Hello, story-tellers, world-weavers, and lore-creators
I am a newer DM (started in August) as well as a fairly new player (started in April) and as I move forward with a small, loose kind of game, I am discovering a much larger story I want to tell. My players have already agreed to doing a mich more structured game with new characters. However, before I drop this on them, I wanted to ask the ether of wonderful veteran DMs out there, "Have you ever created a completely custom story from scratch without using any source material?" I play in a custom Skyrim campaign, and I am DMing a campaign in a world I've completely created from scratch (over the course of MANY years before I even played DnD), and I was curious what sort of advice would you guys have for me. I plan to start after New Years with the new campaign and I have a fair amount of main story, important NPCs, and primary villains prepared. With a bit more fleshing out, I'll have those aspects totally done. So, to my point.
What EXTRA stuff should I have prepared? How much world building is enough vs how much is too much?
Also, any additional advice is greatly appreciated.
Allow the players to have a stake in world building
Keep in mind what level the adventure is happening at, as the PCs increase in power reflect that in the world
think through the effect of magic on the setting, figure out how easy it is to learn magic, who can learn magic, in an average city what % of the population is capable of magic? flip through the wizard cantrips and 1st level spells think what would happen to a normal city if there were people who could do these things. particularly pay attention to cantrips since a caster could do those as often as they like, and pay attention to spells that can fundamentally change the structure of society, revivify, speak with dead, zone of truth, probably some more spells in this category.
In custom structured campaigns you have to pay attention to your villains much more so than in other styles of game. leading your players by the hand through the "lets get the bad guy" theme park is pretty lame, its hard work but getting your players to truly desire the downfall of the villain will make them active participant in the world as the take the initiative to hunt down and kill the BBG
There are a ton of threads on here that cover your question, the various ways that we, as DMs, craft our worlds, stories, pacing, monsters, and more. Take some time to dig around, look for all of the "New DM" threads and start to compile your helpful information.
With that said, the first direction many people will point you is toward watching various DM Help videos, reading D&D Blogs, listening to Podcasts, and watching D&D play videos from a plethora of people out there. Some of the most common names dropped:
Matthew Coleville, Matt Mercer/Critical Role, Angry GM, Nerdarchy, DawnForgedCast, Acquisitions Inc., and many more.
My personal answer to your question is to start of with the basic necessities of your story. Get the starting location drawn up, populated, and all the various plot hooks set in place. Set up the first couple encounters/dungeons that the players will have access to. Jot down some basic information about the nearest towns, important locations, and points of interest. Write out the basic information about your main plot, don't plan it out to great length, just the important bits. Make a couple dieties, the pantheon may not be huge to your setting but inevitably someone will ask. Just write down a rough idea of the important information that you'll need, you can expand on it all as it is needed and save yourself time to enjoy the players' interactions with the world.
When it comes to locations, only draw what your players will see, the rest is all common knowledge. I have a total of 29 different cities on one continent in the homebrew I've been running, there's 2 more continents that the players are only vaguely aware of. I have a map for 4 of those cities because the players have visited them, the rest are just names with a few brief sentences to describe them if the players ask about them. Once I know where my group is heading I can then take the time to craft an idea of what the city is like based on the information that I have written down about that city. By doing it this way I can save a lot of extra work by only doing what's necessary for the next couple sessions and I can customize some of this new location to the things that the players have done prior to showing up. Here's an example:
The players are going to be heading West from Iron Haven, the Dwarven Keep in the Godshelf. They know that there is a city in that direction, but they haven't done any research, they're only going off a map that one of the player's parents drew. I already know that there is a Halfling settlement to the south of where they're headed called Briar Glen. I also know that there is a giant canyon west of Briar Glen called The Titan's Cleft. The players will pass both on their way to this unnamed city, they'll know about The Titan's Cleft due to it having a historical and lore based story behind it, but Briar Glen will be unknown to them since they've never heard of it nor asked about it. The town they're heading toward is Oberlean, again they've done no research on it so I'll have to make some "common knowledge" facts about the town for them to find, and then flesh out the details that I need as DM.
Town of Oberlean
Desert town, used to be a flourishing trade between Whitebridge and Linvall.
One of few cities Dragonborn are seen to visit frequently.
Oldest outpost to survive Orc/Half-Orc raids and never fall.
Only reason it survives in the desert like atmosphere is the large natural spring fountain in the middle of town
The Titan's Cleft is visible from the souther ramparts.
From there, when the players show up, I can easily sketch out a map for them to work with. I know enough information to make the town feel right based on the rumors/common knowledge that I jotted down in the bullet points. If the players had surprised me and said they wanted to go there, giving me no time to draw a full map, I can even make a sketch based on that information and give them a final version in the next session. There's also a note about a point of interest, this way I can give the players something about the world beyond just a city and road.
I can also use many of the things going on in my story to make a few NPCs in town react to the players, giving the world a connected feel. The players belong to a guild that has been gaining renown, one player is a H-Orc, one player is looking for her father who's a cartographer. Each of those could be used to make the NPCs react to the players in various ways.
