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View Full Version : DM Help Best Way To Plan a Crazy Campaign Idea?



Freelance GM
2016-07-02, 12:55 AM
Simultaneously, several of my D&D dreams have all been realized at once. I get to play in a high level 5E game, and I get to DM a high level 5E game. At the same time.

We're currently going through Curse of Strahd, so this won't start until that ends. Everyone's having a blast, but the party's failing pretty miserably. That's a wonderful story of it's own, but long story short, we're only four sessions in, and it may end as early as next week with Strahd completing his last 2 objectives, a TPK, and the words, "game over."

Anyways, once that's over, we'll probably break for a few weeks. Then, we've already got an exciting and different idea for our next campaign in the works. Here's what we've got:

Elevator Pitch: An episodic intrigue/RP-centric kingmaker campaign with a rotating GM and two PCs per player. I told you it was crazy.


Characters. Everyone gets a Level 11, their "main character," who plays a major role in ruling the kingdom, and a level 5 apprentice. However, they don't play their own character's apprentice. For example, I'm playing a Wizard, but my level 5 character is serves under the party Rogue. That way, we can role-play out all the master/apprentice drama, instead of the protege simply being another set of skills and stats.

Most of my campaigns end around levels 9 to 12, so starting at 11 is unusually high-powered for my group. Should be fun.

Kingmaker-Style. A king with a cursed key bankrupts his kingdom in search of a magical treasure vault. The party steals the reins of his kingdom in the aftermath of a bloody revolution. As rival nations make ambitious moves into their territory, the heroes must survive the game of thrones, as their agents try to break the curse that haunts their new kingdom. The idea is a campaign primarily based around intrigue and role-play, and still leaves room for episodes of intense action and dungeon-crawling.

Rotating DMs. Our group has 2 novice DM's (less than 1 year of DM experience) and 2 veteran (5+ years of experience each) DMs. All of us want to play in this game, but all of us would love to try DMing it. So, the two experienced DMs are going to coach the novices on writing self-contained 2-hour to 4-hour adventures. The hardest part will be setting a consistent tone for the adventure, but I'm hoping that it will help if all four of us collaborate on the world-building for the game.

Episodic Style. Since we'd be cycling DMs, an episodic style would be almost essential. I'm imagining scenarios like cutthroat negotiations and espionage with a rival kingdom one week, dealing with Efreeti from an inexplicable rift to the Plane of Fire the next.

The Ghost. As if the campaign wasn't crazy enough, we had the idea of one player being a spy. But that's not fun, because one player is very obviously doing sketchy stuff and the rest have to try not to metagame it. What we came up with instead is that each session, the curse or a malevolent spirit possesses a random party member. That player is given a simple, seemingly innocuous objective to complete in secret, and gets some in-game reward if they succeed.


I've got a lot of experience GM'ing, but this is so crazy and different compared to my usual thing that I figured I'd ask for some guidance. Has anyone in the Playground done anything remotely like this before? Are there any pitfalls we need to look out for? Any advice you have about running episodic games, games with multiple GMs, or games with multiple PCs per player would be helpful.

My main question is this: what's the best way to go about planning a game with several GMs? Just spend a day world-building? Let everyone do their own thing, or collaborate on a pool of adventure seeds, and then pick our favorites? Especially since two of the GMs are relatively new, how much help and hand-holding should the two vets offer?

We've got at least a few weeks to plan, so no rush, but any advice we can get would be appreciated!

SilverLeaf167
2016-07-02, 07:17 AM
Well, when it comes to rotating DMs, you definitely want to establish a general long-term tone, even if you leave it very vague, and each DM should be willing to follow up on each other's plot hooks to some extent. After all, especially in a RP-centric game, there's no such thing as a truly self-contained adventure. Many if not all adventures will have implications for the future or even end up taking multiple sessions, and if every DM is dead-set on only running their own plot, it'll get janky at best and cause drama at worst. Everyone must be willing to compromise, and the more experienced DMs must accept that it'll be very different from what they're probably used to.

As for the setting, I'd suggest starting with a relatively basic summary of the surrounding world: neighboring countries can have as little as a name and a few general traits. The group's own kingdom should have a bit more detail, but still be very barebones compared to an usual setting. Every DM (and PC backstories, too) can expand from there. When the players ask questions about things the DM hasn't considered yet, they should follow the first rule of improvisation and answer "Yes", adding a "but" if necessary.

"Are there mines in these mountains over here?"
"Yes, but they have fallen into disrepair lately."

This leaves plenty of space for everyone to incorporate their own ideas and plot hooks while still maintaining some kind of control over the setting.

Freelance GM
2016-07-04, 11:15 PM
Well, when it comes to rotating DMs, you definitely want to establish a general long-term tone, even if you leave it very vague, and each DM should be willing to follow up on each other's plot hooks to some extent. After all, especially in a RP-centric game, there's no such thing as a truly self-contained adventure.
As for the setting, I'd suggest starting with a relatively basic summary of the surrounding world: neighboring countries can have as little as a name and a few general traits. When the players ask questions about things the DM hasn't considered yet, they should follow the first rule of improvisation and answer "Yes", adding a "but" if necessary.

This leaves plenty of space for everyone to incorporate their own ideas and plot hooks while still maintaining some kind of control over the setting.

Thanks for the advice! I'm hoping that some time in the next few weeks, the prospective DMs and I will be able to gauge interest and brainstorm.

Right now, my main concern is setting a consistent tone. We've all got pretty unique styles. My games tend to lean on the grittier side of Heroic Fantasy, another DM is very into High Fantasy, and the other two fall somewhere in between. I'm sure we'll be able to work out some happy middle ground, and I'm open to something different, since that's the whole point of this game, but really there's no way to know if it will be an issue or not until we sit down and start planning.