Start small, and the further out you get the less detail you need. Your next session or two should be prepared, but everything after that is still in flux - you really only need the essential ideas of what you're working towards for anything that won't get covered in the next two sessions. Expect your players to do things differently than you had planned, and be open to riffing off of whatever they actually do instead of spending hours preparing things that may never come to pass or turn out less interesting because the characters' actions went in a different direction. Doing this will also allow you to pace yourself a bit - it's easy to burn out on a campaign if you spend a ton of time on prep, especially if a lot of it ends up in the maybe next time pile.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
You can prepare a lot of inter-related material then attach them together with rubber bands. Make sure you have a set of completely independent events ready to slap into the holes your players will blow in your campaign.
If your campaign is about X but they players decide that Y is the important thing, then make Y the focus of the campaign. You have to be flexible because players will do the unexpected.
AND:
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
My favorite tactic is just keep track of unusual npc’s and anyone that might have gotten away. Throw in a unique tattoo or mysterious symbol and have loose ends keep popping up on future adventures. Very little pre prep is needed for this, pc’s have a way of deviating away from preplans, you work out the details as needed between adventures as your crew slowly uncovers the sinister organization or malevolent mastermind behind the whole thing. If they accidentally kill your mastermind to soon then they discover he was really just an officer in service to the real bad guy. As long as you pretend you got a bigger scheme working you can keep them riveted. Listen to them discuss what they think might be really going on and borrow from their ideas. The kind helpful guy from the first adventure turns out to be an investigator that has been tracking the cult, the merchant who overcharged them for mounts on the second adventure is a spy for the bad guy. The guy they beat up in a bar fight sets them up as fugitives to further the plot because he was recruited by the horse trader. Etc.
I would say to make an adventure, not make a campaign. Let the campaign come from the players wanting to see more of the adventure.
Some of my favourite video game RPGs begin with a simple premise that later erupt into a globetrotting campaign. My favourite example is Tyranny: you're tasked with sending a letter, and in delivering it, accidentally set the doomsday clock a tickin'. Meet its requirements and the world won't blow up. This was so incredibly well done that just ~3 hours into this game, when I'd met the requirements of the Edict, I didn't realise the game opened up after this. I genuinely thought you deliver the letter, start a new game, go back to Conquest mode, and make different choices. The ~22 hours thereafter were a bonus! And people say it was too short.... *grumbles*
Start with a premise. What adventure are the players going on? Why are they tempted to go on it? If they haven't done A-B, how are they going to get to C except more by luck than judgement (or reading your DM's notes while you're on the toilet?)? That little bit of railroading is fine especially for a brand new campaign, as it's letting the players get to grips with the world and its inhabitants slowly but surely. It sets the tone and expectations of anything that may follow (I should just add this is by no means a replacement for Session 0. Do both!)
Once your players arrive at their B, what happens next? Is the world static, where everything is frozen in time until the players go after it? That's fine if you want to run a game like Diablo or some other Action RPG. Hack 'n' slash is perfectly valid. But while your players are umm'ing and arr'ing, the threats they are (or could be) tasked with facing are carrying on. While the players are dealing with bandits, there's a dragon earning the reason for its bounty... or is it? Has it been slain by other adventurers, or something more fierce? What if the thing that has replaced it is an even greater threat? What if its cult is displeased by its death? What happens now there's one less predator in the ecosystem, or one less reason to raid the town is gone? Or say the players go after the dragon instead of the bandits, are they still raiding? Are they getting better equipment? Have they moved on? Are they amassing a rebellion against the lord that drove them to banditry in the first place? You only need to worry about this after you've established your players are going to be alive long enough to have made it to point B.
I have very few complaints with how The Lost Mine of Phandelver is written as a new player and DM's adventure, but one of those complaints - and perhaps this is to its benefit - is thus:
Several characters who have the possibility of escaping are told that "their fate is beyond the scope of this adventure," or words to that effect, should they succeed.
This is rather unfortunate because I feel it gives a dissatisfying answer to the players' inevitable question. Imagine saying the above quote to the players, how gutted would you be to have one of your first encounters with a charismastic villain end like that? Be prepared for that question, and furthermore, for the players to want to pursue that answer. That's one of the defining differences between an adventure and a campaign: "and then what?"
