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View Full Version : DM Help How do you actually prepare a campaign



Yora
2014-04-27, 04:40 AM
Since the thread about starting adventures went so well, let's have another with a similar question on a different scale.

Starting an adventure is one thing. But I feel that preparing a campaign that will span several connected adventures is even much more difficult. Do you have any advice you can share on this?

EccentricCircle
2014-04-27, 07:44 AM
It may seem obvious but start by thinking about what the campaign should be about and what themes should run through it all. You need to create a series of linked adventures which will allow the story to develop and evolve as the game progresses.

I tend to break a campaign down into a series of story arcs. Each will typically take about six to ten weeks of once a week evening games, or play out over the course of a weekend of more intensive gaming. Each episode should build on what has gone before, but should also have enough variety to feel fresh and different.

I've found that games where each story arc is too similar to whats gone before don't tend to last as long. Players can easily get bored if they keep having to face the same villains and threats repeatedly.
Finding the balance between making all of the adventures feel like parts of a whole, while still sustaining the story over a long period of time is a very tricky thing to do and takes a lot of practice to get right.

I tend to have multiple factions and villains working at cross purposes, and at least two storylines which start out seeming unrelated, but which can be tied together as the game progresses.

At the start you can do a couple of seemingly unrelated story arcs, get the players used to their characters and the world, do a few different things. Then tie together the threads. Maybe the evil sorcerer from part one has a master who was also responsible for the Duke's plot to overthrow the kingdom. But they have no way of realizing that until they find that the Duke was getting advice from a magical mirror almost identical to the one in the sorcerer's tower.

Then part three becomes about them trying to find out who was behind these seemingly seperate schemes and how they all tie together. Leading them to different lands or places, through different problems etc.

I tend to not plan everything out at the start but throw out lots of possible subplots and see which ones the Players take notice of, these can then be woven into the fabric of the story as the game progresses and you don't run the risk that the players ignore the character you were setting up to be the big bad from the start. You throw in a few characters who could be the big bad, and whichever one they "like" turns out to be the villain. From their point of view it will still look as though you had it all planned out from stage one.

Also remember that sometimes a subplot needs to be resolved so that you can focus on the main story. I usually use the penultimate story arc to kill off the minor villains, thwart a few subplots and resolve most of the outstanding issues. In particular it's good to wrap up subplots which are focused on one or two players at this stage, so that they go into the final arc with their "priorities straight". The red herrings have been swept aside, they know who the villain is and what they are planning, and so there is a definite sense of closure, "this is what we've got to do, and we've got to do it now, before it's too late"
When played right this lends a dramatic and apocalyptic sense of scale to the finale, rather than it feeling like just another episode.

So essentially the model has five essential stages
1) Introduce the characters to the world and set the tone of the campaign with a minor adventure.
2) The second seemingly minor adventure proves that things are more dangerous than they knew and that they are in over their heads.
3) They learn what's going on and start fighting what they now realize is a much more serious plot and begin knowing what to do about it.
4) They win some major victories, but the villains are still one step ahead, leading them to hurtle towards the final confrontation.
5) everything comes to a head and everything that is set up earlier in the campaign gets paid off.

If time allows any number of episodic storylines can take place between stage 1 and 3 with each giving them another clue to the fact that something is going on, and they can have numerous adventures between 3 and 4 as their attempts to combat the villains scheme leads them deeper and deeper into the plot:

Lastly know when to end it. I'd advise having stages 4 and 5 planned out at the same time as stage 3. you can then have as many intermediate adventures in that second half of the campaign as you're players want, but once they start getting tired or time grows short use stage 4 to wrap up all the loose ends and then throw them into the finale.

BWR
2014-04-27, 07:53 AM
Some of the most enjoyable and long-lived campaigns I've played started off as nothing more than random adventures for random characters, and just grew from that.

