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Dragoon
2007-06-27, 04:02 PM
I'm just curious to how much planning other DMs go through before they start their campaigns. Do you have the whole world map out or add places as the campaign goes on? How much of the important NPC's do you have made in advance? How much of the adventure do you plan ahead? And if you DM play by post, do you plan more or less than for weekly, bi-weekly gaming sessions?

Thanks

Fixer
2007-06-27, 04:08 PM
Depends

I am presently working on a campaign that I am going to be detailing in great detail. This is uncommon for me, however, as I usually only detail the areas the PCs are likely to head to as I feel confident in my ability to predict the PCs actions or make it up as they do something odd.

I do, at the very least, have a world map prepared and a basic political divisions (regional alignments, how do they get along, etc) , as well as any unique 'features' I want in the world put on paper before I start a new world.

Dark Knight Renee
2007-06-27, 04:09 PM
If I could get away with it, I wouldn't plan. If I could get away with it, I wouldn't DM.

That said, if I'm feeling like doodling, I'll draw a world map for a campaign world, but I usually won't add the important stuff until I need it (it'll have, like, a few major landmarks, and major forests usually, but not much else). Typically, I pull ideas out of nowhere when I need them.

Same goes for NPCs, towns, plots, and adventures. If I'm stuck or the characters aren't leading the game somewhere on their own, I'll work out a rough sketch of what I want to happen. In general, though, the more I plan something in advance, the less I enjoy using it.

Rad
2007-06-27, 04:36 PM
I usually try to plan with detail only things close to the PCs. It adds more to the game if you know what 10 people in the PCS' tavern are about than 10 nations on another continent.
Moreover, it usually pays to have some "standard NPCs" ready for use. A city guard, a beggar, a bandit etc. always ready to be inserted in the plot.

de-trick
2007-06-27, 05:00 PM
i usually have a world thought of like landscape, history, and races. I make cities right before PCs get into city because i would kill them if i had made a major city and they get a new set of armor and sell the loot and go away from the city. Also for cities i usually onto go far into detail unless its a urban campaign.

Glyphic
2007-06-27, 05:01 PM
I like to plan. I like to doodle. I like describing people.For me, the process of designing a campaign goes like this.

First, I grab a clean white sheet of printer paper. I doodle out a continent shape and draw Ideas from it. My last two times I made a campaign, it's been on a single, blob-y continent. My next one, I'll be using an archepeligo. I tend to get side tracked while doodling, thinking up ideas of what I want, what my players want, and what'll be cool to carm into it all. Here is where I decide where the cities are, Major land marks, Cites/kingdoms/government. Alot of this is simply determined by location on the map. Cities are either costal or along rivers, or in fertile spots. It'll determine historical wars/confruntatins over resources, style of living, local religions..ect.

Once I'm done with a basic map, I'll trace it in pen and photo copy it 2 times. One I keep plain. One I add monster/political boundaries/hidden land marks to. One I give to the players.

In additon to this, later, I'll map out some random monster lairs (ruins, dens of thieves, old forgotten caves). When I feel like the players need that bump of excitement while traveling, I'll place them on the map. Usually right where the PC's are.

Here's what one of my recent maps looks Like (http://www.freewebs.com/gryphonnorin/map2.JPG).

Then once I've got a map, I grab a spiral note book. This is a new method for me, but I absolutely love it. It really helps if it has folders in the front/back. The first thing I write down is the histories and governments and random information about my setting. I'll share this all with my players early on, and let them think about where they want thier character to come from.

Then I'll make a check list of what I need before it's playable. Since the campaign above was a city campaign, I grabbed some graph paper and mapped the entire city. Then, in my spiral, I made just a short entry (http://www.freewebs.com/gryphonnorin/Samplelist.JPG) of about 15-25 people in in the town that would be pivital, kooky, fun, ect. This included where they were in the city, their name and job, about 3 things that described them, and their goal/troble/outlook on life. I did not give these people alignments. Some of these people will need to become NPC's. A recent tool that's helped me out alot, has been a laptop and E-tools. I can save and print out Stat blocks, and then I can paper clip those into my spiral, or just stick em in one of the folders. (paper clipping loose papers has been very helpful.)

From here I should have ideas for plot hooks. I'll jot down how the starts, make the appropiate NPCs and monsters, and leave it at that. Unless it's straight forward, any PC interation will generally make an arc unpredictable (Like when my PC's gave an artifact -back- to the vampire they stole it from).

