Just curious. How does everyone go about writing their homebrew adventures? I've been DMing for a few years now, but have only ever run pre-made adventures, and have finally started to come up with my own campaign. I've noticed that when I'm writing it all out that I tend to format it like a published adventure since that is my main frame of reference. Its fine if I'm just running the players on the rails as it where, but I'm not sure its the best for planning for the players in the event they jump to another track.
Is there another way that people plan out and run their games? Do you make an outline or write it all out as though someone else could just pick it up and run it like a published adventure.
There are two ways which I go about writing campaigns.
The first, and less frequently used, is a method I call "converspansion". I start with a published adventure, or even a few of them that are related to each other, and I go through them carefully making changes so that they are going to work for the play style my players and I prefer. Often this means rewriting multiple room descriptions from an old AD&D adventure into a singular encounter description because of things like the adventure saying one/some of the creatures in one room go get help from creatures in another room, changing traps so that they aren't resource sinks that the players can't actually interact with in any meaningful way, and altering all sorts of details that just don't make any kind of sense (i.e. potent magic weapon sitting under the bar at the local village tavern is a no - regular folk use regular weapons, specifically because potent magic weapons are the sort of thing adventurers are meant to find while adventuring, not while deciding to rob innocent locals), plus omitting any text from my version of the adventure that contains information that the players and their characters cannot learn by playing through the adventure and would not already have (especially when it doesn't have any use within the context of the adventure to know it). All while organizing the adventure content to minimize page flipping (i.e. maps go in a separate document dedicate to maps, and monster/npc stats are found with their encounter descriptions, not in a separate section, unless there are so many that it warrants having a separate document of monster or encounter stats).
The second, and my usual go-to, is a method I call "Let's just play some D&D". i start with literally no plan at all. The players and I sit down at the table and start to build characters. During the building process we collectively determine what sort of thing to begin the campaign with or a very general premise for the campaign, something along the lines of "How about being professional treasure hunters, hired to retrieve some ancient swag by a wealthy collector?" or "What if the campaign is about a bunch of students at an academy of wizardry, and the strange things which happen on/around campus?" or "How about the characters start as slaves, toiling away at building like a temple or a palace for some evil ruler?". By the time the characters are finished and filled out on their character sheets, I've thought up the first session-worth of stuff to have happen (usually a little combat with a purpose, and a lot of establishing the environment immediately around the characters in both the sociopolitical sense and physical sense, plus getting to know an NPC or two).
Between the first session and the second, I'll write an intentionally vague outline of where the campaign will go, almost always from the point of view of "these events will transpire, unless the player characters intervene". Then running the campaign follows the same improvisational process used for the first session - I just sit down, see what the players want to do with their characters, and toss reasonable-seeming and interesting obstacles between the characters and whatever goals the players give them. And I keep notes of what details get created during a session - so at the end of a campaign, I have notes that roughly resemble what a fully-pre-planned campaign would look like if it had been written in advance and the players never strayed from the single course of action it planned for.
I like AaronofBarbaria's response. This is a question I have a well. I'm running a published adventure for one group, but home brew for another as they want a far more RP heavy politics and intrigue game. We're in a dungeon crawl and they're over it (fortunately our next session we'll meet the BBEG and then we can discuss going forward.)
What I'm doing at the moment is to propagate my home brew world with NPCs and what they're up to. Out of that I'm trying to build plot hooks. Of course, if the players want to go somewhere else entirely, that's fine - they have a richer world to do it in with more options down the track.
My problem is getting into the nitty gritty of it all. I want the players to have agency so don't want to over prepare, but they need some solid hooks and I'm having trouble thinking of things that aren't just clear the dungeon, take the loot, especially for lower tier characters. It's easy to come up with palace intrigue, but what's happening in the world of a 1st to 4th level character?
