So I don't know exactly how to start this off but I will start with this.
I am a kinda new DM to D&D, I've only done maybe around 10-15 sessions, and most of those sessions weren't that long, maybe an hour. So I would say that i'm ,,new''. What im getting at there is that I have had a campaign idea in the back of my head for a while and I needed some help fleshing it out, and/or maybe improving it to make it better. I don't have an exact idea of what I want, only little tidbits and such of what I want to include, but I was hoping for a more creative person to help flesh them out.
let's start off here. I've already done a couple sessions with the party, but it doesnt really concern what narrative I wanna start shifting towards so I won't get into it. But what I'm thinking about is that I wanna have my party be in the capital city and have it be raided and attacked by a kingdom of beast folk/demons. maybe something involving the queen being killed in this raid. And I wanted this to start and grow into a campaign in which the other kingdom taking over the city and driving out all the remaining residents. and at some point i wanted to have the party find a way to fight back against this kingdom, by maybe killing off people close to the king of this kingdom, but maybe that would be too much? idk.
im stuck on this idea which i know isnt good but i wanted help from someone who is better at this stuff then me and hopefully make something my party will enjoy.
It is an interesting idea. Could be that they are driven into little pockets of resistance hiding within the kingdom. Then have it that as they kill of key players or retake specific areas they weaken the kings grip [maybe he draws his power from his close allies]. Set it up so they know of several targets at a time and give them enough information that they choose which to go after when, but the n make it clear that the others don't just stay in a steady state. So missing one now means it might not be available or as easy next time. So thry have to take a more strategic approach to which target is next.
Could also tie in some historic artifacts that can be found through the kingdom that they either have to race the babies too, or that they might want to retrieve to make their attacks easier. That way you could tie in some dungeon crawls....
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
So there is a sociology acronym that’s useful for word building but would probably not pass forum guidelines
Social
Political
Economic
Religious
Military
try and think through not just the plot hook of the idea but the structure of the world you are basing it in. A story will keep you going for half a dozen sessions but campaigns require verisimilitude. Ask yourself not only “what would be cool” but “why”
in a current campaign I thought it would be cool to have a vertical city at the mouth of a canyon, so I thought about why a city might end up that way? Was it protection, expansion, magic, farming, etc the answer was all 5 but through that I then created a backstory for the city that made sense in the world, and because it made sense on the context of the world it grounds it for the characters.
Another dimension to consider is rather than trying to decide what the players will do in the campaign, create your situation / scenario and let them respond to it. You still need hooks and such, but because this is home brew, you can respond to the players’ interests.
The idea is to create the events that are happening in the world, and why. Then drop the party into the mix. By understanding why things are happening, you can adapt them “realistically” in response to the parties actions. The cool thing about this is that it includes if they do nothing. The world continues to move and evolve. You can use this to create pressures to motivate them to action.
For example, if this were me, I’d probably aim for a noir WW2 occupied France vibe (or the lead up to it). The hooks would lead to various possibilities: resistance against the invaders/occupiers, agents for the formal government (local or foreign), allying with the invaders to route out the resistance that just doesn’t see the greatness being brought to their land, mercenaries who try to walk the line, etc. If they take none of these ideas, the world they live in begins to change and perhaps helps or hinders whatever they were otherwise up to.
You should probably also have a session zero to talk about the broad strokes of your idea to make sure it is something they are interested in. It’s like reading the dust jacket of a module you’d buy. Agree on tone, how open ended the campaign is, etc. Something we often don’t talk about is that there is a tacit agreement the players will generally move in the direction the DM has prepared for. This is particularly important if you are a new DM as you may not be comfortable totally winging substantially new content if they go left when you planned for right. You’ll get better at this over time if you aren’t already, but it’s ok to have guide rails in the mean time. That’s essentially what a commercial module is.
first, i'd sign up for the RPG writer's workshop that started yesterday - its free. second, circle of worldbuilders just finished a similar class - with utube videos, i strongly recommend watching them. third, i'd read the 'let's design an adventure' series of articles on this website: https://www.dndbeyond.com/tag/lets-design-an-adventure
after all that, keeping the big picture in mind, but not worrying about it...start with your first adventure. by the time you get to adventure 3-4-5, the vast majority of everything you have in your head will have changed. don't bother with the session 0 at this point - without any adventures designed yet its like planning a racing strategy before you've built the car.