The key takeaways that I can say, in addition to what others above me have said, are thus:
Make an adventure first, then let the campaign grow from that. Inspire your players to want to be mailmen from the get-go, and they'll be mailmen until they have to decide on who's winning the ongoing war. The analogy makes sense, trust me.
The C is never still. Perhaps while points A to B appear static, C, D, E, F, and G are all moving behind the scenes; nobody's arrival at C will be same, however straightforward A-B may be.
Don't panic. There's a lot to keep track of, and others will have better answers than I on how to keep on top of it all, but so long as the players don't realise that's what matters. To them you're a magician, and magic is all about perception (or rather, the viewer's lack thereof). If you can make events change radically simply by rolling a table ("1: the dragon's killed by a pack of mercenaries. 2: the dragon flies away. 3: the dragon's killed by a stronger dragon. 4: the dragon explodes itself via potion miscibility"), the players will be totally clueless and wowed all the same that you could make such things happen.
I'd like to apologise for the length of this post. I find the more I have to say on such a subject, the more cracks there are faults can slip through. My advice is generally "make an adventure, and grow from there," but thought to elaborate for a change this time.
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."
Some of my favourite video game RPGs begin with a simple premise that later erupt into a globetrotting campaign. My favourite example is Tyranny: you're tasked with sending a letter, and in delivering it, accidentally set the doomsday clock a tickin'. Meet its requirements and the world won't blow up. This was so incredibly well done that just ~3 hours into this game, when I'd met the requirements of the Edict, I didn't realise the game opened up after this. I genuinely thought you deliver the letter, start a new game, go back to Conquest mode, and make different choices. The ~22 hours thereafter were a bonus! And people say it was too short.... *grumbles*
Sorry to be off-topic, but my 5 full playthroughs and hundreds of hours of gameplay agrees.
Some of my favourite video game RPGs begin with a simple premise that later erupt into a globetrotting campaign. My favourite example is Tyranny: you're tasked with sending a letter, and in delivering it, accidentally set the doomsday clock a tickin'. Meet its requirements and the world won't blow up. This was so incredibly well done that just ~3 hours into this game, when I'd met the requirements of the Edict, I didn't realise the game opened up after this. I genuinely thought you deliver the letter, start a new game, go back to Conquest mode, and make different choices. The ~22 hours thereafter were a bonus! And people say it was too short.... *grumbles*
Sorry to be off-topic, but my 5 full playthroughs and hundreds of hours of gameplay agrees.
Sadly I can't relate with that specific example, I'm currently on my second playthrough, but I can relate with other video games that have the same principle:
Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Roleplaying Game. The adventure is quite simple: retrieve the water chip. This is twofold: due to the limited time, you can either do the few steps required to get a working water chip from an abandoned Vault, or you can extend the timer by making a deal with a water-trading caravan company. The campaign then extends to dealing with townsfolk, varying Wasteland factions, and convincing the main villain to blow himself to smithereens because his Johnson doesn't work [citation needed]. I find a lot of parallels can be drawn between this particular game and The Lost Mine of Phandelver, which I consider to be Adventure Writing 101.
Fallout: New Vegas. Another adventure where you're a mailman, and you need to return a package to the sender, namely the bullet to the head you miraculously survived. The campaign opens up when you have to aid/hinder several Mojave factions in their overarching quest to control the Hoover Dam.
What I don't think is good campaign writing is exactly what another Obsidian Entertainment game, Pillars of Eternity, does. The adventure begins with you trying to find out why people are being born without souls. This is the best story within the game, featuring a perfect runtime. Alas, it has the dubious honour of being the launchpad for a greater overarching story that meanders all over the place, sometimes only briefly stopping at interesting locales such as introducing the party to their new stronghold of Caed Nua, before dragging them to another opportunity to dump lore. PoE's creators like lore. They like backstory, appendices, indices, and encyclopedias, but when it comes to putting it into a story - the thing the players are there to be part of, shape, and discover - they haven't got an exceedingly good cake's chance in Mr. Kipling's factories.
