Ask a GM [07/22/08]: How much do you plan a campaign?

[Farcaster]

In this week's Ask-A-GM, fmitchell asks,

How much do you plan a campaign?

Unless you're using a third-party product, coming up with a gigantic Tolkien-level history for a campaign seems to be going out of style. But how do experienced GMs plan their campaign?

Do you start with a home city/village and plan out from there? Or do you create the entire kingdom, continent, or planet?

Do you decide what nonhuman races/species exist in the area, or do you simply grab whatever the game gives you as you need it.

Do you plan out a whole story arc, or simply sketch out themes and possible end goals, with an initial adventure to get the ball rolling?

[gdmcbride]

There are a lot of ways to build a campaign. None of them are simply right or wrong. It's a creative process -- like writing the opening chapter of a novel -- and everyone has a different method. Here is one I commonly use.

I'm a big believer in organic growth. What we create together will almost always be more personal, more meaningful than me writing a gigantic tome of history and forcing it down the players throats.

I start with a map. Whether the game takes place in a city, a sector, a county or a continent -- draw it. Give a few names, as evocative as you can. Don't simply write 'Vandaria' on your map, write 'The Lost Theocracy of Vandaria'. This nation is lost? From who? It's a theocracy? What do they worship? Are their rulers noble priest-kings or are they corrupt? Great questions. Answer them together.

Write an opening session -- something full of fire and foment. Make it as exciting and engaging as you can. Things go horribly wrong. Our heroes live happily in a town -- burn it down. The land is peaceful -- start a war. All is right with the Galactic Republic -- until the Invaders came! The princess loves the paladin -- kidnap her.

Throw around a lot of loose ends -- what do these invaders want? Why did they burn our town? Where have they taken the princess? You can even come up with answers to them if you want. But a better solution is to talk to the players after every session. What do YOU think is happening? Listen to their answers. Pick the best one or even better take the best two and mash them together.

Make careful notes to allow for campaign continuity. Even better, give a PC a few bonus XP for keeping a copious journal and emailing it to you after every session.

Remember, even as a GM, you are playing a game and thus (hopefully) having fun. If you ever find yourself not having fun while prepping for a game ... stop doing that. Skip to the fun stuff. Focus on the fun.

Hopefully, this method will create a campaign that is both uniquely yours and endless fun. And really, isn't that why we got into this hobby in the first place?

Gary

[cplmac]

Actually, since my campaigns tend to take quite awhile to complete, my players usually grow attached to their PC's. I tend to use the same setting that they have been campaigning in. There is almost always a few things that they never encountered during the initial campaign, that allows me to use that little item to actually create another whole adventure that may or may not expand off of the previous one.

I do usually have all the encounters planned and printed out, just in case the party would happen to actually run across that particular encounter. I don't like to have to stop the game to scrape together the specifics of any particular encounter. Nothing ruins the flow of gaming than having to wait for the DM/GM to figure out what is going to happen and who all is there besides the PC's. Not to mention all the stats for each opponent.

Usually, I'm pretty flexable on what races and such are in any given campaign. About the only thing that I draw the line on is that I do not allow PC's of an evil alignment. I have, however, managed to get an evil NPC attached to a party a couple of times. Each time, they figured it out to late, since it was after the NPC disappeared that they realized that their current plan has also left with them.

When preparing a new campaign from the original one, it is sort a challenge to come up with a concept that will keep the party interested. The important thing to keep in mind while doing this is that you want to be sure to have different types of encounters from the previous one. To make sure I don't forget something about any particulay encounter is the biggest reason why I like to have major encounters planned out.

[Anaesthesia]

About 60% of my game is written down-mostly where I want to party to go. I usually do put in "extra" encounters, but the majority of those I do on the fly. I also have an extremely detailed background for all my campaigns, so if there's something I forgotten or I'd like to "direct" the party in another direction, I can always refer to that.

Some of my campaigns I stick to certain races, but I am generally open minded about alignment (in Revenge of the Dragon had a evil aligned drow PC amongst the other good/neutral aligned characters). I'm a little nutty and like the idea of a group of characters with mixed alignments.

[Grimwell]

I tend to follow a consistent pattern for the campaigns I create. I've never actually listed it like this before, but here's an easy outline that I follow:

1. Concept a region
2. Find a place for the player races
3. Create antagonist populations
4. Create nemesis villains
5. Personalize things some
6. Add some wonder
7. Consult potential players

Concept a region
Inspiration, for me, really brews best when I think first of where I want the campaign to take place. The climate, the ecology of plants, the natural animals, the resources. These sorts of things dictate a lot about what people are going to do survive and thrive, so I find it to be a great point to kick off my ideas as it answers a few basic questions, but opens the doors to many more that can be answered as things get nailed down.

