I might not sure where this falls in your poll but my current method is prepping 1 ahead so I am not railroading where they are going all the way upto BBEG I react to what my players say and do. I treat levels like story arcs of a tv show. But handle each a bit differently.
One of my campaigns is called “ The Fall of Mirrea” so the arcs so far
level 1 - getting the group together
3/4 players start as party with the 4th being an Everyman character. So the first arc was this character being dragged out of his comfortable life and put on a road he could not return on. I only planned out 3 definite events/encounters that would happen, the rest driven by the players.
level 2 - testing the group dynamic in a dungeon
this was basically a pre planned dungeon crawl, less to move the plot but to give the players a breather between plot, learn more about the world, earn some coin, find a maguffin, end on cliff hanger. 95% pre planned in layout, but players were free in their approach.
level 3 - Do you want to rob a sky ship?
I have my players an objective and told them they were free to attempt it however they wanted. They talked with other about what they might need ( way on board, explosives, help, disguises etc) and as they did I listened and populated the city with options to allow them to get them. They got themselves in place to carry out their plan, then somebody beat them too it and started robbing the sky ship first. Whole thing ended with a fight in the antagonists vault (due to a player making an off hand ad-lib in session one about wanting to find the vault that did not exist when he said it) - completely unplanned from the point of giving them the objective, I told them they had 7 in game days . It was entirely reactive to how they planned to use their time.
Level 4 - Monster of the week arc
I have a handful of locations which take a certain amount of time to travel between. I have told them that x bad thing has been happening around the New moons, the last just happened, the next is in 30 days. Key events and people will be in the various places at set times across this time frame. But they have compete freedom about where they go, when and how long they take getting there. I have a list of events planned that happen wether the players are in a place or not. It’s up to them what they investigate to solve the mystery.
The best way I've found of handling campaigns is have a world that you know a bit about and can communicate the key features to the players relatively quickly. Then make up some bad bad shit that's going down if the Adventurers don't stop it. Stick the Adventurers near where something key's going to kick off, tie them into the world and then sit back and let the players lead what happens. Once in a while make some other bad shit that's going to happen and throw it at the world.
In all cases the players get the choice of what their Adventurers to foil, ignore or even assist the bad shit. If they ignore it, oh dear. It's going to get worse and worse and if they ignore the wrong piece of festering poo that's it, goodbye and goodnight.
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I might not sure where this falls in your poll but my current method is prepping 1 ahead so I am not railroading where they are going all the way upto BBEG I react to what my players say and do. I treat levels like story arcs of a tv show. But handle each a bit differently.
One of my campaigns is called “ The Fall of Mirrea” so the arcs so far
level 1 - getting the group together
3/4 players start as party with the 4th being an Everyman character. So the first arc was this character being dragged out of his comfortable life and put on a road he could not return on. I only planned out 3 definite events/encounters that would happen, the rest driven by the players.
level 2 - testing the group dynamic in a dungeon
this was basically a pre planned dungeon crawl, less to move the plot but to give the players a breather between plot, learn more about the world, earn some coin, find a maguffin, end on cliff hanger. 95% pre planned in layout, but players were free in their approach.
level 3 - Do you want to rob a sky ship?
I have my players an objective and told them they were free to attempt it however they wanted. They talked with other about what they might need ( way on board, explosives, help, disguises etc) and as they did I listened and populated the city with options to allow them to get them. They got themselves in place to carry out their plan, then somebody beat them too it and started robbing the sky ship first. Whole thing ended with a fight in the antagonists vault (due to a player making an off hand ad-lib in session one about wanting to find the vault that did not exist when he said it) - completely unplanned from the point of giving them the objective, I told them they had 7 in game days . It was entirely reactive to how they planned to use their time.
Level 4 - Monster of the week arc
I have a handful of locations which take a certain amount of time to travel between. I have told them that x bad thing has been happening around the New moons, the last just happened, the next is in 30 days. Key events and people will be in the various places at set times across this time frame. But they have compete freedom about where they go, when and how long they take getting there. I have a list of events planned that happen wether the players are in a place or not. It’s up to them what they investigate to solve the mystery.
The best way I've found of handling campaigns is have a world that you know a bit about and can communicate the key features to the players relatively quickly. Then make up some bad bad shit that's going down if the Adventurers don't stop it. Stick the Adventurers near where something key's going to kick off, tie them into the world and then sit back and let the players lead what happens. Once in a while make some other bad shit that's going to happen and throw it at the world.
In all cases the players get the choice of what their Adventurers to foil, ignore or even assist the bad shit. If they ignore it, oh dear. It's going to get worse and worse and if they ignore the wrong piece of festering poo that's it, goodbye and goodnight.