I'm thinking with a dungeon master if they are good that would cause the evil side of the spectrum to be against the players group if that is there purpose in the campaign to help the dungeon master accomplish the quests that they make Thus if each quest has encounters with 9 monsters there is a chance for a outcome of good neutral or evil in each one ( probably different ways of breaking up how things turn good or bad that way) but the point is that there should be three quests like this where players could play there traits, qualities, and bonds to help flavor there actions to accomplishing these quests. much the same as the enemy on the competition with the players group would be using its three traits to control the three quests that the players would need to overcome with their evil backgrounds in order to have control over there minions that would be what the point of accomplishing the quests for a good outcome would be to set each of the minions back to a good result and thereby weaken the boss that was controlling the other three. I play a homebrew with the concept that each level in dnd counts as three levels In homebrew, And then at level 5 a player has equal to 15 levels worth of training, And that means one for each 5 levels which could include and or any three combination of good evil neutral, Per rank, And by the time player gets to level 15 they could have 9 options for training, Because when people go by ranks of 10 levels people would get they would have 10 levels for each 5, In the three that they have three of, And that would equal a total of 90 if they have 9, But (obviously if 5 = 15 then there is more than 10 per rank i explain this by 10 levels is for reality and the other 5 is for dreams and a good chance to throw a quest in there for people to accomplish before achieving each rank) Essentially its reusing the pattern thats in every level so a player could make more than three quests for there traits ideals and bonds, And maybe make the flaw relate to their relationship with the dungeonmaster where as the minions in each of the three quests could have their own traits ideals and bonds and maybe there flaw is what their evil master has used against them to use them against the players. So basicly a level 5 player would have found his 3 background stats and thus would count as a +3 background, I suppose the flaw gets added in because when people reach +3 there is a automatic level thrown in but its optional. So doing the math would reveal a level 15 player has up to +9 with optional extra 3 flaws, Which coincidently is how many monsters to put in an encounter (without the optionals), For a campaign that has three quests to overcome to defeat the boss, Which would seem to me to be that the players might pick their best trait from there backstory to somehow go up against what they suspect each monster represents from the boss's repetior (with),-- Or minions background traits to figure out that, By winning 5 from the 9 enemies (to win 5 it gets into a whole other post). It would create a fully good or bad result from a quest, And winning another 5, From the next quest would create a fully good result If the players so wanted, And if they did that on the third quest they would have three of a kind and outwit the evil boss, which would probably anger it and cause it to try to devour the players souls or destroy the world or something harsh like that.
So far we have been running a published adventure for the last 6 months and the players have gotten to level 4 (been playing bi-weekly or monthly depending on the week). I decided I wanted to try some homebrew but didn't want the players to change characters. So I'm planning a world ending event to happen, but some reality crossing diety plucks the characters up and sends them my home brew world with little to no knowledge that they even moved worlds. I have some story beats I want to address (many from their backstories that were my inspiration for moving away from pre-gen) and they will eventually get to deal with the thing that destroyed their old reality, it's just filling in the bits in between in a way that I'm not writing a series of novels. I want the players to have some freedom to explore but I do want some structure as well.
Improvisational methods grant you freedom to give the players a lot of freedom. The preparation you do is different - I find I'm more constructing frames, global narratives and events, but letting the local events around the PCs transpire as they make them transpire. I present them with a situation, and just see what they do with it. The core is that you have a frame to work with, which provides global story impetus. Have you ever played the PC game Star Control? As a player, you get to go wherever, but there is a global story you are working to, which is accumulating resources and intel to defeat a big bad. In your scenario, an example of a global story might be that the thing that destroyed Earth 1 will eventually come for Earth 2, and that people realise this because certain phenomena present in Earth 1 a year ago are now beginning to appear in Earth 2. This global story makes it's own bits to fill in - the characters will likely want to find intel and resources to defeat the BBEG, and all you have to do is present means by which they can go about finding them.
Regarding the situation you describe, I'm not sure as a player I'd like a deity simply pulling me out of my home world, without, say, asking that deity to evacuate everyone, because why-not-you're-a-god. It also destroys my sense of agency. Better might be, that the reality destroying event is caused by or includes the effects of large portals popping up, and that due to local devastation (e.g. slowly surrounded by lava/wildfire/zombie apocalypse from which there is no other escape), it is pretty much the only possible means of survival.
I have a basic way: I write out a very vague story, such as "a vampire will return to try to regain control of a city he lost", and then plan some big plot hooks that may or may not come into play. Then I only plan a few sessions at a time, taking into consideration the things my players did and how it might affect what I established already
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
The reason for plucking them out of Earth 1 to go to Earth 2 behind the scenes was just so I can make up my own world and not have to worry about incorporating the pre-made one. The reason the being or deity or whatever that plucks them out is because they were the ones chosen to defeat the big bad from destroying the multiverse, but he showed up to Earth 1 when they were at level 4. So they are being moved to another corner of the multiverse till about level 15 or so with little to no memory of the events that got them there. I'll sprinkle things in as they level to lead back to stopping the big bad and not remembering but knowing what happened to them.
As far as the characters will be concerned they were on Earth 2 the whole time, and the events of the previous sessions will be retconned to fit the new setting. It's even allowing one of them to reclass his character to fit some ideas he had.
I know I could just hand wave a bunch of it, but I some ideas I had for the world destroying big bad made more sense to do it this way.
I usually start with a concept and world map, decide where on that map I want to start and mostly flesh out that area with a couple towns, NPC's and quest options. I then try to use player backgrounds to develop a bit more. I would caution you NOT try to build every detail of your world before the game starts. The format you choose to write your campaign is up to you.