Speaking of monsters, they just get a page number where they be found. Or, if they're special enough, there's a place in the spiral for them. I do tend to leave extra pages, but seperate it quite nicely. Or just add extra sheets via paper clip.

Religion isn't my fancy. But I generally don't like the gods presented in Dnd (cept Talos). I'm rather fond of the greeks/romans. Sometimes I'll make my own. This is rarely more than one paragraph, describing the key symbols, rituals, and the -gerneral- belief/ aim of the religion. Most of my players are fine with it being there, but not really clubbing them to death. The current predominate religion in my campain is PEACE (Pluralistic encouragement in a community of excellence). Its a secular religion without any divine backing. Its kinda fun to mess around with.

So, by this point, I've got everything I need, in an orderly fashion. I've got plots, I've got history, I've got random elements I can use to spice it up, I've got the direction of where I'd like the campaign to go, I've got NPCs and Monsters. And somewhere in the back religion is crying. This is all meant to help me prepare. I;ve I've done this, I'm ready to start designing my campaign..

Kidding. I'm done. These notes are great and all, but if I were to look at them while playing, it'd be too much and I'd probably bore my PCs. But now I can just refresh 30 minutes before the game starts and I'm good. And if I really need, they're all right there.

Corolinth
2007-06-27, 05:23 PM
I've found that the amount of work I put in to planning a night's adventure has a huge impact on how much my player's enjoy that session.

Diggorian
2007-06-27, 05:26 PM
I'll do a world map with general notes on the regions including terrain and a little history.

The area within a weeks travel radius of the party gets a bit more detail: notes on the environments there, natural hazards, monsters that frequent them. something interesting in every direction.

Settlements near them contain plot hooks tied to important NPCs that may be in competition with or scheming against each other if not the party itself. The effect of these may extend into the surrounding areas.

At game time I ask, "What do you want to do?" Wherever they go I add improvised finishing detail as they move through the vaguely defined areas of the world.

So overall vague on the zoom out that gets more defined as we zoom in on the PCs, our protagonists.

Songlander
2007-06-27, 05:31 PM
All I can give are insights into my own thinking/planning/DMing style.

I'm DM-ing a campaign at the moment; I don't want to give away too much detail about the planning process because the players are partway through the campaign and at least one of them is a semi-regular contributor on this forum.

First of all, start with the players and what they want to do. Go on, ask them what they want! Things are generally easier in the longer term if they get to have some input. In my case, the group already had a set of characters inherited from a previous DM, so I just had to design a scenario to accommodate them. Take account of unusual nuances; in my group there was no rogue (and nobody else with Trapfinding) and a preponderance of outdoors-ey types, so that suited a mostly outdoors campaign. Hey presto, let's set the campaign in a technologically backward, low population density area of the world.

Now we need a "hook", or a backstory, or a history. Just come up with something out of thin air. The trick is then to determine consistently and coherently. I thought, "A bunch of demons & other baddies came to this region a while ago. They were kicked out by some other force. Only the vestiges of this other force remain. And now the demons are starting to return..." OK, there's the history.

Now let's put some flesh on that history. Try to do so in such a way that one thing leads to another. "Cause and effect" leads to some amusing ideas. What could have driven demons & such out? Angels & celestials? Nah, too stereotypical. How about the forces of the planes of lawful neutrality? Hmm, that makes sense... they won't like demons running around ruining the joint either. Lawful neutrality tends to involve lots of well-organised forces... like a Roman legion? Aha! I'll call the ancient forces "Legion", and make them Roman in style. The gods of this world were already established as being the Greek pantheon, let's make my region worship the gods under different (Roman) names. Bingo! Campaign flavour!

More cause-and-effect: So where is this Legion now? Hmm... how about, "many of them stayed behind as protectors and had offspring with the natives." Okay, so I'll have two groups of peoples natively: First, an aboriginal people, primitive but honourable. And the other group, the descendants of the Legion soldiers, who are all slightly Axiomatic by bloodline. They aren't numerous, but they build well-defended towns and cities but their rules and hierarchies are very strict. Hurrah, I have a justifiable reason for small, well-organised communities dotted amongst the landscape for the PCs to rest and re-supply in. Pull out a couple of towns & cities from pre-published adventures, tweak monstrously to adapt them to my campaign flavour, and voila. One campaign world, ripe and ready for adventurers!

There's a lot more detail in this campaign world (e.g. arcane magic is illegal in civilised areas), but it is ALL cause-and-effect from the simple history above. By having only a few "core" events, and everything else just being cause-and-effect from those principles, makes it a lot easier to "wing it" later on.

