I am currently working on my campaign titled: "The Void" and I would like to know if anyone had any tips on what to do and what not to do, because this is my first custom campaign.
I have one of my friends helping me with the technical stuff, while I mainly focus on the storyline, but there might be some stuff he missed.
Don’t think of the campaign as a story, but rather, a series of locations, NPCs, and potential plot points. It’s alright to have a general idea of the campaign’s climax, but don’t write out a play-by-play story. Instead, listen to your players and let THEM decide how to story should play out.
Start small. A village and environs. Don’t spend lots of time on lore and geography, your players won’t interact with most of it. Just build as you need, and as you go, or risk doing a lot of work for nothing.
Focus on a handful of important NPCs and build out their personality traits. That way, when your players interact with them, you can react and respond fluidly and with confidence. Also, the more you know about your NPCs, the easier they are to use as plot hooks at different parts of the campaign.
This is a general DM tip, not necessarily for world building:
NPCs should be memorable and easily recognizable. If you want the players to remember a NPC, you can give that NPC some unique quirk to make them stand out. There’s always a place in this world for complex, deep NPCs, but those details won’t be found out unless your players care about an NPC, for good or bad.
For example, my players decided to check out a tip about some ruffians near a tap house. Inside, they asked for a bartender and I came up with a guy on the spot: Ed, a perpetually drunk brewer who can’t remember anything for more than 5 minutes. (He wasn’t even a brewer until I composed that sentence.) The party loves him, and have referenced him several times in later sessions, despite only meeting him once. By making his surface-level personality simple and expressive, the party remembers and cares about this NPC.
Alternatively, if you want the party to remember an enemy, make them hurt the PCs, physically or emotionally. Killing (or trying to kill) a party mascot, gloating, or other annoying traits can really make your players hate the NPC, which is exactly what you want.
IF YOU WANT YOUR PLAYERS TO CARE ABOUT NPCS, MAKE THE NPCS MEMORABLE.
Some other posters have offered great advice, but let me add onto what they said:
- Start with a couple of locations and expand on your ideas for other parts of the world and the settlements in those places as the game goes on. Mapping out the regions of another continent is a pointless waste of your time if your players won't visit that continent until 30 sessions later.
- Make your enemies' plans, not your player characters'. You can't control what your player characters will do, so decide the baddies' plans and let your characters choose to interact with the plot, enemies, and the bad guys' plans. It is your players that steer the course of the campaign, after all.
Never try to plan too far ahead because then you get to the point where player choice can conflict with what you as the DM planned, and player choice should always matter.
I usually only plan content about 1-3 sessions in advance, and then you can plan more content between sessions based off what the players are doing.
My biggest bit of advice is to write the story of what has happened, not what is going to happen. The past is set, the future is uncertain, and writing even "when the players arrive in town, they will need somewhere to stay" as a reason for writing up an inn is inherently flawed; RAW, a character with the right background might seek accomodation from a guild they are part of, and remove your inn entirely.
As such, focus on Motivations and Plans, not storylines. The BBEG wants to raise an army of the dead, and the players first thing is the cleric saying "I want to bless the graveyard with holy water" and boom, your storyline is thrown into jeapordy, causing you to try and save it, whereas if you only have the motives, the BBEG will simply start looking elsewhere. You want building blocks, not complete models.
Let the players flesh out the world. Sometimes we envision how things will go and how players will interact and interpret what we create, and when that does not line up we feel flustered or that we failed.
Example: I create a NPC who was a shop keeper and council person. He was supposed to be a central persona in doling out quests etc. BUT when I used him to enforce a 'guide point' of my campaign (PCs wanted the town to provide all their gear needs which I don't do), he turned into their nemesis. They loved all the other council members but saw him as a jerk and enemy. So I had to flip from my first vision into something different to help move the story along. I know knew each time they interacted with him, the players would be negative. So, I turned him into the foil for the BBEG. Voila!
I am currently working on my campaign titled: "The Void" and I would like to know if anyone had any tips on what to do and what not to do, because this is my first custom campaign.
I have one of my friends helping me with the technical stuff, while I mainly focus on the storyline, but there might be some stuff he missed.
Thanks.
