I'm a fairly new DM (only done a few sessions) with new players and was trying to make my first campaign and am not sure exactly what to do.
The kind of setting I'm going for is sort of dark fantasy, along the lines of the witcher or warhammer but with a bit more adventuring.
I'm quite confused on what I'd need to do planning wise and how to start it off aswell as how to make a good villain. Is there certain things that I should do or do any of you have some tips?
Any advice / help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance 👍
First what you'll probably want to write and flesh out is the location the campaign takes place in. One thing to make this process easier is to leave some cities/towns open for players to create themsleves as hometowns of their characters. You'll then be able to take their backstories and have an easier time fitting it into the campaign.
Next you'll want to set up an adventure of some kind. Don't need to flesh these out as the players will decide how the story will unfold, but you do need some framework of what's going on in the adventure. Is there a legendary artifact the party are looking for? A powerful tyrant they're looking to overthrow? Come with an understanding of the goal, and a loose understanding of how to achieve that goal.
To look for inspiration of this idea done well, is the film Pirates of the Carribean: Dead man's chest. The goal is to get the heart of Davy Jones. Each character needs it for a different reason, but they all want it. There is also a creature slowly hunt Jack Sparrow during his search for the heart that is built up over time. To get the heart, they need to 1) get the key to unlock it, 2) procure a way to find the heart. A map would be one way of locating the heart but they use a different method, using the compass that points to what they want most, to find the heart, while Will Turner has his own side quest to get the key, which develops his backstory when he meets his father.
In regards to creating good villians, you'll need to decide what kind of villians are in your world. It is a good idea to have multiple types of villians, each with different motivations. When creating a villian you need to understand that the villian sees themselves as the hero of their own story and everyone else is either helping them or in their way. I'll give an example with one of my villians I created for the starting area of my campaign, a wealthy merchant named Ambrose Bassan.
1) What is motivating the villian? Ambrose loves the city he was born and rasied in and wants to do what he believes is best for the city. He would prefer to act within the ethical bounds of the law, but when he begins to exhaust those methods, he will bend around them in the persuit of his goal.
2) Why does the villian choose to achieve these goals through "evil" means? Ambrose was raised in the extreme wealth of the Bassan mansion, wealth his father procured through a devilish deal. The cost of that deal led to Ambrose being born with an extremely rare skin disease which causes him to be extremely sensitive to sunlight. Growing up in this way has caused Ambrose to be unable to mingle with the locals and has given him the perception of an anti-social shut in. Recently, seeing the incompetency of the local government, Ambrose attempted to run for mayor. However, his opponent spread a rumour that Ambrose is a vampire and that is why he is unable to come out during the day. Ambrose lost the election, and decided that to save the city, he will need to take the city by force as well as find a cure for his affliction
3) What is your villian willing to do to achieve their goal? How far and depraved will they sink? Ambrose wishes he could take the city through legal methods, but seeing that the people will never accept him as long as he burns in the sun, he needs to both find a cure, and build an army of loyal mercenaries to help take over the city. His butler, Oslo, has been experimenting with different methods of transformation magic, in the hopes of finding a cure. The exeriments have grown more dangerous and unethical over time, and has lead them down a path where they are capturing werewolves and smuggling them into the city to continue experimenting on them. Meanwhile, Ambrose has been setting up a mercenary guild under the city and has learnt about the city's underground crime network. He promises himself that once this is all done and the city is his, he will abolish the crime network, but for now he needs to utilise them to achieve his goal.
4) Will the villian offer the party to join them? Ambrose doesn't see his actions as evil, just neccessary. Seeing the party helping the city through their different adventures, when the party eventually confronts him, he will offer them to join him and make the city a better place with him in charge.
Also, keep it simple. Don't add enormous amounts of races, monster invasions, dragons flitting about etc, because all of that requires you to be able to answer "why"
Your world needs to make sense to the PCs, even if they don't know the whole story. That means all the stuff you introduce has got to be there because it is necessary for the story you are telling/creating.