If I create an inhospitable region, each population has to answer a fundamental question created by that region: "How are you going to actually live here before characters thwack you expecting XP to pop out?"

If you are in a winter environment, food and shelter matter a lot. If you are in a temperate environment those questions are a lot less important (which means you have extra time to focus on other things).

Find a place for the player races
So let's assume that I settled on a region that borders an arctic circle. We are talking about cold in a big way and short growing seasons. Now let's stick the races into the environment.

Elves get the forests, so everyone can work from a stereotype there; but it's a coniferous forest... and the animals are way different -- so that can create some inspiration points for them.

Now lets throw the Dwarves into a mountainous valley 10,000 feet above sea level... and give them a volcano in that valley. That gives them access to heat and water, but makes them remote.

Humans wander the tundra as simple hunter gatherers, and have no kingdoms. Halflings populate the southern sea coast, sheltered by the Dwarven mountains (see how I made that up on the spot) and enjoy four seasons due to trade winds.

Hopefully these examples make the point. By selecting different parts of the terrain as a homeland for player races, you start to see where each race is going to build it's culture from and gain distinction in the process.

Create antagonist populations
Then I turn and do the same thing for major populations of hostiles. Let's throw some fire giants up there in the volcano by the Dwarves... just to singe their beards and give them a challenge. The Elves get ogres who chop the forests down to create warmth and cooking fires. The humans compete with a population of minotaurs for mastery of the tundra, and the halfling face regular raids from shauagin pirates (cool, now the shaauagin pirates say "Arrrrgh!" when they rise from the sea. They aren't just monsters, they are pirates).

This gives each race a potential natural enemy, and cultural opposite. It's actually wise to have some of the antagonist populations cross between, say like the fire giants also pillage the elven forests for timber to burn. That way you have some back end reasons for members of different races to partner up.

Create nemesis villains
What's a teeming horde of ogres in an elven forest if they don't have an ancient white dragon telling them what to do? You know you can't resist sticking in the white dragon as GM if you are going to have a winter zone. Then there is Iceblade the Remorhaz of epic purportion that haunts the frozen tundra.

The point here is to create a few titanic, or long term enemies to work the party against. Including Mayor Drumbles of Ceton, the main halfling port. By day he's a happy mayor. By night he's a Lich in disguise and uses his valued trade route to procure things for his needs. Bad things...

You don't have to over do this step, but one or two big baddies ahead of time is nice for back burner ideas and work over the long haul. You at least have someone to blame things on when the party ignores all your work and heads toward the blank part of the map. "You stumble onto a wicked ceremony where halfling cultists have an elven maiden tied to a sacrificial table. One of the halfings cries out "Drumbles!!!" (ok that sounds funny) and brings a blade hard and fast across her throat, what do you do?"

Personalize things some
So now you have a setting, homelands for the player races and antagonist races, as well as a few nifty "big dudes" to be scary at a distance while the party levels up. At that point I really try to make things my own.

This is where you start to personify some of the people, places, and races. The humans move from being generic humans to people influenced by old Celtic names and distant, cold deities. The Rhemorhaz goes from being an almost animal terror to the manifestation of a deity's consuming force in the world, etc..

While it's probably not wise to change things wholesale, this is where Halflings become Kender and iconic to the setting (Pro Tip: This is also where you make it clear that your Halfings are not Kender, and this is not Krynn... so knock it off Steve, it's not in character for your damn halfling to steal everything he sees!). Or Dwarves become avid bakers of pastries and mushroom foods instead of miners who are gruff, etc. A few simple twists and turns to remind people that this isn't Generic World Setting 432.60, it's a custom campaign.

Add some wonder
Don't forget that these are fantastic worlds with exciting and strange places that deny a bit of the science and theories that drive ours. A castle made of ice that floats high above the tundra -- the kind where people go in but never come out. A secret part of the elven forest that is warm for no good reason, and is their primary cropland. A pool of magical water that amplifies arcane powers vested in those that drink from it... it's stock for fantasy because it's what makes the fantasy fantastic. Which is why I try to stop and remember to find more than one place for it.

I want people to hear a description of something fantastic and have a vision of it in their heads and get some sense of the wonder that their character must be feeling. That's fun and fantastic.

Consult potential players
So now I've got an idea of what kind of setting I'd like to run. To be honest, everything I've listed above would just be a brainstorm for me for a month or two. I like to think about these things, put the thoughts away for a day or two to ferment, and then bring them out to see what they are like.

Once I think I have something interesting and potentially fun, I don't start writing... I start talking to people who are likely to be invited to play in the game. Sharing the larger details of the setting and relationships between the peoples and monsters within will tell me if people even want to play there. Plus it tends to get people to spontaneously brainstorm their own ideas into it and now my ice castle is actually a mind flayer crossing point to their homeland, etc.