I'm not particularly good at planning big stories from the start. At best I have an idea of what I want the campaign to be about, then I think up some cool scenes and incorporate them at appropriate points, but mostly just think of mostly unconnected adventures which I try to connect to eachother in some way.
Theoretically, I have a decent idea what to do.
- think up what you want the major plot point to be
- think how you are going to introduce the PCs to this: random bystanders, accidental involvement, do-gooders fighting evil, Chosen By FATE, whatever
- consider how they will work their way up the chain of lesser encounters and challenges until they reach the top
- consider the motivations and personalities opposing them, and how they react to the PCs
- do not have preconceived events that must occur once the PCs are invovled. Have plans for what the opponents intend to occur and what will happen if the PCs don't succeed, but allow the PCs the chance to change or stop things from happening. The opposition can also regroup and try again or alter their plans in response to the PCs.

I just have problems with a smooth transition from one adventure to another and conveying the ideas in my head to the players.

Kingreaper
2014-04-27, 08:02 AM
Some of the most enjoyable and long-lived campaigns I've played started off as nothing more than random adventures for random characters, and just grew from that.

My longest running campaign didn't even have a single GM to plan a long-term plot. We just built a world piece by piece, and by the time we reached the epic finale it had become clear who the big bads were :-)

jedipotter
2014-04-27, 09:03 AM
I don't plan out too much. I just plan in general. The most important thing is to create links and a web of plots and stories. You want to avoid examples from fiction where there is one bad guy and lots of nameless folks. Star Wars is a great example: Big bad Empire has just one great bad guy: Vader. Everyone else in the whole Empire is nobody.

So I always leave lots of hooks. Just about everything is connected to everything. Not all will be used, but they will be there to be used if needed. And with no clear video game-like BBEG, the players are not sure who to go after, and you can be sure some will escape. And lots of hooks will not be so clear, at first.

It can be great fun to even take something like a goblin thug, and have him be hired by lots of bad guys. So the group always runs into him.

Rhynn
2014-04-27, 11:24 AM
Minimal work, everything just in time.

The best campaign I've run was probably my Artesia: Adventures in the Known World campaign. I started with no plans at all, basically - I read and ran the intro adventure. My players got pretty invested in some of elements included in it. After every session, I went over what they'd done (basically, the people they had interacted with) and figured what it would result in - spinning out these separate threads little by little. I decided what consequences and results to introduce next session.

I did have an idea of a larger arc - the political events of the realm, and how they progressed without the PCs, and how they might be involved. The PCs threw a wonderful wrench into the gears, though - at a tourney, a NPC talked one of them into hating one of the three princes (who were set up to compete for succession), and the PC "accidentally" killed the prince in the grand melee, and then managed to convince the king's counselors and nobles that it was an accident, and was only banished. This pretty much changed the direction of the campaign - the PCs fled (partly because they'd attracted the attention of witch-hunters) north, planning to conquer themselves a castle in the war-torn northern realm.

The only things I had in advance were a general idea about the political situation and major political events that would happen without the PCs' interference, maps and locations, and the major personalities of the realm. Everything that actually happened - "encounters" - was prepared before the session it would come up, and session prep was never more than an hour or two.


My current ACKS Dark Sun campaign is a bit more work so far, but for basically unlimited returns; I've created and keyed a hexmap (based on the Dark Sun maps), created encounter tables, and described one city so far. I've created a few big dungeons, and chosen a bunch of modules that fit into the setting. It's currently on hold, but it's going to run sort of similarly to the above: I'll have an idea about large events independent of the PCs, and between sessions I'll figure out the consequences for their actions and when to introduce them.

RFTD-blog
2014-04-27, 12:12 PM
Interestingly enough, I have a whole website/blog dedicated to the creative design of campaign settings:
http://www.reflectionsfromthedungeon.com/

In order to start a new campaign, I'd begin with thinking of a starting location, like an empire, kingdom, city, or tribal community. Rationalize what neighbors would be nearby, and come up with a few clever NPCs you think the adventurers might run into on the way. Having a first quest is great, but I never try to pin them into certain quest railroads.

