After reading your introduction I'm uncertain of what will be required of your players. Are they all family members? Is everyone tied together by the family and the Bard mentioned?
That being said usually most sessions zeros either get your group focused in on the campaign and where you all want it to go. Or after learning all the PC backstories you drop them all into a situation together to meet and bond over the experience. Ie. Tavern (brawl optional), rescue a village, trapped by evil overlord and left in a pit to die, a family argument at the carnival, a normal day in the city and the start of a cataclysm happens or they are somehow swept up in a heated political debate of two warring factions in the city?
I would be happy to give you some better pointers once I understand your possible starting point. Also is this a long adventure expected to take an unknown amount of time? It appears to be a roleplay-heavy experience from your description. Will there be more players besides the two you have listed? Just some points I would need to know to help you out.
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I live my life like a West Marches campaign, A swirling vortex of Ambitions and Insecurities.
Right now I’m still figuring stuff out, but the overarching plot is mostly exploration based, and I do have lots more characters, however I might not have enough slots to make them all, but the main focus is for Clef, his soul sister princess moon, their friend, a noble named Linnea, Clef’s girlfriend Ana, and his mentor Onyx. The plot is pretty long, but it centers around this team of mostly Bards, but some of Clef’s friends are other classes as well.
Clef: Bard/paladin
Moon: Bard
Linnea: Sorcerer
Ana: Bard/wizard
Onyx: Noble (background) Sorcerer (class)
the stories mostly center on 6 friends exploring areas unknown in the Forgotten realms, as well as meeting people and finding out things they’ve never thought about before, either about themselves or other people. Though, for knowledge reasons, is it alright if I see the plots for other people’s campaigns?
After reading your introduction I'm uncertain of what will be required of your players. Are they all family members? Is everyone tied together by the family and the Bard mentioned
They’re not all family members, but they do very much act like a family. They’re a very tight knit group, and most of the plot is the adventures of this group of people from all backgrounds and walks of life. One of the small plots in this whole campaign is Clef and friends trying to learn more about the family of Onyx, since they don’t seem to know much about them, and it seems like they have a bit of a strained relationship with another parent, and they do indeed want to make peace with the fact that their family story is a flawed one, yet part of their family refuses to open up to Onyx about it, and Clef and the others are debating whether Onyx’s family hides secrets that they’re refusing to reveal to Onyx all because of some trivial fight their dad had with their mom, all while trying to balance the fact that Princess Moongold’s family tree holds bigger secrets and surprises than she ever knew, yet she still wants to know what else her lineage holds. Note: still working on this
Though, for knowledge reasons, is it alright if I see the plots for other people’s campaigns?
I am going to assume the word "See" is supposed to be the word "Steal".
We all call it "stealing" because I think it sounds more fun than "borrowing" I suppose. But the answer should always be yes in this one case. I hear of people's games all the time and use their ideas to further my own. This is how DMs and GMs have always created our games. But don't stop there, use movies, TV shows, books, comics, or anything you can get content from.
As another idea get a hold of modules and repurpose the dungeons from those into your game. If need be change the theme of the dungeon, or the motivations of the enemies within.
Or use the modules as adventure locations for your story and run them almost as is.
Now as for your campaign, it sounds very story based with little deviation or at the very least scene based where you put the PCs in situations for them to resolve but you have a planned outcome. Otherwise, if you have players who are good at staying with their own character concepts and help drive the sessions toward their own goals you can sandbox this to a certain extent but still have an overall story of personal drama driving each PC.
Is each player giving you a background of all those characters you listed or are you assigning them to your players?
Do you want your game to only focus on the story or is that the core of the PCs but then everything else is happening to them or around them?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I live my life like a West Marches campaign, A swirling vortex of Ambitions and Insecurities.
I don’t want to steal any ideas. I’m still learning the ropes of how DnD works, and these are all very story driven, but as for the characters, if I act as DM, Clef and company are NPCs, but Clef is my main PC if I was a player. His friends are mainly NPCs, but I use them as characters other people can play if they either haven’t made a character yet or if they don’t feel like they want to make a character. If that’s all right with you, I’m going to be posting short comic stories involving my characters to test the limits on how well I can tell stories, no matter how long or how short. A lot of them will be short stories in each character’s life or how they met each other, or some weird little adventure they go on.