Here endeth the lecture.

Anxe
2007-06-27, 05:42 PM
For a campaign I usually design the first town they'll be in and have a small adventure go off from that. Then a map with the surronding towns. You'll never need more than that for a campaign. One kingdom or so should be enough to entertain your characters for years. You don't even need a map, just tell them the general direction of stuff. A real map you can give the players is better though.
I never actually stat out NPCs unless I'd enjoy playing them. You always want to design villains in detail, but the other people don't really matter. I give the players a benefactor character they can trust and make all the other NPCs on the spot. It's not that hard. Just one thing that defines them. For me it's usually a mental disorder of some kind, those are funny.
I barely plan ahead. Design the basic stuff, such as maps for dungeons, where the monsters, traps, treasure, and NPCs are. The players can fill in the rest of the gaps like room description. Let the players guide the adventure and don't get in their way. They'll have fun and so will you.

CrazedGoblin
2007-06-27, 05:45 PM
The first session i did with the currant campaign i planned it really well but then they went and did something completely unplanned, so now i improvise alot hehe :smallbiggrin:

Saph
2007-06-27, 06:00 PM
For the current campaign, I planned out the plot well in advance session by session and did most of the planning before hand.

For the last campaign I ran, I never planned more than a week ahead, came up with something different for the PCs to do each week, and fitted it all together at the end.

And for one-shots I usually make it all up on the spot.

Each one has advantages and disadvantages. Some of the best games I've done have been the elaborately planned ones, but a couple of the most fun sessions have been where the PCs did something unexpected and I had to make everything up off the top of my head.

- Saph

Beleriphon
2007-06-27, 06:03 PM
I tend only to detail what I expect the characters to actually interact with. I'll even tend to come up with fairly contrive reasons to prevent the players from screwing around too much.

Examples include a mystical fog around the valley they are currently in. If a group of 3rd level characters can hit a DC40 Survival check to escape then they do, but of course you can't hit a DC that high at level three, so they just get on with the adventures, which typically revolve around finding the source of said fog and stopping it.

Ravyn
2007-06-27, 10:34 PM
My players are death on plots. Or plotting on death. Or... something like that. Either way, I've had to seriously revamp plots in mid because of things they did, so while my major NPCs are usually pretty solidly figured out motivation-wise, what actually happens is almost all improv.

Heck, I learned just a week ago that a good enough group can find a way to mess up downtime. Give them a month and a couple small and relatively risk-free ways to entertain themselves, and one of them will invariably follow a lead that he was supposed to get the entire group in on and end up getting captured or worse by what's supposed to be one of the next plot arc's BBEGs. (On the plus side, it's a wonderful opportunity to flesh out said BBEG and her confused assistant....)

Anyway, long story short, I pull almost all of it out of my ear.

SadisticFishing
2007-06-27, 10:42 PM
Well, I'm still DM'ing my first campaign (we're level 16, started at 2, but we don't use regular levelling rules - we've only been playing like... 5 months, and not that often), but I made ahuge mistake - I planned the last 2 levels first. I noticed almost right away that the fact that I had a whole world, and seven level 20 BBEGs made my players not really have any say what's been going on, till recently.

Also, I have an entire backstory planned, with two BBEG's (actually, a BBEG and a BBGG) trying to become gods - but my players don't care enough to try to figure it out. In real life, the plot doesn't feed itself to you, so if they don't wanna do detective work they have no way to learn things. Humph.

kjones
2007-06-27, 10:46 PM
I've found that the amount of work I put in to planning a night's adventure has a huge impact on how much my player's enjoy that session.

Same here. The more I plan, the less my players enjoy the adventure. :smalltongue:

Seriously, I created an intricate, in-depth encounter where the players (~Party Level 7) arrived in a halfling village and one was dominated by halfling vampires (which I call "hampires") and framed for a murder. They had to exonerate the player, track the hampires back to their lair, battle their way through the haunted woods, and destroy the hampires. Their favorite part of the night? One of the hampires summoned some wolves before fleeing back to its lair. They had more fun destroying a dozen helpless (essentially, took 2 rounds and only because the barbarian couldn't Great Cleave them all at once) wolves than they had the entire rest of the night.

So, either plan specific things and railroad your players, plan everything, or be prepared to improvise a lot.