After you've got those sketches, I usually move onto a metanarrative, or the grander, bigger idea. In my Mumblemouth Halfling-only campaign, that involves extraterrestrial treefolk drugging up slaves to resurrect them as devils to eventually exterminate the Material Plane in order to stop the economic lifesucking of the Astral Emperor's northern mines.

From that point forward, it's easy to move the cogs in whichever direction points in the metanarrative, ever so slowly over time.

If you have any specific questions, ask me and I will be happy to answer them.

Rhynn, you have great points. I love what you said about "lots of hooks." I'm always throwing new hooks within old webs at them. I imagine a campaign setting more like a piece of interactive literature or play rather than a wide matrix of data sets. After all, your goal is entertainment like literature, not to reach some absolute conclusion using mathematics.

Rhynn
2014-04-27, 12:21 PM
Rhynn, you have great points. I love what you said about "lots of hooks." I'm always throwing new hooks within old webs at them. I imagine a campaign setting more like a piece of interactive literature or play rather than a wide matrix of data sets. After all, your goal is entertainment like literature, not to reach some absolute conclusion using mathematics.

:smallbiggrin: jedipotter said "lots of hooks," but I do basically that, yeah. I lay down a bunch of threads, the players lay down more threads, and before each session I "pull up" some of them. Most threads end eventually, but new ones are always being laid. I think the players like the sense of results and consequences - things they do echo down the sessions and affect the campaign.

Something important I didn't make explicit: I write down a lot of things, but I keep my notes short. It'll be on the level of "[Woman PC seduced] shows up seeking protection from abusive jilted knight husband," "[Woman's] abusive jilted knight husband shows up looking for vengeance (Fine Knight, Fury 4)."

I also make a lot of use of generic statblocks. A:AKW gets you to a great start with these, and I've prepared a bunch more. I can pull up any one and modify it in two minutes to fit what I need in a NPC. Of course, games like ACKS don't have complicated stats to begin with (I can mechanically describe a NPC with "fighter 6, STR 16, sword +2").

Basically, anything that's trivial to make up on the spot (like describing a tavern, whatever) I never bother to write down beforehand. I might write it down afterwards if I need to keep track of it.

RFTD-blog
2014-04-27, 12:33 PM
:smallbiggrin: jedipotter said "lots of hooks," but I do basically that, yeah. I lay down a bunch of threads, the players lay down more threads, and before each session I "pull up" some of them. Most threads end eventually, but new ones are always being laid. I think the players like the sense of results and consequences - things they do echo down the sessions and affect the campaign.

Ah, I see. Still getting used to the site, but I like the collaborative style you're describing--it's not only yourself, but the players laying down the threads. Choosing which ones to explore is a joint decision. Giving your players that sort of power is a great thing. I also focus on the echoes a lot, because that sort of dynamic change between sessions can give a world life.

Here's a basic example. The first time you go the Kingdom of Nasgard, everything is great. The King dranks a little too much wine and has too many servants lolligagging in his chambers, but the economy is booming and the peasant are happy. But 6 months down the road, after the PCs have started raids on Nasgard's merchant ships, the King is nowhere to be found. The players can now only speak to him through his favored servants. Peasants who recognize the PCs from last time whisper murmurs of rebellion.

This sudden change, and not only that but sudden change which the PCs had a part of, gives the players a level of satisfaction that I don't think can be achieved by slaying monsters in a randomly-generated dungeon.

If you'd like to read more about what I have to say about the "echoes" you speak of when it comes to how the PCs interact with NPCs, check out what I have to say here:
http://www.reflectionsfromthedungeon.com/?p=126



Something important I didn't make explicit: I write down a lot of things, but I keep my notes short. It'll be on the level of "[Woman PC seduced] shows up seeking protection from abusive jilted knight husband," "[Woman's] abusive jilted knight husband shows up looking for vengeance (Fine Knight, Fury 4)."