To address the first part of Story, when I think of a story game session I feel it becomes much more roleplaying. This means you play more in scenes than moving PCs around from location to location on a map exploring places. Dice are often used less frequently as the interaction between PC and NPC drives the session more. This is one style of gaming people often use.
Intrigue and mysteries lend themselves well to this type of gameplay. But so does interpersonal issues like relationships or even two friends butting heads over a girl.
Story style is usually predetermined to an extent by the DM but can have branches depending on PC's choices. Or if you are running a module like Rise of Tiamat you are playing a campaign mostly on rails where it does not allow for deviation by the PCs. Thusly a story. The only real part where it branches is if the PCs win in the end.
The second part of what I was asking was the Story of the Characters like above with the disputes and romance however the outside world gets in the way and goblins must be defeated or an evil plot needs to be stopped. All that before you can decide if you still want to be friends with the party fighter because he keeps stealing from you.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I live my life like a West Marches campaign, A swirling vortex of Ambitions and Insecurities.
Is this a story you want to tell or is this a setting you want to explore? If you have specific character arcs in mind for these characters, then maybe instead of playing a campaign you could write a short story (or publish more comic strips, as you mentioned). If you're okay with things going very far away from what you envision, and for players to interpret these characters different than you, that's when a DND campaign can be used.
You say you're new; one of the big pitfalls people run into is the idea of 'main character syndrome', where they have a huge epic plot in mind for their character, leaving the rest of the characters behind them. I confess I haven't read the plot synopsis in the link you posted, but judging from the replies I'm mentioning this point just in case it's relevant. DND at it's core is a shared storytelling experience. If you'd rather tell a story without it getting warped and changed by others, that's fine, but it's not DND.
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Also I made Clef’s friends to all be “open characters” mainly because while I created them, they can be shaped by other people’s interpretations of them. If you want to use my other characters, feel free. The main setting I do want to explore is the entirety of the Forgotten Realms, along with what lies beyond them.
In general, I’m very flexible about where people take some of my characters. The only character they can’t use is Clef. I made him for myself
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Hello everyone, I’m Clef, and I’m both new to playing DnD and staring a campaign. What are some tips for DMing a session and running a campaign?
Here’s the link for it: Fate lies on your hands: the journey of hearts and souls
I’m only just starting out, and it would be wonderful to hear from anyone who has a campaign or has run sessions for a long time.
After reading your introduction I'm uncertain of what will be required of your players. Are they all family members? Is everyone tied together by the family and the Bard mentioned?
That being said usually most sessions zeros either get your group focused in on the campaign and where you all want it to go. Or after learning all the PC backstories you drop them all into a situation together to meet and bond over the experience. Ie. Tavern (brawl optional), rescue a village, trapped by evil overlord and left in a pit to die, a family argument at the carnival, a normal day in the city and the start of a cataclysm happens or they are somehow swept up in a heated political debate of two warring factions in the city?
I would be happy to give you some better pointers once I understand your possible starting point. Also is this a long adventure expected to take an unknown amount of time? It appears to be a roleplay-heavy experience from your description. Will there be more players besides the two you have listed? Just some points I would need to know to help you out.
I live my life like a West Marches campaign, A swirling vortex of Ambitions and Insecurities.
Right now I’m still figuring stuff out, but the overarching plot is mostly exploration based, and I do have lots more characters, however I might not have enough slots to make them all, but the main focus is for Clef, his soul sister princess moon, their friend, a noble named Linnea, Clef’s girlfriend Ana, and his mentor Onyx. The plot is pretty long, but it centers around this team of mostly Bards, but some of Clef’s friends are other classes as well.
Clef: Bard/paladin
Moon: Bard
Linnea: Sorcerer
Ana: Bard/wizard
Onyx: Noble (background) Sorcerer (class)
the stories mostly center on 6 friends exploring areas unknown in the Forgotten realms, as well as meeting people and finding out things they’ve never thought about before, either about themselves or other people. Though, for knowledge reasons, is it alright if I see the plots for other people’s campaigns?