When it comes to your plots and story arcs there is a fine line between well planned and over planned. This part is tricky since it depends on the table you're with and the style of DM you are. There are two camps, generally, when it comes to planning things out and neither of them is better than the other. Camp 1 says that planning should be kept to the barest that you can afford, sometimes to the point of just describing an event and then taking your hands off the wheel completely. This leaves the "how to complete" the story and the resolution of the story completely in the hands of the players. Camp 2 says that you should plan out important details, such as the inciting incident, how the antagonist(s) may react when their plan is interrupted, or goes uninterrupted, and a win/fail state. I'm more of the camp 2 type, but I have successfully run stories using the camp 1 method on a number of occasions. The biggest thing to remember is to make sure you don't deny the players their ability to affect the way the story unfolds, their actions should have more agency than your plans.
My plan:
Tik and Tak, Gnome twins. They were exiled from their home for being too reckless with their inventions and causing much damage to public and private property, though no deaths to their credit.
The players had heard rumor of bandits stealing from merchant wagons coming into town, they went to investigate. Upon reaching the location where the incidents occurred the players would be able to find evidence. Tak would try to influence one of the players to persuade the party to leave. If a fight broke out Tik would use his inventions and Tak would use her illusions. When the time was right, they'd run away or they'd be captured/killed.
How it played out:
They made it to the location, they found the evidence, and they continued to explore the area trying to figure out what to do. One of the players ended up talking to Tak and decided to learn why the two of them were committing these crimes. After a lengthy conversation the two made a deal: Give us the head of one of your thralls and I'll let you leave, we get our reward, you get to go home. The catch was that if the twins did anything else underhanded the player would hunt them down and bring them to justice...her way. It worked, the rest of the party was unaware of the trade, and the twins have become a running theme since then.
In the end, write what the players will see, give yourself some basic information about the rest of the world to help you easily adapt to their decisions, and get comfortable improvising just about everything.
PS: if you're anything like me make a list of about 50 names...players love to ask for names at the most inopportune times!
That is incredibly in depth, thank you! Yeah, I mostly posted this because I'm at work and don't have a lot of time to read. I'll take a little looky-loo once I'm off. I appreciate the level of detail you put into this. Like I said, this one I'm currently running is more of a tester, and my players know that, so I can see how much work I need to do for the more structured campaign later. What I've learned over these past 3-4 months is exactly what you said. Planning is key, but HOW to plan is the more accurate statement. Things I expected to take an hour have taken 3 while things I had expected to take the whole session took only an hour or so.
What I know I need to do is make the bulletpoints for the "behind the scenes" sort of plans that the villain(s) have going on unknown to the players. Likewise, I need to have a list of side stuff prepared so when we go off course, I have stuff to do.
My MAIN bad guy is like 4 tiers up for them to investigate. He is a smallish half-elf that uses his charismatic nature to gain control over other people. His goal is to wipe out all magic from the world after his village was burned by mercenary mages. He's seen how people with magic seem to always be unfairly high-ranking or unstoppably powerful. He wants to use his talents, alomg with powerful people he has met to construct a device that will force an anti-magic field to encompass the planet, effectively stopping all magic from being possible. He hates magic and all those who use it so he has been forcing mages he finds to openly attack cities, organizing whole armies to lay waste to any population he can, coupled with smear campaigns in highly political areas, in order to turn public opinion against mages. He tries to limit or completely outlaw all magic in the capital city of his home country. It is up to the party to discover the plot and stop him... before it is too late.
Some great advice here already. My $0.02 ( some same, some different ).
Figure out the scope of your proposed conflict: What is it likely to encompass? If you have a small "rescue the village Blacksmith's daughter from the Goblin tribe" style adventure, you need only the village, the Goblin lair/dungeon, and some interesting territory in between. If you're writing a high-seas pirate adventure, you need much more, and more sprawling a setting worked out. Now you know the scale and scope of the material you'll need.
Write narrow, write deep: Within the areas you've figured out you'll need, detail the hell out of it, but only write the material that the players will directly interface with + a little ways out at lesser detail. If they're hanging out in a small city and adventuring out of it for the next couple of levels, make your setting city very detailed. Write history, political and economic factions, current conflicts between those factions, notable NPCs in those factions ( and in general ), write up the local temples & the religions of those temples. If you know this setting inside out, it becomes easy for you to improvise the responses of the world around the Party when they do things you didn't expect ( and they will ).Write about the surrounding countryside, and write about the surrounding towns and cities - but for these you need a lot less detail. Maybe have some general ideas about other religions that interact with the faiths represented in your city, but again, you don't need as much detail. Same for larger scale political factions. Have some general ideas about the province the city is in, and the nation they are part of. Create some semi-reliable rumors and stories about far off places. Basically, the farther away from the Party, the less detail you need, but right up close to the Party, have as much detail as you can muster.