I like this way, and I think a good way to phrase it is through motivations. Every NPC the PCs come across should have some sort of motivation, be it as crazy as taking over the world or as simple as wanting a bite of the PC's porridge. This is a hallmark of fiction as well. You never see two characters just hanging out for no reason, and even it appears that they are, there is always something thematically going on elsewhere or the motivations lie hidden within their social and nonverbal cues to each other.


I also make a lot of use of generic statblocks. A:AKW gets you to a great start with these, and I've prepared a bunch more. I can pull up any one and modify it in two minutes to fit what I need in a NPC. Of course, games like ACKS don't have complicated stats to begin with (I can mechanically describe a NPC with "fighter 6, STR 16, sword +2").

This is something that I am not as familiar with, but my favorite generic statblock to use (D&D 3.5) is the DMG nonplayer character one. When using math in the campaign, I really enjoy using the percentile dice--it takes power away from me as DM and puts it in the hands of the campaign world. Any time I can delegate power to the campaign world to take away from my own arbitrary nature, I consider that to be probably a good thing. I'd be curious to hear what specific statblocks you use, as I've never heard of A:


Basically, anything that's trivial to make up on the spot (like describing a tavern, whatever) I never bother to write down beforehand. I might write it down afterwards if I need to keep track of it.

This, I think, is the toughest part. Writing it up before the session is easy. Writing it down and remembering it a week later is sometimes hard, especially in a campaign with lots of politics and such. Because my campaigns often focus a lot on political roleplaying, I actually have a sheet that lists all the NPCs the PCs have met in person, including their race, name, and one or two words of who they seemingly associate (such as a certain King or underworld gang).

Rhynn
2014-04-27, 01:10 PM
This, I think, is the toughest part. Writing it up before the session is easy. Writing it down and remembering it a week later is sometimes hard, especially in a campaign with lots of politics and such. Because my campaigns often focus a lot on political roleplaying, I actually have a sheet that lists all the NPCs the PCs have met in person, including their race, name, and one or two words of who they seemingly associate (such as a certain King or underworld gang).

It was really easy in A:AKW for a couple of reasons.

First, because of the way experience works in A:AWK (you gain Arcana Points in specific Arcana for specific actions; e.g. winning a combat gets you a few points of Sword Arcana, corrupting someone gets you some Sphinx Arcana, etc.), we'd end every session with 15-30 minutes of talking through the events, going over each Arcana together and everyone bringing up actions that should count for points, and the GM (me!) adding everything up (not saying yea or nay to specific actions, but just secretly adding up the totals as appropriate). This was a great refresher on the session, especially because each player is going to remember something in more detail than I do. (I'm often amazed by the details my players can remember years and years after a game!) Then, once the players left (we play at my place), I'd take 30-60 minutes to write up a prosey "chronicle" entry of the session, and take down any notes I didn't take down during the session, and then think up the threads to bring up next session. Usually I'd take another hour later (before the next session) to elaborate on the things to bring up and take down stats, etc., I'd need to use.

A:AKW also had a special maintenance element: before the next session, I'd make dice rolls for stuff like pregnancy happening (since the game had mechanics for that), for whether slain NPCs became ghosts (mechanics for that, too!), and then make any necessary notes and decisions on those. The PCs have been haunted by one ghost so far: a young man whose corpse they dumped in the swamp after he and his friends followed a local bailiff to accuse them of trafficking with a witch... the PCs essentially murdered the lot. (It was one of many threads that contributed to the PCs becoming the targets of a literal witch-hunt.)

TheCountAlucard
2014-04-27, 06:33 PM
Step one should probably be talking to your players about what they want out of your game.

Kaun
2014-04-28, 01:05 AM
Step one should probably be talking to your players about what they want out of your game.

heheh... i tired this a couple times, it never seems to work out well.

