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Asheram
2010-07-13, 02:06 PM
Earlier this evening, I were sitting here infront of my computer and pondered upon my upcoming campaign as a DM. Now A flaw of mine is that I always thinks of writing as if writing a singular scene without connecting it too firmly to the previous scene, and this can cause trouble when attempting to manage a full campaign.

Anyhow, I were sitting there twisting and turning the plots to my favor when I suddenly became possessed by the spirit of Graham Chapman who, with my mouth, said "This is getting much to silly, stop this right now!". So I took a mental step backward to look out over the whole of the campaign and found it being a load of s***e!

Now, this being mostly a D&D board you read about lots of DM faliures, re-tellings from both sides of the DM screen, but you never hear much of admitted faliure in early planning. How do you cope with it? I still struggle with my vanity, wanting to keep most of my campaign, while the rest of my mind tells me that I should start over completely, keeping only a very few select pieces of the original plot.

How do you do it?

valadil
2010-07-13, 02:23 PM
How do you cope with it? I still struggle with my vanity, wanting to keep most of my campaign, while the rest of my mind tells me that I should start over completely, keeping only a very few select pieces of the original plot.


I put plot in a drawer and save it for later. It may be deemed inappropriate for the current game, but might fit better in my next one. More likely I'll look at the plot when I've matured as a GM and throw it away. "What was I thinking," is a much easier reaction when you're no longer emotionally attached to the idea. Other bits and pieces find their way into new games.

Anyway, when I do advanced planning I don't really expect to run through all that stuff. I like to give players story they find interesting. It makes for a much more compelling game than one where I give them stuff I expected them to find interested 6 months before I even told them I was gonna run a game. In any given campaign I probably use 10% of the ideas I came up with for that campaign (and that's optimistic). The rest are perfectly good ideas, but don't fit with the game as it plays out.

So save them in a drawer somewhere (I use a wiki and google docs) and forget about them for now. A year later when you're hurting for ideas read through them again. You'll probably find a couple freebies in there that you'd forgotten about.

tl;dr Don't trash anything. Consider it planning for the next campaign. Save it for later.

Zombimode
2010-07-13, 02:50 PM
Now, this being mostly a D&D board you read about lots of DM faliures, re-tellings from both sides of the DM screen, but you never hear much of admitted faliure in early planning. How do you cope with it? I still struggle with my vanity, wanting to keep most of my campaign, while the rest of my mind tells me that I should start over completely, keeping only a very few select pieces of the original plot.

How do you do it?

It happens to me from time to time: I come to the conclusion, that the idea I had in mind wont work out at all; that the plot is not interessting overall; that there are far to many holes for a "round" session; that a higher degree of whatever skill then I posess/energy then I am willing to spend would be required to actualy preform the plot/adventure/campaign in an entertaining fashion.

If any of those cases occur, I make a screeching halt. Then I reconsider things and wonder, if it would be worth the time and energy to safe the plot. If this answer is NOT a clear "YES!", then I have no hesitation to completely thrash the old plot and concentrate on something new.

Saving those concepts may be worthwhile, but of course it takes time to do so.

Kylarra
2010-07-13, 02:51 PM
My only current game is a pseudo sandbox, so the majority of my plots either run without input from the players or are destroyed by accident.

Morph Bark
2010-07-13, 06:06 PM
My only real problem is creating dungeons. When I create dungeons, they seem rather random, with no real theme connecting them all together. The last one I made I made up after seeing all sorts of walls in Dungeonscape and thinking about how I could use each and every one of them in the dungeon. I ended up tweaking it at the last moment and if you would get the explanation you'd see it would all sort-of fit together story-wise for the whole area, but if you just walked on through it, it was just one random occurrence after another.

nedz
2010-07-13, 06:28 PM
My best plots/encounter etc are the ones I re-write TWICE

So put it to one side and re-work it again later from another angle.

Rinse and repeat.

