How do you plan and prepare campaigns?

[ChampionWiggles]

I'm currently planning a short campaign for a group of mine and was just curious how the rest of you normally try to prepare and write your campaigns. Right now I'm finding that a method that is working for me is asking questions after I have a general idea. Like

What's the campaign hook?: Bad guy is looking for macguffin to do bad things
Who is the bad guy?: Baddy McEvilface
What's the macguffin?: Mystical Doom Staff
How did bad guy find out about macguffin?: He put an add on craigslist
Where does party start?: The Village of Startingham
etc.

I'm just curious how the rest of you go about writing up a campaign and also just was curious about people's preferences.
Do you prefer open-world campaigns that consist of a series of "mini-campaigns" or do you like one, linear, over-arching campaign?
How much of a campaign do you write out ahead of time? The whole thing or a few sessions ahead?
Do you like to put a lot of side-quests and activities in your campaigns?

[Arastel]

I tend to run open world games where the players choose their own goals and I will facilitate them going about completing those. I also provide events which happen around them which the players can take interest in, but will resolve themselves, or maybe escalate.

In my experience, if you are going to let the party chose their own goals, a session zero is crucial to make sure that there won't be any massive character personality or goal clashes. If there are, what tends to happen is the party will pursue one person's goal and the rest will tag along reluctantly. It is also useful to make sure your players are dedicated and can turn up to at least 3/4 games (which is a big commitment you're asking for) or else they are liable to not be present while pursuing their own goal.

When providing events, I usually prepare four events which the players see or hear of. For each, I'll only have the idea of the plot prepared or else I'll be doing four times the work. Travel takes time in my games, so if they choose one event to pursue, it'll normally give me time to flesh out the people and details of what's been happening. The next time they hear of some events I typically choose one of the four they heard of last time and escalate it and generate another three. If they go after the escalted events maybe they'll encounter a 'villain' (I tend to use conflicting groups misunderstanding one another) or a recurring threat.

When actually detailing a plot or goal that the party is pursuing, I don't plan any conversations or 'script' anything. I tend to focus on the history of the location and who the people are and their motivations. Once you have these things, you can provide flexible and natural reactions for whatever the party might do.

I hope this helps!

[MrStabby]

I like a list of Awesome Things.

NPCs, designs for encounters, locations, Magic Items, factions, monsters, spells... once I have a big list of fun and awesome I try and tie them together in the world. Anything inconsistent gets dropped off. Some, like encounters, might not happen but I create a world consistent with them happening.

This world should have Events happening that pull the PCs into the flow of what is happening. They should be big enough to be important, small enough that the PCs can make a difference to the outcome.

Then run a session zero. Brief the PCs about the world and have them come up with a party capable of working together and with a reasonable fit to the world around them. Bend the world a little to better reflect the characters backstories and ensure starting location is consistent with what happens there.

Begin.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm a lazy DM. I know basically what's going on around the campaign area, and then I make it up about two sessions in advance. This means that there are few "save the world" over-arching plot-lines and more "reacting to what the players decide to do." Often I'll build an area based on "what would be cool to encounter here" and then think of why they're there, doing that. I usually get a twist that hits me and I'll run with it.

For example, my group is on a side-quest. Explicitly--they know of some big things going down but need to wait and gain strength before dealing with them as they're not pressing and they need more information. So they're exploring the ruins of a city. Turns out the ruins are inhabited (at least partially) by warforged. Frost giants are attacking. Why? Because the leader of the frost giants is religious and believes his Goddess thinks that those warforged (created by stuffing the souls of people into orbs) are abominations. They went out to go slay frost giants and realized that there's much more going on there. All only loosely planned out based on a random idea.

[Demidos]

The best advice, hands down, that I've ever received on this account comes from one of my former DMs --

Come up with a list of 10-12 "movers and shakers" in your world, that is to say, people that you expect to have a deep and abiding impact on the campaign world. Common US examples might include Tesla or Edison, one of the robber barons, a steel or oil monopolist, a slave-owner turned freedom-fighting president named George Washington, or a nobody clerk who ended up giving us the framework for modern physics. The person doesn't have to start (or end!) necessarily powerful in a conventional sense (see the impact hobbits have on the fate of Middle-Earth), but their existence and plans must somehow be important to the future of the world.

Next decide on what those plans may be. Continuing with US history, Tesla had ambitions to provide free electricity to the entire country, and was working on a variety of devices throughout his life. If in your world Tesla will achieve free electricity within three months, and then defend the freedom of this energy from evil capitalists by building giant mecha defenders over the next year, then plan out the dates over which each of these plots will come to fruition, and here's the key idea, if nothing interferes. Of course, the movers and shakers may interact with each other -- see Tesla vs. Edison.