Not sure I agree with deferring session 0, though. I Suppose it’s different things to different people, but for me it’s always been mostly to get on the same page as to the game you want to share. Form, not content. Is meta gaming or min-maxing a big deal? Do people want it weighted towards crunchy or role playing? What’s taboo? I had a player who had been sexually abused and this created some constraints on both game design and what was considered ok by and between the players. There was recently a forum question about how to handle alcohol given that one of their players was a recovering alcoholic. Serious and gritty or lighthearted and fantastic? Resource starved or Monty Haul? Game frequency and attendance expectations?
These are all completely orthogonal to the story and result in a different table experience. A goodly percentage of the questions and comments in this part of the forum are “my players don’t want the game I want and I don’t want to lose my friends.” I suggest you preempt that.
Some of the answers will likely feed into and provide input to the adventure you end up with. I ended up running a campaign in Eberron loosely based on ToA (had to really hack the story up) with lots of epic narrow escapes and intrigue because the players wanted a sort Indiana Jones vibe. I had wanted to run a dark, almost Cthulhu’esque, take on Curse of Strahd where the party never quite gets their legs under them and are ever underpowered, fearful, and one step behind.
Oh wow that is a super interesting idea, I never thought of it like that. I have some vague idea about them killing off people close to the king of the beast kingdom in order to weaken his power and eventually close in on him but I never really could think of how I could do that. I always was like "well I know I want this to be the overall story plot but how so I push them to do that" and having little pocket rebellions that help push them in that direction would be great.
One of the ideas I had for this was that since the kingdom got overrun by the beasts then it would be a neat idea to have it where they would have to avoid certain major areas cause they were being occupied by the enemy, and they would have to sort if hide and maybe liberate these areas slowly until they reach what is essentially the end game of taking over the capital. But I juggled that around and was thinking it might be difficult for the players to do since it would involve a lot less traditional dnd play and more tactics and strategy for how they were gonna end up liberating and saving these smaller places. But if it's anything my players enjoy thinking outside the box and having a lit of freedom when it comes to those kinds of things so maybe it should be perfect for them :/
If you don't want it to be that they become "city managers" for the liberated areas you could have it that they are the opening force for the rebellion and once they have cleared it out then others within the rebellion take over the day to day defense and rebuilding, and could be used as a home base for the players as they gain more areas.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
So I don't know exactly how to start this off but I will start with this.
I am a kinda new DM to D&D, I've only done maybe around 10-15 sessions, and most of those sessions weren't that long, maybe an hour. So I would say that i'm ,,new''. What im getting at there is that I have had a campaign idea in the back of my head for a while and I needed some help fleshing it out, and/or maybe improving it to make it better. I don't have an exact idea of what I want, only little tidbits and such of what I want to include, but I was hoping for a more creative person to help flesh them out.
let's start off here. I've already done a couple sessions with the party, but it doesnt really concern what narrative I wanna start shifting towards so I won't get into it. But what I'm thinking about is that I wanna have my party be in the capital city and have it be raided and attacked by a kingdom of beast folk/demons. maybe something involving the queen being killed in this raid. And I wanted this to start and grow into a campaign in which the other kingdom taking over the city and driving out all the remaining residents. and at some point i wanted to have the party find a way to fight back against this kingdom, by maybe killing off people close to the king of this kingdom, but maybe that would be too much? idk.
im stuck on this idea which i know isnt good but i wanted help from someone who is better at this stuff then me and hopefully make something my party will enjoy.
It is an interesting idea. Could be that they are driven into little pockets of resistance hiding within the kingdom. Then have it that as they kill of key players or retake specific areas they weaken the kings grip [maybe he draws his power from his close allies]. Set it up so they know of several targets at a time and give them enough information that they choose which to go after when, but the n make it clear that the others don't just stay in a steady state. So missing one now means it might not be available or as easy next time. So thry have to take a more strategic approach to which target is next.
Could also tie in some historic artifacts that can be found through the kingdom that they either have to race the babies too, or that they might want to retrieve to make their attacks easier. That way you could tie in some dungeon crawls....
All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
So there is a sociology acronym that’s useful for word building but would probably not pass forum guidelines
Social
Political
Economic
Religious
Military
try and think through not just the plot hook of the idea but the structure of the world you are basing it in. A story will keep you going for half a dozen sessions but campaigns require verisimilitude. Ask yourself not only “what would be cool” but “why”
in a current campaign I thought it would be cool to have a vertical city at the mouth of a canyon, so I thought about why a city might end up that way? Was it protection, expansion, magic, farming, etc the answer was all 5 but through that I then created a backstory for the city that made sense in the world, and because it made sense on the context of the world it grounds it for the characters.
