I am intrigued by the concept of Grimm, and have been thinking about picking up a copy.

I do have a question regarding the game itself. Does Grimm lend itself more to a one-off type of story structure, or does it favor a longer campaign (multiple stories laid end to end, with significant character/power growth over time)?

I have always loved the one shot story games, lasting maybe one or two nights (Call of Cthulhu is a good example of this), and Grimm is perfect for this. My group did this with the game. We played a long one shot story that played out one night a week for a month. In the end, the Chacters (well, most of the characters) made it back to the real world without too much mental scaring.

We liked the story, and the play so much that we intend to do it again...with the same characters, kind of like a "Return to Grimm".

To answer your question though, I personally feel that the game lends itself better to short story games, rather than a full on Campaign. That is just my opinion at least.

I think Grimm is capable of doing both. I don't have experience with Grimm yet (I hope this will change soon) as I'm a GM novice... However the material that is covered in the book itself and the possibility to add other fairytales to the Grimm Wolrd, makes a longe campaign interesting and fun.

If nothing else it seems to lend itself to the possiblity of many small episodic games linked in a larger over arcing campagin. The simplist likely outline for such would be to get a book of nursery ryhms or Grimm's Fairy Tales and just do (Grimm the RPG) versions of the contained stories -- although I am sure this is suggested elsewhere. That's one of the more apealing ascpect of the game at least from my outsider's view, it looks to be very sytem lite, modular both in terms of the types of games you can play regarding tone and setting as well as length and ease of planning it seems a game that lends itself to diffrent kinds of play and GM styles.

I really feel it's great for both. If campaign play is sought, I think it's best to look to the miniseries "The 10th Kingdom" for some inspiration on how it might go and/or as just one method of structuring things.

Janus said:

Nice that you tipped the hat to 10th Kingdom!

I would say that Grimm can be run in either. Just depends on what you want out of the game, I actually ran my Spiderwick game more in episodes like a TV series. Really allowed me to create a larger story arc that also held mini one off adventures where some were important to the main story are and others were one offs that didn't have a direct reference to the main arc but had the players up against other baddies or trying to solve a different problem altogether.

Chalk it up to repressed ADHD, but I'm always in the market to try something new at the game table. Today is the first time I've looked into Grimm. Given, as many of you seem to say, that this game lends itself well to both campaign and one-off play, I'll assume you will also say its a good investment.
What I'm getting at, in my own round-about way, is that I'd like to know how was the player response to being introduced to the Grimm Lands?

I'm asking because I think I'd like to use Grimm as break from some of my more brutal rpg campaigns.

Most players I introduce the game to have one of two reactions right off the bat:

1. Big grin when I mention the "Twisted and Wrong" Fairy Tale denizens of the Grimm lands.
2. Intruige when I mention the simple rules to learn

Now, I run with story-heavy play groups, and they're always looking for new twists to challenge them with making characters and seeing what kind of games we can run. Our Grimm games got to be fun because when we were doing our character generation and pre-game prep session we were watching movies like "Goonies", "Hook", "Time Bandits", and "The 10th Kingdom" and everyone was getting in the mind of child protagonists that weren't just Harry Potter.

Now, our group is usually playing Shadowrun, In Nomine, and 7th Sea. What are you guys playing?

Thanks, Janus. I think I should easily get my little group to go for it, if I mention Goonies or Time Bandits . With these two films in mind I think they will be most willing to jump into the Grimm Lands.

Our group, for the most part, plays Dark Heresy , WHFRP , D&D (mostly in a Ravenloft or Dragonlance setting), Pendragon , Space: 1889, and the Battlestar Galactica rpg (we cycle through to keep from getting bogged down in any one game for too long). There are others to be sure, but thats been our cycle in the last year.

Before I start my rant, let me define what I call a one-shot. To me a one-shot is a self-contained adventure in which is intended to last one session or less. You may not share that definition, but all future references to "one-shot" in this post are to be defined as that.

I've found that Grimm one-shots cannot be treated like say, DnD one-shots. I find Grimm to be especially story-driven and revolving around a central theme. Say if you stick to the book and are having the kids attempt to escape Grimm, that should be the driving force of that chapter. Hence it will take some time to get your kids into Grimm, introduce the world, etc. This is in stark contrast to a genera d20 game where you can plop your adventurers into a tavern, tell them the evil wizard is over there, and they accept it without pause.

Part of what I discovered is that L6 is just ...different from d20. What a lot of my players will do is run skill checks as if this were DnD, they tend not to have a lot of fun. In fact, they find the game boring because generally whatever they want to happen happens. So they climb the tree...or seem cool to the peasants...etc. Needless to say there was never anything deep happening in the game, because I had just plopped the party down somewhere and let them do whatever they pleased. BIG MISTAKE! IMO, Grimm cannot function properly without direction and plot. Those 2 factors will be much more important than overall length. You can run a quixotic campaign if necessary, a chapter here, a chapter there, graduate your character 4 times, play again, etc., if you want and I see Grimm functioning fine. You can also run a full-fledged campaign and it would work as well. That to me is a question of personal preference. However, if you choose to do a one-shot, take the time to develop the plot and direction. Random dungeons with random monsters is not what Grimm is all about.

I have run Grimm as both a one-shot and a campaign, and while the one-shot was fun I must say that the whole feel of Grimm seems to be better suited for a campaign. Grimm has just always struck as a much longer story - the kids are trapped in this world and they have to get out of it, and if you can do that in one session then, well, it just doesn't seem very epic. For my one shot, I had them travel to two different kingdoms - they had to escape the first, and then solve a quest in the second, at which point they'd be allowed to return home.

I'm posting here because I need to vent. Maybe it's the global economic downturn that's the cause, but I'm seeing the phrase "temporarily unable to order"( I cannot put inot words how strongly I loathe this phrase) all too often when I try get a game through local channels. My Grimm plans are going to be on-hold unitl at least the new year; which is alright, frustrating, but alright.

pigi314159 said:

Great post and very much a need to know for those interested in GRIMM. I have always been a BIG supporter of the story and character driven games and GRIMM fits that like a glove.

pigi314159 said:

Great post and very much a need to know for those interested in GRIMM. I have always been a BIG supporter of the story and character driven games and GRIMM fits that like a glove.