Press The Beast

Campaign 2026

Every year there are a slew of RPG challenges. For 2026 this right here is the main one: that's right, you're reading the biggest RPG challenge of the year. In Campaign 2026 there are two approaches: referee or player. The goal is to run or play a game for most of the year. In order to get started we will be using a simple deadline.

Getting Started

We will leave January as a month for preparation. If you're a player that just means finding a group, IRL or online, and committing yourself to the chosen time slot. If you're a ref it means prepping a campaign—this is easy and fun to do.

Weird Writer at Roll To Doubt has a famous blogpost about setting up an OSR sandbox, the Beyond The Wall supplement Further Afield has an effective structure for campaign setup that can be done alone or with your play group and is relatively lean, there are many retroclones with guidance for building regions or tools to generate them (i.e, OSRIC and Delving Deeper), many modules and pre-written campaigns have already been published—got a module you've bought but not run? Start running it. Got cool ideas? Jot them down, bash some simple maps together and go. Run the campaign however you want (linear, sandbox, investigative, etc), and mine books for inspiration or scaffolding whenever you need to.

You don't need much to start playing, and too much prep can burden the mind and destroy horizons of possibility yet unknown.

Showing Up & Focusing

Showing up is the main thing. Referees should run the game at the same time every week (or every other week, whatever schedule you got). If just one player shows up at the agreed time it's still easy and fun to run a game: try it if you haven't. In order for a game to have longevity the table needs plasticity, so if a player can't make it for a week or two then that's fine, if the referee can't make it then someone else can run a gaiden scenario in the same world and let the campaign space expand.

Sometimes a game needs a hiatus. Don't be afraid to take time away, two weeks off here or there can do a campaign good and give the ref the time and space needed to run a killer game. It's easy and fun to take a break, like deload weeks when you're lifting hard and heavy.

Focusing is the second most important thing. This will obviously vary from session to session; no stress. Taking notes helps both players and ref to focus. Session reports or reflections ossify the game in the minds of participants (More on those in a second). Referees are usually among the most tuned in at the table; players can stay engaged by handling logistical elements (tracking time, handling hirelings, running enemies, etc) and by thinking seriously about their character's involvement in the game world. Players can do whatever they want, so feel free to embellish and develop your character's place in the world; push the boundaries and make your referee mad by adding a backstory where your character has 17 siblings all coming to kill her: keep insisting that this is happening, and create stat blocks and backstories for all of your character's siblings.

For both players and refs the main thing is to be engaged and actively strive to get what you want out of the game instead of being passive and letting life pass you by.

How to Participate

If you want to participate in this very epic challenge then you've got to post about your campaign. That could mean session reports or impressions, posts describing what you've learned from a particular method of prep or play, intermittent reflections on the game, post up materials used in the game for others, etc. Participating in hobby communities is important and wonderful. It makes the hobby better for everyone.

Feel free to go beyond simple blog posts. Write in universe fiction, create thematic recipes for your player characters, make an abstract stop motion film. I don't give a shit: make awesome stuff inspired by your game and share it.

I'd recommend creating a directory page for your campaign that contains links to all session reports, player blog posts, etc. That will make it easy for others to follow along.

You win Campaign 2026 if you play in a single campaign that stretches from early February to the end of the year. Send me your group's retrospectives and blog posts related to your campaign and I will draw you a custom illustration and send it to you. 2026 is only the beginning: a campaign can last many years and be very cool. This year is about longevity; drinking water from a stone. So, let's play games!

If you want to be added to a list of ongoing campaigns let me know. Don't worry: pre-existing campaigns can join Campaign 2026. If you make a directory, I can link it here so that others can follow your campaign and read your posts about it. It's cool if both players and referee are blogging about it, so I can have multiple links. Here is a list of Campaigns 2026: