Hello!

So, I'm a fairly newer DM, and I was wondering about how to go about writing a campaign.

I've run Mines of Phandelver, and Curse of Strahd without any problems, and I want to start writing a campaign while we play Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

I've already decided that I want to set it in Faerun, because I'm familiar with the setting (having read some of the Drizzt books and doing research on my own), and I was wondering how one generally goes about starting and writing a campaign.

Thanks in advance.

The Marketplace has some really interesting modules that you can adjust to your characters and campaign as you want. I learned by giving myself less creating to do and used the modules to learn the rules myself so I didn't overwhelm myself by taking on all the hats at once.

Well first off you don't write a campaign you play a campaign. But you start off a campaign by creating a single adventure and then you play it to find out what happens. And then you do it again and again until you have a campaign. I know that doesn't sound very helpful and to some it may not be but it should be all you need. But just in case I am willing to help out some more. So the first thing you should do is come up with a premise and it doesn't have to be anything long or complicate, matter of fact it should be simple no more than one sentence. Something like "The villain wants to find the thing so they can do this ritual to make the princess fall in love with them." Then you tell your players what the freakin' premise is so they can make characters that will fit with the premise. Which is why you should figure out what kind of games your players like so you can come up with a premise that the players will actually like but that is out of the scope of this advice. After the premise pick a starting point...some random tavern in some random village and tell your players what that is so they can make sure their characters have a good in-fiction reason to be at some random tavern in some random village at the appointed hour. After that is is just about building adventures and if you need help with that then DM on Discord @ Auberginian#9015 and I will walk you through it.

I believe you can find some helpful tips here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLlUk42GiU2guNzWBzxn7hs8MaV7ELLCP_&v=e-YZvLUXcR8

That is quite literally the best advice I can give you. After that:

I don’t write a campaign. I don’t use a giant module. I have tons of smaller modules and a fleshed out campaign setting that I am very comfortable and familiar with. I know the NPCs, the factions, political powers, churches, etc. I know what they want and what they are willing to do to get it. All of that goes on in the world regardless of which choices the players make. If they decide to go deal with what the evil Duke is doing, that becomes their next adventure. If they decide to go do something else, that becomes their next adventure. When they get back, then hey will then find out what the evil Duke did. If they decide that interests them, then dealing with that becomes their next adventure.

I am constantly dropping opportunities for side quests or parallel adventures. Maybe one of the thieves’ guilds does something two days after a politician does something. Those two things may be completely unrelated to each other and unrelated to the quest they are currently on for one of the churches.

By having all of that stuff going on at once, it makes the world dynamic and allows the party to choose the course of their own adventure.

You may not have all of that put together, it took me more than two decades. But you can start to put that stuff together, just like I had to do in the beginning. It takes time, work, and dedication. But it all starts with one adventure. Pick two or three small modules that you really like, and drop hints for all three spaced out and let them pick the one they want to pursue, it hen have the other ones progress (or at least seem to) behind the scenes. Now, instead of following a railroad, they get to play in a sandbox.

Just pick a small Barony to start with, maybe a few small towns and some wilderness with a couple ruins. Just get a vague idea for things in your head, you don’t need every little detail, or even most of them. You only need one village to start with, and a rough idea of the other two. A couple small dungeons, maybe a few rooms each. Have at least two things happening. Tada! You have a small sandbox that could take your players months to get through while you curate more stuff for your collection.

Welcome to the other side of the DM’s screen, and good luck!

Look up Shawn Merwin’s articles here on DnDB called “Let’s Design an Adventure”. It was a very helpful series.  

I agree with what is said.  Everyone’s tendency is to write a story.  No.  That’s not writing for a game.  That’s writing for a book.  You have a one sentence premise.  Then you design encounters that support that premise.   And rip those encounters right off from other places.  Replace enemies and settings as you see fit.  You can populate the town with whatever NPCs you like.  Then the PCs interactions with all these encounters is what creates the story.  So I recommend keeping a stockpile of encounters on hand.  You should be able to “see” a session or two out to see which encounters make the most sense to put in front of them.

Another bit of advice: It feels dramatic and awesome to plan encounters where they meet a high level enemy, but don’t fight him, or he escapes them to fight them another day.  Don’t.  Players will WRECK your clever plan.  They will doggedly pursue this enemy until either they die or he does in that session.  RPGs are just different than movies.

If they’re up against a plot, it needs to be what’s going on despite your adventurer’s existence. Cultists set to assassinate the king on the first of the month?  Adventurers who took an extra long rest on the road and are rolling into town on the 2nd arrive in a city abuzz with the death of their king. If the villains aren’t stopped, it just changes the nature of the next encounter.  You can steer a party into an encounter.  You can’t walk them through the story in your head. Because they’re creating the campaign as much as you are.

First, I'm going to front this with a caveat that I can only tell you how I do things. It's not the only way. It's not even the best way for everyone, it's just the best way for me. Eventually you'll find your own style.

• Don't write a campaign. Write a single Adventure.
• Don't write an adventure write a Situation.

• A situation consists of:
  • A collection of Agencies - people and factions who are involved in the situation. The Party will one such, the opponents will be another. There can be multiple other agencies involved, some of which can be opponents, or allies, or neutral third parties. Don't make too many. It takes fewer than you think to make a situation interesting, and not to many more to make the situation chaotic. When you start, simple Good Guys & Bad Guys is sufficient.
  • A central Conflict. All agencies will want something ( the Party wants to rescue the blacksmith's daughter, the goblins want to sacrifice her to consecrate their new lair). Where those desires collide, you have the conflict. Map out possible Resolutions - the conflict will be over when one of these happens: the goblins sacrifice their hostage, the Party rescues her, the Party quits, the Party is all dead.
  • Give all your non-Party Agencies some personality: what do they know, what do they believe, what are their resources, what are the tactics they like to use, what are the tactics they will use in an emergency, what are the tactics they will never use, when will they quit the conflict. Give notable NPCs a single distinctive quirk, for now - others will come out naturally in play later if they show up in multiple scenes, but keep your options open until then.
• Figure out some possible resources. What are the NPCs/Factions not involved in the conflict who the Party might be able to call up for information, magic, equipment, or services. Perhaps other Agencies might be able to call upon them as well. In some cases, maybe they will only lend aid to one faction, or another, but not both. Sometimes these resources are only available at a cost, or by incurring a debt, or to discharge a debt because they owe the Party. Bargaining and deals for information and services is a gold mine for the DM to sow in future adventure hooks.
• Sit down and figure out what each non-Party agency will try and do next. Where those action intersect, you have a conflict.
  • When that conflict involves the Party, you have an Encounter. All sides involve will try and succeed with their plans, and thwart the plans of other factions. That can involve combat ( the Party tries to kill or drive off the assassins who are trying to kill the Baron's son ), or be completely social ( the Party is trying to convince the King to pull troops back from the border to deescalate the threat of war, while the court Vizer is advocating for a first strike, and both are arguing against each other in court,using Persuasion, Deception, Intimidation, appeals to reason, appeals to vanity, blackmail, etc.  ). 
  • When that conflict doesn't involve the Party, the DM gets to figure out how the conflict turns out ( DM fiat, roll a die, etc. ) - but the events might have effects of the larger world, and the Party might hear about it. In fact, it's better if they do, and it provides information about the other agencies involved.
• Flowchart out ahead what you think are the probable moves/conflicts/resolutions that will happen in the situation, but don't get out too far. As many steps as you think you might play through in the next session, and no further. Plan for different possible outcomes for conflicts - which is why it's a flowchart, not a list.
• Where you can be reasonably sure that an encounter involving the Party is likely to happen, sit down and do some encounter design. Well thought out, designed, and polished encounters are typically better than the things you have to improvise. Same for locations.

• Throw the flowchart away! You won't need it, and it won't be particularly useful. Your Players may not adhere to what you predict ( in fact it's guaranteed that they'll go off what you expect at least part of the time ). The flowchart is only useful as a tool to help you figure out what encounters it is worth your while to spend some design time and polish on.

• For each step, or "beat", again, figure out what each agency will try and do ( that's DM role playing ) and see where your points of conflict will occur. Again, make choices as to what happens where the Party isn't involved. The Party gets to play out the encounters which involve them.
• Repeat the above step, until the conflict is resolved. If you're really good, or really lucky, what you and the Players role play out one step at a time will have a lot of overlap with your flowchart predictions.