So now i figure out what i want to run. I try and out lay it as clearly as possible in an elevator pitch format, then i shop it around to various potential players to see if they are keen to play. (admittedly i can be spoiled for players some times.)

Apart from that i have stopped putting to much work into major story arcs until 3 or 4 sessions in. I generally just make up a couple of episodic sessions to start the ball rolling, let the players ease into their characters and see what direction the game is taking.

Lord Raziere
2014-04-28, 01:17 AM
Step One: write up meticulous plans about how the entire campaign will go and villains they will face, planning out the entire thing from start to end.

Step Two: Recognize that none of it will ever happen the way you plan, and scrap it as soon as you come up with something better in response to PC action or improvise a way for things to get back on track without them noticing.

Step Three: Have Fun.

above all remember: "No plan survives contact with the PCs." its only there in case you don't have to improvise for their actions and everything goes smoothly for once.

Yora
2014-04-28, 02:21 AM
heheh... i tired this a couple times, it never seems to work out well.
Nah, players want nothing and have no preference for anything. They always want to do anything that you want. And then say they play an elven bard before you even got a chance to describe the setting to them.


Apart from that i have stopped putting to much work into major story arcs until 3 or 4 sessions in. I generally just make up a couple of episodic sessions to start the ball rolling, let the players ease into their characters and see what direction the game is taking.
Now that's actually a useful peace of advice instead of "don't prepare, just hope you're lucky". I had a number of ideas for our next games, and I think I'll take those that are completely standalone first and then see what happens before deciting on the specifics of what comes after.

Thrudd
2014-04-28, 03:37 AM
How to plan a multi-adventure campaign without subverting the players' choices/railroading? That is the real question. Also, how to define "adventure"?
For D&D, my preference would be to prepare a series of locales for the players to explore. An adventure can be defined as a specific locale full of dangers and challenges where the players will be attempting to accomplish something. Their goal may be as general as "find treasure", or it may be specific "rescue a captive" or "kill the evil wizard". To connect various adventures with some sort of continuity, each locale will have clues pointing to one or more other locales. Characters must be designed with built-in motivation to participate in the type of activities you have planned (for D&D, adventuring).
Outline the important NPCs and organizations in your setting. If you want, outline plots and events on a timeline which will occur if players do not interfere. Keep careful track of the passage of time in the game world, and reference your timeline for events that may impact the players or alter locales.

An important element of a campaign is that the players are all "on-board" for what you have planned. To avoid in-game railroading may require some pre-game cooperation and planning in the form of specifying the sorts of characters and motivations players ought to have. If you want to plan a series of adventures revolving around hunting down an evil cult, the players need to have characters that want to do that. Tell the players that their characters must be members of the rebellion, or are part of a thieves' guild, or are royal rangers, or are occult investigators. With all similar motives and a reason to participate in certain types of adventures, planning the campaign will be much easier.

The setting and game mechanics must also be designed to support each other and support the type of campaign you are planning. The game should reward the activity you desire from your players. A game where the majority of XP comes from loot implies that characters will be and should be motivated to recover loot from dungeons and lairs. This needs to make sense within the setting. Rewarding players only for killing monsters will result in characters who are motivated primarily to hunt down monsters, this will inform what sort of adventures and campaign will be possible. House rules and homebrew must be selected carefully to create an environment which supports your campaign idea.

Airk
2014-04-28, 10:44 AM
Yeah, at risk of reiterating what people have already said, you basically need two things:

#1: An idea of what will happen if the PCs do nothing. The world should not be static. If the PCs didn't exist, or if they just sat in the tavern drinking beer and picking their collective noses, what would happen to the world? This gives you an idea of what the characters can and can't change.

#2: Somewhere to start the action. You need some sort of adventure to happen before the players will have the faintest idea what they might want their characters to do. This can be a simple one, or it can (more ideally, IMHO) try to introduce the characters (and therefore the players) to at least some of the players and factors involved in #1, so that they start having ideas about what they might want to do.