Don't write stories at all; write the initial conflict & situation. Figure out the rest as you go along: Conflicts & adventures start when someone wants something, tries to achieve it, and is opposed. Players want the lost treasure of Ix, while the guardian monsters want to stop them; Local thieves guilds wants to extract revenge against the party Rogue and have kidnapped her, the Party wants to stop them. Set up the basic conflict for your adventure. Figure out what has to occur for the conflict to be resolved, and the adventure over: The Party gets the treasure, retreats, or dies in a TPK; The Party gets their friend back, the Theives Guild executes her, the party gets wiped out trying to retrieve her. From there figure out who all the power players are in the situation. Figure out their abilities, knowledge, and personality. This is where having a super detailed setting ( for the local region only, remember ) really helps; you know who will be involved, and how they'll likely react.Figure out what all the power-players will try and do next. Figure out where the various power-player actions come into conflict. Resolve the conflicts. Rinse-and-repeat for the next "move" in the adventure, until one of the conditions which will end the conflict happens. This approach allows you to roll with the punches when the Players do things you never expected them to do ( and they will ).
Make the conflict personal for your Players: Conflicts happen all the time without the Players. Players should have a reason to get involved other than it is "the adventure of the day". Have the conflict involve, or impact, things that the Players care about: people, places, organizations. Alternatively, have the conflict impact someone who is willing to hire the Party. But ultimately, the Players need to have some stake in the conflict that motivates them.
Improvise & Plagiarize ( from your Players ): Listen to your Players. They have great ideas. Often better than yours :D Use them as inspiration to add nuance and detail to your world you'd never considered. You don't have to copy their exact ideas, but use them for inspiration. Learn to make up S#$@ on the spot, bur once you do, write it down, because that's now canon. The Players will notice if you forget details you made up, and then make up something contradictory later.
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What I know I need to do is make the bulletpoints for the "behind the scenes" sort of plans that the villain(s) have going on unknown to the players. Likewise, I need to have a list of side stuff prepared so when we go off course, I have stuff to do.
You really don't have to plan for the stuff players do that take them a different direction than you had set up, it's a lot more fun and memorable to just roll with it. That is not to say it's not a good idea to understand your world and the way things naturally flow. As I pointed out in the earlier post, having an idea of how things could play out is a good thing, it helps continuity and makes reacting to your players easier, but you have to let their actions have priority over what you've got planned.
That's not my mess...
I had my players chasing a dog they'd befriended through Whitebridge, the dog seemed intent on something so the players decided to follow. They found themselves in front of an abandoned home and broke in, the dog was intent on getting in there for some reason. They found the house covered in dust, some infernal writing on a wall, and traps on the stairs that let to the upstairs workshop. In the workshop they found strange mechanical devices, tiny gears, schematics for tiny houses with numbered faces, and miniature carvings of leaves, people and arrows. The dog was intent on the pantry on the first floor, where they found a cellar door and descended. The cellar was filled with dusty jars full of food stuffs long rotten.
As they looked the cellar over the dog went to a spot on a wall and started digging. One of the players helped and they found a circular object, the dog was excited about this, so they gave it to him as a collar. One of the players figured out that the entire cellar was made up of reclaimed headstones and grave markers. As the collar was placed on the dog's neck the room began to glow an eerie blue color. This large skeletal hand issued forth and it's fingers grew like fruit on a tree, from this smaller skeletons, with wolf heads, burst forth. The group ran like mad to get away. Soon after three giant wolf headed skeletons were rampaging the city and the party, as well as the town guard, had to deal with them.
---
I had intended on them just fighting the skeletons in the cellar, but the group ran away. I had to figure out what their actions would do, and what the consequence was for abandoning the place. I also set up the house to be a tiny piece of a puzzle later on in the game, something that will come to light later, but if they remember they'll go "OH! That place was important". They went off course, but rather than having contingencies I went along with it and made up something that made sense for the situation. (The town still has no clue it was their fault, but that's just lucky on their part.)
Why run when you can just medicate...
I had the party chasing down a strange creature/person in the sewers beneath Narthen, they had no clue what it was but they knew it had something to do with the odd situation of the town. I had no intent on letting them win the fight, it was a Wererat and they were very ill equipped to defeat it, I wanted the critter to fight and then escape.
As the fight drew on the wererat changed into his rat form and made to escape, just as I had planned. Then, as players are wont to do, one of my players did something completely unexpected; he grabbed the rat and tried to bite it's head off. I had to roll grapple checks, the creature had taken almost no damage, and the fight wasn't going to keep going in the players' favor if they kept attacking this creature. Then, once again, another player came up with a plan that was straight out of left field. She decided to use her sleeping herbs to try to put the creature to sleep, but there was no way to feed it to the creature. So instead she used the only available orifice and popped the herbs in there.
How do you work with that kind of ingenuity and craziness? I rolled with it, I used the DC of the herbs, then made some horrible saving throws. The creature succumbed to the sleeping agent, and the players got a coup-de-grace.
How not to planar travel...
The group is in the middle of a tumultuous world, many things are happening and they're only aware of a fraction of these events. One of the events that they are working on is that there are planar rifts appearing for unknown reasons. One of my players has an artifact that can force these rifts closed, but it's dangerous and doesn't always work on the first try.
