Lately I’ve been trying to draw inspiration to start a campaign (I seem to always have starting ideas and never complete them) and I really don’t know how to start. I’m not so sure what actually is a good idea, or where to even start as far as plot or even locations. I’ve looked up specific things online as far as structuring the campaign, but nothing I’m coming up with really feels like something worth pursuing. If anyone has any tips or tricks as far as worldbuilding or storytelling, I would be super grateful!
I'm not writing this to be snarky or condescending, but have you actually read what the Dungeon Master's Guide says in Chapter One re: Creating a campaign? Start small and let the big picture develop after you get an impression of the party from levels 1-3. Treat the levels 1-3 (heck even four, but make sure they really earn 5) as training wheels for both you and the players. Mechanically speaking, PCs literally can't do much between level 1-2 and 2-3.* So scale those introductory scenarios accordingly.
Don't think of it as World Building at those levels. You need a relatively simple setting, with some challenges scaled to the party's ability. That's it. Once you run them through a few encoutners in what might well be their back yard, you can get a sense of what sort of world they'll want to venture forth in.
So many new DMs get stuck in this "world building" trap. Take the early levels to learn what you and the players ultimately want in your game, then you can start mapping out what exists beyond the two days ride confines.
You could also run something published. There are whole campaign books written that do all the work for you. Or, in my opinion, the levels 1-3 adventures in Explorer's Guide to Wildemont are pretty adaptable to a "generic fantasy world" and I think are some of the best scaled adventures brewed with a little bit of everything to them out of all the WotC produced stuff.
*EDIT: By the little a PC can do in levels 1-3 I'm not just writing about the capacity of a low level character. Rather, I'm more writing to the relatively low XP threshold before levels. Generally a 5e character will reach 2nd level well within the parameters of what's sometimes defined as an "adventuring Day" and will definitely be at level three by the end of a "Adventuring Week." I don't think they're explicitly described as such anywhere, but I always use them as sort of the "tutorial levels."
Start small and let the big picture develop after you get an impression of the party from levels 1-3. Treat the levels 1-3 (heck even four, but make sure they really earn 5) as training wheels for both you and the players. Mechanically speaking, PCs literally can't do much between level 1-2 and 2-3. So scale those introductory scenarios accordingly.
This. Some of the best stories start with a farm or a fishing village for a reason. Start small and build from there. World Building Tolkien like fantasy worlds is just gonna burn you out at first. See what you like and what you don't and build on top. Some good tools: https://watabou.github.io/city-generator/ and (for when you go bigger) https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/
And I can't stress enough how starting with a pre-written can be helpful for new DMs, it just helps you get the feel of what you really need and how DM works for you. DMing is not writing a book and finding out your playstyle is key to understand how you should world build.
If I’m being honest, I completely forgot about that section of the DMs handbook! Thank you for that, I will definitely be trying to do something more lowkey instead of immediately going crazy in the worldbuilding department :)
I always refer people to the video game Tyranny for my number one lesson in campaign writing: write an adventure first, then build the world around it. Without spoiling too much, the player's goal in Tyranny is to deliver a message and then see it is acted upon within a week or two. This means players don't get time to dilly-dally but will be able to when the prologue is seen to. When the message has been acted upon, they're free to do things at their own pace, whilst still having an overarching goal. This also applies to another one of Obsidian's games, Fallout: New Vegas (which, handily, is also about being a courier and delivering a 'message').
The point of this is to say that the world exists but it doesn't matter if the players aren't fully invested in their adventure first. Write the general premise, the major beats, locations and characters, and then build around it. The last thing you want to do, which is what I did, was write how the main city's infrastructure came to be and have none of it be meaningful in an adventure. In my Land of Nod setting most players will not ask about the structural integrity of a tower that can reach the Heavens, or the logisitics of moving grain from one end of the city to the other, or cuisine differing between neighbouring districts.
BigLizard has the right idea for this, but generally the advice given by others is also bears repeating especially when - like me - you have difficulty committing to an idea.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
For sure start small, take all those half formed ideas you had, plant hooks for them in your world as it expands, let the players follow the hooks at their discretion. You can fully develope your ideas from half-formed to full questlines once the players go for one, that way you don't waste effort on content they're not interested in. Not to mention, planning content too far ahead of the players doesn't take into account player choice and player actions, which should 100% have an effect on the final story. You actively shouldn't "finish" content before running it-- it should be an ongoing process, with heroes changing their plans in reaction to the villain's actions and (arguably more importantly) vice versa.
