Advice on running a 1-20 campaign.

[YossarianLives]

Hello.

I've recently decided to take on a significant challenge to my DMing skills. I'm going to be attempting to run a D&D 3.5 levels 1-20 campaign. I have at least six months worth of planning time before my campaign begins which I think I'll definitely need.

I am currently blundering around in the dark as the longest campaign I've ever run only took up about three months of OOC time and four IC levels.

I apologize for my reliance on GitP for DMing advice but I want to give my players as good a experience as possible.

What do I need to know about running a campaign this long?

[Gemini Lupus]

I have only ever run 1-20 campaigns, and here's what I have learned:

1. Don't get discouraged. There will be times where things sort of drag and you will feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and wonder if it was all worth it. Trust me, by the end of it, it will be a tale worth remembering.

2. Don't try to plan everything out in the beginning. Don't try to write an entire module before the game even starts. Paint the broad strokes of the campaign and what you want the players to do and the themes you wanna tackle, then start thinking about the villains and the main conflict.

3. Plan only 1-2 adventures ahead. When it gets down to the actual playing of the game, you have your broad strokes and overall plan in mind, but only plan an adventure at a time, so that you can more easily adapt to the players' needs and actions.

4. Decide whether you want the campaign to be episodic, pseudo-episodic but there is a greater story arc, or a single story arc that encompasses the entire campaign and each session builds directly off the last. Basically do you want your story to be a police procedural, a Buffy-esque or Hobbit style adventure, or Lord of the Rings/Star Wars.

5. Divide your campaign into several smaller arcs, so that the party can feel accomplished and like they are making a difference in the world. You can also use these arcs to raise the stakes, much like a season of Buffy, or Lord of the Rings. The first arc is getting to know the characters and defeating a minor villain, the next is the growth of the characters, accepting their destiny, and defeating a greater villain, and the third is when everything comes to fruition: complete their story arcs, defeat the BBEG, and return home as heroes.

For an extra twist, have this last bit happen around level 12-16, and then have the party come out of retirement for one last adventure to save the world from an even greater evil.

Them's me two coppers. If I think of anything else, I'll post it for you.

[prufock]

2. Don't try to plan everything out in the beginning. Don't try to write an entire module before the game even starts. Paint the broad strokes of the campaign and what you want the players to do and the themes you wanna tackle, then start thinking about the villains and the main conflict.

3. Plan only 1-2 adventures ahead. When it gets down to the actual playing of the game, you have your broad strokes and overall plan in mind, but only plan an adventure at a time, so that you can more easily adapt to the players' needs and actions.

5. Divide your campaign into several smaller arcs, so that the party can feel accomplished and like they are making a difference in the world. You can also use these arcs to raise the stakes, much like a season of Buffy, or Lord of the Rings. The first arc is getting to know the characters and defeating a minor villain, the next is the growth of the characters, accepting their destiny, and defeating a greater villain, and the third is when everything comes to fruition: complete their story arcs, defeat the BBEG, and return home as heroes.

Take breaks between arcs as well. I'm running a 1-20+ game (currently level 15) that is being done in 5 parts, currently on part 4. After each part we run something different before coming back to it. It works in that it relieves DM burnout, gives players a chance to refresh, and - if the campaign and characters are enjoyable - makes them yearn to return to the game.

[ArcanaFire]

Have a home base of some sort for the PCs to come back to. My group has tried running a campaign without something like this, but we always end up with a home town at least halfway through the game. It's good because it gives you a place to start your sessions, and a familiar setting to touch base with. It also gives you a built in way to handle someone not being able to make it to the table.

If your bad guy has to show up in person early on in the game, realize that the PCs might actually kill him/her. Use mooks. Use trusted lieutenants.

Don't make the immediate threat so immediate that your inevitable filler adventures make the PCs look frivolous. Not every single game session is going to be plot, sometimes your PCs are going to want to have sidequests, and when that happens it's good if the entire world doesn't hang in the balance of them getting to x location with the macguffin in a timely fashion. Save that for endgame.

Edit: Oh, and know your PCs if you can, in advance, so you can tailor plot points to them! In my experience players are pretty evenly divided between "yes please use my backstory against me" and "I'm not giving you any dirt to use in your plot, I'm an orphan and all my siblings are dead too". If you have players in the former camp, nothing thrills them more than things being personal.