One of the rifts, a greater rift, wasn't responding to the instrument. The twin instrument, held by an NPC who is in an alternate realm/reality, is tied to the players, and the party just learned that it could scry on the other instrument. They saw that the NPC was in a fight and reacted instinctively. They had previous knowledge that these rifts were dangerous, as they had seen a carriage of Elvenkind severed, along with some of the passengers by a rift appearing randomly. One of the players thought to jump through this greater rift to help the NPC in their fight, another player sought to stop her from going in. The player was stopped from diving into the portal, but not before having her arm severed and covered in a strange crystal.
I thought that was enough to put some fear into the group, but no. Three of my players then decide to go through the portal. All intent on doing something heroic or useful to the situation. So, here I am thinking to myself they're all going to die, they're not equipped for planar travel, and some of the planes can outright kill them simply for entering the realm. I had to act quickly so I had them each roll a % to see if they managed to make it across safely. 1 player was fine, one player wound up having an arm and a leg trapped in stone, and the last roll so poorly that they were buried up to their neck in stone, dead.
I was fortunate enough that I could save the dead player, there was another story thread hanging around that he was integral to and I could start it with his death. The other two managed to figure out a way to salvage their situation and make it back to the Prime material.
As you can see, planning for your players' actions is almost impossible. Don't try to anticipate them, instead have the world react to their actions. That type of agency and influence will make your players a lot more invested in the world and their characters.
Edit: Check your PMs I have something I want to share but on the off chance one of my players reads this I don't want them to know.
Things may have been mentioned above. I have created a world from scratch as well. I have gone so far as the continents, the pantheon, generally what might be found in certain regions, economy, general things like that. And nothing more. I now have a good infrastructure for the players group to grow into. Now I have a local level set up. Starting encounters, local town, a few potential battle sites set up for combat, NPCs for each location and a few that can be thrown in for 'Off The Rails". As the players move along and outward from their starting point I can then fill in the next areas and regions.
As to goals, I only have enough for levels 1 to 3 or 4 at this point. No need to go much higher at this point. As the characters grow in game, there will be more flushed out by them that I can use and continue to expand. Though I am preparing a decent amount, the story and the world will be a living and breathing tool for our use.
In short (too late), there is no need to have a town laid out half a continent away that the PCs may never get to. Imagine your world as the empty canvas. When you begin to describe the setting in Session 0, that will be the first brush stroke. And you will always have somewhere to place the second brush stroke because the canvas has already been lain beneath.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Thank you. ChrisW
Ones are righteous. And one day, we just might believe it.
I want to say thank you to all the replies here. I really appreciate it. I think I will push off my campaign just a bit so I can really hammer down a few details (and make a few side hooks) before dropping in and feeling unprepared.
I want to say thank you to all the replies here. I really appreciate it. I think I will push off my campaign just a bit so I can really hammer down a few details (and make a few side hooks) before dropping in and feeling unprepared.
:D
That is your decision to make, but I'd counsel you to not put it off.
If you write only that part of the world which you need, you don't need much to start. I know I advise a lot of detail, but that's over a small area: lots of depth, not much breadth. For the first handful of sessions you can literally get away with a single village, containing a single temple with a mid-level cleric ( only one religion needed at that point ), a mid-level wizard, a blacksmith, a tavern, and as many colorful NPCs as you have time to create. If you have time, having at least two factions - say two local and rival clans whose rivalry touches on the adventure which hooks in the Party - would be ideal, but not really essential.
All adventures for the first few levels can be based out of this village. D&D even classes levels 1-4 as the "Local Heroes Tier" of play. Not hard to do, if the first local adventure leads to the second, etc.
Quick Example
The party is hired by the village of Hillford ( or better, the 1st level party is all from Hillford ) to rescue the Blacksmith's daughter, who is captured in a Goblin raid ( they need a sacrifice to consecrate their new lair to their God). The party retrieves her, only to discover that the Goblins have been pushed out of their mountain territory by some nebulous threat. That threat turns out to be some re-awakening evil extra-planar creature - Rurgriral - who has long had a cluster of secret worshipers amongst the Steelthorne clan in Hillford ( in fact their multi-generational feud over the Forestvale farming region with the Graysun family was because the Graysuns owned the farms there, but there was a secret shrine to Rurgriral buried in that region which the Steelthornes wanted to reclaim).
That can easily spin off 3-4 full adventures: Rescue the Blacksmith's daughter ( probably a Graysun - which would make that village faction view the party favorably and alienate the Steelthornes ) which would be a straight up dungeon slog; set up some sort of social based mystery adventure involving something with the local Steelthorne cult of Rurgriral and the murder of the local Reeve, where the party uncovers the cult; a bit of an adventure/wilderness adventure trek into the mountain passes to locate the lair/temple of Rurgriral where the Party runs into the Goblins again, and actually end up allying with them to help defeat some of the monstrosities let loose from the re-awakening of the temple, and track down the location of the temple; and a larger, more complex dungeon slog to defeat the cult of Rurgriraland stop its return to the material plane, and thus save the farming community of Hillford.
Sort of Indiana Jones meets The Shadow over Innsmouth, but it would work for 4-6 gaming sessions easily.