I like to decide on a location (or more than one, if that's what I want), and figure out the stuff in it-shops, homes, important people, and then decide on a way to get my players there. Usually there's multiple hooks for "side quests" that take 1/2 a session max, and one big, hard quest. They can pick the order, etc. The big hard quests are usually connected to my main storyline, and sometimes the "side quests" are too. However, I'm about to do a switchover to where they're getting hired by a school of magic to work for them long-term. For that kind of adventure, I like to give them their adventure, and let them do the planning. My adventure planning usually looks like this:
Important NPCs: Archie Delver, Kiran Tonning, Fifi Teller
Locations: City of Turin
Objective: Steal magical artifact of Moradin
Antagonist: Horace McCorwyn
Then I fill in NPC stats, city details, and the specific "dungeon" (endgame/bossfight location) details. Then I throw them in and improvise as they go.
When planning a single adventure, I usually write it as "scenes" or vignettes. Each scene includes any relevant description, locations, and NPCs, and centers on a single event. I plan how scenes begin, but I leave the endings open-ended depending on how players react to a situation. I treat combat encounters like a single scene.
I also hyperlink out to any rules that I might need to use, such as monster stat blocks, so I'm not having to page through things during a session. I sometimes match certain images or music to certain scenes in an adventure.
On the campaign level, I start by preparing a very rough map in the area the campaign is set, outlining all the important locales, NPCs, organizations, and other details to make a one-page sheet to give to players. When writing the plot, I decide on the principal players, and create a plot web that shows how their various motives and agendas intersect. I tend to write plots with layered mysteries and intrigue, so this helps a lot. I then create a rough road map to the campaign that shows what important NPCs or players in the plot will do when, and then design plot hooks to pull the players into these events.
When planning the campaign plot, as with individual scenes, I leave open enough gaps between pivotal events so that things can be adjusted to accomodate whatever the players end up doing in the campaign.
As a general rule, I try to outline as much as possible, but I avoid going into too much detail unless I absolutely know that players will need this detail. There's no use writing complex histories, designing atlas-style maps, or overworking other campaign details that the players will never see. For example, it's enough to sketch out NPC motivations and backstories and leave the rest to be expanded later, when it might be needed.
Any and all plans get utterly crushed once the PCs get involved. The best way to set up any campaign or one-shot if you have a chaotic group is to build all their tasks that they need to do bare-bones, and then flesh it out when you get there. I am currently running a campaign about a dark god and only one weapon able to kill him. The sword was shattered into 5 pieces. First task was to negotiate with a collector in possession of the shard. Second task was to sneak into an elf village and steal the shard. Third task was a mountain they had to climb to get it, fourth was a sinkhole and system of caverns they had to get through, and the final shard they had to get into a dragons lair. Now that they got the last shard, they go to Moradin and reforge it. And finally, the final boss fight. These are all barebones encounters and I fleshed all of them out the week before. Don't worry too much about details at the beginning.
When I'm writing it all out that I tend to format it like a published adventure since that is my main frame of reference.
I used to do the same thing years ago. Full paragraphs of text, written in the "Gygaxian" narrative voice (which nobody uses anymore but everyone tried to use back in the 1970s and 80s).
But there is really no reason to do that. I know what my adventure is about. I wrote it. No one else is going to read it, so I don't have to explain anything. I just need reminders to help jog my memory of what I want to do. To that end, what I write down is much how I write out my lecture notes before teaching class (I am a university professor by day, DM by night/weekend). I don't write whole paragraphs out and read them aloud to the class... I make notes to remind myself of the facts and then I fill in the details from memory.
I also don't like things done in paragraphs of text because it takes too long to pick out important info. from paragraphs. You need to get the relevant facts quickly as a DM and so long sentences and paragraphs are not useful if you are just making notes to yourself.
I do the same thing with my notes in an adventure. For instance, from a couple of sessions ago, a small tomb they were going to investigate, I wrote this (Italics are the "read aloud" text -- that I do sometimes still and I do make that verbatim). Numbers were keyed on my version of the map.
INVESTIGATION - DC 10 - The dust has been disturbed by the passing of many feet recently.
Each alcove has a single stone sarcophagus in each. Both lids have been wrenched aside and both are empty.
Main Tomb - This is where the majority of the Vulius family members were buried. As the party enters this room, they smell the stench of death and decay - it is almost overpowering. They see, crouched in the middle of the chamber, a disgusting creature with pale skin, glowing green eyes, and claws on its hands and bare feet. It appears to be munching on the disembodied arm of a corpse.
This is a Ghoul and it will attack on sight. The ghoul has 17 cp on him and a moss agate gem worth 10 gp.
All the stone sarcophagi in here are empty, lids thrown aside.
Statue of Mercury. Desecrated like the others. Caduceus and head broken off, splashed with black paint or ink.
RELIGION - DC 10 - It is the death penalty under Roman law to desecrate sacred statues, altars, or holy symbols.