[Shadowsend]

First 20 minutes or so of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlvdsJy53HA

[Reltzik]

Study what Straczynski did with Babylon 5. In particular:

1) Plan for character departures. Maybe one of your players gets a job in another state. Maybe the fighter fails a really important fort save. For whatever reason, your planned narrative may lose characters. Don't let any of the PCs become load-bearing. Have a quick way to write each of them out (and write newcomers/replacements in). Update this from time to time. This doesn't mean that the PCs should be completely plug-and-play, with no personal stake or involvement in the tale, and that the tale doesn't hinge on them... just that it can survive their departure.

2) Plan to be cancelled. Maybe around level 5 the group decides it doesn't like this game. Maybe they want to play WoD for the next 12 months instead. Maybe group drama is about to split everything up. Have a way to wrap up your campaign, in at least a partially-satisfying way, in the course of a session or two. Hopefully you make it all the way, but plan for the possibility that you won't.

3) Recap frequently. Don't assume your players will remember at level 18 something you revealed at level 2. Find ways of working reminders in, at least so they know enough for this particular adventure. You don't have to be obvious about it and you don't have to infodump it. Dialog can go something like, "Now that we've <recap>, we can start doing <adventure idea>." Or, "BBEG is trying to take Generica Castle? That makes sense in light of <recap>." Similarly, if there's an important bit of backstory that won't come to be important for a while, find ways to bring it up from time to time.

4) You need to engage players in both the arc and the moment. The current adventure... even the current encounter... needs to hold their attention in its own right, but it also needs to impact the overall story in ways they care about.

[TheThan]

Don’t introduce your main villain until you’re ready to risk him dying. Many Dms have done this, they will introduce their main villain at level one, and he taunts them and then flies off. Level two is an encounter where they catch fleeting glims of him. But the raging barbarian crashes through the door and tackles him, the players immediately kill him. Oops forgot to plan for grappling? Too bad the player’s have him dead to rights.
So don’t introduce him, use minions, loyal followers, body doubles and other such contrivances to keep the narrative flowing without risking the players ending your campaign prematurely because if given half a chance to, they will.

Give the player characters down time between adventures/ story arches. Let them do some exploring, RPGing, Crafting, background exploration, ect. The world doesn’t constantly need to be in threat for the players to be heroes. Besides it makes sense for thwarted villains to need to come up with new schemes, recruit new minions and soldiers, build new strongholds etc.

[Nibbens]

Don’t introduce your main villain until you’re ready to risk him dying.

Can't agree with this enough.


Give the player characters down time between adventures/ story arches. Let them do some exploring, RPGing, Crafting, background exploration, ect. The world doesn’t constantly need to be in threat for the players to be heroes. Besides it makes sense for thwarted villains to need to come up with new schemes, recruit new minions and soldiers, build new strongholds etc.

Agreed. PC's need time to craft and purchase Magic Items you have not provided which they believe is essential to their character's power. APs are notorious for this - never giving the PCs what would be good for them, but instead you'll find 18 magic items made of human skin... in a party of good PCs.

Give them the access to magic items and downtime to create or travel to towns where they will be buying the items they need (and the towns will be buying the items they sell).

Don't be scared if the PCs crash through one encounter after the next - this happens, and they need to feel victorious from time to time. However, if it becomes a recurring theme, you may want to consider altering the setup of the AP you're running (if you're using a module) or altering the way you build encounters. I live and die by this guide (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nx-o8VAjhUwh3nnfzDQT-JA5eFLnN_BZJiBitGjBMDg/edit?usp=sharing&pli=1) now. It has altered the way I run D&D games.

Don't be scared to let the PCs dictate the flow of the story for every now and again. So they went to a town you never intended and some random NPC you created on the fly wound up absorbing their time for the next 3 levels? so what! roll with it! Time will find a way to get the story back on track. You've got 1-20, remember? Enjoy the spontaneity of the game - this is where DMs learn to be creative, and things you never intended to happen, do.

Expect to screw up. It's going to happen - you'll forget rules, things will not go as planned, PC's will bypass traps and one shot mini-bosses. It happens. Just remember that you're one person and PCs are many, you cannot have perfect system mastery, and even if you did, they shouldn't expect you to have system mastery. Just remember that there is always "next game." Rules implemented in one game don't have to stand at the next game. You're the DM and you screwed up. Big deal. If the PCs want perfect, tell them to play a video game instead (and even then, they still have bugs).

