I've been wanting to write a campaign for some friends for a little while now, I've been writing down ideas here and there, but one of my big problems is, that it's in a world I'm making myself, and my issue there is I don't really know when to stop with worldbuilding and get to writing the actual first session and the campaign, or to the extent of which I should plan out the events of the campaign. should I Just have start point, important items to collect/things to do/ baddies to beat and an ending, or should I go a bit more into it than that?
I have been a dungeon master before, just not in a world and campaign I've made myself so I'm having a little trouble with it. especially since I'm very excited about the world I've made so I keep just wanting to add more little random tidbits of lore, which I feel probably are a bit of a waste of my time. thanks for the help in advance.
I've been wanting to write a campaign for some friends for a little while now, I've been writing down ideas here and there, but one of my big problems is, that it's in a world I'm making myself, and my issue there is I don't really know when to stop with worldbuilding and get to writing the actual first session and the campaign, or to the extent of which I should plan out the events of the campaign. should I Just have start point, important items to collect/things to do/ baddies to beat and an ending, or should I go a bit more into it than that?
I have been a dungeon master before, just not in a world and campaign I've made myself so I'm having a little trouble with it. especially since I'm very excited about the world I've made so I keep just wanting to add more little random tidbits of lore, which I feel probably are a bit of a waste of my time. thanks for the help in advance.
If this is your first campaign, consider making it in an established world to remove that problem. If you really want to create a new world, start out small and build as the characters level up. What would a bunch of level 1 characters know about your world to start? Their home town? Maybe some basic geography of the region? Probably who the gods are at a high level. They're probably not going to know all about politics and detailed history. Maybe some basic events from the past. As the campaign progresses, you can get more detailed with the world. The choices they make and the characters they want to play and story they want to tell may influence how you build your world as well.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
It's easy to get bogged down in all the details and how everything in your world works. The key is to not have the answers for everything, but to create a world wherein your players want to know how everything works and ask questions about it. Much like how a game designer doesn't know much about their game until it's out in the wild, you can't know everything about your setting until your players tell you how they interface with it.
should I Just have start point, important items to collect/things to do/ baddies to beat and an ending, or should I go a bit more into it than that?
This is essentially how I would go about this .Tell the story the players need to know, and then develop as they get interested in between sessions. There's no shame in saying "I haven't accounted for that" or "this bit won't be ready" out of character because it's a fledgling setting you're making all by yourself. The way I wrote the outline for my first adventure set in my campaign setting of Nod was inspired heavily by The Lost Mine of Phandelver - you don't spend much time in Neverwinter (or Nod, in my case), and are sent on your merry way to adventure. Just as I'm not entirely interested in Neverwinter and greater Faerun, your players might not be as interested in diving deeper into your setting that early on (though, as friends, I'm sure they'll be a great deal more inquisitive than I will the author of LMoP).
It might be worth looking at how video games such as Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Roleplaying Game, Tyranny, or Pathfinder: Kingmaker does things. Players are given limited time to complete an objective in a world bursting with style and flavour, and once they've finished, they then have time to seek the answers to all the questions they've been aching to ask. Your first session could well be "go here and beat the baddie," but once they've done that fairly straight-forward task, they might have clues that lead them to greater threats and treasures and they'll have some more freedom in completing those objectives.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
Don't do any worldbuilding you aren't sure you'll need in the first couple of sessions until you're done prepping those. That's a rabbit hole you may never climb out of. Those little tidbits of lore are fun, but if they're not going to come up they add no value - contrary to content the PCs will actually need for the campaign to make sense. It's ok to add stuff here and there that just comes to you (which it likely will), but if you set aside time to work on the campaign, spend it working on the campaign.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Choose a bad guy who has been causing trouble in a relatively remote area. They should present a powerful challenge to a level 5 party.
There is one major settlement in the area (a large village) and maybe one smaller one.
Work out what the bad guy has been doing to upset the locals, and why they need heroes to help them.
Design the village. No NPCs in the village should be above level 3. Characters with levels or fighting skills should have reasons why they can't go fight the BBEG on their own.
Sprinkle things around the major settlement. Forests, caves, rivers, map it out and include a bunch of places of interest. You don't have to design all of them yet.
Work out what the smallest, most immediate threats and problems are. Put plot hooks in the village.
Those missions and quests should lead on to more missions and quests at the later areas, which you don't have to have designed until they reach higher level.
Design the world in line with the things that you are creating.
As your PCs level up, think about how you can advance beyond this first BBEG.
Take it small, and slow. Don't plan whole continents until the PCs have access to travel there. The world will feel richer and more realistic if you put your effort entirely into the place that they're going to be early on, rather than knowing about 9 different cities they won't travel to until level 10.