Generally I make a lot of NPC's (probably too many) for the starting city, then I think about potential BBEG's and what they should be doing to forward their plan and how that plan would interact with the players. Then I make up a series of adventures, usually one more than it would take to level up. Most of the time the first adventure is seemingly unconnected to the main plot until later it's revealed that the first adventure had something to do with the BBEG in a roundabout way (Maybe the city was attacked because he/she displaced those monsters, or maybe the players have to protect a cart with something the BBEG wants on it). Then the next few till the level up are side-quests with maybe one adventure tying into the main plot (assuming you're starting at 3rd level. If not then it should be all side-quests except the first session). Then when they level up I create more encounters and usually expand upon some of the sidequests by making the BBEG of that side-quest a reoccurring villain if possible or having them deal with the evil organization from the side-quest. Once they hit level 5 (Or level 3 depending on the length of the campaign) I introduce the BBEG himself/herself or one of his/her lieutenants/right-hand man/woman doing something that the players must stop (attacking an ally, trying to summon something, stealing the important item, using intrigue to try to take over the royal court). Then rinse and repeat till they fight the BBEG of that arc. Once they do that I decide whether we can and whether we want to continue the campaign with a new arc. Also, try to tie in each character's backstory and give them their own mini arc/quest.
I tend to stay away from macguffins that stay macguffins for too long. The items should always have explainable mechanics or lore that makes that item useful to the BBEG or potentially the players. I generally don't like playing in full campaigns where the shtick is that a macguffin that's never going to be explained must be retrieved to stop the evil bad guy of evilness. Everyone has their reasons for doing something, even if those reasons are crazy to everyone else (EX: destroying the world because people never showed you enough empathy so you feel such a cruel world has no right to exist, an intelligent wizard who was driven mad after he was exposed to eldritch secrets and now seeks to "enlighten" everyone else with the knowledge of his master, or something simple like power or unrequited love). Not every villain has to be extremely complex but every villain should have some reason for their actions. Unless, the villain is a low intelligence demon then you can get away with their reasoning being "they're a demon".
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
call me Anna or Kerns, (she/her), usually a DM, lgbtq+ friendly
PART 1 - Short Answer: I think for me, homebrewing a world and homebrewing an adventure have almost exclusively always been a separate process, whereby navigating and modifying a given world to match the needs of character backstories or desired one-off campaigns is the game of homebrewing an adventure.
PART 2 - Longer Answer: I think the success of an enriching world takes time and just playing a lot; all we do is modular and every small "world" you build imparts new cities, guilds, NPCs, folklore, etc, which you can retool as you like in the future. Even a lot of your pre-built campaigns can be renamed, NPCs you're comfortable behind the wheel with reused etc. Unless you have the same play group for a decade or so I doubt players are going to pick up on a lot of your recycling and using it let's you relax and focus on all the finer renderings of a positive play experience for everybody.
PART 3 - A Valuable Resource: If you're thinking about getting into homebrewing more transitioning out of pre-made stuff I hiiiiiighly recommend looking into a book (or small youtube series) called The Lazy Dungeon Master (by Sly Flourish)--I could write out how exactly it addresses some of your questions, but they wrote it better than I could so just check it out next time you're internet-spiraling/youtube spiraling.
My approach is to drop the players into a small, usually remote place that fits their characters. Which, due to the existence of at least one edgelord in every party, will usually be a crime-infested village for stranded souls. There, they will have a starting adventure that, while not already connected to any main-plot, brings them into contact with as many NPC's as possible, each of them either connected to a political faction of the region or a recent major event, for each of which I have a basic concept for a villain prepared. This gives my players a general idea of which routes are available. After the starting adventure, they can choose what to do next, although I often nudge them into directions that already seem more fitting than others (For example, in my current campaign, they considered to accompany a scientist whose main goal is to convince the large university of the country to broaden the field of 'relevant' science, which is currently limited to certain disciplines of Arcane Magic. However, the starting adventure had already established that not one member of the party was highly interested in politics, half of them being mostly concerned with nature and the other half having a loose concept of 'looking for a place in the world'. Accordingly the scientist questioned their interest and nudged them towards characters whose interests involved more traveling through the wild). I have rough ideas of the regions mapped out at the start of the campaign ('forest full of werebeasts', 'firbolg town that grows plums' and so on...) and from there I just etch things out as they make their way.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You get a wonderfull view from the point of no return.
There is noting wrong with doing it the way you are doing it as long as you come to terms with the fact, as you probably already have, that you might put a lot of work into something that never actually comes to fruition. I typically write out my adventures as if they were published adventures, more or less, and then come up with stuff on the fly if players deviate from the material that I have written. Most players are pretty good about picking up on adventure hooks and steering themselves toward the content. Sometimes players will surprise you. Once I dropped an adventure hook for a group of players to explore an old elven ruin and the first thing they found when they got there was a bunch of mutilated elves imprisoned in trees writhing in pain. One of my players just said "Ok, we're out of here." There goes about 12 hours of planning. Oh well.
