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Accountant
2007-10-02, 08:29 PM
^ Yeah, pretty much that.

For example, if your group tells you that they're ready to play whenever you, as the DM, are ready to host something, how long might you take to put a campaign together? Lets say starting from scratch. Hypothetically, of coarse. :smallbiggrin:

A couple of hours, spent over a few days or what?

Thanks guys.

Ranis
2007-10-02, 08:36 PM
It took me three years to finish my campaign setting.

Dullyanna
2007-10-02, 08:37 PM
That depends on a couple things. If the players are just looking for a beer and pretzels game, it should'nt take more than a few hours to build something. If they want something a bit more epic (Or at least with more roleplaying instead of rollplaying), I imagine it would take at least a week, and that's if you're using a pre-existing campaign setting i.e. Faerun or Eberron.

Mr. Moogle
2007-10-02, 08:37 PM
Personally it takes me about 4 hours, spread over 2-3 days to have the first couple twists set up. But i usually build on this later.

Lord Tataraus
2007-10-02, 08:53 PM
About 5 or so hours to flesh out the world completely, then about 30 minutes making the plot hooks, the campaign itself is design during game play.

RTGoodman
2007-10-02, 08:59 PM
As others have said, it depends on the attention to detail and the seriousness of your play style. As in, I spent several hours just adjusting the major NPCs for "Red Hand of Doom," changing ability scores (and everything they affect) to compensate for my players' super-high stats.

In that same amount of time, though, you can put together a dungeon or a simple adventure. The higher the level, though, the more time - especially if you have to create high-level NPCs/BBEGs.

One of the best tools I've found for creating a quick game is in the book Dungeon Master for Dummies. In the appendix, there's a simple d% chart for creating an entire dungeon, including rooms, encounters, features, and such. One of my DMs created a one-shot dungeon for 2nd-level characters including all the encounters in around 45 minutes to an hour.

F.L.
2007-10-02, 09:15 PM
Well, first you need to spend several years committing books to memory...

Then you just need some hours-weeks to assemble a subset of items into a campaign.

DraPrime
2007-10-02, 09:28 PM
My campaigns are never done being written, until they are fully done. During those boring periods in school, I'll always think a new idea or some change that I want. I might have a fairly good idea of what I want to do done in a week at most, but by the time the campaign is over it's been changed, expanded, and twisted a lot. I find this method to be best, because it really throws a lot of unpredictability at my players.

Vaynor
2007-10-02, 09:38 PM
My campaign world (Linky! (http://amaret.proboards47.com/)) is a continuous work in progress. Of course, I am creating entirely new classes for it (except for the warrior, can't do much with that). Most of the site is incomplete but a few things are done.

However, I am assuming you mean a campaign, not a campaign world. If you want a really nice campaign it might take a bit, but if you're just going to throw monsters that make sense into a themed dungeon with little plot for the party's enjoyment, maybe a day or so, a few hours each day. Longer if you write full descriptions for all the rooms in depth.

Winterwind
2007-10-02, 09:44 PM
About 20 minutes to devise the basic idea of the campaign and the main NPCs (assuming a campaign of about 10 sessions à 5-7 hours), and about 5 minutes prior to every session to think about what exactly I want to happen during that session.
Yes, I improvise a lot. I prefer it that way - that way I don't have to worry about the players disrupting my plans, for I haven't invested too much time in them anyway, and I'm constantly in a "free to do whatever I want" state of mind, instead of switching back and forth between "free to..." and "do what you planned!".

On the other hand, if I plan handouts (in Call of Cthulhu games mostly: newspaper clips, letters, and alike), I easily spend 3-4 hours prior to a session.

leperkhaun
2007-10-03, 01:36 AM
depends on what you want. One of my DM's was a wealthy guy and retired. Basically he spend about 4-5 hours a day over 3 or so years building a world, but then he always ran things in his own homebrew world.

Another DM of mine can somehow make an outline, then wing a whole campaign.

In general iv found that most DMs will start with an already built world then eventually build their own.

Fixer
2007-10-03, 07:55 AM
{table]Option|Time usually spent
Mooks (for encounters)|1-5 minutes per group (3 average)
Minor Villains (for adventures)|5-15 minutes each (10 average)
Major Villains (for campaigns)|15-30 minutes each
Encounter detailing|15 minutes - 1 hour (30 average)
Adventure detailing|additional 10 minutes per encounter
Campaign detailing|additional 1 hour per adventure[/table]

So if I am planning on a campaign to bring characters from Level 1 to Level 6:
5 encounters * 6 levels = 30 encounters
(average) 4 encounters / adventure = 8 adventures
(average) 3 mook groups / encounter = 90 mook groups
1 minor villain / adventure = 8
1 major villain

30 * 30 minutes + 8 * 10 minutes + 8 * 60 minutes + 90 * 3 minutes + 8 * 10 minutes + 30 minutes = 900 + 80 + 480 + 270 + 80 + 30 = 1840 minutes (roughly 31 hours total prep time)

bosssmiley
2007-10-03, 07:55 AM
Half-an-hour, a couple of sheets of paper, a couple of the *many* sourcebooks (D&D and other) I have lying around. Mix in with known player loves/hates. Stir well. Cook. Win! :smallsmile:

Rule of Cool (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool) and Rule of Fun (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfFun) take precedence over common sense at all times.