You could spend 30 years worldbuilding and never play and not be close to half done. Start small. Drop everyone in a relatively isolated location, like an island or something (mountaintop, valley, Clifton, etc). You just need an excuse to limit things geographically, something where you only have to build that one area.
Then you need to manufacture a reason for that community to make sense in that location. Maybe the mountaintop comunity grew up around a mountaintop temple, or was a lookout point or something forever ago in some long forgotten conflict. Maybe a fishing village, or valley farming/ranching comunity, or something.
Then you know what to worldbuild. It’s gonna need some type of feed shop, dry goods, etc. It’s gonna need a taproom or tavern. It’s gonna need some place for hardware too, maybe even it’s own smith. It’ll need a place that at least resembles a food market. Now, maybe the town is so tiny that all of this is two businesses, the “general store” (hardware, feed, dry goods, cloth, food, etcetera) and the tavern.
After that you need a reason for the are to become suddenly cut off from the outside. This could be anything, politics, weather, religious uprising, seasonal flooding or rockslides, geological upheaval, economic reasons, whatever. This can be related to your adventure, but doesn’t have to be. I kinda like it when they are unrelated because then it isn’t all just one problem with a bow on it for them. Like a villain/monster, and the weather or something, that way it isn’t all “evil.” But somethings it really is just all the villain, that’s your department.
You need a BBE. But don’t write a whole thing for them to go through. You could spend years doing that and not play. Just make sure you know all the key nouns (people places things of specific note), the weather, and the general geography. Knowing those key people, and what their motivations are is way easier than trying to “plan” for the party. They will take left turns on you that you will never anticipate, but that’s okay. As long as you know what the key NPCs want, why they want it, and how bad, then you can react with confidence no matter what they do. If you try to “script” events, you’ll drive yourself nuts.
Finally all you need to manufacture a reason for the heroes to be “passin’ through.”
Basically, that’s how they did Tremors, Die Hard, High Planes Drifter, most “haunted mansion/asylum” movies, Predator, Alien & the Aliens movies, the Harry Potters, the Matrix trilogy, almost every “lost exploring the [anywhere]” story ever….
Oh yeah, couplefew last things: Have Fun, Good Luck, & watch me.
One real simple bit of advise a lot of new DM's don't think about too: pay attention to what your players want. In game, take note of how their characters interact with the world, who their friends are, who their enemies are, what the characters' goals are, etc, and eventually you'll have enough material for the game almost to run itself as long as you shelve that instinct to think "ok this is distracting us from the main quest so I need to fix it." People talk a lot about player agency being necessary for playing as a player, but people rarely talk about how allowing players to have agency makes your job as a DM *so* much easier. It provides you with so much additional content without all the extra work.
Outside of game, talk to them. Ask them if they had fun, ask them if they have any constructive criticism from time to time. Be ready to throw out stuff you have prepared if the players aren't into it (it's a good practice to get into to not plan too much too far in advance. I plan like 70% of each session the week before so I can take into account events that happened in the last session), be ready for the players to do something crazy and unexpected and be ready to roll with it rather than try and solve it like a problem. Players love when their wild/crazy plans start to ripple out and effect the world around them; that's when the world becomes real to them.
When plotting out a campaign, try to look at it from the bad guy's POV and think, if the heroes didn't intervene at all, what would their plan be. Don't try to come up with what the players need to do to stop them, that's their job. Just make sure your villain has a plan, and you can change that plan on the fly as the players get in there and muck it up. Stay adaptable, like any good evil schemer should be.
I'm not going to say "don't worldbuild" because it is fun and often inspires unique encounters or NPCs that can really make your game stand out.
But I will say that overbuilding can often be restricting. The more you leave open, the more you can adapt the world to the party or the story's needs as you go. This makes the world more of a collaborative thing, which many players enjoy. But I would recommend making it a priority that spontaneous developments feel consistent with what you've put out so far in order to keep the world feeling real.
In general, I'd recommend broad strokes and lots of nebulous ideas that you're okay with totally scrapping based on how the story goes. Keep separate track of what you think the world is like and what has actually been presented in game - only the latter need be set in stone.
A number of years ago Ray Winninger wrote a series of excellent articles in Dragon Magazine called Dungeoncraft where he detailed and gave examples of how to put together a campaign from scratch.
Im not sure im allowed to post a link here, but if you Google "Ray Winninger Dungeoncraft", you'll get 29 articles that take you step by step through creating a campaign.
Along the way he creates several "rules" The first of which is Never Create More than you Must. (which is hard to follow because its fun)
Ive been DMing for 30 years, but I still touch on to these articles occasionally for help.