At the lower levels much happens on the local level, in or around one town. Rumours about monsters or treasure can be heard in taverns and town squares and provide adventure hooks, later local merchants or town council members can become temporary patrons, before the characters even become aware that there is a story and not just a string of independent adventures. Then when the rudiments of the whole is revealed the party can either be self motivating (e.g. "This cannot stand!") or you can introduce a higher ranking NPC with an interest is resolving the larger issue, and so forth
First what you'll probably want to write and flesh out is the location the campaign takes place in. One thing to make this process easier is to leave some cities/towns open for players to create themsleves as hometowns of their characters. You'll then be able to take their backstories and have an easier time fitting it into the campaign.
Next you'll want to set up an adventure of some kind. Don't need to flesh these out as the players will decide how the story will unfold, but you do need some framework of what's going on in the adventure. Is there a legendary artifact the party are looking for? A powerful tyrant they're looking to overthrow? Come with an understanding of the goal, and a loose understanding of how to achieve that goal.
To look for inspiration of this idea done well, is the film Pirates of the Carribean: Dead man's chest. The goal is to get the heart of Davy Jones. Each character needs it for a different reason, but they all want it. There is also a creature slowly hunt Jack Sparrow during his search for the heart that is built up over time. To get the heart, they need to 1) get the key to unlock it, 2) procure a way to find the heart. A map would be one way of locating the heart but they use a different method, using the compass that points to what they want most, to find the heart, while Will Turner has his own side quest to get the key, which develops his backstory when he meets his father.
In regards to creating good villians, you'll need to decide what kind of villians are in your world. It is a good idea to have multiple types of villians, each with different motivations. When creating a villian you need to understand that the villian sees themselves as the hero of their own story and everyone else is either helping them or in their way. I'll give an example with one of my villians I created for the starting area of my campaign, a wealthy merchant named Ambrose Bassan.
1) What is motivating the villian? Ambrose loves the city he was born and rasied in and wants to do what he believes is best for the city. He would prefer to act within the ethical bounds of the law, but when he begins to exhaust those methods, he will bend around them in the persuit of his goal.
2) Why does the villian choose to achieve these goals through "evil" means? Ambrose was raised in the extreme wealth of the Bassan mansion, wealth his father procured through a devilish deal. The cost of that deal led to Ambrose being born with an extremely rare skin disease which causes him to be extremely sensitive to sunlight. Growing up in this way has caused Ambrose to be unable to mingle with the locals and has given him the perception of an anti-social shut in. Recently, seeing the incompetency of the local government, Ambrose attempted to run for mayor. However, his opponent spread a rumour that Ambrose is a vampire and that is why he is unable to come out during the day. Ambrose lost the election, and decided that to save the city, he will need to take the city by force as well as find a cure for his affliction
3) What is your villian willing to do to achieve their goal? How far and depraved will they sink? Ambrose wishes he could take the city through legal methods, but seeing that the people will never accept him as long as he burns in the sun, he needs to both find a cure, and build an army of loyal mercenaries to help take over the city. His butler, Oslo, has been experimenting with different methods of transformation magic, in the hopes of finding a cure. The exeriments have grown more dangerous and unethical over time, and has lead them down a path where they are capturing werewolves and smuggling them into the city to continue experimenting on them. Meanwhile, Ambrose has been setting up a mercenary guild under the city and has learnt about the city's underground crime network. He promises himself that once this is all done and the city is his, he will abolish the crime network, but for now he needs to utilise them to achieve his goal.
4) Will the villian offer the party to join them? Ambrose doesn't see his actions as evil, just neccessary. Seeing the party helping the city through their different adventures, when the party eventually confronts him, he will offer them to join him and make the city a better place with him in charge.
This is a great method but 1 thing you need to remember: cater to your party, the way you play the game can change drastically depending on those you’re playing with, for example if you’re playing with a bunch of 9-11 year old boys then the best campaign is most likely just a hack-n-slash. Give them a villain and a reason to kill the villain, then hand them weapons a send them out to slaughter everything in their path. While if you’re playing with a more mature party (13+) you’ll probably want more encounters outside of combat that develop the story, and more decisions to make when it comes to morality and the like (example-villain is only doing crimes to avenger someone, and the person who hired the adventures is the one who committed the crime that started the ball rolling, what does party do? Kill what they thought was the main villain or help him avenge his loss). There are an infinite number of adventure options, just make sure you are running a story that will be interesting to your players.