It encompasses a single farming community on the scale of a few dozen farms, two clans, a single local temple/religion, maybe an Inn, maybe a local wizard to aid the party ( best make her no more than 5th level, and old and infirm so she's not going with the party, or just solving the adventure for them ), probably a handful of notable NPCs ( Blacksmith, local cleric, local wizard, Innkeeper, head of the Steelthorne clan, head of the Graysun clan, the local cult leader, and maybe 3-6 notable local clan members that interact with to add flavor ), a local cult shrine, some mountain pass wilderness terrain and encounters, a Goblin chieftain, one low-level demon, and two dungeons.
To start, you really only need: the Blacksmith, the Inn, some local terrain between Hillford and the Goblin lair ( I'd suggest the Darkwood - the local dank forest the locals avoid, which the party end up camping in ... ), some locals in the Inn for color ( you could foreshadow aspects of the Steelthrone / Graysun feud by the use of some colorful tavern patrons and their interactions/scuffle that could sew some threads for the next adventures ), and the Goblin lair itself ( which needs only be large enough for a single session of adventure play ).
You could come up with everything you need for the first adventure with a few hours work, at most. You could sketch out the rest of the adventure over a few evenings ( at most ), and you can build that in between gaming sessions.
So - a single evening writing out details and NPCs, and you're good to go!
Now - I don't expect you to use that, but it's an example of how narrow you need to develop to create a workable multi-session adventure. One evening of sketching, and you're good to start.
All the time you're running them through the sessions, you're building the next, and adding details to the larger world around them. You can always salt the adventure with hints and references to the larger world around them ( in adventure #2, one of the Duke's couriers stops in the Inn overnight, running the local mail from Burnsley in the north to Malrton in the south ), but you don't need to reference more than names.
"Perfect is the enemy of good", and "We fail at 100% of the tasks we do not start" ;)
So - I'd advise to not put it off; sketch out what you need to start in an evening, start your party playing, and keeping writing just one step ahead of them for the next couple of years :)
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Hello, story-tellers, world-weavers, and lore-creators
I am a newer DM (started in August) as well as a fairly new player (started in April) and as I move forward with a small, loose kind of game, I am discovering a much larger story I want to tell. My players have already agreed to doing a mich more structured game with new characters. However, before I drop this on them, I wanted to ask the ether of wonderful veteran DMs out there, "Have you ever created a completely custom story from scratch without using any source material?" I play in a custom Skyrim campaign, and I am DMing a campaign in a world I've completely created from scratch (over the course of MANY years before I even played DnD), and I was curious what sort of advice would you guys have for me. I plan to start after New Years with the new campaign and I have a fair amount of main story, important NPCs, and primary villains prepared. With a bit more fleshing out, I'll have those aspects totally done. So, to my point.
What EXTRA stuff should I have prepared? How much world building is enough vs how much is too much?
Also, any additional advice is greatly appreciated.
Don't build what you don't have to
Allow the players to have a stake in world building
Keep in mind what level the adventure is happening at, as the PCs increase in power reflect that in the world
think through the effect of magic on the setting, figure out how easy it is to learn magic, who can learn magic, in an average city what % of the population is capable of magic? flip through the wizard cantrips and 1st level spells think what would happen to a normal city if there were people who could do these things. particularly pay attention to cantrips since a caster could do those as often as they like, and pay attention to spells that can fundamentally change the structure of society, revivify, speak with dead, zone of truth, probably some more spells in this category.
In custom structured campaigns you have to pay attention to your villains much more so than in other styles of game. leading your players by the hand through the "lets get the bad guy" theme park is pretty lame, its hard work but getting your players to truly desire the downfall of the villain will make them active participant in the world as the take the initiative to hunt down and kill the BBG
There are a ton of threads on here that cover your question, the various ways that we, as DMs, craft our worlds, stories, pacing, monsters, and more. Take some time to dig around, look for all of the "New DM" threads and start to compile your helpful information.
With that said, the first direction many people will point you is toward watching various DM Help videos, reading D&D Blogs, listening to Podcasts, and watching D&D play videos from a plethora of people out there. Some of the most common names dropped:
Matthew Coleville, Matt Mercer/Critical Role, Angry GM, Nerdarchy, DawnForgedCast, Acquisitions Inc., and many more.
My personal answer to your question is to start of with the basic necessities of your story. Get the starting location drawn up, populated, and all the various plot hooks set in place. Set up the first couple encounters/dungeons that the players will have access to. Jot down some basic information about the nearest towns, important locations, and points of interest. Write out the basic information about your main plot, don't plan it out to great length, just the important bits. Make a couple dieties, the pantheon may not be huge to your setting but inevitably someone will ask. Just write down a rough idea of the important information that you'll need, you can expand on it all as it is needed and save yourself time to enjoy the players' interactions with the world.