Some general advice:

• Someone at the table should be taking meticulous notes. That's the canon. It's usually the DM - but a Player can be appointed Chronicler.
• Practice improvisation! You'll need it! The Players can take things off in directions you hadn't considered. Don't panic, just remember the loop: figure out what all the agencies will try and do next, figure out where those action collide, resolve those actions, repeat. You can run a whole adventures with zero planning if you've designed your Agencies and Conflict well.
• Have a handful of optional Events in your back pocket. These are happenings which come from the outside which affect the conflict, but aren't directly caused by any of the agencies. These can be complications which make the conflict more complex ( someone else becomes involved, the Party has to now operate under a restriction they hadn't planned upon, like no in the compound can be killed ), or outside events ( a storm hits the port city ), or even timed events ( the mercenaries will get reinforcement in 3 days, you had better take them out before then! ). These are used to speed up the pace of play, or slow it down, or spice it up. Use these optionally, as needed.

Good luck! :)

What Vedexent said. They just told you what I do (except the flow chart, but I got experience for that) only they told you way better than I did.

Everyone has already told you NOT to write a campaign, but to write individual adventures that are modular and can be tweaked and fitted together. I know that’s not what your post is about, so I’m going to try to answer your question, even though I see the wisdom in all the above posts.

The biggest issue with a campaign is your players. They don’t want to be railroaded. And the best way to not railroad the players is to have the adventure be about THEM. So that’s a problem. Assuming you already know the players who are going to be in this campaign, this is what I would do.

Get each of the players to write up a character they want to play with a detailed backstory. Then use those backstories to write the campaign, touching on and resolving the players conflicts and desires. Dwarven Fighter wants to reclaim his hereditary throne? Plot arc 1, done. Rogue wants to get vengeance for her murdered family? Plot arc 2, done. Then find a way to weave them all together with NPC’s Or locations tied to multiple arcs to bridge them.

MajorPuddles brings up a good point.

We're all advising you not to set out to write a campaign, but to write Adventures or Situations which become Adventures, which will becomes a Campaign -  and I still stand by that.

However, having some idea how to connect Adventures into a Campaign is also a good idea.

There's a couple of different ways to set it up. 

1. Episodically. This is how a lot of television/streaming shows are written. Each Adventure is self-contained. This week's Adventure has no connection to next week's Adventure, other than it's the same Party which is experiencing both. You could almost shuffle the order of these Adventures ( re-balancing each episode for the Party's level at the time ), and you would have very little effect on the overall Campaign. You'd see this sort of thing if the Party is a group of mercenaries, for example. Each week is just another contract. 
2. Connected Story Arcs: Each Adventure is connected to the next, and all have a common back story, or overall Narrative. The Party needs to find the 5 mystical macguffins to open the wards which keep the celestial prisoner bound. Each adventure is semi-independent, in that the central conflict is different for each, and the antagonists might differ from chapter to chapter, but the ending of one feeds directly into the beginning of the next. Plus you can have NPCs and antagonists span multiple sub-adventures.
3. Complex Story Arcs: There's more than one Adventure plot ongoing at any given time. Some of these can be a series of connected story arcs. Some of these can be stand-alone episodes/side-quests. Adventures get put on hold, and then re-activated ( or not ... sometimes adventure threads just get dropped ). This works best if you have Players that keep pretty good Campaign notes - as they'll track all the various "jobs" they have on the go.

I personally like #3. If you keep feeding the Party plot hooks, and they bite on a couple, you'll end up with #3. Even if there are strings of connected story arcs ( there can be more than one in play at a time, and no one series of connected adventures has to last for the length of the entire campaign ), there will likely also be episodic adventures sprinkled all over the place as well.

I do like MajorPuddles suggestion of incorporating parts of the Characters' goals in as story arcs - probably as episodic Adventures. However, there's a danger here that you need to guard against. If a Character's motive for being an adventurer is a particular goal, and you allow them to achieve that goal, why would they stay with the Party? Don't deny them that resolution, but if you want to go down this path, you need to make sure that you give that Character opportunity to develop other motivations for continuing as an adventurer, even if their original goal is met. You can't force it, as that's up the Player, and what resonates with them, and what will motivate their Character, but if make aspects of each Adventure personal for Characters ( not every Adventure has to have personal elements for every Character, but every Character should occasionally have personal elements pop up ), and chances are they latch onto some of these as new Character motives.

Or, alternatively, you can realize that there's a chance that Players will change out Characters who have come to the end of the adventuring careers and settle down, with fresh new conflicted Characters. There's nothing wrong with that, either.

