What types of campaigns are there (ie, hexcrawl, megadungeon, ect.)

[Rfkannen]

What do you think the various types of campaign are? What types have or have not been represented by official adventurers? What is your favorite type of campaign?

[LurkytheDwarf]

I would say the two biggest divisions are Linear and Sandbox.

In a Linear campaign, things will get kicked off immediately with some event (a princess kidnapped, a capital city fallen to the enemy, etc) which set the PCs off on their path. Then there's basically a series of set pieces or events which turn the course of the path toward the ultimate end. In the kidnapped princess example, it's unlikely a single kidnapped princess is going to take up a whole campaign, but perhaps it forces the party to track her down in the wilderness to an abandoned keep filled with monstrous humanoids. After their victory they discern a noble at court orchestrated the kidnapping, so when they return there is a more city-based intrigue adventure only to find the traitor who in fact had the princess kidnapped as a distraction from his work on the terrible arcane engine in the dungeon below the castle, but wait! the traitor sealed it away before his death, so the party must seek out his hidden lair in the mountains to gain the key to access it, etc, etc. When done well for the right group it feels like the campaign has a great momentum leading to a spectacular climax, but for the wrong group or execute poorly it can feel like the PCs are being led around by the nose.

In a Sandbox campaign, the PCs motivate themselves and often their motives tend to be baser (i.e. greed) unless of course, some crusader-type character has managed to rally all the others to follow his quest. Either way, the map is laid out (either literally, or just arrows pointing in different directions with rumors attached to them). "This session we'll seige the Lair of the Leopard Lord!" It takes however many sessions, then on to the next rumor. And as the party grows in power the obscurity and danger of the rumors they hear grow as well. The NPCs tend to be more one-offs and frequently do not survive past their introduction, save those sages or vendors loitering around the PCs' base. Eventually, after many different often disparate adventures, the PCs may pick up on a shared backstory linking them which ultimately leads them to the greatest of hidden dungeons/ruins/castles (like following the evil refugees of a fallen ancient civilization to the extraplanar fortress) which serves as an end piece for the campaign. When done well it gives the PCs a lot of leeway and freedom, often offering more downtime for extra-adventuring pursuits like stronghold building, but when done poorly or without a motivated group it can be a wandering aimless affair where nothing is explored long enough to grip the PCs' attention.

[firelistener]

West Marches is a popular game type. You basically build a setting and let whoever the players are that week decide what to do. As DM, you don't usually provide longer-term plot hooks and instead try to tie everything up in a single session. It's designed for when you don't consistently have the same players, so a lot of "come and go" games do it, like in game stores or clubs that let random people join whenever.

[stoutstien]

What do you think the various types of campaign are? What types have or have not been represented by official adventurers? What is your favorite type of campaign?

The types of campaign can be so loosely categorized it's hard to list them. the two big groups are sandbox and critical path driven or a campaign can be both at once.

I wish we had more sandbox style source material.

[Tanarii]

West Marches is a popular game type. You basically build a setting and let whoever the players are that week decide what to do. As DM, you don't usually provide longer-term plot hooks and instead try to tie everything up in a single session. It's designed for when you don't consistently have the same players, so a lot of "come and go" games do it, like in game stores or clubs that let random people join whenever.
West marches is an open table hexcrawl sandbox. It takes a LOT of prep before you launch the campaign, but once you've done the prep it's fairly easy to run. Meaning not much prep is needed on an ongoing basis unless you add completely new content.

[Democratus]

West marches is an open table hexcrawl sandbox. It takes a LOT of prep before you launch the campaign, but once you've done the prep it's fairly easy to run. Meaning not much prep is needed on an ongoing basis unless you add completely new content.

I'll second the "LOT of prep" bit.

My typical sandbox takes a coupe hundred hours of prep before the players start rolling dice.

But I feel it's worth it for verisimilitude. Anywhere the characters choose to go, I'm ready. :smallsmile:

[Tanarii]

I'll second the "LOT of prep" bit.

My typical sandbox takes a coupe hundred hours of prep before the players start rolling dice.

But I feel it's worth it for verisimilitude. Anywhere the characters choose to go, I'm ready. :smallsmile:
It's one reason "start small" is so commonly given as advice. If you only prep say 3 medium adventuring sites for a one party sandbox, that'll probably take them to level 5 if they do two of them. For 3-5 sessions a week with players starting new characters at level 1 all the time, you need more options. Or they need to be more in depth options.

The best advice I got from the alexandrian was to steal as much content as you can and drop it with as few modifications as you can.:smallamused:

[KorvinStarmast]

You seem to be forgetting the "Beer and Pretzels" campaign. I've been in one of those for a bit over two years now. We had a lot of those in the 80's and 70's.

