Let me start by saying that I don't plot my campaigns game-by-game. I write out the major events of the over-arching story, then write each week's game in the week leading up to game night, deciding then how much of the overall plot will be revealed. So this won't be another boring breakdown of pacing or combat vs. dialog or any of that overthinking nonsense. This is simply a method to flesh out the over-all storyline of the campaign around which you'll set your individual games.

Simply, the double-tap is hitting the players twice, in quick succession, with two huge reveals. Rarely are these reveals back-to-back in the same play session, but they do come back-to-back in terms of the overall story.

In the double-tap structure, the players are given a problem to solve, a singular goal around which the campaign hinges. As they near the end of that goal you hit them with the first shot - the problem is much worse, much bigger, and has a much larger lead on them than they actually thought. In traditional three act formula, this is known as the climax or second turning point, in Jo-ha-kyū it's the break, where things suddenly accelerate out of control; the heroes, who until now have trudged through ever complication thrown at them, suddenly find themselves against overwhelming odds against which they cannot prevail and the clock is ticking down even faster. This is standard stuff in adventure stories.

In the double-tap, the characters barely overcome their challenge, are victorious over the villain, and pick up their things to walk off into falling action and denouement - only to find that a bigger, meaner, more evil antagonist has been there the whole time and bam they're hit with another climax. This is terrible in a book, even worse in a movie, but played right in a gaming campaign and you can create a massive oh shit moment.

What follows are the five steps toward running a double-tap campaign.

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It was a stupid idea, but exactly the kind of stupid idea that could eventually lead to something awesome. Somewhere in the back of my head, the part of my brain that stores silly ideas noticed that the plastic brick that contained my idea for a game based on Harry Potter snapped together with the plastic brick of the Gangster Squad idea and made an airplane. The kind of airplane made up of two bricks snapped together crosswise, sure, but with enough imagination it flies.

The spot at which the round bumps of one brick fit into the backside of the other brick was the idea of secret police. Gangster Squad reminded me of The Untouchables with its FBI agents, and Harry Potter has its aurors, a squad of wizard-busting badasses. It wasn't a great leap to having an American agency responsible for policing magical crimes in the US and bam, I had a synopsis for my next campaign -

American Auror - the PC's are aurors working for the magical equivalent of the FBI. They'll deal with magical organized crime, magical terrorism, and the occasional dark wizard. There will be lots of combat.

I've been mulling that over for the last few weeks since I came up with the idea. I floated the synopsis out to my regular group and everyone was pretty enthused about the idea. As we talked about it, I came up with a few ideas and worked up a document for the agency based on some stuff I'd found on the FBI's website. It gave the players some good ideas for their characters and they started rolling them up before I'd even written a word of plot.

So, since I've been asked, here's that original agency document I created, as well as the campaign template I plan on handing out for the next step of setting design.