What's been written above is good advice, but to go against the grain here slightly, there's nothing wrong with writing an outline of the major plot points you expect for your campaign ahead of time. It's not useful for sandbox or episodic campaigns, but for any campaign that will have a one or more long-term plot arcs, it's a must. Ignoring the need for this outline, and stringing together a series of adventures post-facto, won't do you any favors as far as continuity and cohesion are concerned.

If you're writing a story arc with a single major villain, or with several powerful factions all vying for the same goal, you can and should outline what steps they might take to achieve their goals without the intervention of the PCs. If the PCs don't intervene, then all goes according to plan. If they do, the key is to be flexible, and following advice others mentioned above, decide how these antagonists and various factions will react.

A few other pieces of advice.

• Don't run a sandbox. It's a nightmare to plan for, and ultimately most players don't want it anyway. Instead, present your players with a strong central premise they all agree on; that way, you can be sure they buy into the campaign, and they'll create characters that fit the premise.
• Try your best not to plan anything your players will never see. If you do, keep it stored away for another time. Don't waste your time on minor details.
• Make sure you know what your players want. Ask them.

Most has been said already. The way I go about it is:

1. Create an over arching theme that the entire campaign is about.
2. Create an red line over arching story line/story beats. You can stretch these out spanning any level range. I got that one ready for the entire range of lvl 1 to 20. But if something happens it can be moved around to come to completion within a few sessions from now if need be.
3. Create adventure arcs that are loosely connected to the overall theme. You can create general outlines for adventures for every level range. Just don't flesh them out yet until you get closer and make it fit to what has been going on. Having a general idea of what is going to occur at some point or another lets you do some really cool subtle foreshadowing. Also allows you to tie in the overarching story beats at any given moment. Depending on how the PC's are interested in it. It can be in their face or just loosely lingering in the background. Just so the players are always aware of it and never fully forget about it. It sux in video games when there is a main quest and you go off side questing for 80 hours and forget about the main threat. That isn't how I run my dnd table. In DND everything has repercussions. The world doesn't stop moving just because the PC's decided to go off do other things and ignore the big threat.
4. If you have bad guys... Create a time table in which they achieve certain key steps towards their plan. These will happen and create conflict and drama for the PC's to interact with. And if the PC's werent around when it happened. This is a great and easy way to make sure your bad guy is always doing stuff. And letting you think about the outcome and when they encounter the PC's for conflict/drama.

Also the campaign doesn't have to be about your players. it entirely depends on the type of game you run. In most of the games played at my table... No attention is given to character backstories. If they come to me with more than half a page I ignore it entirely. Most of the character development and ideas occur during play. The dice deciding a big part of the PC's personality/phobia's etc while actually playing the game. I still believe the older style of play from the 2e days offer far more roleplay then the modern day setups. Which are far more forced, scripted and limited.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbbm5dLXGyI&list=PLsHhMRkG9uA40g9hoNXmjtvtEhJ-16TKZ

I know everybody's given a lot of good advice, but I'm just going to give my #1 tip for campaign writing: don't plan more than a few sessions ahead, especially at first! Make sure every session is a fun adventure that can stand on its own. Later on, you can tie it all together with a main villain behind everything or some such, but for now, take it dungeon by dungeon. The rest will come!

Just to react to a couple of recent posts, and frame the conflicting advice ...

I think we're all proposing the same basic structure.

I think where we differ, is the amount of planning ahead we find optimum for our own Campaigns.

Writing the Campaign as you go gives you the most flexibility. Writing as you go is not the same as a sandbox. With the technique I've described, the bad guys still have their moves every iteration. The world, and the conflict you started with, still progresses, no matter what the Party does.  This technique does, however, have a higher danger of losing cohesion, if the GM isn't tracking things carefully, taking meticulous notes, and if the Conflict and the Agencies aren't well designed. To use this successfully, you put your design efforts in the world and the NPCs, and into role playing the NPCs/factions in "real time".

Writing an Outline gives you the most cohesion, gives you the best overall tracking of the Campaign, allows you to easily plan literary devices like foreshadowing & planned reversals,  and allows you to pre-plan the pacing of your game. However, it runs the highest risk of wasted GM effort, as the Players run off the planned script. This is almost guaranteed to happen, and the more broadly spanning the outline, the higher the chance of this - writing an overall Campaign outline is almost doomed to not having its first draft look anything like what happens. There is a secondary danger here, if the GM sees large swathes of their planning being rendered pointless by Player choices, and that's railroading: forcing the Characters' actions, or moving events and encounters around to make sure what you planned for happens ( the "quantum ogre" tactic ). To use this technique successfully, you put your design efforts into building the plotted events, and writing, re-writing, and re-re-re-writing your Outline over and over.