When it comes to locations, only draw what your players will see, the rest is all common knowledge. I have a total of 29 different cities on one continent in the homebrew I've been running, there's 2 more continents that the players are only vaguely aware of. I have a map for 4 of those cities because the players have visited them, the rest are just names with a few brief sentences to describe them if the players ask about them. Once I know where my group is heading I can then take the time to craft an idea of what the city is like based on the information that I have written down about that city. By doing it this way I can save a lot of extra work by only doing what's necessary for the next couple sessions and I can customize some of this new location to the things that the players have done prior to showing up. Here's an example:
The players are going to be heading West from Iron Haven, the Dwarven Keep in the Godshelf. They know that there is a city in that direction, but they haven't done any research, they're only going off a map that one of the player's parents drew. I already know that there is a Halfling settlement to the south of where they're headed called Briar Glen. I also know that there is a giant canyon west of Briar Glen called The Titan's Cleft. The players will pass both on their way to this unnamed city, they'll know about The Titan's Cleft due to it having a historical and lore based story behind it, but Briar Glen will be unknown to them since they've never heard of it nor asked about it. The town they're heading toward is Oberlean, again they've done no research on it so I'll have to make some "common knowledge" facts about the town for them to find, and then flesh out the details that I need as DM.
Town of Oberlean
From there, when the players show up, I can easily sketch out a map for them to work with. I know enough information to make the town feel right based on the rumors/common knowledge that I jotted down in the bullet points. If the players had surprised me and said they wanted to go there, giving me no time to draw a full map, I can even make a sketch based on that information and give them a final version in the next session. There's also a note about a point of interest, this way I can give the players something about the world beyond just a city and road.
I can also use many of the things going on in my story to make a few NPCs in town react to the players, giving the world a connected feel. The players belong to a guild that has been gaining renown, one player is a H-Orc, one player is looking for her father who's a cartographer. Each of those could be used to make the NPCs react to the players in various ways.
When it comes to your plots and story arcs there is a fine line between well planned and over planned. This part is tricky since it depends on the table you're with and the style of DM you are. There are two camps, generally, when it comes to planning things out and neither of them is better than the other. Camp 1 says that planning should be kept to the barest that you can afford, sometimes to the point of just describing an event and then taking your hands off the wheel completely. This leaves the "how to complete" the story and the resolution of the story completely in the hands of the players. Camp 2 says that you should plan out important details, such as the inciting incident, how the antagonist(s) may react when their plan is interrupted, or goes uninterrupted, and a win/fail state. I'm more of the camp 2 type, but I have successfully run stories using the camp 1 method on a number of occasions. The biggest thing to remember is to make sure you don't deny the players their ability to affect the way the story unfolds, their actions should have more agency than your plans.
My plan:
Tik and Tak, Gnome twins. They were exiled from their home for being too reckless with their inventions and causing much damage to public and private property, though no deaths to their credit.
The players had heard rumor of bandits stealing from merchant wagons coming into town, they went to investigate. Upon reaching the location where the incidents occurred the players would be able to find evidence. Tak would try to influence one of the players to persuade the party to leave. If a fight broke out Tik would use his inventions and Tak would use her illusions. When the time was right, they'd run away or they'd be captured/killed.
How it played out:
They made it to the location, they found the evidence, and they continued to explore the area trying to figure out what to do. One of the players ended up talking to Tak and decided to learn why the two of them were committing these crimes. After a lengthy conversation the two made a deal: Give us the head of one of your thralls and I'll let you leave, we get our reward, you get to go home. The catch was that if the twins did anything else underhanded the player would hunt them down and bring them to justice...her way. It worked, the rest of the party was unaware of the trade, and the twins have become a running theme since then.
In the end, write what the players will see, give yourself some basic information about the rest of the world to help you easily adapt to their decisions, and get comfortable improvising just about everything.
PS: if you're anything like me make a list of about 50 names...players love to ask for names at the most inopportune times!
That is incredibly in depth, thank you! Yeah, I mostly posted this because I'm at work and don't have a lot of time to read. I'll take a little looky-loo once I'm off. I appreciate the level of detail you put into this. Like I said, this one I'm currently running is more of a tester, and my players know that, so I can see how much work I need to do for the more structured campaign later. What I've learned over these past 3-4 months is exactly what you said. Planning is key, but HOW to plan is the more accurate statement. Things I expected to take an hour have taken 3 while things I had expected to take the whole session took only an hour or so.
What I know I need to do is make the bulletpoints for the "behind the scenes" sort of plans that the villain(s) have going on unknown to the players. Likewise, I need to have a list of side stuff prepared so when we go off course, I have stuff to do.
My MAIN bad guy is like 4 tiers up for them to investigate. He is a smallish half-elf that uses his charismatic nature to gain control over other people. His goal is to wipe out all magic from the world after his village was burned by mercenary mages. He's seen how people with magic seem to always be unfairly high-ranking or unstoppably powerful. He wants to use his talents, alomg with powerful people he has met to construct a device that will force an anti-magic field to encompass the planet, effectively stopping all magic from being possible. He hates magic and all those who use it so he has been forcing mages he finds to openly attack cities, organizing whole armies to lay waste to any population he can, coupled with smear campaigns in highly political areas, in order to turn public opinion against mages. He tries to limit or completely outlaw all magic in the capital city of his home country. It is up to the party to discover the plot and stop him... before it is too late.
Some great advice here already. My $0.02 ( some same, some different ).