Periodically query your PCs how they are liking the game, how they feel about rulings, what they would like to see their characters do. I had a PC retrain in his down time into 1 level of EX-Paladin, so he could roleplay a "atonement" in game. Have fun with this and don't be afraid to say yes - you may just create the memory of a lifetime!

Lastly, have fun with your PCs. If you're not having fun, then the game isn't going well. Everyone needs to be enjoying the game.

Ps. Welcome to the deep end! :D

[Troacctid]

A lot of the biggest challenges you face will be social and logistical. 20-level campaigns take a long time—you want a dedicated group of friends who are willing and able to commit to regular scheduled game nights over the course of many months. That's not always easy to set up when people have other commitments to their jobs and significant others and such.

[Telonius]

Don’t introduce your main villain until you’re ready to risk him dying. Many Dms have done this, they will introduce their main villain at level one, and he taunts them and then flies off. Level two is an encounter where they catch fleeting glims of him. But the raging barbarian crashes through the door and tackles him, the players immediately kill him. Oops forgot to plan for grappling? Too bad the player’s have him dead to rights.
So don’t introduce him, use minions, loyal followers, body doubles and other such contrivances to keep the narrative flowing without risking the players ending your campaign prematurely because if given half a chance to, they will.


Very much this. One of the published 1-20 modules that I've run (Shackled City) did a particularly good job of it:
The BBEG, Adimarchus, was literally caged up in a maximum security prison in Carceri, completely inaccessible until the very last battle.

Some of the standard DMing advice is particularly important here. Double-check the plot. If there are any places where the players must take (or refrain from) a particular action, or must remember a particular thing, in order for the plot to advance, then you need to be able to plan around that plot point. This is even more important for a 1-20 adventure than a shorter adventure. Get some buy-in from the players, too. If they completely jump the plot rails, that might not just be a single encounter you have to make up on the fly. What you really don't want is for them to do something completely off the wall at level 3 that invalidates the next 17 levels of planning.

On that note, for each quest, plan out what will happen for success, partial success, failure, and catastrophic failure. If the party is supposed to broker a peace treaty, figure out what happens if they do; if they negotiate a partial settlement; if they don't come to an agreement; and if the party Bard gets caught in flagrante delicto with the ambassador's wife. Each one should have real in-game consequences, but even a "catastrophic failure" should not derail the game entirely.

[Flickerdart]

Make sure that the PCs don't outgrow the adventure. They will be acquiring capabilities that trivialize earlier challenges because that's how the game works, so there's a relatively narrow window for things like "bandits ambush you in the forest!" and "dungeon hallway full of traps!" that you need to hit at the right time if you want to do them at all.

[atemu1234]

FYI, if the main villain DOES die, resurrection is a thing. As is teleportation. And badder, better, bigger villains.

[Renen]

FYI, if the main villain DOES die, resurrection is a thing. As is teleportation. And badder, better, bigger villains.

As is "it was a clone/projection/ice assassin of the baddie"

[Sagetim]

If you find yourself stuck, don't be afraid to just take a break from running the campaign and have others run a different game entirely. This happened frequently with a game I was a player in, but we still went from 3 to 18 over the course of it eventually. In the end, taking breaks from running the ongoing campaign gave us a chance to do other things, other character builds, other systems, other stories, and then we could return to the campaign that was on hiatus like a comfortable pair of pants.

Don't be afraid to let the adventurers outgrow encounters. By that same token: Not all encounters are going to be level appropriate for the players. Unless the setting has a blatantly 'low level friendly zone' built into it somehow, then the players could run into a CR 15 dragon while wandering around the woods at level 2. Let that encounter happen, and if the players do the smart thing and run away from the encounter they are woefully underleveled for, maybe let them get away with their lives when they might not have otherwise survived.

Survival xp is a thing. If your players ran from the dragon in the above example, they should get a little xp for the learning experience they just went through. By that same token, if the players completely bypass traps without disarming them, or negate encounters through intelligently avoiding them, they should still get xp for that. If you insist that they have to kill **** to get xp for it, then you're encouraging the players to engage all situations in a 'lets kill it/loot it/break it' mentality just so they can get the xp, if nothing else.