Also, feel free not to have a "main plot" immediately out of the gate. There's nothing wrong with "save the world" plots, however they are somewhat railroad-y and at early levels the scope and scale feels off for the level of play the players are at. Small scale adventures-- bandits cutting off trade along a major road, lycanthropes taking over a town to infect the strongest and capture the rest, stuff like that makes players feel more attached to the world and its inhabitants if they're allowed to make their own choices and interact with the world organically. THEN maybe after levels 1-6 of them doing whatever adventures they want across the gradually unfolding world, THEN if you want to unveil an existential threat to that world they've grown attached to, watch them trip over themselves to save that world.
TL;DR; there is no "done" when it comes to preparing a campaign. And that's a good thing. You should always be operating from a position of incompleteness, because gameplay is what completes your work.
It sounds like you are putting the cart before the horse here. As a new DM, your priorities are to nail down the rules, learn the monsters and how to fight with them tactically, and get good at creating dungeons and encounters.
Once you have those down, the meat of the game that is, then you can start tying it together with a bit of worldbuilding and some storytelling narratives. Start small and don’t go overboard.
When I’m world building, I use a system that I suppose you could call “Queued Layering”. So for instance, the topmost “layer” of the world would be a large body of land and/or water, right? We will call that a Quadrant. Ok so we have this quadrant, it is a square area say 50x50 miles, could be 100x100 whatever works for you… We have a mountain range here, a forest there, etc etc. Ok. We have a quadrant the players can explore.
Now, let’s create another quadrant for the “queue”. We have a second quadrant made and in the queue, and whenever the players reach the edge of your current one from any cardinal direction, flop down the queued one and BAM your world just expanded. Now queue up another.
Let’s move down a layer. What are the sub-layers of a quadrant? Well you have dungeons, towns, and other interest points right? Queue those up too. Create placeholders for them on your quadrant, and flop down towns and dungeons as needed from your queue when it becomes relevant to the players, then refresh these queues.
You can then sub-layer towns and dungeons from there; shops, NPCs, factions, government, monsters, treasure, etc etc. you can be as detailed or otherwise as you want. Using random generators (there are tons of good ones out there) can take a tremendous amount of legwork out of all this too, take what it spits out into consideration then tweak it and queue it up.
As far as storytelling, well you have this world being created as the players venture around, how is it reacting to their adventures? What motives are the NPCs pursuing? Let your players take a load off you by telling the story for you as you facilitate.
I'm not writing this to be snarky or condescending, but have you actually read what the Dungeon Master's Guide says in Chapter One re: Creating a campaign? Start small and let the big picture develop after you get an impression of the party from levels 1-3.
I personally use the "Mileu" concept to world-building coined by Gygax in the 1st edition DMG.
MidnightPlat and BigLizard are talking about the same thing here. In world building, this is called inside out. Outside in also has advantages, but I don't think they align with your goals.
Google something like "inside out world building vs outside in" if you're interested, but this blog post (though not D&D specific) is a representative result, and a good introduction:
*I found that blogpost with a brief google search; to my knowledge, I have no affiliations with the author of the post or the company or companies involved with hosting, nor will I receive any type of compensation for recommending it.
I'm not writing this to be snarky or condescending, but have you actually read what the Dungeon Master's Guide says in Chapter One re: Creating a campaign? Start small and let the big picture develop after you get an impression of the party from levels 1-3. Treat the levels 1-3 (heck even four, but make sure they really earn 5) as training wheels for both you and the players. Mechanically speaking, PCs literally can't do much between level 1-2 and 2-3.* So scale those introductory scenarios accordingly.
Yeah, in my homebrew world, I just drew a map and wrote one sentence about each continent. Then, when my characters chose where they wanted to start, I fleshed out that continent.
You could start even smaller with just a settlement or two, and expand, as you get ideas and inspiration from your players and other sources, and see what your players want.
Worlds often start pretty generic (at least mine do), but eventually, they grow into their own, unique thing.
You can start with a set of objectives you want the campaign to cover, or path to a favorite type of enemy like the typical lets go kill the dragon. But you can fill that in with any thing, lets go kill the king because we are an evil party etc. My campaign I am running now I had rough idea of what I wanted to do wrote the beginning and ending of the campaign then just found an open world map and filling in the details as I go.
We all know the players will go off script quick so you don't have to have it all figured out at the jump. I try to stay a week to two ahead of where we are at, but not killing myself to write a book. And when you get lost find a side quest or something out of one of the campaigns and run that for a bit. I found a map and campaign that fit into a four day break the players have on waiting on something so we are just going to run that book for the next month.