They’re not all family members, but they do very much act like a family. They’re a very tight knit group, and most of the plot is the adventures of this group of people from all backgrounds and walks of life. One of the small plots in this whole campaign is Clef and friends trying to learn more about the family of Onyx, since they don’t seem to know much about them, and it seems like they have a bit of a strained relationship with another parent, and they do indeed want to make peace with the fact that their family story is a flawed one, yet part of their family refuses to open up to Onyx about it, and Clef and the others are debating whether Onyx’s family hides secrets that they’re refusing to reveal to Onyx all because of some trivial fight their dad had with their mom, all while trying to balance the fact that Princess Moongold’s family tree holds bigger secrets and surprises than she ever knew, yet she still wants to know what else her lineage holds. Note: still working on this
I am going to assume the word "See" is supposed to be the word "Steal".
We all call it "stealing" because I think it sounds more fun than "borrowing" I suppose. But the answer should always be yes in this one case. I hear of people's games all the time and use their ideas to further my own. This is how DMs and GMs have always created our games. But don't stop there, use movies, TV shows, books, comics, or anything you can get content from.
As another idea get a hold of modules and repurpose the dungeons from those into your game. If need be change the theme of the dungeon, or the motivations of the enemies within.
Or use the modules as adventure locations for your story and run them almost as is.
Now as for your campaign, it sounds very story based with little deviation or at the very least scene based where you put the PCs in situations for them to resolve but you have a planned outcome. Otherwise, if you have players who are good at staying with their own character concepts and help drive the sessions toward their own goals you can sandbox this to a certain extent but still have an overall story of personal drama driving each PC.
Is each player giving you a background of all those characters you listed or are you assigning them to your players?
Do you want your game to only focus on the story or is that the core of the PCs but then everything else is happening to them or around them?
I live my life like a West Marches campaign, A swirling vortex of Ambitions and Insecurities.
I don’t want to steal any ideas. I’m still learning the ropes of how DnD works, and these are all very story driven, but as for the characters, if I act as DM, Clef and company are NPCs, but Clef is my main PC if I was a player. His friends are mainly NPCs, but I use them as characters other people can play if they either haven’t made a character yet or if they don’t feel like they want to make a character. If that’s all right with you, I’m going to be posting short comic stories involving my characters to test the limits on how well I can tell stories, no matter how long or how short. A lot of them will be short stories in each character’s life or how they met each other, or some weird little adventure they go on.
please elaborate a bit on this.
To address the first part of Story, when I think of a story game session I feel it becomes much more roleplaying. This means you play more in scenes than moving PCs around from location to location on a map exploring places. Dice are often used less frequently as the interaction between PC and NPC drives the session more. This is one style of gaming people often use.
Intrigue and mysteries lend themselves well to this type of gameplay. But so does interpersonal issues like relationships or even two friends butting heads over a girl.
Story style is usually predetermined to an extent by the DM but can have branches depending on PC's choices. Or if you are running a module like Rise of Tiamat you are playing a campaign mostly on rails where it does not allow for deviation by the PCs. Thusly a story. The only real part where it branches is if the PCs win in the end.
The second part of what I was asking was the Story of the Characters like above with the disputes and romance however the outside world gets in the way and goblins must be defeated or an evil plot needs to be stopped. All that before you can decide if you still want to be friends with the party fighter because he keeps stealing from you.
I live my life like a West Marches campaign, A swirling vortex of Ambitions and Insecurities.
Is this a story you want to tell or is this a setting you want to explore? If you have specific character arcs in mind for these characters, then maybe instead of playing a campaign you could write a short story (or publish more comic strips, as you mentioned). If you're okay with things going very far away from what you envision, and for players to interpret these characters different than you, that's when a DND campaign can be used.
You say you're new; one of the big pitfalls people run into is the idea of 'main character syndrome', where they have a huge epic plot in mind for their character, leaving the rest of the characters behind them. I confess I haven't read the plot synopsis in the link you posted, but judging from the replies I'm mentioning this point just in case it's relevant. DND at it's core is a shared storytelling experience. If you'd rather tell a story without it getting warped and changed by others, that's fine, but it's not DND.
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Also I made Clef’s friends to all be “open characters” mainly because while I created them, they can be shaped by other people’s interpretations of them. If you want to use my other characters, feel free. The main setting I do want to explore is the entirety of the Forgotten Realms, along with what lies beyond them.
In general, I’m very flexible about where people take some of my characters. The only character they can’t use is Clef. I made him for myself