Last article, I spoke about the second of three campaign narrative structures. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend going back and reading The Three Campaign Structures Part 1 and Part 2. In the first part I discuss the concept more broadly and go in depth regarding the Journey campaign structure. Now I shall complete the trilogy by discussing at length the Organization narrative structure.
What is the Organization? The third campaign structure is the Organization, and this is arguably the least common narrative structure used in campaigns, but as mentioned in the prior article, the Journey is by far the most common and the Organization and Situation are both far less common. This is primarily due to the prevalence of Dungeons and Dragons which orients itself to the Journey. Now! A campaign follows the Organization structure if the characters are part of a coordinated organization, are charged with pursuing its mission, and by doing so they can move up within the organization.
Popular Examples The Bene Gesserit from Dune is an excellent example of an organization. The guild sends its followers to advise countless monarchs throughout the galactic empire who then shape the course of humanity to the Bene Gesserit’s will.
In a similar vein but from a far different series, the Council of Mages in the Witcher has its sorceresses assigned to each of the human kingdoms in order to advise them politically and on sorcerous matters. The sorceresses are meant to further the interests of the Council.
Mission Impossible is a solid example, sort of. The characters are part of a secret organization which they do missions for. The goals of the organization become the goals of the characters. The reason I say “sort of” is because the quest-giver in Mission Impossible is more secretive that what you want if you’re running an Organization campaign - you typically want plenty of interaction between the characters in an Organization campaign and the other members of the organization.
Best Systems to Play Any system works for the Organization campaign. Systems where characters gain XP and level up work well because extra XP can be assigned for completing organization missions thus incentivizing the players to invest in the organization. Any system that is more grounded, realistic also works well because it incentivizes the players to use organization resources since their characters probably can’t go out on their own and fight a whole army of orcs by themselves. Do note that any system whose progression is based more on training than XP will provide yet another reason for the players to invest in the organization - it has all of their trainers.
Advantages of the Structure The Organization structure immediately makes it clear to the players what the role of their characters is in the world, and this is supremely helpful for your players when they create their characters. During the campaign, the reason that the characters are adventuring (or doing whatever they’re doing) is obvious, and there is an obvious reward structure in place (ranking up, getting paid, furthering the organization’s mission, etcetera).
The Organization structure also automatically gives the characters more influence and an excellent world tie-in. Presumably the organization exists because it fulfills some needed purpose in the world and the characters, being part of the organization, have a level of authority which can be made use of to have greater influence over the game world, whatever its scope.
The organization itself becomes something worth protecting and cultivating, a basic through-line for the campaign in addition to whatever the main plot is. The organization ought to have many NPCs whom the characters can interact with, and because the characters will spend plenty of time in the organization, they will have multiple interactions with the many NPCs thus increasing the likelihood of meaningful connection.
Disadvantages of the Structure The primary oddity about the Organization structure is that there will likely be more-competent NPCs than characters leading to situations where you, the DM, might find yourself struggling not to simply have one of them give the players the answer to whatever problem they face. Further, you must justify why the player characters specifically are being sent to accomplish any given task they are sent to accomplish rather than some other group the organization has at its disposal.
At the point when the characters get to the top of the organization and can manage it, those characters are less realistically able to also go on adventures “in the field”. They effectively have desk jobs which might be up the alley of the some players but definitely not all.
How to Mitigate the Disadvantages I’ll address the the challenges of this structure in reverse order. At the point where some or all of the characters get to the top of the organization, let those characters run the organization and make strategic-level decisions and have each of those players make a second lower-ranking character that can participate during in-field missions. You can even start the campaign with each player running two characters: an administrative character and a lower-ranking field officer - this works especially well when you are running very high-level conflicts where the administrative character might be negotiating a trade deal with a representative from the other empire while the group of lower-ranking field officers uses the opportunity to find dirt on the other representative. If you do this, be careful to avoid scenes where a player must have both of their characters interact with each other for anything other than basic logistical communication.
In order to ensure that the missions the characters go on actually make sense for them to go on, it is useful to have the players play characters who are either a special unit within the organization or who are devoted to a task which only they can complete. You don’t have to do this, but in that case, you ought to make the characters recruits of some sort whose goal is to move up the ladder - that is quite functional as well, especially if they are assigned tasks that no one else really wants only to end up in the right place at the right time for complications to occur…
In my current campaign, the players play “Dwimmerists”, think anti-magic detectives trying to rid a dark fantasy city of magical corruption while dealing with plenty of political intrigue to boot. The current squadron of characters (their old party died) consists of the highest-ranking field officers in the organization, and thus it makes sense that they would be sent on the most plot-important missions. When the campaign started, the characters were high-ranking but not the highest, and the concept was that the Dwimmerist’s Guild had enough on its plate that it could entrust important missions to important-but-not-the-most-important officers. I experimented with each player controlling two characters at once, but given that none of the characters at the time were high-ranking enough to actually control the Dwimmerist’s Guild, it ended up bifurcating the campaign unhelpfully, so now each player only has one character which seems to be working. At the point when enough of those characters reach the top ranks that the Guild can be controlled entirely or nearly-entirely by players, then each player can have a second character once more.
And that is that!
I have dived deep into each of the three campaign structures and I will refer back to them going forward. Knowing your campaign’s narrative structure is so important because, for example, if you try to run a Journey structure campaign when what you really want is an intrigue campaign full of recurring interactions with many NPCs, you will fail.
I did this once actually - I ran Traveller and the players played poor traders who roamed around the galaxy getting into trouble, and then I presented them this really cool city and prepped some cool intrigue for them to encounter. Thing was, the characters didn’t have any actual leverage or power or connection with much in the city, no real reason to stay there once things got tough and no way to really get in with the powers therein, and why would they? They were poor fuckers trying to pay off their spaceship mortgage! They would encounter potential intrigue leads but not be able to actualize any of them, or worse, would encounter trouble and get annihilated by the far more powerful guilds within the city - it simply did not work and was very dissatisfying for everyone at the table. That campaign ground to a halt as I got burnt out and ended rather hilariously, but that’s a story for another time.
So the point is, know your structure and prep adventures that work for it! If you want to change your structure, that’s gonna be a pretty major shift for the campaign, and it totally can happen but you’ve got to prepare accordingly, make sure that everyone is on-board, and then make decisive changes to enable the new structure to function correctly. As before, no half-measures.
If you have any questions, I am more than happy to answer them. Whenever you talk about such immense things as campaign narrative structures, there is always more to discuss, always more examples to give. But this three-article series should give you a functional understanding and then some, so that you can act purposefully with your future campaign preparations to give your campaign the best chance of achieving enduring grandeur.