Also engage your players on what they would like to do. I have one guy that wanted to fight in arenas with his character, guess what we have bloodsport going on in the campaign, Arena's everywhere. Another guy wanted to be some Lord fancy pants, now the nobles and lords will only talk to this guy.
You need to have a central starting theme or something to bring the party together, but beyond that it can be what ever you want. I tend to follow, Role play session (town/talking with people) Get a quest(s), movement/battle session, small battle session, big battle session, Party session/character development training.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Lately I’ve been trying to draw inspiration to start a campaign (I seem to always have starting ideas and never complete them) and I really don’t know how to start. I’m not so sure what actually is a good idea, or where to even start as far as plot or even locations. I’ve looked up specific things online as far as structuring the campaign, but nothing I’m coming up with really feels like something worth pursuing. If anyone has any tips or tricks as far as worldbuilding or storytelling, I would be super grateful!
I'm not writing this to be snarky or condescending, but have you actually read what the Dungeon Master's Guide says in Chapter One re: Creating a campaign? Start small and let the big picture develop after you get an impression of the party from levels 1-3. Treat the levels 1-3 (heck even four, but make sure they really earn 5) as training wheels for both you and the players. Mechanically speaking, PCs literally can't do much between level 1-2 and 2-3.* So scale those introductory scenarios accordingly.
Don't think of it as World Building at those levels. You need a relatively simple setting, with some challenges scaled to the party's ability. That's it. Once you run them through a few encoutners in what might well be their back yard, you can get a sense of what sort of world they'll want to venture forth in.
So many new DMs get stuck in this "world building" trap. Take the early levels to learn what you and the players ultimately want in your game, then you can start mapping out what exists beyond the two days ride confines.
You could also run something published. There are whole campaign books written that do all the work for you. Or, in my opinion, the levels 1-3 adventures in Explorer's Guide to Wildemont are pretty adaptable to a "generic fantasy world" and I think are some of the best scaled adventures brewed with a little bit of everything to them out of all the WotC produced stuff.
*EDIT: By the little a PC can do in levels 1-3 I'm not just writing about the capacity of a low level character. Rather, I'm more writing to the relatively low XP threshold before levels. Generally a 5e character will reach 2nd level well within the parameters of what's sometimes defined as an "adventuring Day" and will definitely be at level three by the end of a "Adventuring Week." I don't think they're explicitly described as such anywhere, but I always use them as sort of the "tutorial levels."
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
This. Some of the best stories start with a farm or a fishing village for a reason. Start small and build from there. World Building Tolkien like fantasy worlds is just gonna burn you out at first. See what you like and what you don't and build on top. Some good tools: https://watabou.github.io/city-generator/ and (for when you go bigger) https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/
And I can't stress enough how starting with a pre-written can be helpful for new DMs, it just helps you get the feel of what you really need and how DM works for you. DMing is not writing a book and finding out your playstyle is key to understand how you should world build.
If I’m being honest, I completely forgot about that section of the DMs handbook! Thank you for that, I will definitely be trying to do something more lowkey instead of immediately going crazy in the worldbuilding department :)
I always refer people to the video game Tyranny for my number one lesson in campaign writing: write an adventure first, then build the world around it. Without spoiling too much, the player's goal in Tyranny is to deliver a message and then see it is acted upon within a week or two. This means players don't get time to dilly-dally but will be able to when the prologue is seen to. When the message has been acted upon, they're free to do things at their own pace, whilst still having an overarching goal. This also applies to another one of Obsidian's games, Fallout: New Vegas (which, handily, is also about being a courier and delivering a 'message').
The point of this is to say that the world exists but it doesn't matter if the players aren't fully invested in their adventure first. Write the general premise, the major beats, locations and characters, and then build around it. The last thing you want to do, which is what I did, was write how the main city's infrastructure came to be and have none of it be meaningful in an adventure. In my Land of Nod setting most players will not ask about the structural integrity of a tower that can reach the Heavens, or the logisitics of moving grain from one end of the city to the other, or cuisine differing between neighbouring districts.
BigLizard has the right idea for this, but generally the advice given by others is also bears repeating especially when - like me - you have difficulty committing to an idea.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
For sure start small, take all those half formed ideas you had, plant hooks for them in your world as it expands, let the players follow the hooks at their discretion. You can fully develope your ideas from half-formed to full questlines once the players go for one, that way you don't waste effort on content they're not interested in. Not to mention, planning content too far ahead of the players doesn't take into account player choice and player actions, which should 100% have an effect on the final story. You actively shouldn't "finish" content before running it-- it should be an ongoing process, with heroes changing their plans in reaction to the villain's actions and (arguably more importantly) vice versa.