Let Pillars serve as a warning to the DM that it's very easy to get caught up in what you like as the campaign and setting creator. It's the same reason why the players aren't expected to have their own copy of the Monster Manual or copies of the adventure's sourcebook: their knowledge of that is not necessary to the here-and-now. They don't need to get bogged down in the details of a firbolg's mating rituals, a beholder's dental hygiene practices, or the milkman's daily routine which includes his undiagnosed OCD habits that were caused by the fligrabrutul curse, brought on by the alixtríne móorunbrium of the Ogromoshrian era, along with paragraphs of explanations of what each of those made-up words are.
I don't blame Obsidian for this entirely, because I do this all the time with my own fictional settings. I flesh them out way too much, when really, the players aren't as interested in it as I am, especially during their first session in that campaign setting. Give them the reason to care first, which is the major difference between Tyranny and Pillars: in Tyranny, the players decide what content is relevant through the Conquest system (players choose between one of two choices in a series of locations on a map, to decide the events preceding the main game), and which made-up words they come across first.
Regardless of my opinions on the above video games, here's one final tip that I think everyone can get behind: "perfection is achieved not when there's nothing more to add, but when there's nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
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."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
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Does any one have any tips on making a campaign? I’m in the middle of making one but it’s not the best. Any help is welcome!
Start small, and the further out you get the less detail you need. Your next session or two should be prepared, but everything after that is still in flux - you really only need the essential ideas of what you're working towards for anything that won't get covered in the next two sessions. Expect your players to do things differently than you had planned, and be open to riffing off of whatever they actually do instead of spending hours preparing things that may never come to pass or turn out less interesting because the characters' actions went in a different direction. Doing this will also allow you to pace yourself a bit - it's easy to burn out on a campaign if you spend a ton of time on prep, especially if a lot of it ends up in the maybe next time pile.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
You can prepare a lot of inter-related material then attach them together with rubber bands. Make sure you have a set of completely independent events ready to slap into the holes your players will blow in your campaign.
If your campaign is about X but they players decide that Y is the important thing, then make Y the focus of the campaign. You have to be flexible because players will do the unexpected.
AND:
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
What is it you’re trying for, and what about it don’t you like?
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Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
My favorite tactic is just keep track of unusual npc’s and anyone that might have gotten away. Throw in a unique tattoo or mysterious symbol and have loose ends keep popping up on future adventures. Very little pre prep is needed for this, pc’s have a way of deviating away from preplans, you work out the details as needed between adventures as your crew slowly uncovers the sinister organization or malevolent mastermind behind the whole thing. If they accidentally kill your mastermind to soon then they discover he was really just an officer in service to the real bad guy. As long as you pretend you got a bigger scheme working you can keep them riveted. Listen to them discuss what they think might be really going on and borrow from their ideas.
The kind helpful guy from the first adventure turns out to be an investigator that has been tracking the cult, the merchant who overcharged them for mounts on the second adventure is a spy for the bad guy. The guy they beat up in a bar fight sets them up as fugitives to further the plot because he was recruited by the horse trader. Etc.
I would say to make an adventure, not make a campaign. Let the campaign come from the players wanting to see more of the adventure.
Some of my favourite video game RPGs begin with a simple premise that later erupt into a globetrotting campaign. My favourite example is Tyranny: you're tasked with sending a letter, and in delivering it, accidentally set the doomsday clock a tickin'. Meet its requirements and the world won't blow up. This was so incredibly well done that just ~3 hours into this game, when I'd met the requirements of the Edict, I didn't realise the game opened up after this. I genuinely thought you deliver the letter, start a new game, go back to Conquest mode, and make different choices. The ~22 hours thereafter were a bonus! And people say it was too short.... *grumbles*
Start with a premise. What adventure are the players going on? Why are they tempted to go on it? If they haven't done A-B, how are they going to get to C except more by luck than judgement (or reading your DM's notes while you're on the toilet?)? That little bit of railroading is fine especially for a brand new campaign, as it's letting the players get to grips with the world and its inhabitants slowly but surely. It sets the tone and expectations of anything that may follow (I should just add this is by no means a replacement for Session 0. Do both!)