Have you heard of Sly Flourish? His lazy DM method is great! You can find him on youtube and even watch him prep for sessions step by step.
I would suggest the following.
1. If you have acceass to any prewritten campaigns take a look at what info they give you as the DM. Its a good guideline to see what type of things to prepare.
2. Have loose overarching ideas of the overall goal. Focus on what the villains are doing. You can NOT predict what the players will do. But you can flush out the villain's motivations, plans and have a general idea of what the party would need to defeat him. If you know the truths of the world, you can improvise from there.
3. Flush out the town the players will start in and the first session ONLY. How do the grand plan of the villain manifest at the low level? Are they building something that requires contraband? Maybe the first few levels the party is hired to track down some bandits that smugle some forbidden substance.
4. Plan ONLY one session ahead. Other than the general overaching thing and knowing what the villain is doing, focus only on the next session. And don't be afraid to ask your players what their characters plan to do the next session so you can prep accordingly.
5. Have a list of names and personality traits on hand for improvised NPCs.
6. Don't be afraid to have a lot of unknowns about the world and the minutia of the Villain's plans. Hearing the players brainstorm about the clues they found will give you better ideas than what you can come up with on your own. Seriously, take the time to shut up and listen to your players discuss amongst themselves.
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I'm a fairly new DM (only done a few sessions) with new players and was trying to make my first campaign and am not sure exactly what to do.
The kind of setting I'm going for is sort of dark fantasy, along the lines of the witcher or warhammer but with a bit more adventuring.
I'm quite confused on what I'd need to do planning wise and how to start it off aswell as how to make a good villain. Is there certain things that I should do or do any of you have some tips?
Any advice / help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance 👍
Read the DMG.
First what you'll probably want to write and flesh out is the location the campaign takes place in. One thing to make this process easier is to leave some cities/towns open for players to create themsleves as hometowns of their characters. You'll then be able to take their backstories and have an easier time fitting it into the campaign.
Next you'll want to set up an adventure of some kind. Don't need to flesh these out as the players will decide how the story will unfold, but you do need some framework of what's going on in the adventure. Is there a legendary artifact the party are looking for? A powerful tyrant they're looking to overthrow? Come with an understanding of the goal, and a loose understanding of how to achieve that goal.
To look for inspiration of this idea done well, is the film Pirates of the Carribean: Dead man's chest. The goal is to get the heart of Davy Jones. Each character needs it for a different reason, but they all want it. There is also a creature slowly hunt Jack Sparrow during his search for the heart that is built up over time. To get the heart, they need to 1) get the key to unlock it, 2) procure a way to find the heart. A map would be one way of locating the heart but they use a different method, using the compass that points to what they want most, to find the heart, while Will Turner has his own side quest to get the key, which develops his backstory when he meets his father.
In regards to creating good villians, you'll need to decide what kind of villians are in your world. It is a good idea to have multiple types of villians, each with different motivations. When creating a villian you need to understand that the villian sees themselves as the hero of their own story and everyone else is either helping them or in their way. I'll give an example with one of my villians I created for the starting area of my campaign, a wealthy merchant named Ambrose Bassan.
1) What is motivating the villian? Ambrose loves the city he was born and rasied in and wants to do what he believes is best for the city. He would prefer to act within the ethical bounds of the law, but when he begins to exhaust those methods, he will bend around them in the persuit of his goal.