Kurald Galain
2007-10-03, 09:40 AM
I do a surprising amount of winging and improvisation on the spot. I believe I prep between 20 and 60 minutes for a session, possibly less if it's in the middle of the campaign and I know what's going on.

SoD
2007-10-03, 09:56 AM
I tend to spend a long (planning over a few weeks, writing ideas down, statting and fleshing out NPCs) time getting ready, then mid-session, ideas come to me, and I follow them, then lead it back then come up with ideas in between sessions, or cool NPCs to introduce, and I just work them in. Basically-ongoing, half improvised, half planned, completely controlled chaos.

I kind of feel sorry for my players...stuck in my world...

Tormsskull
2007-10-03, 10:08 AM
A long time. I think of a general idea, then the world in which that idea exists, then try to flesh out the rest of the world a bit, then add in interesting details, etc.

Then I think of where the PCs are going to start, and what kind of encounters/plot/quests they could become caught up in.

Probably a couple of weeks on the first part, then maybe a week on the second.

daggaz
2007-10-03, 10:40 AM
I spend the most time drawing out actual dungeons/caves/fight scenes. I like that part of DnD to be exciting, challenging, and most of all to make sense. I can't wait to buy Rich's dungeonscape book, for that matter.

Everything else I pretty much make up as I go along. Plot twists/hooks/general storyline happens on the fly, in response to the players' decisions, and it usually comes out pretty good. Lots of adventure and excitement, intrigue, mystery, you name it. Otherwise, I will kind of daydream and mull ideas over in my head throughout the week, but I dont need to write them down or do any intensive planning.

valadil
2007-10-03, 10:43 AM
I try to avoid putting a whole campaign together all at once. Players always seem more interested in the stuff I improvised around them than the material I had planned out beforehand. As such I try not to do too much in advance.

Past experience shows that planning a session takes however much free time I have. I did a game where each 4 hour session had 15-20 hours of planning (that was my first game though and I didn't know how to plan well so most of that was unnecessary). I also did a game that was completely improvised. Most recently I ran a game with 4 hour sessions, each of which took 2-4 hours to plan. That seemed like a reasonable amount of time to spend.

I really can't say how long I actually take on a campaign though. I get ideas at random times and either keep them in my head or write them down. When I find that enough of those ideas work together I bundle them up, attach a BBEG, invite some players, and call it a game. Some ideas that I haven't gotten to run with are leftovers from my first game. If I were to put those in a game tomorrow I wouldn't say that that game was 5 years in the making. I just never got around to writing it earlier. So much of my games comes from passively collected ideas that I can't offer a good estimate of how long it takes to write such a game.

But once I've decided to do a game I can definitively say that it takes me about a month to plan. I write out the beginnings of all my plots. Then I figure out some organizations. Those usually get tied to plots and introduce more plots. Then (maybe two weeks into things) I rustle up some players. I give out some of my ideas and hope the players take them as inspiration. Character histories are absolutely necessary in my games. I've made exceptions but I've also kicked out players who haven't had them. Once I get the backstories (this is usually a 1-3 week process) I read and reread them. The idea is to see if I can tie them into any existing plots (thus making those plots personal for that player), try and come up with a plot per each character, and see if there are any ways to link characters together. This takes a week or two. Once that is done I'm ready to start the game. At some point I've also tried to come up with a beginning and end to the game. (Some would say that a prewritten ending means I'm railroading players. I disagree. They arrive at that destination however they like. All I'm doing is providing the destination, but the players gotta lay the tracks themselves. I do this because I get sick of my games after a couple months, but if I have an ending ready to go I can conclude on a high note instead of halfassing it.) All in all this is a 4-6 week process. I run a game every couple years and they usually last 2-4 months. It should also be noted that I don't do world building because I find it to be a complete waste of my time.

Golthur
2007-10-03, 11:47 PM
Usually a month or so - in the sense that I create the "framework" of what I want, as well as a lot of plausible detail in the world.

Basically, I create enough detail and coherent plot lines that I can wing it and have it come out looking like I knew what I was doing all along. :amused:

Bitzeralisis
2007-10-04, 12:20 AM
This completely depends on what the game is about, how much it strays from the Generic D&D setting, how complex the storyline is, etc. usually, for an average campaign, I'll take around a week or two thinking up the exact setting, as in magic-psionics transparency, what classes are liked and what aren't, what the storyline should be, all that good stuff.