Once your players arrive at their B, what happens next? Is the world static, where everything is frozen in time until the players go after it? That's fine if you want to run a game like Diablo or some other Action RPG. Hack 'n' slash is perfectly valid. But while your players are umm'ing and arr'ing, the threats they are (or could be) tasked with facing are carrying on. While the players are dealing with bandits, there's a dragon earning the reason for its bounty... or is it? Has it been slain by other adventurers, or something more fierce? What if the thing that has replaced it is an even greater threat? What if its cult is displeased by its death? What happens now there's one less predator in the ecosystem, or one less reason to raid the town is gone? Or say the players go after the dragon instead of the bandits, are they still raiding? Are they getting better equipment? Have they moved on? Are they amassing a rebellion against the lord that drove them to banditry in the first place? You only need to worry about this after you've established your players are going to be alive long enough to have made it to point B.
I have very few complaints with how The Lost Mine of Phandelver is written as a new player and DM's adventure, but one of those complaints - and perhaps this is to its benefit - is thus:
Several characters who have the possibility of escaping are told that "their fate is beyond the scope of this adventure," or words to that effect, should they succeed.
This is rather unfortunate because I feel it gives a dissatisfying answer to the players' inevitable question. Imagine saying the above quote to the players, how gutted would you be to have one of your first encounters with a charismastic villain end like that? Be prepared for that question, and furthermore, for the players to want to pursue that answer. That's one of the defining differences between an adventure and a campaign: "and then what?"
The key takeaways that I can say, in addition to what others above me have said, are thus:
I'd like to apologise for the length of this post. I find the more I have to say on such a subject, the more cracks there are faults can slip through. My advice is generally "make an adventure, and grow from there," but thought to elaborate for a change this time.
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
Sorry to be off-topic, but my 5 full playthroughs and hundreds of hours of gameplay agrees.
Sadly I can't relate with that specific example, I'm currently on my second playthrough, but I can relate with other video games that have the same principle:
Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Roleplaying Game. The adventure is quite simple: retrieve the water chip. This is twofold: due to the limited time, you can either do the few steps required to get a working water chip from an abandoned Vault, or you can extend the timer by making a deal with a water-trading caravan company. The campaign then extends to dealing with townsfolk, varying Wasteland factions, and convincing the main villain to blow himself to smithereens because his Johnson doesn't work [citation needed]. I find a lot of parallels can be drawn between this particular game and The Lost Mine of Phandelver, which I consider to be Adventure Writing 101.
Fallout: New Vegas. Another adventure where you're a mailman, and you need to return a package to the sender, namely the bullet to the head you miraculously survived. The campaign opens up when you have to aid/hinder several Mojave factions in their overarching quest to control the Hoover Dam.
What I don't think is good campaign writing is exactly what another Obsidian Entertainment game, Pillars of Eternity, does. The adventure begins with you trying to find out why people are being born without souls. This is the best story within the game, featuring a perfect runtime. Alas, it has the dubious honour of being the launchpad for a greater overarching story that meanders all over the place, sometimes only briefly stopping at interesting locales such as introducing the party to their new stronghold of Caed Nua, before dragging them to another opportunity to dump lore. PoE's creators like lore. They like backstory, appendices, indices, and encyclopedias, but when it comes to putting it into a story - the thing the players are there to be part of, shape, and discover - they haven't got an exceedingly good cake's chance in Mr. Kipling's factories.
Let Pillars serve as a warning to the DM that it's very easy to get caught up in what you like as the campaign and setting creator. It's the same reason why the players aren't expected to have their own copy of the Monster Manual or copies of the adventure's sourcebook: their knowledge of that is not necessary to the here-and-now. They don't need to get bogged down in the details of a firbolg's mating rituals, a beholder's dental hygiene practices, or the milkman's daily routine which includes his undiagnosed OCD habits that were caused by the fligrabrutul curse, brought on by the alixtríne móorunbrium of the Ogromoshrian era, along with paragraphs of explanations of what each of those made-up words are.
I don't blame Obsidian for this entirely, because I do this all the time with my own fictional settings. I flesh them out way too much, when really, the players aren't as interested in it as I am, especially during their first session in that campaign setting. Give them the reason to care first, which is the major difference between Tyranny and Pillars: in Tyranny, the players decide what content is relevant through the Conquest system (players choose between one of two choices in a series of locations on a map, to decide the events preceding the main game), and which made-up words they come across first.
Regardless of my opinions on the above video games, here's one final tip that I think everyone can get behind: "perfection is achieved not when there's nothing more to add, but when there's nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
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