Best of Luck :)
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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You really don't have to plan for the stuff players do that take them a different direction than you had set up, it's a lot more fun and memorable to just roll with it. That is not to say it's not a good idea to understand your world and the way things naturally flow. As I pointed out in the earlier post, having an idea of how things could play out is a good thing, it helps continuity and makes reacting to your players easier, but you have to let their actions have priority over what you've got planned.
That's not my mess...
I had my players chasing a dog they'd befriended through Whitebridge, the dog seemed intent on something so the players decided to follow. They found themselves in front of an abandoned home and broke in, the dog was intent on getting in there for some reason. They found the house covered in dust, some infernal writing on a wall, and traps on the stairs that let to the upstairs workshop. In the workshop they found strange mechanical devices, tiny gears, schematics for tiny houses with numbered faces, and miniature carvings of leaves, people and arrows. The dog was intent on the pantry on the first floor, where they found a cellar door and descended. The cellar was filled with dusty jars full of food stuffs long rotten.
As they looked the cellar over the dog went to a spot on a wall and started digging. One of the players helped and they found a circular object, the dog was excited about this, so they gave it to him as a collar. One of the players figured out that the entire cellar was made up of reclaimed headstones and grave markers. As the collar was placed on the dog's neck the room began to glow an eerie blue color. This large skeletal hand issued forth and it's fingers grew like fruit on a tree, from this smaller skeletons, with wolf heads, burst forth. The group ran like mad to get away. Soon after three giant wolf headed skeletons were rampaging the city and the party, as well as the town guard, had to deal with them.
---
I had intended on them just fighting the skeletons in the cellar, but the group ran away. I had to figure out what their actions would do, and what the consequence was for abandoning the place. I also set up the house to be a tiny piece of a puzzle later on in the game, something that will come to light later, but if they remember they'll go "OH! That place was important". They went off course, but rather than having contingencies I went along with it and made up something that made sense for the situation. (The town still has no clue it was their fault, but that's just lucky on their part.)
Why run when you can just medicate...
I had the party chasing down a strange creature/person in the sewers beneath Narthen, they had no clue what it was but they knew it had something to do with the odd situation of the town. I had no intent on letting them win the fight, it was a Wererat and they were very ill equipped to defeat it, I wanted the critter to fight and then escape.
As the fight drew on the wererat changed into his rat form and made to escape, just as I had planned. Then, as players are wont to do, one of my players did something completely unexpected; he grabbed the rat and tried to bite it's head off. I had to roll grapple checks, the creature had taken almost no damage, and the fight wasn't going to keep going in the players' favor if they kept attacking this creature. Then, once again, another player came up with a plan that was straight out of left field. She decided to use her sleeping herbs to try to put the creature to sleep, but there was no way to feed it to the creature. So instead she used the only available orifice and popped the herbs in there.
How do you work with that kind of ingenuity and craziness? I rolled with it, I used the DC of the herbs, then made some horrible saving throws. The creature succumbed to the sleeping agent, and the players got a coup-de-grace.
How not to planar travel...
The group is in the middle of a tumultuous world, many things are happening and they're only aware of a fraction of these events. One of the events that they are working on is that there are planar rifts appearing for unknown reasons. One of my players has an artifact that can force these rifts closed, but it's dangerous and doesn't always work on the first try.
One of the rifts, a greater rift, wasn't responding to the instrument. The twin instrument, held by an NPC who is in an alternate realm/reality, is tied to the players, and the party just learned that it could scry on the other instrument. They saw that the NPC was in a fight and reacted instinctively. They had previous knowledge that these rifts were dangerous, as they had seen a carriage of Elvenkind severed, along with some of the passengers by a rift appearing randomly. One of the players thought to jump through this greater rift to help the NPC in their fight, another player sought to stop her from going in. The player was stopped from diving into the portal, but not before having her arm severed and covered in a strange crystal.
I thought that was enough to put some fear into the group, but no. Three of my players then decide to go through the portal. All intent on doing something heroic or useful to the situation. So, here I am thinking to myself they're all going to die, they're not equipped for planar travel, and some of the planes can outright kill them simply for entering the realm. I had to act quickly so I had them each roll a % to see if they managed to make it across safely. 1 player was fine, one player wound up having an arm and a leg trapped in stone, and the last roll so poorly that they were buried up to their neck in stone, dead.
I was fortunate enough that I could save the dead player, there was another story thread hanging around that he was integral to and I could start it with his death. The other two managed to figure out a way to salvage their situation and make it back to the Prime material.
As you can see, planning for your players' actions is almost impossible. Don't try to anticipate them, instead have the world react to their actions. That type of agency and influence will make your players a lot more invested in the world and their characters.
Edit: Check your PMs I have something I want to share but on the off chance one of my players reads this I don't want them to know.
Things may have been mentioned above. I have created a world from scratch as well. I have gone so far as the continents, the pantheon, generally what might be found in certain regions, economy, general things like that. And nothing more. I now have a good infrastructure for the players group to grow into. Now I have a local level set up. Starting encounters, local town, a few potential battle sites set up for combat, NPCs for each location and a few that can be thrown in for 'Off The Rails". As the players move along and outward from their starting point I can then fill in the next areas and regions.