At the end of your 'first adventure', or, better still, at the end of every session, discuss with the players what they might want to do next.

Rhynn
2014-04-28, 11:19 AM
At the end of your 'first adventure', or, better still, at the end of every session, discuss with the players what they might want to do next.

This is a critical element of a campaign that isn't just the GM telling the players what they're doing next. A debriefing and a look ahead, so that the GM knows what to prepare next.

(#1 and #2 are spot on, too.)

It goes well with what Lord Raziere brought up about letting the players pick the direction of the campaign: start out by throwing a bunch of stuff at the PCs, and allow the players' interest in the first few sessions to determine the direction of the campaign (within the boundaries you set originally; even if you've got a fairly narrow scope, there's probably at least two sides to whatever central conflict).

I should maybe stress that, as GM, you still create those boundaries and choose the scope. If you want to run a campaign about high adventure on the Caribbean Sea in the Golden Age of Piracy, prep notes and pitch that to your players - but there's a lot of variables within that scope that your players should ultimately choose in play (do they want to be privateers siding with a crown, or treasure-hunters, or buccaneers; do they want to rob ships or conquer towns; etc.). You don't have to let a player change that into a campaign about participating in the Glorious Revolution in England (although if all your players prefer that, it might be worth thinking about). If you're not into running a campaign, it's not going to be much good.

Kaun
2014-04-28, 06:22 PM
Nah, players want nothing and have no preference for anything. They always want to do anything that you want. And then say they play an elven bard before you even got a chance to describe the setting to them.

Hehe, something like this. Generally i think the problem is, most players don't really know what they like and most of the time its because they have never really stopped to think about it. Then when they are asked what they want you get a mixed bag of answers that are generally the first thing that comes to mind rather then useful info. And often, the ones that frequent rpg forum, will give the answers they think they are supposed to give. For example i have a player who always wants a game where he isn't railroaded, where his character is free to do what it wants to do. But in reality, he gets massively bored in sandboxy style games and really seems to enjoy games where the plot is jammed down his throat. What he actually likes, is to be able to go off on tangents every now and then, when the whim strikes him.

Its the same for a lot of GM's though. For the longest time i had this list of half thought out ideas for games i "really wanted to run one day", but after getting to run a couple of them and having them fail on me i took a long look at my list and realized i hadn't really considered my own preferences.

for example the idea of the campaign set entirely inside the mega dungeon. Its an idea that gets mentioned a bit and it has always interested me but in saying that .... i hate running dungeons. I get bored mapping them and designing them and doing the prep work for them, so why would i ever want to run a game based solely around dungeons? I will never do this idea, because i know i won't enjoy it but the idea still interests me for some god unknown reason.

Your best off trying to learn what your players like through trial and error and then making note of it. Then when you are running a session, try and sprinkle a little bit of stuff in for everybody.


Now that's actually a useful peace of advice instead of "don't prepare, just hope you're lucky". I had a number of ideas for our next games, and I think I'll take those that are completely standalone first and then see what happens before deciting on the specifics of what comes after.

Yeah, this is a hard learned lesson for me but one well worth learning.

Throw a few interesting NPC's that have solid agendas into the first few sessions and see which ones the players like. And be prepared for them to not like any of your pre-made NPC's and gravitate to the spur of the moment npc that is little more then a scribbled name in your note book.

Feel the character motivations out and see how you can subtly direct them (because lord knows trying to figure out how to motivate a character from their back story is a waste of time.)

Then after a few sessions, when you have a better idea of where the pieces have fallen, you can sit back and look at a what you have and then try and figure what to build from it.

Finally on BBEG, or any major NPC's. Give them a goal, but never plan there actions more then a couple of sessions in advance. Be fluid with there agenda, alter it as the game progresses, adapt it to the players actions. Things generally turn out better if you let their plans evolve naturally rather then mapping it all out in advance.