The PCs are controlled by players, not you, so their hopeless bumbling has many ways of interacting with these plans. Perhaps they destroy a steel factory providing the raw materials for Tesla's Mecha, or "accidentally" set some important library documents that Tesla needed on fire as part of an unrelated adventure. This might push back Tesla's plans by weeks if not years, and this would provoke interest from Tesla himself. Of course, this might be positive interest, if they defend the library instead of setting it on fire, thus prompting him to have a good reason to hire them.

In this way, you have a coherent, but ultimately flexible storyline. Don't feel tied down to the initial movers and shakers, and feel free to de/re-promote people from the list, based on who the PC's interact with or like. Perhaps the throw-away shopkeeper who the PCs love becomes the undercover revolutionary leader, thus keeping the PC's solidly in line with current events. Perhaps he doesn't, and the PCs hear after the fact from a third hand source about the revolution that toppled the oppressive/benevolent monarchy. It's your world to build.

[xanderh]

My group plays over Roll20, and I like to have a map of any dungeons the party delves into.
I tend to have an overarching goal laid out for me, with a general idea for how the campaign is going to play. I don't really plan that far ahead other than encounters, because I've found that I can make up interesting NPCs on the spot. Prepared NPCs tend to be things I thought up while taking a walk, and that I decided to write down.

[Puh Laden]

I like to mix it up. Sometimes I setup the world as a sandbox, other times I create plots and adventures by taking inspiration from the choices players make at character creation, and sometimes I say "I'm running this module." Sometimes I tell players that "the party is this, make a a character that fits" other times I put the pieces together myself or ignore the question of why the PCs are a party altogether -- depending on how silly or serious a campaign is in tone.

Generally my campaigns are short mostly because of schedules, but also because the modules that I do run can be completed in a matter of a month or two and I like to have a fresh party for each module (unless it's a series like G1-3). I also have a relatively short attention span when it comes to adventures because there are so many different kinds I want to run.

[ruy343]

Firstly, we play a game of microscope (http://www.lamemage.com/microscope/) (forgive the lame website, it's really worth trying out sometime). After a session of microscope, we've got a great, vibrant game world that has elements of things that each player wants to see come up in the game, so the players are invested in the outcome of the game - they want to see what happens to their world as a result of their characters' actions.

Then, as above, I created a list of 4 potentially antagonistic organizations they could run into anywhere, and 4 potentially friendly organizations that could become allies. These were great fodder as I've gone along and needed a challenge or ally for them to run into. I don't have everything about these organizations planned out (I have no idea who the leaders of six of them are), but I don't need to - they just see the very tips of these groups anyways.

After this, I create a few megaplots that could interact (as above). My current campaign has three: A dragon sets up shop in a nearby town, and could cause problems later (they encountered this first, but I had the dragon - who was well-fed and not interested in a fight - teleport them away when they arrived). A major underground criminal element has just gotten a large windfall and found the location of an artifact they're interested in. The Aboleth are prompting scholars to seek out ancient lore in devices that will ultimately damage the world they live in. All of these elements are unrelated, but provide hooks for my players, and they get the chance to decide what most interests them as we go, and I get to adapt to their interests.

Then, I create a rough idea of geography, so that people can spout off names of nearby settlements. I also create a list of names that could be drawn from for my setting, which I can spew off at random while DMing and I need a guard's name or something. Finally, I came up with the encounter that starts off the adventure. I'm totally fine with railroading my players for the first 5 minutes of the game - "You all agreed to clear out the kobold nest just outside of Westglen - tell me how you got roped into this." After they explain why they're there and how they know each other (keep it 30 minutes, tops), we roll initiative, and something happens. None of this "You meet in a tavern, and a mysterious man approaches your table" nonsense: that takes too long, and the rogue always gets bad ideas that way...

Finally, in the time between sessions, I prepare for a given settlement by creating segmented areas of the settlement (minas tirith "tiers", quarters of the city, different sides of the river, whatever - I'm too lazy to make maps), and put various buildings and businesses in each spot, along with the names of their owners and what players can do there. I print out a separate magic item bidding-house's item list and the mage tower's spell-purchase list (both, if applicable to the setting, of course) so that if the party inevitably wants to separate, I've got something to entertain that half of the room. Here's what I did (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L0Bzx-u5TbScJsxMwhoVHTp2EV6eLTS-GF9AdloJK8U/edit?usp=sharing) for my most recent city in about two hours while waiting for some yeast to spheroplast (feel free to comment or supply ideas).

Hope that helps. Remember: you don't need to do all the work - your players can do a lot of that for you. Microscope is a big part of this at the worldbuilding phase (best played over skype with draw.io), and when players ask for a certain shop or organization, or a group that supports their background, provide it (within reason) - often players are reasonable with their expectations of what they find, so you might ask them for a minute to fill in details before you continue, but it makes a world of difference.