I agree with Scatterbraind that you want to be careful to not paint yourself into a corner with too much detail. I tend to outline my world more than write it in any kind of fine detail. For me the detail comes in the pregame work for the 1 or 2 upcoming sessions. There are a few things that I do ahead of time, bits (truly just bits) of world mythology or lore that are key to your campaign story line or goals. I will also sometimes write a short paragraph about any cities that I know the characters are likely to end up in later game, but these are simply to have a basic idea of what information to give players when one of the characters ask a traveling bard, "What do you know of the great city of Osgiliath?" or something similar.
World building is really fun, and as Iamsposta pointed out, you could do it for many years and never get to an actual game. Know your players and the kind of game/playstyle they want and they will help you build your world as you play.
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I've been wanting to write a campaign for some friends for a little while now, I've been writing down ideas here and there, but one of my big problems is, that it's in a world I'm making myself, and my issue there is I don't really know when to stop with worldbuilding and get to writing the actual first session and the campaign, or to the extent of which I should plan out the events of the campaign. should I Just have start point, important items to collect/things to do/ baddies to beat and an ending, or should I go a bit more into it than that?
I have been a dungeon master before, just not in a world and campaign I've made myself so I'm having a little trouble with it. especially since I'm very excited about the world I've made so I keep just wanting to add more little random tidbits of lore, which I feel probably are a bit of a waste of my time. thanks for the help in advance.
If this is your first campaign, consider making it in an established world to remove that problem. If you really want to create a new world, start out small and build as the characters level up. What would a bunch of level 1 characters know about your world to start? Their home town? Maybe some basic geography of the region? Probably who the gods are at a high level. They're probably not going to know all about politics and detailed history. Maybe some basic events from the past. As the campaign progresses, you can get more detailed with the world. The choices they make and the characters they want to play and story they want to tell may influence how you build your world as well.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
It's easy to get bogged down in all the details and how everything in your world works. The key is to not have the answers for everything, but to create a world wherein your players want to know how everything works and ask questions about it. Much like how a game designer doesn't know much about their game until it's out in the wild, you can't know everything about your setting until your players tell you how they interface with it.
This is essentially how I would go about this .Tell the story the players need to know, and then develop as they get interested in between sessions. There's no shame in saying "I haven't accounted for that" or "this bit won't be ready" out of character because it's a fledgling setting you're making all by yourself. The way I wrote the outline for my first adventure set in my campaign setting of Nod was inspired heavily by The Lost Mine of Phandelver - you don't spend much time in Neverwinter (or Nod, in my case), and are sent on your merry way to adventure. Just as I'm not entirely interested in Neverwinter and greater Faerun, your players might not be as interested in diving deeper into your setting that early on (though, as friends, I'm sure they'll be a great deal more inquisitive than I will the author of LMoP).
It might be worth looking at how video games such as Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Roleplaying Game, Tyranny, or Pathfinder: Kingmaker does things. Players are given limited time to complete an objective in a world bursting with style and flavour, and once they've finished, they then have time to seek the answers to all the questions they've been aching to ask. Your first session could well be "go here and beat the baddie," but once they've done that fairly straight-forward task, they might have clues that lead them to greater threats and treasures and they'll have some more freedom in completing those objectives.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
Don't do any worldbuilding you aren't sure you'll need in the first couple of sessions until you're done prepping those. That's a rabbit hole you may never climb out of. Those little tidbits of lore are fun, but if they're not going to come up they add no value - contrary to content the PCs will actually need for the campaign to make sense. It's ok to add stuff here and there that just comes to you (which it likely will), but if you set aside time to work on the campaign, spend it working on the campaign.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
this is incredibly helpful, Hex, thanks a ton man!
and thanks everyone else for the help too
Don't try to build a world. Follow this process:
Take it small, and slow. Don't plan whole continents until the PCs have access to travel there. The world will feel richer and more realistic if you put your effort entirely into the place that they're going to be early on, rather than knowing about 9 different cities they won't travel to until level 10.
You could spend 30 years worldbuilding and never play and not be close to half done. Start small. Drop everyone in a relatively isolated location, like an island or something (mountaintop, valley, Clifton, etc). You just need an excuse to limit things geographically, something where you only have to build that one area.
Then you need to manufacture a reason for that community to make sense in that location. Maybe the mountaintop comunity grew up around a mountaintop temple, or was a lookout point or something forever ago in some long forgotten conflict. Maybe a fishing village, or valley farming/ranching comunity, or something.
Then you know what to worldbuild. It’s gonna need some type of feed shop, dry goods, etc. It’s gonna need a taproom or tavern. It’s gonna need some place for hardware too, maybe even it’s own smith. It’ll need a place that at least resembles a food market. Now, maybe the town is so tiny that all of this is two businesses, the “general store” (hardware, feed, dry goods, cloth, food, etcetera) and the tavern.