Darth Mario
2007-06-27, 11:54 PM
Same here. The more I plan, the less my players enjoy the adventure. :smalltongue:


100% agreed. I do lots of prepwork before the campaign on the world (detailed terrain and political maps, custom races, political situation, major NPCs, etc...)

However, once I get into a session, my players will ALWAYS go in a different direction than I have intended. Therefore, I don't try to think of a campaign-spanning plot until about 5 sessions or so in (i run 15 game sessions twice a year) once I have an idea of what the players want to do with their characters.

I usually have about 3 or 4 potential enemies to have the players fight at any time (NPCs, not monsters), insert them at various points. Any that survive will likely become the BBEG (though the players won't know it).

Tallis
2007-06-28, 12:01 AM
I have a basic idea of what my world is like, along with a rough sketch of the main continent. I only do a detailed map of one region at a time, doing new ones as the PCs move. This way if I come up with new ideas it's easy to add them in in the next region. on the other hand I have run my last 3 campaigns in the same world and plan to continue doing that, so my world grows with each new campaign.
As far as week to week adventures, I used to plan plots and draw dungeon maps and plan out (hopefully) interesting adventures. Unfortunately my group is very chaotic. Both the PCs and the players themselves. It's very difficult to predict what they'll do because it changes from session to session. They'll tell me what they plan to do at the end of the night, then the next time we meet they'll change their minds and do something completely different.
Now what I do is stat out the important playersalong with a rough plot for the week, then I improvise as I go. I very rarely draw maps any more because I never know if they'll even get used.
I do have some large plots going on in the world. They're background until the PCs run into them, then I can see what they pick up on and plan that in more detail. Sometimes I'll tie something I improved into one of these. Occassionally I'll improv something that gives me another idea and starts a whole new plotline.
The biggest one was in my last campaign. The group was sent to rescue the Duke's daughter. They fireballed the area she was in, killing her. The Duke was not amused. Originally I had planned for the PCs to get involved in the rising tensions between their kingdom and it's neighbor. Instead they ended up questing to bring the duke's daughter back from the dead (ressurection is not standard in my world). Sometimes improv can lead to a great storyline.

Damionte
2007-06-28, 12:42 AM
I plan out the first couple of advenutres in detail, to set a foundation for the story. beyond that I play it by ear. i have a general feel for where thigns should be going but the details i play from the hip.

The best laid plans always fall apart in the face of actuall player ingenuity.

I make a few NPc's. any that the players will see often. I don't usualyl make stats for them unless I expect them to be an actual foe. Even then I don't stick with anythying. I never tell the players what class the baddies are. i leave it to them to reason that out on thier own through experience.

for instance i am gearing up a 1-15+ campaign at the moment. I plan on using a lot of written material, including the Red Hand Of doom campaign module. But I am modifying a few things to fit our custom game word.

I have picked out aout 20 pre made adventure packets, from different sources. And will pick and chose which ones to use as they travel along.

The adventures though are just story templates for me. The monsters and treasure and details i'll change on the fly as we go along. I've learned the hard way not to try and really plan out all the details before hand. You'll ended up with a ton of unused stuff.

TSGames
2007-06-28, 01:08 AM
I'm just curious to how much planning other DMs go through before they start their campaigns. Do you have the whole world map out or add places as the campaign goes on? How much of the important NPC's do you have made in advance? How much of the adventure do you plan ahead? And if you DM play by post, do you plan more or less than for weekly, bi-weekly gaming sessions?

Thanks

I don't usually map out the world... I create NPC's on the fly most of the time. I plan out the potential story line pretty far in advance, but lately I'm trying a node based DMing. I don't do play by post, all the good ones die. Also, I am a mean DM.

Kiero
2007-06-28, 05:15 AM
I don't do campaigns, I prefer strings of one-shots or short sessions of a handful of games. I also plan little, indeed the ideal I'm working towards is zero-prep. We turn up, brainstorm a setting and some characters in 20-30 minutes then play for about three hours.

banjo1985
2007-06-28, 05:24 AM
The important thing for me is the more I plan a campaign before it starts, the less I actually enjoy running the game.

When I start a campaign, I have a basic map in my head of the town/area where play starts and a very vague map of the world in which the whole campaign will take place.

The story I bullet point in a basic manner, as well as the history of the world and how it's important to the campaign, as I know I will have to change it as time goes on. Other than that I really don't do anything else, I have to craft a campaign as it's going on, because if I plan everything beforehand it quickly becomes stale to me and I end up not enjoying the thing I've worked so hard to make.

factotum
2007-06-28, 05:51 AM
Been a long time since I did any DMing, but I would always draw a map--I actually like drawing maps, world building, and the like! Hell, I often enjoyed that part so much I'd have about six hours to come up with the actual campaign...