One approach I tried is keep it really basic and loose as I play as a PC sometimes and know me and my party can mess up the DM's plans. Instead of making a set way to do a certain thing, make a basic idea you can branch off of if you need to
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Hey everyone,
Just curious. How does everyone go about writing their homebrew adventures? I've been DMing for a few years now, but have only ever run pre-made adventures, and have finally started to come up with my own campaign. I've noticed that when I'm writing it all out that I tend to format it like a published adventure since that is my main frame of reference. Its fine if I'm just running the players on the rails as it where, but I'm not sure its the best for planning for the players in the event they jump to another track.
Is there another way that people plan out and run their games? Do you make an outline or write it all out as though someone else could just pick it up and run it like a published adventure.
There are two ways which I go about writing campaigns.
The first, and less frequently used, is a method I call "converspansion". I start with a published adventure, or even a few of them that are related to each other, and I go through them carefully making changes so that they are going to work for the play style my players and I prefer. Often this means rewriting multiple room descriptions from an old AD&D adventure into a singular encounter description because of things like the adventure saying one/some of the creatures in one room go get help from creatures in another room, changing traps so that they aren't resource sinks that the players can't actually interact with in any meaningful way, and altering all sorts of details that just don't make any kind of sense (i.e. potent magic weapon sitting under the bar at the local village tavern is a no - regular folk use regular weapons, specifically because potent magic weapons are the sort of thing adventurers are meant to find while adventuring, not while deciding to rob innocent locals), plus omitting any text from my version of the adventure that contains information that the players and their characters cannot learn by playing through the adventure and would not already have (especially when it doesn't have any use within the context of the adventure to know it). All while organizing the adventure content to minimize page flipping (i.e. maps go in a separate document dedicate to maps, and monster/npc stats are found with their encounter descriptions, not in a separate section, unless there are so many that it warrants having a separate document of monster or encounter stats).
The second, and my usual go-to, is a method I call "Let's just play some D&D". i start with literally no plan at all. The players and I sit down at the table and start to build characters. During the building process we collectively determine what sort of thing to begin the campaign with or a very general premise for the campaign, something along the lines of "How about being professional treasure hunters, hired to retrieve some ancient swag by a wealthy collector?" or "What if the campaign is about a bunch of students at an academy of wizardry, and the strange things which happen on/around campus?" or "How about the characters start as slaves, toiling away at building like a temple or a palace for some evil ruler?". By the time the characters are finished and filled out on their character sheets, I've thought up the first session-worth of stuff to have happen (usually a little combat with a purpose, and a lot of establishing the environment immediately around the characters in both the sociopolitical sense and physical sense, plus getting to know an NPC or two).
Between the first session and the second, I'll write an intentionally vague outline of where the campaign will go, almost always from the point of view of "these events will transpire, unless the player characters intervene". Then running the campaign follows the same improvisational process used for the first session - I just sit down, see what the players want to do with their characters, and toss reasonable-seeming and interesting obstacles between the characters and whatever goals the players give them. And I keep notes of what details get created during a session - so at the end of a campaign, I have notes that roughly resemble what a fully-pre-planned campaign would look like if it had been written in advance and the players never strayed from the single course of action it planned for.
I like AaronofBarbaria's response. This is a question I have a well. I'm running a published adventure for one group, but home brew for another as they want a far more RP heavy politics and intrigue game. We're in a dungeon crawl and they're over it (fortunately our next session we'll meet the BBEG and then we can discuss going forward.)
What I'm doing at the moment is to propagate my home brew world with NPCs and what they're up to. Out of that I'm trying to build plot hooks. Of course, if the players want to go somewhere else entirely, that's fine - they have a richer world to do it in with more options down the track.
My problem is getting into the nitty gritty of it all. I want the players to have agency so don't want to over prepare, but they need some solid hooks and I'm having trouble thinking of things that aren't just clear the dungeon, take the loot, especially for lower tier characters. It's easy to come up with palace intrigue, but what's happening in the world of a 1st to 4th level character?