Neither technique is incapable of doing what the other does, it's just more work. You can have foreshadowing, plot reversals, and pace management if you write as you go. It just takes different techniques, and you have learn how to do this dynamically: foreshadow things you think will probably happen, the Party will notice the ones that connect; develop techniques for speeding up or slowing down game pace on-the-fly; etc. You can maintain flexibility and agility with an outline. You just have to be willing to throw out your outline and re-write it every time the Party takes a left turn and goes off the map.

In fact, I would argue the write-as-you-go technique that I described is actually writing an outline, it's just writing that outline 3-4 steps ahead of the Party, and no more. That loses you some of the benefits of long term planning, but it saves you tons of re-write work.

It's a question of personal style, and where you want to put your design efforts. With write-as-you-go, you need to be constantly evaluating, reacting, designing NPCs, taking meticulous notes, and learning how to improvise on the fly. With outlines, you need to write, re-write, and re-re-write constantly; that's the only way to avoid that is to fall into the trap of railroading your Players.

One other thing. I disagree with the sentiment "It sux in video games when there is a main quest and you go off side questing for 80 hours and forget about the main threat" - the implication here being that it's bad if the Players go off on a different plot thread that you had predicted. I think that's OK; they just decided to have a different Campaign that you had envisioned. That's their right; it's their Adventure. I agree completely that every Player choice should have repercussions in the world, and if they leave the main quest, the antagonists have free reign to do what they will, and there will be in-world repercussions. But that's the Party's choice. As a GM, you can just roll with the punches ( if you're writing as you go ), or you need to create a new outline ( if you're using outlines ). If you force, or script, the directions the Party goes, you don't need Players. You need a publisher. 

Quote from Vedexent >>

 

One other thing. I disagree with the sentiment "It sux in video games when there is a main quest and you go off side questing for 80 hours and forget about the main threat" - the implication here being that it's bad if the Players go off on a different plot thread that you had predicted. I think that's OK; they just decided to have a different Campaign that you had envisioned. That's their right; it's their Adventure. I agree completely that every Player choice should have repercussions in the world, and if they leave the main quest, the antagonists have free reign to do what they will, and there will be in-world repercussions. But that's the Party's choice. As a GM, you can just roll with the punches ( if you're writing as you go ), or you need to create a new outline ( if you're using outlines ). If you force, or script, the directions the Party goes, you don't need Players. You need a publisher. 

That's the best thing about TTRPGs. Some (video) games don't allow you to advance unless you follow the given path. In TTRPGs, you can do what you want even if it's only a long string of "side quests".

It does take a lot of work no matter how you plan your game. 

Quote from Vedexent >>

ntiment "It sux in video games when there is a main quest and you go off side questing for 80 hours and forget about the main threat" - the implication here being that it's bad if the Players go off on a different plot thread that you had predicted. I think that's OK; they just decided to have a different Campaign that you had envisioned. That's their right; it's their Adventure. I agree completely that every Player choice should have repercussions in the world, and if they leave the main quest, the antagonists have free reign to do what they will, and there will be in-world repercussions. But that's the Party's choice. As a GM, you can just roll with the punches ( if you're writing as you go ), or you need to create a new outline ( if you're using outlines ). If you force, or script, the directions the Party goes, you don't need Players. You need a publisher. 

 that's not what i meant at all though.

What i notice in a lot of games is that the big events apparently aren't big and threatening at all. When you go around and do something else. Then not even a single NPC has rumors, news or something mentioning the big event. players always go off track at some point or another. problem is when the "side content" happens. yet the entire world seems to stand still waiting for the PC's to do their stuff. That is what happens with video games. Only the Witcher 3 had NPC's around the world mentioning the big bad war and how it impacts their lives etc. In most other games the player just goes off and the world stops and only focuses on this side content. This is a massive failure in world building and action vs reaction. That is what I say needs to be prevented. If your players go off doing other stuff. Then the big events should just keep on happening regardless. The world needs to keep reacting to it. Just because the players don't want to interact with it, doesn't mean it suddenly disappears.

In my current campaign. the idea was to have the blood war...devils vs demons in the background and gradually ramp it up. Well the players went full into that straight away. Meaning other story aspects were pushed to the background. But those events didn't suddenly stop occurring however.