After that you need a reason for the are to become suddenly cut off from the outside. This could be anything, politics, weather, religious uprising, seasonal flooding or rockslides, geological upheaval, economic reasons, whatever. This can be related to your adventure, but doesn’t have to be. I kinda like it when they are unrelated because then it isn’t all just one problem with a bow on it for them. Like a villain/monster, and the weather or something, that way it isn’t all “evil.” But somethings it really is just all the villain, that’s your department.
You need a BBE. But don’t write a whole thing for them to go through. You could spend years doing that and not play. Just make sure you know all the key nouns (people places things of specific note), the weather, and the general geography. Knowing those key people, and what their motivations are is way easier than trying to “plan” for the party. They will take left turns on you that you will never anticipate, but that’s okay. As long as you know what the key NPCs want, why they want it, and how bad, then you can react with confidence no matter what they do. If you try to “script” events, you’ll drive yourself nuts.
Finally all you need to manufacture a reason for the heroes to be “passin’ through.”
Basically, that’s how they did Tremors, Die Hard, High Planes Drifter, most “haunted mansion/asylum” movies, Predator, Alien & the Aliens movies, the Harry Potters, the Matrix trilogy, almost every “lost exploring the [anywhere]” story ever….
Oh yeah, couplefew last things: Have Fun, Good Luck, & watch me.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
One real simple bit of advise a lot of new DM's don't think about too: pay attention to what your players want. In game, take note of how their characters interact with the world, who their friends are, who their enemies are, what the characters' goals are, etc, and eventually you'll have enough material for the game almost to run itself as long as you shelve that instinct to think "ok this is distracting us from the main quest so I need to fix it." People talk a lot about player agency being necessary for playing as a player, but people rarely talk about how allowing players to have agency makes your job as a DM *so* much easier. It provides you with so much additional content without all the extra work.
Outside of game, talk to them. Ask them if they had fun, ask them if they have any constructive criticism from time to time. Be ready to throw out stuff you have prepared if the players aren't into it (it's a good practice to get into to not plan too much too far in advance. I plan like 70% of each session the week before so I can take into account events that happened in the last session), be ready for the players to do something crazy and unexpected and be ready to roll with it rather than try and solve it like a problem. Players love when their wild/crazy plans start to ripple out and effect the world around them; that's when the world becomes real to them.
When plotting out a campaign, try to look at it from the bad guy's POV and think, if the heroes didn't intervene at all, what would their plan be. Don't try to come up with what the players need to do to stop them, that's their job. Just make sure your villain has a plan, and you can change that plan on the fly as the players get in there and muck it up. Stay adaptable, like any good evil schemer should be.
Hope that helps!
I'm not going to say "don't worldbuild" because it is fun and often inspires unique encounters or NPCs that can really make your game stand out.
But I will say that overbuilding can often be restricting. The more you leave open, the more you can adapt the world to the party or the story's needs as you go. This makes the world more of a collaborative thing, which many players enjoy. But I would recommend making it a priority that spontaneous developments feel consistent with what you've put out so far in order to keep the world feeling real.
In general, I'd recommend broad strokes and lots of nebulous ideas that you're okay with totally scrapping based on how the story goes. Keep separate track of what you think the world is like and what has actually been presented in game - only the latter need be set in stone.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
A number of years ago Ray Winninger wrote a series of excellent articles in Dragon Magazine called Dungeoncraft where he detailed and gave examples of how to put together a campaign from scratch.
Im not sure im allowed to post a link here, but if you Google "Ray Winninger Dungeoncraft", you'll get 29 articles that take you step by step through creating a campaign.
Along the way he creates several "rules" The first of which is Never Create More than you Must. (which is hard to follow because its fun)
Ive been DMing for 30 years, but I still touch on to these articles occasionally for help.
G
I agree with Scatterbraind that you want to be careful to not paint yourself into a corner with too much detail. I tend to outline my world more than write it in any kind of fine detail. For me the detail comes in the pregame work for the 1 or 2 upcoming sessions. There are a few things that I do ahead of time, bits (truly just bits) of world mythology or lore that are key to your campaign story line or goals. I will also sometimes write a short paragraph about any cities that I know the characters are likely to end up in later game, but these are simply to have a basic idea of what information to give players when one of the characters ask a traveling bard, "What do you know of the great city of Osgiliath?" or something similar.
World building is really fun, and as Iamsposta pointed out, you could do it for many years and never get to an actual game. Know your players and the kind of game/playstyle they want and they will help you build your world as you play.