As to goals, I only have enough for levels 1 to 3 or 4 at this point. No need to go much higher at this point. As the characters grow in game, there will be more flushed out by them that I can use and continue to expand. Though I am preparing a decent amount, the story and the world will be a living and breathing tool for our use.
In short (too late), there is no need to have a town laid out half a continent away that the PCs may never get to. Imagine your world as the empty canvas. When you begin to describe the setting in Session 0, that will be the first brush stroke. And you will always have somewhere to place the second brush stroke because the canvas has already been lain beneath.
Thank you.
ChrisW
Ones are righteous. And one day, we just might believe it.
I want to say thank you to all the replies here. I really appreciate it. I think I will push off my campaign just a bit so I can really hammer down a few details (and make a few side hooks) before dropping in and feeling unprepared.
:D
In need of more dms https://discord.gg/uAyHSGD
That is your decision to make, but I'd counsel you to not put it off.
If you write only that part of the world which you need, you don't need much to start. I know I advise a lot of detail, but that's over a small area: lots of depth, not much breadth. For the first handful of sessions you can literally get away with a single village, containing a single temple with a mid-level cleric ( only one religion needed at that point ), a mid-level wizard, a blacksmith, a tavern, and as many colorful NPCs as you have time to create. If you have time, having at least two factions - say two local and rival clans whose rivalry touches on the adventure which hooks in the Party - would be ideal, but not really essential.
All adventures for the first few levels can be based out of this village. D&D even classes levels 1-4 as the "Local Heroes Tier" of play. Not hard to do, if the first local adventure leads to the second, etc.
Quick Example
The party is hired by the village of Hillford ( or better, the 1st level party is all from Hillford ) to rescue the Blacksmith's daughter, who is captured in a Goblin raid ( they need a sacrifice to consecrate their new lair to their God). The party retrieves her, only to discover that the Goblins have been pushed out of their mountain territory by some nebulous threat. That threat turns out to be some re-awakening evil extra-planar creature - Rurgriral - who has long had a cluster of secret worshipers amongst the Steelthorne clan in Hillford ( in fact their multi-generational feud over the Forestvale farming region with the Graysun family was because the Graysuns owned the farms there, but there was a secret shrine to Rurgriral buried in that region which the Steelthornes wanted to reclaim).
That can easily spin off 3-4 full adventures: Rescue the Blacksmith's daughter ( probably a Graysun - which would make that village faction view the party favorably and alienate the Steelthornes ) which would be a straight up dungeon slog; set up some sort of social based mystery adventure involving something with the local Steelthorne cult of Rurgriral and the murder of the local Reeve, where the party uncovers the cult; a bit of an adventure/wilderness adventure trek into the mountain passes to locate the lair/temple of Rurgriral where the Party runs into the Goblins again, and actually end up allying with them to help defeat some of the monstrosities let loose from the re-awakening of the temple, and track down the location of the temple; and a larger, more complex dungeon slog to defeat the cult of Rurgriral and stop its return to the material plane, and thus save the farming community of Hillford.
Sort of Indiana Jones meets The Shadow over Innsmouth, but it would work for 4-6 gaming sessions easily.
It encompasses a single farming community on the scale of a few dozen farms, two clans, a single local temple/religion, maybe an Inn, maybe a local wizard to aid the party ( best make her no more than 5th level, and old and infirm so she's not going with the party, or just solving the adventure for them ), probably a handful of notable NPCs ( Blacksmith, local cleric, local wizard, Innkeeper, head of the Steelthorne clan, head of the Graysun clan, the local cult leader, and maybe 3-6 notable local clan members that interact with to add flavor ), a local cult shrine, some mountain pass wilderness terrain and encounters, a Goblin chieftain, one low-level demon, and two dungeons.
To start, you really only need: the Blacksmith, the Inn, some local terrain between Hillford and the Goblin lair ( I'd suggest the Darkwood - the local dank forest the locals avoid, which the party end up camping in ... ), some locals in the Inn for color ( you could foreshadow aspects of the Steelthrone / Graysun feud by the use of some colorful tavern patrons and their interactions/scuffle that could sew some threads for the next adventures ), and the Goblin lair itself ( which needs only be large enough for a single session of adventure play ).
You could come up with everything you need for the first adventure with a few hours work, at most. You could sketch out the rest of the adventure over a few evenings ( at most ), and you can build that in between gaming sessions.
So - a single evening writing out details and NPCs, and you're good to go!
Now - I don't expect you to use that, but it's an example of how narrow you need to develop to create a workable multi-session adventure. One evening of sketching, and you're good to start.
All the time you're running them through the sessions, you're building the next, and adding details to the larger world around them. You can always salt the adventure with hints and references to the larger world around them ( in adventure #2, one of the Duke's couriers stops in the Inn overnight, running the local mail from Burnsley in the north to Malrton in the south ), but you don't need to reference more than names.
"Perfect is the enemy of good", and "We fail at 100% of the tasks we do not start" ;)
So - I'd advise to not put it off; sketch out what you need to start in an evening, start your party playing, and keeping writing just one step ahead of them for the next couple of years :)
Good luck!
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.