I'm thinking with a dungeon master if they are good that would cause the evil side of the spectrum to be against the players group if that is there purpose in the campaign to help the dungeon master accomplish the quests that they make Thus if each quest has encounters with 9 monsters there is a chance for a outcome of good neutral or evil in each one ( probably different ways of breaking up how things turn good or bad that way) but the point is that there should be three quests like this where players could play there traits, qualities, and bonds to help flavor there actions to accomplishing these quests. much the same as the enemy on the competition with the players group would be using its three traits to control the three quests that the players would need to overcome with their evil backgrounds in order to have control over there minions that would be what the point of accomplishing the quests for a good outcome would be to set each of the minions back to a good result and thereby weaken the boss that was controlling the other three. I play a homebrew with the concept that each level in dnd counts as three levels In homebrew, And then at level 5 a player has equal to 15 levels worth of training, And that means one for each 5 levels which could include and or any three combination of good evil neutral, Per rank, And by the time player gets to level 15 they could have 9 options for training, Because when people go by ranks of 10 levels people would get they would have 10 levels for each 5, In the three that they have three of, And that would equal a total of 90 if they have 9, But (obviously if 5 = 15 then there is more than 10 per rank i explain this by 10 levels is for reality and the other 5 is for dreams and a good chance to throw a quest in there for people to accomplish before achieving each rank) Essentially its reusing the pattern thats in every level so a player could make more than three quests for there traits ideals and bonds, And maybe make the flaw relate to their relationship with the dungeonmaster where as the minions in each of the three quests could have their own traits ideals and bonds and maybe there flaw is what their evil master has used against them to use them against the players. So basicly a level 5 player would have found his 3 background stats and thus would count as a +3 background, I suppose the flaw gets added in because when people reach +3 there is a automatic level thrown in but its optional. So doing the math would reveal a level 15 player has up to +9 with optional extra 3 flaws, Which coincidently is how many monsters to put in an encounter (without the optionals), For a campaign that has three quests to overcome to defeat the boss, Which would seem to me to be that the players might pick their best trait from there backstory to somehow go up against what they suspect each monster represents from the boss's repetior (with),-- Or minions background traits to figure out that, By winning 5 from the 9 enemies (to win 5 it gets into a whole other post). It would create a fully good or bad result from a quest, And winning another 5, From the next quest would create a fully good result If the players so wanted, And if they did that on the third quest they would have three of a kind and outwit the evil boss, which would probably anger it and cause it to try to devour the players souls or destroy the world or something harsh like that.
So far we have been running a published adventure for the last 6 months and the players have gotten to level 4 (been playing bi-weekly or monthly depending on the week). I decided I wanted to try some homebrew but didn't want the players to change characters. So I'm planning a world ending event to happen, but some reality crossing diety plucks the characters up and sends them my home brew world with little to no knowledge that they even moved worlds. I have some story beats I want to address (many from their backstories that were my inspiration for moving away from pre-gen) and they will eventually get to deal with the thing that destroyed their old reality, it's just filling in the bits in between in a way that I'm not writing a series of novels. I want the players to have some freedom to explore but I do want some structure as well.
What Aaronofbarbaria said.
Improvisational methods grant you freedom to give the players a lot of freedom. The preparation you do is different - I find I'm more constructing frames, global narratives and events, but letting the local events around the PCs transpire as they make them transpire. I present them with a situation, and just see what they do with it. The core is that you have a frame to work with, which provides global story impetus. Have you ever played the PC game Star Control? As a player, you get to go wherever, but there is a global story you are working to, which is accumulating resources and intel to defeat a big bad. In your scenario, an example of a global story might be that the thing that destroyed Earth 1 will eventually come for Earth 2, and that people realise this because certain phenomena present in Earth 1 a year ago are now beginning to appear in Earth 2. This global story makes it's own bits to fill in - the characters will likely want to find intel and resources to defeat the BBEG, and all you have to do is present means by which they can go about finding them.
Regarding the situation you describe, I'm not sure as a player I'd like a deity simply pulling me out of my home world, without, say, asking that deity to evacuate everyone, because why-not-you're-a-god. It also destroys my sense of agency. Better might be, that the reality destroying event is caused by or includes the effects of large portals popping up, and that due to local devastation (e.g. slowly surrounded by lava/wildfire/zombie apocalypse from which there is no other escape), it is pretty much the only possible means of survival.
I have a basic way: I write out a very vague story, such as "a vampire will return to try to regain control of a city he lost", and then plan some big plot hooks that may or may not come into play. Then I only plan a few sessions at a time, taking into consideration the things my players did and how it might affect what I established already
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
What AaronOfBarbaria said, with the addition of what VanZoeren said.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Tooltips (Help/aid)
The reason for plucking them out of Earth 1 to go to Earth 2 behind the scenes was just so I can make up my own world and not have to worry about incorporating the pre-made one. The reason the being or deity or whatever that plucks them out is because they were the ones chosen to defeat the big bad from destroying the multiverse, but he showed up to Earth 1 when they were at level 4. So they are being moved to another corner of the multiverse till about level 15 or so with little to no memory of the events that got them there. I'll sprinkle things in as they level to lead back to stopping the big bad and not remembering but knowing what happened to them.
As far as the characters will be concerned they were on Earth 2 the whole time, and the events of the previous sessions will be retconned to fit the new setting. It's even allowing one of them to reclass his character to fit some ideas he had.
I know I could just hand wave a bunch of it, but I some ideas I had for the world destroying big bad made more sense to do it this way.
I usually start with a concept and world map, decide where on that map I want to start and mostly flesh out that area with a couple towns, NPC's and quest options. I then try to use player backgrounds to develop a bit more. I would caution you NOT try to build every detail of your world before the game starts. The format you choose to write your campaign is up to you.