Lawful Good does not equal Lawful Nice or Lawful Dumb. Players can be vicious bastards and still have a good alignment, what matters more is motivation, reasoning, and intent. Don't be afraid to shift players towards neutral evil if they are consistently acting like selfish ***** though. Basically: get familiar with the alignment system and write down how you intend to enforce it ahead of time so you can try to be consistent. If you later find that what you wrote down doesn't fit, or that it's not working, don't be afraid to revise your previous decisions. In the aforementioned 3 to 18 game I was in, my character went from chaotic good to neutral good to lawful good to neutral good. Alignment changes can happen.

Players are never too high level to be waylaid by bandits. This doesn't mean the bandits will be any higher level than the last bandits that waylaid the party, but only smart bandits are going to think 'maybe those guys are too tough for us to handle'. And if the world you're running has smart bandits, it has bigger problems than bandits on the highways. It probably has an organized crime syndicate that regulates those bandits.

Wealth by Level is a suggestion, not a hard rule. If your players are clever and find ways to earn extra money beyond what wealth by level proscribes, let them earn it. Just because the party has money, however, doesn't mean that they can buy high level magic items. Also, if it's becoming a problem, make them start keeping track of how much money weighs and how they are transporting and securing their wealth. If they have to start trekking all over hell's half acre to hunt down magic items to buy (which is entirely possible when you're talking about high end things like +6 belts of strength or what have you) then their sacks of fat cash are going to make for tempting targets. Further, some cities are bound to be ruled by less than scrupulous individuals who might charge a percentage based tax to anyone entering the city with more than a certain amount of money. Which gives your players an incentive to topple the government in that city, if only to get their money back. Which gives you a potential story arc.

In that same vein, npcs can have wealth completely out of line with suggested wealth by level from the dmg. A prince, for example, might be a level 1 aristocrat fop, but he's probably going to be decked out in a +2 ring of protection (or better) a +1 or +2 mithral chain shirt (if not better) hidden under his clothes, a cloak of charisma, and probably a finely crafted magic sword of some kind. Which kind of leads back to why bandits would still attack high level adventurers: because they would mistake the well kitted out adventurers as overly equipped nobles that would make for an easier target.

If you're going to do random loot rolls, roll the loot before the party encounters the thing. If the loot includes useful magic items that the target can use, just add those to the equipment of the target. If it doesn't make sense for the monster to have Not been using the loot, then they should probably be using the loot.

[Rainshine]

I definitely advise aiming for chapters. I usually go for four or five level chapters -- 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20. At the end of each, I usually aim for giving the PCs a month or two of downtime, at least. It also lets me set up smaller modules and troll those in front of the PCs. The smaller modules give them room to try different things, change course, while still letting me draw a bigger arc.
The breaks also allow for pretty clean RL breaks too :)

[BWR]

Only skimmed through the responses and I couldn't see this mentioned:

Accept that the characters will be become bigger and more powerful and that the types of challenges they encounter will have to change to be an actual challenge. Not just what monsters they face but all sorts of other things. A simple pit trap may be a challenge at level one but a few levels on it's a non-issue, one you probably should not making into anything more than flavor text (if that). Similarly, a sheer wall might be hard for anyone without Spider Climb at low levels but soon everybody has at least a potion of Fly. Traveling across vast distances, negotiating with low-level officials, goblins attacking a local village, creatures that can only be harmed by special materials; these are all things that become increasingly irrelevant as the PCs get more powerful. At some point it's the stuff you leave to younger, less powerful heroes because you have bigger things to deal with. As a DM you will have to change with the PCs. The stakes get higher, the difficulties harder, the requirements steeper, the consequences more dire. In game terms, the DCs of skill checks get higher, the spells needed to resolve a situation more rare and more expensive, the general expenditures more expensive, etc.

Resource management is a big thing, no matter what level or length of play you have. Take a look at what the party as available at any given time and don't plan encounters they can trivialize or bypass with what amounts to no expenditure of resources. E.g. needing to get across the continent in the space of an hour to reach some place by a specific time is a non-issue if they have Teleport and no other need to expend spells until they've rested again. It becomes an issue if they will come into combat or otherwise need to spend a lot of spells before resting. Likewise, a bunch of fighter types who face some enemies and maybe take a few hp damage but are never in danger of dying and can rest and heal up before their next encounter don't need to have this played out. It only becomes an issue if the cumulative effect of individually minimal encounters puts them in any form of danger.