As for the different approaches to preparing campaigns. Even the longer stretches are nothing more than broad strokes and very flexible. I doubt you can over prepare. All the stuff you already did can be adjusted, re-fluffed and used elsewhere in different context. Nothing you prepare is ever truly a waste. Heck I've brushed off the dust from notebooks that are 20 years old and use elements of dungeons/items prepared back then.

Ah - if you mean the world needs to seem to be alive, that there need to be events going on around the Characters which are not directly related to them at all, and that the Player choices as to what to pursue and what to ignore should have obvious effects on the world, then we agree 100%. Just because the Characters go over there doesn't - or shouldn't - mean that that events here just stop.

And I agree you can always use material that you prepared and then the Characters bypassed ( heck, you can use stuff they didn't bypass with a little cosmetic work ). I didn't mean to imply that the outline re-writes were completely wasted - although that is how it sounds, re-reading what I wrote. 

It should be pretty clear that I prefer the write-as-you-go method - but in the end, whatever approach works for them is the method a GM should be using.

There's one other aspect of write-as-you-go that I like very much, that not everyone will like: I don't know where the story is going either. I like the surprise, as much as ( perhaps more ) than my Players. If I've outlined well, I lose at least some of that surprise. But not every GM likes surprises, so that might not be for them. 

Yes that is what I meant. So we agree 100% in regards to your first two paragraphs.

My experience is that you always "write as you go" regardless how broad the outlines are. Players often do their own stuff for a while. Meaning plenty of improvisations or creating investigations/short adventure arcs no matter what. Pretty much leading to new unforeseen content that broadens and fleshes out everything. It is just easier in my opinion to improvise when you got some broad strokes and framework in place.

Instead of dropping in a Hag side story and it being there for the sake of being there. With the broad strokes you can make it a more cohesive fit. My broad strokes is something of multi layers in photoshop. Tiamat cult cells spread around the world being active. With that the other layer I added was Blood War. Where there is Tiamat there are devils. Where there are devils there are demons. Starting with a war in the valley the party started. Beyond that I don't know the exact details either. I just have some ideas for various locations they might visit should they go there. A basic understanding of some factions, cities and what's going on in there. And what the players do will make me adjust along the way.

It is more about having a grasp of a theme and atmosphere and go from there. One of the players at my table said they want to visit their family at some point. Saying that they decided an element of their backstory. How some relatives died that caused them to run away. And eventually during their travels grew and want to seek means to aid the family. For this arc I currently only have: "Nautical, Pirate Princes that are causing trouble with the Marine, her family is part of the council and in charge of the marine, pirates are harassing the trade routes, a Young Kraken or Aboleth?, some mystical weather at sea will cause the party's ship to crash into the Astral. Leading them to other realms dropping them wherever I want". That is pretty much my broad strokes for such an arc. And the same applies to the larger arc for a campaign.

Even when running modules here and there as adventure arcs means it is mostly about understanding the theme and main NPC of that arc. Everything else gets shuffled around and dropped in as deemed needed. This is also why I like the new format WotC uses in adventures such as the Gadzeteer. Just giving a 1 or 2 sentence long idea. How you as DM turn it into a full arc is up to whatever happens.

As for surprises... I notice that the past months I've grown more and more indifferent about what the players decide to do. I just go along with whatever and don't fuss over it one way or the other. When I was younger there was the mistake of trying to railroad as with many new DM's. The less I cared, the better it got :P

I am new ( half a year of being a gm ) my players cant all be at the game at the same time, how should I deal with this without kicking them out or not playing with them?

For me, when I started my campaign I had a 1 or two sentence premise of the major issue confronting the party.  I created a simple adventure with a hook for said theme. Based on their responses, I would modify what to do and when to drop in more things.  Eventually, I got to where I am now where there is a resolution that needs to be done (defeat these set people, recover said items etc) which become different miletsones for the campaign. Throw in a few small character arcs to keep each person tied into the story and voila! you have a campaign. 

I think the biggest thing is for the DM to be flexible enough to adjust to how the characters are pursuing things. No set solutions so you allow them to create the solutions and approaches. Sometimes that means they do things in a round about what or like in a recent game of mine, they shy away from what could be an actual easy solution.  But that is the fun. Let the characters be themselves and let them drive the story.  You just help control the mechanics along the way.