Most of my campaigns start here : https://donjon.bin.sh/
I like to decide on a location (or more than one, if that's what I want), and figure out the stuff in it-shops, homes, important people, and then decide on a way to get my players there. Usually there's multiple hooks for "side quests" that take 1/2 a session max, and one big, hard quest. They can pick the order, etc. The big hard quests are usually connected to my main storyline, and sometimes the "side quests" are too. However, I'm about to do a switchover to where they're getting hired by a school of magic to work for them long-term. For that kind of adventure, I like to give them their adventure, and let them do the planning. My adventure planning usually looks like this:
Important NPCs: Archie Delver, Kiran Tonning, Fifi Teller
Locations: City of Turin
Objective: Steal magical artifact of Moradin
Antagonist: Horace McCorwyn
Then I fill in NPC stats, city details, and the specific "dungeon" (endgame/bossfight location) details. Then I throw them in and improvise as they go.
Stella Diamant, Human Rogue 17 (Swashbuckler), The Exploits of Misfit Company
Kat, Medtech, Cyberpunk: Red
Shi, Changeling Bard 4 (College of Spirits), Tyrant's Grasp
Dani, Human Artificer 9 (Armorer), Skulls and Starships
DM, Project Point (Teams Scimitar and Longsword)
Everything Else!
When planning a single adventure, I usually write it as "scenes" or vignettes. Each scene includes any relevant description, locations, and NPCs, and centers on a single event. I plan how scenes begin, but I leave the endings open-ended depending on how players react to a situation. I treat combat encounters like a single scene.
I also hyperlink out to any rules that I might need to use, such as monster stat blocks, so I'm not having to page through things during a session. I sometimes match certain images or music to certain scenes in an adventure.
On the campaign level, I start by preparing a very rough map in the area the campaign is set, outlining all the important locales, NPCs, organizations, and other details to make a one-page sheet to give to players. When writing the plot, I decide on the principal players, and create a plot web that shows how their various motives and agendas intersect. I tend to write plots with layered mysteries and intrigue, so this helps a lot. I then create a rough road map to the campaign that shows what important NPCs or players in the plot will do when, and then design plot hooks to pull the players into these events.
When planning the campaign plot, as with individual scenes, I leave open enough gaps between pivotal events so that things can be adjusted to accomodate whatever the players end up doing in the campaign.
As a general rule, I try to outline as much as possible, but I avoid going into too much detail unless I absolutely know that players will need this detail. There's no use writing complex histories, designing atlas-style maps, or overworking other campaign details that the players will never see. For example, it's enough to sketch out NPC motivations and backstories and leave the rest to be expanded later, when it might be needed.
Any and all plans get utterly crushed once the PCs get involved. The best way to set up any campaign or one-shot if you have a chaotic group is to build all their tasks that they need to do bare-bones, and then flesh it out when you get there. I am currently running a campaign about a dark god and only one weapon able to kill him. The sword was shattered into 5 pieces. First task was to negotiate with a collector in possession of the shard. Second task was to sneak into an elf village and steal the shard. Third task was a mountain they had to climb to get it, fourth was a sinkhole and system of caverns they had to get through, and the final shard they had to get into a dragons lair. Now that they got the last shard, they go to Moradin and reforge it. And finally, the final boss fight. These are all barebones encounters and I fleshed all of them out the week before. Don't worry too much about details at the beginning.
I used to do the same thing years ago. Full paragraphs of text, written in the "Gygaxian" narrative voice (which nobody uses anymore but everyone tried to use back in the 1970s and 80s).
But there is really no reason to do that. I know what my adventure is about. I wrote it. No one else is going to read it, so I don't have to explain anything. I just need reminders to help jog my memory of what I want to do. To that end, what I write down is much how I write out my lecture notes before teaching class (I am a university professor by day, DM by night/weekend). I don't write whole paragraphs out and read them aloud to the class... I make notes to remind myself of the facts and then I fill in the details from memory.
I also don't like things done in paragraphs of text because it takes too long to pick out important info. from paragraphs. You need to get the relevant facts quickly as a DM and so long sentences and paragraphs are not useful if you are just making notes to yourself.
