun? I couldn't tell you. The best thing is, let the reward be sweet. If your players are grumpy after a long battle, cheer them up with a pile of experience, or gold, or both. Players are easy like that.
And now, World of Darkness. There is no loot. Experience must be handling in moderation, or players will become too powerful really quick. Often times, especially with Hunter: the Vigil, the reward is your character's life. Its a hard struggle, an uphill battle, and a long night. I've run several HtV campaigns, and most of them ended because the players had lost the will to go on. WoD has to be brutal, or its not WoD. HtV in particular has to be unforgiving, relentless, and taxing, or its not really HtV.
I didn't mention this in my System Spotlight, but if your thinking about a WoD campaign, true to form, think about that. I remember one campaign, things got bad enough for the players that two of them would constantly joke, in character, "let's just go to tahiti." What was great was that they never did. They kept fighting. That's the Vigil. But I had another campaign, where things almost literally went to hell, and the player consensus was "let's just get the eff out of here." What is too much? Well, I couldn't tell you, but the memory of the failures give me pause whenever I pick up one of the WoD books. One thing I know is that for a group, in WoD (specifically HtV, as I don't GM supernaturals, they're boring), to what to keep going, they have to be motivated in-character. Its a hard road.
Also, if you want to run HtV, I suggest picking up the World of Darkness Armory.
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