I think I'm cool.
Don’t think of the campaign as a story, but rather, a series of locations, NPCs, and potential plot points. It’s alright to have a general idea of the campaign’s climax, but don’t write out a play-by-play story. Instead, listen to your players and let THEM decide how to story should play out.
Start small. A village and environs. Don’t spend lots of time on lore and geography, your players won’t interact with most of it. Just build as you need, and as you go, or risk doing a lot of work for nothing.
Focus on a handful of important NPCs and build out their personality traits. That way, when your players interact with them, you can react and respond fluidly and with confidence. Also, the more you know about your NPCs, the easier they are to use as plot hooks at different parts of the campaign.
This is a general DM tip, not necessarily for world building:
NPCs should be memorable and easily recognizable. If you want the players to remember a NPC, you can give that NPC some unique quirk to make them stand out. There’s always a place in this world for complex, deep NPCs, but those details won’t be found out unless your players care about an NPC, for good or bad.
For example, my players decided to check out a tip about some ruffians near a tap house. Inside, they asked for a bartender and I came up with a guy on the spot: Ed, a perpetually drunk brewer who can’t remember anything for more than 5 minutes. (He wasn’t even a brewer until I composed that sentence.) The party loves him, and have referenced him several times in later sessions, despite only meeting him once. By making his surface-level personality simple and expressive, the party remembers and cares about this NPC.
Alternatively, if you want the party to remember an enemy, make them hurt the PCs, physically or emotionally. Killing (or trying to kill) a party mascot, gloating, or other annoying traits can really make your players hate the NPC, which is exactly what you want.
IF YOU WANT YOUR PLAYERS TO CARE ABOUT NPCS, MAKE THE NPCS MEMORABLE.
Some other posters have offered great advice, but let me add onto what they said:
- Start with a couple of locations and expand on your ideas for other parts of the world and the settlements in those places as the game goes on. Mapping out the regions of another continent is a pointless waste of your time if your players won't visit that continent until 30 sessions later.
- Make your enemies' plans, not your player characters'. You can't control what your player characters will do, so decide the baddies' plans and let your characters choose to interact with the plot, enemies, and the bad guys' plans. It is your players that steer the course of the campaign, after all.
- Whether you are homebrewing your entire world, or if you are making just a city or a faction, your players have already partially made it for you. DDB actually had an excellent article on this a while back.
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HERE.Have you read Chapter 1 of the DMG yet?
And Chapter 3 for your first adventure?
This. People like to proverbially shit on the DMG but it has some genuinely useful advice and tools for world building.
[REDACTED]
Never try to plan too far ahead because then you get to the point where player choice can conflict with what you as the DM planned, and player choice should always matter.
I usually only plan content about 1-3 sessions in advance, and then you can plan more content between sessions based off what the players are doing.
My biggest bit of advice is to write the story of what has happened, not what is going to happen. The past is set, the future is uncertain, and writing even "when the players arrive in town, they will need somewhere to stay" as a reason for writing up an inn is inherently flawed; RAW, a character with the right background might seek accomodation from a guild they are part of, and remove your inn entirely.
As such, focus on Motivations and Plans, not storylines. The BBEG wants to raise an army of the dead, and the players first thing is the cleric saying "I want to bless the graveyard with holy water" and boom, your storyline is thrown into jeapordy, causing you to try and save it, whereas if you only have the motives, the BBEG will simply start looking elsewhere. You want building blocks, not complete models.
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Let the players flesh out the world. Sometimes we envision how things will go and how players will interact and interpret what we create, and when that does not line up we feel flustered or that we failed.
Example: I create a NPC who was a shop keeper and council person. He was supposed to be a central persona in doling out quests etc. BUT when I used him to enforce a 'guide point' of my campaign (PCs wanted the town to provide all their gear needs which I don't do), he turned into their nemesis. They loved all the other council members but saw him as a jerk and enemy. So I had to flip from my first vision into something different to help move the story along. I know knew each time they interacted with him, the players would be negative. So, I turned him into the foil for the BBEG. Voila!
The Tome of Adventure Design by Matt Finch of Mythmere Games is pretty solid.
Thank you! Noted.
I think I'm cool.