Xuincherguixe
2007-06-28, 06:51 AM
I think that for the current one I'm thinking, been a year so far? But that doesn't really count since I've been procrastinating like crazy and I have some big writers block. But that block has been starting to crack lately.

Fixer
2007-06-28, 06:56 AM
I've found that the amount of work I put in to planning a night's adventure has a huge impact on how much my player's enjoy that session.
I will agree to this part to an extent.

What my players enjoy is that villains have personality. Guards aren't just obstacles, they actually have some personality. Inkeepers have attitude and barmaids can be flirty or cold, depending on the night or their background.

The depth of the NPCs helps bring the players deep into the adventure so this is one area you should never skimp on.

Dungeonmeister
2007-06-28, 07:06 AM
I'll start planning about 30 minutes before the session starts, jotting down 4 or 5 lines in a spiral pad. Then the rest is just pure ad lib- until after the game, when I go back over any NPCs introduced, or plot elements/twists thrown out and note them all down in the pad.

I'll sometimes doodle notes while I'm at work, but more often than not anything I do come up with before the game is abandoned in favour of an idea that pops into my head there and then.

My current campaign f'rex is an epic Forgotten Realms plot to stop an undead warlord from razing his home city to the ground and create an undead army so he can march into the underdark and war on the Drow who cursed him to undeath. I've got a few names and the above paragraph noted- that's literally all I need, and the campaign has been a hit so far.

Prometheus
2007-06-28, 04:34 PM
The most important thing for me is a map. I can expand it (literally) later, and I frequently add markers to it (small villages, location of cave etc) In most of my campaigns, defining the terrain, racial demographics, and government of a region/city is all that is needed in the short term, and serves as a good starting point for the long-term.
I also need the immediate quest options/NPC. Anything that the players could get to within the next session I try to prepare for - I guess that goes with any session.
Finally there is the plot. In my last big campaign, most of the important plot was thought up mid-way or was an expansion of past events - planning was very little. In my current campaign, I thought out the grand scheme of the plot, especially the NPCs.
Like nothing else, NPCs will always keep the plot going. There has to be enough, the characters have to care, and they can do whatever works for them.

Jades
2007-06-28, 11:14 PM
I spent YEARS working on my campaign world before running my first session. It started out as a short story for a creative writing class, then a play took place in it... several years later I'm running a game in that world, because I had completely built it in stories. It was simply giving characters from my stories NPC stats, and thats not hard to do.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-29, 05:07 AM
I'm a "little to no planning" kind of guy.

Obviously if I think the players are likely to fight something, I'll need to give it stats, but otherwise I'm strictly off-the-cuff.

The Prince of Cats
2007-06-29, 05:48 AM
I have a party who will defy any attempt at preparation. It is not deliberate, it is just their natures. I plan for a single session, with notes about the next session's plot, and a few back-up plans for what happens if they go off on a tangent or derail the BBEG's plot.

They are a nuisance... They grasp concepts that should be beyond them, make wild guesses that tend to be true, focus on sub-plots and red-herrings so intently that they sometimes spend hours following a false trail...

An example would be the lich they found in a cell. He was an old man as far as they could see, who was in a cell in the dungeons of a necromancer's tower. So, the thief gives him a water-skin and the lich plays along, taking a healthy mouthful. The thief then tells me it was the skin of holy water I gave him earlier. Suddenly, the lich finds himself not able to pretend any longer.

Or another time, the same player suddenly developed a case of pyromania and started setting fire to coffins before I even hinted that there were vampires inside. He had to incapacitate the paladin before he could do this, but he really wanted to see them burn.

On the other hand, his paranoia has been trouble. He is the type to suddenly decide that the only bridge across a certain pit must be trapped and then go back exploring every room and searching for hidden doors.

When my players do derail my train of thought, I tend to just work with it and the rest of the session is off-the-cuff play. By next week, I have some written notes for what I intend to do next...