Now, if I want to create my own Patheon, religions, homebrew a lot, create a bunch of complex twists and turns in my storyline, allow many possibilities, then it may take a month or more. Longest time I've ever spent on a campaign setting was two-'n-a-half months, and I abandoned it after that. Which means, don't overdo it. You'll kill yourself.

Stormcrow
2007-10-04, 12:24 AM
The time it takes to get my dice and for the players to roll characters.
I've actually done an adhoc with no character sheets or books at all. Just dice, a pad, a pen and imagination.

Lolzords
2007-10-04, 01:48 AM
My current DM who I've had for the past two campaigns always makes it up as he goes along. :smalleek:

leperkhaun
2007-10-04, 02:07 AM
hmmmi forgot to put what i do in my post.

Generally ill use a prebuilt world (i have a homebrew one i made, but its not that detailed, i havent sat down to actually figure things out).

I have about a dozen notebooks filled with random characters (of all alignments) of various classes and levels, with back stories on them (when i get bored one of the things ill do is make a character, yeah i know weird). some of them are nothing more than a class level and "likes to make undead" to a full character build and several page back story.

i have about half a dozen notebooks on adventure ideas. These range from outlines of 1-20 campaigns, to one shot adventures, to short campaigns, to situations arising from this trap or that spell or this idea.

In general ill just write down random ideas and when it comes time for me to DM ill look through my notebooks and basically see what i have.

The VP
2007-10-04, 03:29 AM
My current world took me a couple hours a day off an on for about three months until i thought it was complete enough to run. I'm still working on some tweaks and expanding the world as the party gets to new parts of it.

Jarlax
2007-10-04, 09:36 AM
for me, a day or two. however my settings and campaigns are not exactly what you would call fully formed. the day or two would produce a map of the region the PCs will be in, the overarching plot that will occur during the campaign and the first adventure. no towns or cities or NPCs, my players have little use for these unless they are an encounter waiting to happen.

for example my last campaign's planning time produces a sea map with dots of different sizes to indicate the location and size of every port in the region. i had an overarching story that would lead my PCs from highway bandits fleeing the law into pirates through the defeat of all other established pirate crews (basically each of the 4 other pirates bases would be its own "Dungon") and finally i had the encounters for the first night of play that would take the PCs out of a large harbor city and into the den of another group of pirates, who's base would become the PCs by the end of the adventure.

for me anything more is not worth planning, i know my Players are unpredictable and even naming a town is not worth it, because my players

A) don't care what its name is. and
B) will probably sink it, burn it, flood it, or place it in another plane of existence. in this case it was a adamantine submersible ship with a fly and dig speed that could phase through earth rather than actually move the earth equipped with spell turrets along the hull. lucky for the NPCs of the town, they had chosen to conquer it.

Dausuul
2007-10-04, 10:09 AM
It varies widely. I have been known to start a campaign on a day's notice with virtually no prep time; on the other hand, I am currently plotting out an extensive campaign which will probably take me many hours over several weeks to get ready.

AslanCross
2007-10-04, 10:41 AM
It took me about a month to prepare for the first adventure over the summer. Since I'm new at this, I was trying to find the general direction I wanted to go. I'm still working on the later stuff now as the players come up with motives for their characters. I'll probably continue working bit by bit as the campaign progresses. I don't want to preempt things.

(One of my female players (a student of mine) badly wants a romance with a villain NPC with a tragic ending. So instead of an imposing old man, I had to make the recurring cleric villain a long-haired blonde pretty boy.)

Indon
2007-10-04, 10:49 AM
I have a campaign world I've been working on for, hmm... about 8 years. I _could_ do a campaign about it at this point, just waiting for a good time to strike.

My Exalted sessions, I generally write up the morning that I'll be DM'ing.

Vay
2007-10-05, 09:25 AM
Been working on my first full campaign for a while now, I'd say about a month, it's pretty close to being playable once I get some stuff for a few NPCs, though the world around them still needs work. Campaign world needs work, campaign is almost done, characters are all written up.

Making new characters usually takes our group a good 3-4 hours because the people in my group normally try to munchkin as much as possible from the get go. Myself, if I have a concept in mind, it takes me as long as an hour, as short as 15 minutes to make a new character.

If we're not adventuring along a story line, usually just takes maybe 30 minutes of prep work (picking appropriate monsters) for us to go on a dungeon adventure.

SoD
2007-10-05, 10:48 AM
Oh, in addition to what I previously stated, I also enjoy dice rolling. Creating random dungeons and NPCs that may or may not be used. And treasures. I like making treasure. Especially magic items.

Mind you, I love coming up with the backgrounds as well. I'd give the example for my current randomised dungeon, but it's currently in use by my players, and I don't want to spoil the suprise.