What, you may ask, is a "beer and pretzels campaign" and the answer is: the players and the DM don't take the game seriously; the group get together and do a combination of dungeon crawling, wandering about, social encountering, and making jokes in the middle of all of it going in and out of character without notice.

It's entire premise is light hearted, and it does not depend on a story arc. PC's die now and again and a new one is rolled up, or, as with one of my PCs, a PC is retired and a new one replaces that PC since the Player want to try something new. We just had that happen again; the life cleric exited stage left since we found his son enslaved in a mine and rescued him. The player decided that he and his son would wander off home and he rolled up a Valor bard.

The DM prepares just enough content for a session or two, and the rest are random encounters.

[Tanarii]

What, you may ask, is a "beer and pretzels campaign" and the answer is: the players and the DM don't take the game seriously; the group get together and do a combination of dungeon crawling, wandering about, social encountering, and making jokes in the middle of all of it going in and out of character without notice.And eventually the falling down drunk player of the not quite falling down drunk dwarf derails the game completely.

Admittedly the players that made me institute a "no alcohol" policy were more into "Rum & Coke and pretzels". Or even "Vodka shots and pretzels". But "Pizza and toss dice (but not at the DM)" gaming is a tolerable substitute. :smallamused:

[Democratus]

You seem to be forgetting the "Beer and Pretzels" campaign. I've been in one of those for a bit over two years now. We had a lot of those in the 80's and 70's.

What, you may ask, is a "beer and pretzels campaign" and the answer is: the players and the DM don't take the game seriously; the group get together and do a combination of dungeon crawling, wandering about, social encountering, and making jokes in the middle of all of it going in and out of character without notice.

It's entire premise is light hearted, and it does not depend on a story arc. PC's die now and again and a new one is rolled up, or, as with one of my PCs, a PC is retired and a new one replaces that PC since the Player want to try something new. We just had that happen again; the life cleric exited stage left since we found his son enslaved in a mine and rescued him. The player decided that he and his son would wander off home and he rolled up a Valor bard.

The DM prepares just enough content for a session or two, and the rest are random encounters.

Fair enough. I've had game groups with drunken Welsh rugby players before.

We rushed to get as much plotting and RPing in as possible - before the first 12-pack was gone. Because after that it was just 'clobberin' time!'. :smallbiggrin:

[KorvinStarmast]

Fair enough. I've had game groups with drunken Welsh rugby players before.
That sounds like fun right there - no trouble with the Bard having an (in)appropriate song for just about any occasion.
'Twas on the Good Ship Venus ...


We rushed to get as much plotting and RPing in as possible - before the first 12-pack was gone. Because after that it was just 'clobberin' time!'. :smallbiggrin: Yeah, about three pints in, our Wizard usually begins to moan "OK, when do we get to kill something?" unless we have already had at least one combat.

Caveat: with this same group, when we played with kids/nephews/nieces, we kept a 'dry' table.
Part of our Deception plan.

[clash]

Episodic is another fun one, especially for drop in/drop out type play. Basically it plays like a tv series where each session can have it's own subplot and conclusion, but the series can have an overarching story and on ocasion a couple 2 or 3 part episodes for the finale, but in general each session is fairly self contained.

[Tanarii]

Episodic is another fun one, especially for drop in/drop out type play. Basically it plays like a tv series where each session can have it's own subplot and conclusion, but the series can have an overarching story and on ocasion a couple 2 or 3 part episodes for the finale, but in general each session is fairly self contained.
I played in official play for years in multiple editions, and ran a open table campaign in 5e for the last few. Episodic now what I view as the 'Default' way to play D&D at this point.

Edit: Even single session sandboxes fall into episodic. Although I suppose some might not call them that because they are player driven, not plot driven.

[Yakmala]

I'm not exactly sure what you would call this, but I ran a campaign a while back that was driven by player input.


Players are told they are hiring on as guards for a long term caravan, crossing hundreds of miles and making multiple stops over the months.
In the first session the players got to know the NPCs in the caravan. I took note of which ones really resonated with them and fleshed out their back stories and gave them extra plot hooks.
I handed out three index cards to each player and told them to write down cool things, both good and bad, that they'd like to see happen during their journey. I told them to keep it brief, and that I would flesh them out later.
I looked over all the cards and rejected a few that were either too easy [We find a random artifact laying in the road!] or too difficult [Tiamat attacks the caravan!] and had them write up replacements.
Over the next two weeks, I fleshed out all the cards into mini-adventures. The gist of each would still be recognizable to the players who submited them, but in most cases, I added some twists.
From that point on, at the start of each session, I'd shuffle the cards and have someone draw one from the "deck" without looking and hand it back to me. That would be what we were doing at the start of the session.
If we got through a mini adventure with time to spare, we might draw another one from the deck.
Rinse/Repeat, with breaks for pre-planned adventures every so often when the caravan was stopped at a major town or city.