I do the same thing with my notes in an adventure. For instance, from a couple of sessions ago, a small tomb they were going to investigate, I wrote this (Italics are the "read aloud" text -- that I do sometimes still and I do make that verbatim). Numbers were keyed on my version of the map.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Generally I make a lot of NPC's (probably too many) for the starting city, then I think about potential BBEG's and what they should be doing to forward their plan and how that plan would interact with the players. Then I make up a series of adventures, usually one more than it would take to level up. Most of the time the first adventure is seemingly unconnected to the main plot until later it's revealed that the first adventure had something to do with the BBEG in a roundabout way (Maybe the city was attacked because he/she displaced those monsters, or maybe the players have to protect a cart with something the BBEG wants on it). Then the next few till the level up are side-quests with maybe one adventure tying into the main plot (assuming you're starting at 3rd level. If not then it should be all side-quests except the first session). Then when they level up I create more encounters and usually expand upon some of the sidequests by making the BBEG of that side-quest a reoccurring villain if possible or having them deal with the evil organization from the side-quest. Once they hit level 5 (Or level 3 depending on the length of the campaign) I introduce the BBEG himself/herself or one of his/her lieutenants/right-hand man/woman doing something that the players must stop (attacking an ally, trying to summon something, stealing the important item, using intrigue to try to take over the royal court). Then rinse and repeat till they fight the BBEG of that arc. Once they do that I decide whether we can and whether we want to continue the campaign with a new arc. Also, try to tie in each character's backstory and give them their own mini arc/quest.
I tend to stay away from macguffins that stay macguffins for too long. The items should always have explainable mechanics or lore that makes that item useful to the BBEG or potentially the players. I generally don't like playing in full campaigns where the shtick is that a macguffin that's never going to be explained must be retrieved to stop the evil bad guy of evilness. Everyone has their reasons for doing something, even if those reasons are crazy to everyone else (EX: destroying the world because people never showed you enough empathy so you feel such a cruel world has no right to exist, an intelligent wizard who was driven mad after he was exposed to eldritch secrets and now seeks to "enlighten" everyone else with the knowledge of his master, or something simple like power or unrequited love). Not every villain has to be extremely complex but every villain should have some reason for their actions. Unless, the villain is a low intelligence demon then you can get away with their reasoning being "they're a demon".
call me Anna or Kerns, (she/her), usually a DM, lgbtq+ friendly
PART 1 - Short Answer:
I think for me, homebrewing a world and homebrewing an adventure have almost exclusively always been a separate process, whereby navigating and modifying a given world to match the needs of character backstories or desired one-off campaigns is the game of homebrewing an adventure.
PART 2 - Longer Answer:
I think the success of an enriching world takes time and just playing a lot; all we do is modular and every small "world" you build imparts new cities, guilds, NPCs, folklore, etc, which you can retool as you like in the future. Even a lot of your pre-built campaigns can be renamed, NPCs you're comfortable behind the wheel with reused etc. Unless you have the same play group for a decade or so I doubt players are going to pick up on a lot of your recycling and using it let's you relax and focus on all the finer renderings of a positive play experience for everybody.
PART 3 - A Valuable Resource:
If you're thinking about getting into homebrewing more transitioning out of pre-made stuff I hiiiiiighly recommend looking into a book (or small youtube series) called The Lazy Dungeon Master (by Sly Flourish)--I could write out how exactly it addresses some of your questions, but they wrote it better than I could so just check it out next time you're internet-spiraling/youtube spiraling.
twitter @nagourta // insta @midnightfolklore
My approach is to drop the players into a small, usually remote place that fits their characters. Which, due to the existence of at least one edgelord in every party, will usually be a crime-infested village for stranded souls. There, they will have a starting adventure that, while not already connected to any main-plot, brings them into contact with as many NPC's as possible, each of them either connected to a political faction of the region or a recent major event, for each of which I have a basic concept for a villain prepared. This gives my players a general idea of which routes are available. After the starting adventure, they can choose what to do next, although I often nudge them into directions that already seem more fitting than others (For example, in my current campaign, they considered to accompany a scientist whose main goal is to convince the large university of the country to broaden the field of 'relevant' science, which is currently limited to certain disciplines of Arcane Magic. However, the starting adventure had already established that not one member of the party was highly interested in politics, half of them being mostly concerned with nature and the other half having a loose concept of 'looking for a place in the world'. Accordingly the scientist questioned their interest and nudged them towards characters whose interests involved more traveling through the wild). I have rough ideas of the regions mapped out at the start of the campaign ('forest full of werebeasts', 'firbolg town that grows plums' and so on...) and from there I just etch things out as they make their way.
You get a wonderfull view from the point of no return.
-Terry Pratchett
There is noting wrong with doing it the way you are doing it as long as you come to terms with the fact, as you probably already have, that you might put a lot of work into something that never actually comes to fruition. I typically write out my adventures as if they were published adventures, more or less, and then come up with stuff on the fly if players deviate from the material that I have written. Most players are pretty good about picking up on adventure hooks and steering themselves toward the content. Sometimes players will surprise you. Once I dropped an adventure hook for a group of players to explore an old elven ruin and the first thing they found when they got there was a bunch of mutilated elves imprisoned in trees writhing in pain. One of my players just said "Ok, we're out of here." There goes about 12 hours of planning. Oh well.
One approach I tried is keep it really basic and loose as I play as a PC sometimes and know me and my party can mess up the DM's plans. Instead of making a set way to do a certain thing, make a basic idea you can branch off of if you need to