Bender
2007-06-29, 06:32 AM
I'm in my first campaign with almost no previous D&D experience. It's mostly just a collection of adventure modules, which I adapt in advance. Lately I'm weaving more and more of a general plot line in the campaign, but I don't even know myself what will happen.
eg: In one of the first adventures I had a corpse they found have a symbol tattooed on his hand, in one of the next the symbol returned on the shirt of an NPC and later on a mysterious magic portal, where it appeared to be the stylistic image of a dragon (I only decided long after introducing the symbol). I haven't decided yet what will be behind the door, but I have some ideas
The map grows when necessary.

valadil
2007-06-29, 09:17 AM
I've done 3 and half campaigns, so I'm still ironing out my process, but I've got a good grasp on it.

Unlike other posters, maps are death traps for me. Intuitively I like starting with a map and going from there, but it never works out right. I mean, I can draw well enough but laying down some geography doesn't do a whole lot in terms of giving my players something to play with. I'm also likely to get hung up on names and sit there for hours wondering about what to call a continent.

In the ideal world I would do up all my own maps and have a custom built campaign setting, but world building doesn't contribute much to my games, so it ends up being a time sink. The other problem I have with making my own worlds is that the players never have as solid a grasp on that world as they would Forgotten Realms. I'm of the opinion that you need to know where a character comes from in order to play him interestingly. In terms of publishing background material, I can't compete with anything that's already out there so I'm more than happy to use something someone else made. Maybe I'll make my own world if I start doing a series of campaigns, but that's not happening any time soon.

Where I ignore geography and setting, I spend crazy effort setting up NPCs. They all have their own groups and factions. Most importantly though, NPCs are active. After each session I check up on every single NPC and see how the PCs affected or avoided them. Plot hooks won't wait for players - they'll go on on their own and then the players see the plot from an entirely different angle when someone else goes for it. Additionally, unnamed NPCs get named and get pages in my book as the PCs interact with them. This makes it very easy to spawn new plot.

Whats important is that this is all PC created plot. I've always found that plots that come up as a direct result of their actions are the ones they find most intriguing. This used to frustrate me. I usually write a main plot before I've even told players they're invited to my game and then come up with more plots for each character. Naturally they went for their own plots as well as the ones that came up in game before going after that anonymous plot that isn't there for them. In my last game I pretty much ignored main plot until the game was more fleshed out I think it worked out better that way.

My games are unfortunately shortlived. My first two were 8 and 6 sessions respectively. The last one I lost count of but it went on for about 6 months. I have trouble keeping interest in the game once the main storyline has arced, which is why the last one was longer - no main storyline for me to tire of. I do have one little trick for keeping myself interested though once a game has gone too long. As soon as I've figured out how to start the game (be that it's premise/plot/BBEG world takeover scheme) I figure out how it's going to end. Then I let the players figure out how to get there. I don't railroad them, but I figure out which plotline is heading towards my ending and I latch the other ones onto it. Once I've gotten bored of a game I have no energy left to run it and the game suffers. As soon as I see that I'm hitting that point, I bring up the ending I've already planned. It's already written for the most part so I don't have to come up with anything new and I've already got enthusiasm left for it because it was created when I was still into the game. I'd much rather cut the game short to end on a strong note than let the game wither and die, and this seems to work pretty well.

Matthew
2007-06-30, 10:17 AM
I do loads and loads of preperation and it's never sufficient... but that's because I do more than necessary for my own entertainment.

Really, you can get by with virtually no preperation at all and only a vague idea of what you are going to do. Sometimes it works brilliantly, sometimes it is a disaster.

If I'm going to run a prepublished Adventure, then my preperation involves reading it, taking a few notes and deciding what gameworld to set it in (usually the specified one or otherwise Greyhawk). A passing acquaintence with the game world in question is all that is really required.

If I am going to run my own Adventure, then I have to actually write it (or half write it), which can require some serious prep time, but sometimes I just make up a dungeon as I go along (though the result is usually not very sophisticated). Long term epic style campaigns require a serious investment of time and labour, but the more of them you do the easier it is to make stuff up without significant preperation. At the moment, I prefer to write Adventure modules prior to games and keep records of events and Character sheets, along with settlements and NPCs. It can take up large segments of time, especially if you are playing once a week and don't have them written in advance.

Really it's a combination of familiarity, experience, preperation and improvisation. If you really enjoy creating campaigns you will probably find that no amount of time is sufficient.

Galathir
2007-07-01, 02:24 PM
It all depends. I am currently working on a campaign for next semester that will be pretty complicated with a detailed world. I do a lot of encounters and things off the top of my head and adjust on the fly to meet the needs of the group so I don't do a lot of encounter planning ahead of time. It all depends on how much spare time I have before the game and how involved the campaign is.