2) Why does the villian choose to achieve these goals through "evil" means? Ambrose was raised in the extreme wealth of the Bassan mansion, wealth his father procured through a devilish deal. The cost of that deal led to Ambrose being born with an extremely rare skin disease which causes him to be extremely sensitive to sunlight. Growing up in this way has caused Ambrose to be unable to mingle with the locals and has given him the perception of an anti-social shut in. Recently, seeing the incompetency of the local government, Ambrose attempted to run for mayor. However, his opponent spread a rumour that Ambrose is a vampire and that is why he is unable to come out during the day. Ambrose lost the election, and decided that to save the city, he will need to take the city by force as well as find a cure for his affliction
3) What is your villian willing to do to achieve their goal? How far and depraved will they sink? Ambrose wishes he could take the city through legal methods, but seeing that the people will never accept him as long as he burns in the sun, he needs to both find a cure, and build an army of loyal mercenaries to help take over the city. His butler, Oslo, has been experimenting with different methods of transformation magic, in the hopes of finding a cure. The exeriments have grown more dangerous and unethical over time, and has lead them down a path where they are capturing werewolves and smuggling them into the city to continue experimenting on them. Meanwhile, Ambrose has been setting up a mercenary guild under the city and has learnt about the city's underground crime network. He promises himself that once this is all done and the city is his, he will abolish the crime network, but for now he needs to utilise them to achieve his goal.
4) Will the villian offer the party to join them? Ambrose doesn't see his actions as evil, just neccessary. Seeing the party helping the city through their different adventures, when the party eventually confronts him, he will offer them to join him and make the city a better place with him in charge.
Thanks very much, this is a great help
Also, keep it simple. Don't add enormous amounts of races, monster invasions, dragons flitting about etc, because all of that requires you to be able to answer "why"
Your world needs to make sense to the PCs, even if they don't know the whole story. That means all the stuff you introduce has got to be there because it is necessary for the story you are telling/creating.
At the lower levels much happens on the local level, in or around one town. Rumours about monsters or treasure can be heard in taverns and town squares and provide adventure hooks, later local merchants or town council members can become temporary patrons, before the characters even become aware that there is a story and not just a string of independent adventures. Then when the rudiments of the whole is revealed the party can either be self motivating (e.g. "This cannot stand!") or you can introduce a higher ranking NPC with an interest is resolving the larger issue, and so forth
Good luck!
Thanks, that's great advice
This is a great method but 1 thing you need to remember: cater to your party, the way you play the game can change drastically depending on those you’re playing with, for example if you’re playing with a bunch of 9-11 year old boys then the best campaign is most likely just a hack-n-slash. Give them a villain and a reason to kill the villain, then hand them weapons a send them out to slaughter everything in their path. While if you’re playing with a more mature party (13+) you’ll probably want more encounters outside of combat that develop the story, and more decisions to make when it comes to morality and the like (example-villain is only doing crimes to avenger someone, and the person who hired the adventures is the one who committed the crime that started the ball rolling, what does party do? Kill what they thought was the main villain or help him avenge his loss). There are an infinite number of adventure options, just make sure you are running a story that will be interesting to your players.
Have you heard of Sly Flourish? His lazy DM method is great! You can find him on youtube and even watch him prep for sessions step by step.
I would suggest the following.
1. If you have acceass to any prewritten campaigns take a look at what info they give you as the DM. Its a good guideline to see what type of things to prepare.
2. Have loose overarching ideas of the overall goal. Focus on what the villains are doing. You can NOT predict what the players will do. But you can flush out the villain's motivations, plans and have a general idea of what the party would need to defeat him. If you know the truths of the world, you can improvise from there.
3. Flush out the town the players will start in and the first session ONLY. How do the grand plan of the villain manifest at the low level? Are they building something that requires contraband? Maybe the first few levels the party is hired to track down some bandits that smugle some forbidden substance.
4. Plan ONLY one session ahead. Other than the general overaching thing and knowing what the villain is doing, focus only on the next session. And don't be afraid to ask your players what their characters plan to do the next session so you can prep accordingly.
5. Have a list of names and personality traits on hand for improvised NPCs.
6. Don't be afraid to have a lot of unknowns about the world and the minutia of the Villain's plans. Hearing the players brainstorm about the clues they found will give you better ideas than what you can come up with on your own. Seriously, take the time to shut up and listen to your players discuss amongst themselves.