Another dimension to consider is rather than trying to decide what the players will do in the campaign, create your situation / scenario and let them respond to it. You still need hooks and such, but because this is home brew, you can respond to the players’ interests.
The idea is to create the events that are happening in the world, and why. Then drop the party into the mix. By understanding why things are happening, you can adapt them “realistically” in response to the parties actions. The cool thing about this is that it includes if they do nothing. The world continues to move and evolve. You can use this to create pressures to motivate them to action.
For example, if this were me, I’d probably aim for a noir WW2 occupied France vibe (or the lead up to it). The hooks would lead to various possibilities: resistance against the invaders/occupiers, agents for the formal government (local or foreign), allying with the invaders to route out the resistance that just doesn’t see the greatness being brought to their land, mercenaries who try to walk the line, etc. If they take none of these ideas, the world they live in begins to change and perhaps helps or hinders whatever they were otherwise up to.
You should probably also have a session zero to talk about the broad strokes of your idea to make sure it is something they are interested in. It’s like reading the dust jacket of a module you’d buy. Agree on tone, how open ended the campaign is, etc. Something we often don’t talk about is that there is a tacit agreement the players will generally move in the direction the DM has prepared for. This is particularly important if you are a new DM as you may not be comfortable totally winging substantially new content if they go left when you planned for right. You’ll get better at this over time if you aren’t already, but it’s ok to have guide rails in the mean time. That’s essentially what a commercial module is.
first, i'd sign up for the RPG writer's workshop that started yesterday - its free. second, circle of worldbuilders just finished a similar class - with utube videos, i strongly recommend watching them. third, i'd read the 'let's design an adventure' series of articles on this website: https://www.dndbeyond.com/tag/lets-design-an-adventure
after all that, keeping the big picture in mind, but not worrying about it...start with your first adventure. by the time you get to adventure 3-4-5, the vast majority of everything you have in your head will have changed. don't bother with the session 0 at this point - without any adventures designed yet its like planning a racing strategy before you've built the car.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
Writing workshops are a good idea.
Not sure I agree with deferring session 0, though. I Suppose it’s different things to different people, but for me it’s always been mostly to get on the same page as to the game you want to share. Form, not content. Is meta gaming or min-maxing a big deal? Do people want it weighted towards crunchy or role playing? What’s taboo? I had a player who had been sexually abused and this created some constraints on both game design and what was considered ok by and between the players. There was recently a forum question about how to handle alcohol given that one of their players was a recovering alcoholic. Serious and gritty or lighthearted and fantastic? Resource starved or Monty Haul? Game frequency and attendance expectations?
These are all completely orthogonal to the story and result in a different table experience. A goodly percentage of the questions and comments in this part of the forum are “my players don’t want the game I want and I don’t want to lose my friends.” I suggest you preempt that.
Some of the answers will likely feed into and provide input to the adventure you end up with. I ended up running a campaign in Eberron loosely based on ToA (had to really hack the story up) with lots of epic narrow escapes and intrigue because the players wanted a sort Indiana Jones vibe. I had wanted to run a dark, almost Cthulhu’esque, take on Curse of Strahd where the party never quite gets their legs under them and are ever underpowered, fearful, and one step behind.
Oh wow that is a super interesting idea, I never thought of it like that. I have some vague idea about them killing off people close to the king of the beast kingdom in order to weaken his power and eventually close in on him but I never really could think of how I could do that. I always was like "well I know I want this to be the overall story plot but how so I push them to do that" and having little pocket rebellions that help push them in that direction would be great.
One of the ideas I had for this was that since the kingdom got overrun by the beasts then it would be a neat idea to have it where they would have to avoid certain major areas cause they were being occupied by the enemy, and they would have to sort if hide and maybe liberate these areas slowly until they reach what is essentially the end game of taking over the capital. But I juggled that around and was thinking it might be difficult for the players to do since it would involve a lot less traditional dnd play and more tactics and strategy for how they were gonna end up liberating and saving these smaller places. But if it's anything my players enjoy thinking outside the box and having a lit of freedom when it comes to those kinds of things so maybe it should be perfect for them :/
If you don't want it to be that they become "city managers" for the liberated areas you could have it that they are the opening force for the rebellion and once they have cleared it out then others within the rebellion take over the day to day defense and rebuilding, and could be used as a home base for the players as they gain more areas.
All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
Black ops team. Or maybe this: https://m.facebook.com/bandofbrothers/photos/pb.165547437444.-2207520000.1427916070./10150391860472445/?type=3&theater