Also, feel free not to have a "main plot" immediately out of the gate. There's nothing wrong with "save the world" plots, however they are somewhat railroad-y and at early levels the scope and scale feels off for the level of play the players are at. Small scale adventures-- bandits cutting off trade along a major road, lycanthropes taking over a town to infect the strongest and capture the rest, stuff like that makes players feel more attached to the world and its inhabitants if they're allowed to make their own choices and interact with the world organically. THEN maybe after levels 1-6 of them doing whatever adventures they want across the gradually unfolding world, THEN if you want to unveil an existential threat to that world they've grown attached to, watch them trip over themselves to save that world.
TL;DR; there is no "done" when it comes to preparing a campaign. And that's a good thing. You should always be operating from a position of incompleteness, because gameplay is what completes your work.
It sounds like you are putting the cart before the horse here. As a new DM, your priorities are to nail down the rules, learn the monsters and how to fight with them tactically, and get good at creating dungeons and encounters.
Once you have those down, the meat of the game that is, then you can start tying it together with a bit of worldbuilding and some storytelling narratives. Start small and don’t go overboard.
When I’m world building, I use a system that I suppose you could call “Queued Layering”. So for instance, the topmost “layer” of the world would be a large body of land and/or water, right? We will call that a Quadrant. Ok so we have this quadrant, it is a square area say 50x50 miles, could be 100x100 whatever works for you… We have a mountain range here, a forest there, etc etc. Ok. We have a quadrant the players can explore.
Now, let’s create another quadrant for the “queue”. We have a second quadrant made and in the queue, and whenever the players reach the edge of your current one from any cardinal direction, flop down the queued one and BAM your world just expanded. Now queue up another.
Let’s move down a layer. What are the sub-layers of a quadrant? Well you have dungeons, towns, and other interest points right? Queue those up too. Create placeholders for them on your quadrant, and flop down towns and dungeons as needed from your queue when it becomes relevant to the players, then refresh these queues.
You can then sub-layer towns and dungeons from there; shops, NPCs, factions, government, monsters, treasure, etc etc. you can be as detailed or otherwise as you want. Using random generators (there are tons of good ones out there) can take a tremendous amount of legwork out of all this too, take what it spits out into consideration then tweak it and queue it up.
As far as storytelling, well you have this world being created as the players venture around, how is it reacting to their adventures? What motives are the NPCs pursuing? Let your players take a load off you by telling the story for you as you facilitate.
MidnightPlat and BigLizard are talking about the same thing here. In world building, this is called inside out. Outside in also has advantages, but I don't think they align with your goals.
Google something like "inside out world building vs outside in" if you're interested, but this blog post (though not D&D specific) is a representative result, and a good introduction:
https://www.well-storied.com/blog/an-introduction-to-world-building
*I found that blogpost with a brief google search; to my knowledge, I have no affiliations with the author of the post or the company or companies involved with hosting, nor will I receive any type of compensation for recommending it.
Yeah, in my homebrew world, I just drew a map and wrote one sentence about each continent. Then, when my characters chose where they wanted to start, I fleshed out that continent.
You could start even smaller with just a settlement or two, and expand, as you get ideas and inspiration from your players and other sources, and see what your players want.
Worlds often start pretty generic (at least mine do), but eventually, they grow into their own, unique thing.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.This is great info…Thanks!
You can start with a set of objectives you want the campaign to cover, or path to a favorite type of enemy like the typical lets go kill the dragon. But you can fill that in with any thing, lets go kill the king because we are an evil party etc. My campaign I am running now I had rough idea of what I wanted to do wrote the beginning and ending of the campaign then just found an open world map and filling in the details as I go.
We all know the players will go off script quick so you don't have to have it all figured out at the jump. I try to stay a week to two ahead of where we are at, but not killing myself to write a book. And when you get lost find a side quest or something out of one of the campaigns and run that for a bit. I found a map and campaign that fit into a four day break the players have on waiting on something so we are just going to run that book for the next month.
Also engage your players on what they would like to do. I have one guy that wanted to fight in arenas with his character, guess what we have bloodsport going on in the campaign, Arena's everywhere. Another guy wanted to be some Lord fancy pants, now the nobles and lords will only talk to this guy.
You need to have a central starting theme or something to bring the party together, but beyond that it can be what ever you want. I tend to follow, Role play session (town/talking with people) Get a quest(s), movement/battle session, small battle session, big battle session, Party session/character development training.