Dust
2010-07-13, 06:51 PM
Well, there's something important to consider here - the difference between plot being godawfulstupidbad and it being 'silly'. The latter, to me, chimes of memorable. Some of my most fondly-recalled tabletop moments include the unexpected, the ridiculous, and the downright bizarre. (Tarrasquemas, the HippoLich, and more)

If you find something to be interesting, amusing, but nonsensical and you're looking for a serious plot, consider simply adding 'straightman' NPCs who treat the whole thing very seriously. You might be surprised what your players will accept.

nihilism
2010-07-13, 09:08 PM
i always start d&d adventures, get writers block forget about them and then get another brilliant idea and the process repeats.

recently i tried writing in a non linear fashion creating a loose setting and deciding the complete structure and resources of the villains and pc allies its working quite well

a few weeks ago i had completely forgotten to prepare at all and i improvised ironically it was the best stuff i have ever come up with and set a great long term plot for the campaign which i am still sticking by (an imminent extra planar invasion by a banished godlike dragon)

oh crap i just got another idea i have to franticly right and then get bored with

PersonMan
2010-07-13, 09:51 PM
I solve that problem by having a two-point-and-pool plot. I know where the PCs begin. I know the general area of where I want them to end. The rest is completely fluid. Before each session(literally like 20 minutes before my players show up) I decide in which direction the plot will move that day, to an extent.

Works for me pretty well. Might not work for you.

Talon Sky
2010-07-14, 12:22 AM
Don't forget, too, that a silly plot can make the night fun. It's a game, after all.

I generally come up with where I want the overall campaign to go, and then session by session I come up with new ways of advancing the story depending on what the characters have done. Places may become important that you randomly stuck on the map 'because it looked empty'. The players may want to investigate a certain NPC that was simply fluff to you, but the next session you can rewrite a little and make the players feel like they were correct. Or not.

For example, I needed a random spellcaster at one point in my game, so I came up with "an old, withered witch who has no eyes in her sockets, but carries a swiveling eyeball in her open palm." The players found her immensely interesting and thought she must be important. So for the next session, I made her important. And a little more, and a little more, and now she's sort of central to my plot.

So something that started out silly and random began to fit in perfectly with my rather serious overall plot, if you're fluid enough.

I apologize if this comes off as stupid, it's 1 am here and I worked eleven hours straight today ;p

bobspldbckwrds
2010-07-14, 01:08 AM
sometimes you have to just realize that silly can work sometimes. just read some douglas adams, ask yourself how you could twist it even further, how you can make this character more compelling, what stereotype to throw in just to hang a lampshade on, and then ask yourself "if i were a player, would i like to spend a few hours a week in this story?"

at least, that is how i like to write my campaigns.

and just remember, throwing the paragon template onto a house cat can make a ridiculous, amusing, and challenging BBEG for the first few levels.

nyjastul69
2010-07-14, 01:36 AM
I solve that problem by having a two-point-and-pool plot. I know where the PCs begin. I know the general area of where I want them to end. The rest is completely fluid. Before each session(literally like 20 minutes before my players show up) I decide in which direction the plot will move that day, to an extent.

Works for me pretty well. Might not work for you.

This is pretty much how handle it. My games are very fluid. I don't usually have an end goal in mind for the players, I allow that to develop as they play. I start with several adventure hooks and see where the players take me. I modify canned modules or create adventures ( I prefer modifying canned modules to suit the players game ) and fit those things to the game that the players want. I guess what I'm saying is that I let the players tell the story and I arbitrate.

As regards silliness; only the players can consider the plot silly. If they don't, I wouldn't worry about it much. It's their game after all, not yours. YMMV

potatocubed
2010-07-14, 03:51 AM
My only current game is a pseudo sandbox, so the majority of my plots either run without input from the players or are destroyed by accident.

All plots run without input from the players or are destroyed by accident. Sandboxiness just kind of codifies that. :smalltongue:

Makiru
2010-07-14, 04:13 AM
I honestly make up the plot as I go if I don't have a pre-built module in front of me. I usually have a long term plot in mind (i.e: the Eberron planes are all coming into alignment, what do?) and milestones, but the short term is left to the players to provide impetus. Last-minute pressure brings strange ideas out of me at the best times, like the Gurrenmobile plane-jumping the mostly-evil party (randomly) to Celestia in order to provoke them into finding a more reliable travel method.

At least for me, you've got to trust your gut instinct when DMing and do what feels right, even if it doesn't seem to quite fit the theme of the game.

super dark33
2010-07-14, 04:43 AM
at first you should make a timline like

pc's meet->they go to the forest->thay fight a miniboss->they return to the village->etc.

valadil
2010-07-14, 08:39 AM
I apologize if this comes off as stupid, it's 1 am here and I worked eleven hours straight today ;p

Nope, nothing stupid about it. IMO that's how more games should be run. If you aren't reacting to you players and rotating the game around their interests, what's the point of even having them there?