Only after I have talked to some friends, as advisor's and potential players do I think about writing for the setting and creating adventures. I can fart out ideas like this left and right, but if people don't want to play in a setting that I've concepted; I don't want to start working on those ideas. I'll throw them back on the shelf to sit and ponder (sometimes for years) and try something different.

Summary (since I can write a lot)
Before I write, I think about a lot of the larger picture ideas. Then I talk to people who may want to play in that larger picture. If I get positive results from the thinking and talking, I start writing.

Due to this process, by the time I need to spec out a starting environment and it's denizens (good and bad), I already know how it fits into the larger picture, potential long term adversaries, and other fantastic details. Which makes it very easy to populate a town or village with people that have personalties that are consistent to whom they are (as a race/culture) and their environment.

So it's easy for me to write, and it's easier for the players to suspend their disbelief in between Mountain Dews, and have a good time.

[Farcaster]

I fall into that category of GMs you mentioned that use a third-party product for a campaign setting. This is particularly the case for fantasy. In my roughly two decades of gaming, I have almost always used a published world such as Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or Darksun.

I have done some world building in a Science Fiction setting of my own devise, but it the game was set in the not-too-distant future of our own world. Clearly, a lot had changed in the interim between the time we played (1995) and when the game was set (2087), and technology was vastly different. My approach though was not to detail all the intervening history, the various states of countries, or even the specific details of the city the characters were living in. Instead, had a summary that gave the players information about the world they lived in broad strokes. The rest, I I let the players explore and detailed the setting as the game progressed. Luckily, none of the characters were super history buffs who wanted to have everything all in one fell stroke. This approach also let me fill in the history as the characters interacted with the world.

One thing that I have found works well when you have a campaign setting that isn't documented down to the smallest minutia, is to give your players latitude to collaborate with you on the creation of the world to some degree. To give an example of this, I once played in a 2nd edition AD&D game that was set in a world of the DMs own creation. I was playing a priest of a goodly god of justice, but the DM hadn't documented very much about this church. So, instead of asking the DM (Jon) for the nitty gritty whenever something came up about my church or its tenets, Jon would let me improvise the details. Doing this requires quite a bit of maturity and inginuity from your players, but when it works, it is an incredible experience. To this day, that was bar-none the most enjoyable game I have ever played.

My approach to planning a campaign is much the same as my approach to world-building. I generally have an idea of how the game is going to start, what some of the major events are going to be, and the ending that I envision for the story. These are just a guideline though. My players often take completly different turns than I expect. When this happens, I just roll with it. Effectively, I create the framework for the story and then I let the players co-author the rest with me.

[jade von delioch]

I started out with a map. Drew in the continent and then worked out where the kingdoms were.

After that i built the main overall plot of the game with a few key events; the why and how. After that i just let the game flow and try to keep the game working towards the main plot even when the stories does not seem to have anything to do with it.

[chosenderrick]

I am fairly new to the DM/GM world. However, I normally start with an overall idea of what I think would be cool to encounter in a game. Not just a fighting/battle scene, but a tough riddle or mystery type deal. I merge information from players background information that they must have to play in my games to make the game more custom styled. Then I let the players semi-mold their futures from there. I believe that good DMing is when players can truly feel freedom in what they do while still having some type of purpose to the overall original goal of the DM! (it's tough but possible)

[Midnight]

I create it from both directions at once: top-down and bottom-up. In general, I begin with a general description of the campaign area. At the same time, I try to come up with a good idea for a single adventure. I then tweak both of them until the adventure fits the campaign, then I flesh out the adventure. Example: The overall campaign world contains a big human empire named the Empire of Kasatorn. This is aggressive, expansionist, neutral-to-evil. Fighting it off is the small, mountainous country of Arandia (the characters' home country). I drew up a map of Arandia, with its major cities and rivers, plus its neighbors.

Now I have the beginnings of a setting. At the same time I came up with the idea that there are kobolds burning a town's wheat fields. The heroes need to stop them. What they don't know (which makes the adventure more complex) is that the farmer who hired the PCs also set the kobolds against the town in the first place. At the same time he arranged things so that the local Duke didn't want to help the town (see below as to why), so that the town _had_ to hire adventurers. So he gets all the credit for contacting the adventurers and making the bold decision to stop the kobolds with outside help. It's all for his own political gain, and he can make the Duke look bad by pointing out how this town solved all its own problems while the Duke just sat there.

Further complications (connecting this to the Empire of Kasatorn): This farmer is actually doing this because he's being encouraged to do so by an agent of the Empire of Kasatorn, who wants to politically destabilize Arandia in preparation for an invasion. He's charming the farmer and giving him a means of disguising himself.

So why doesn't the Duke want to help? Again, this involves making up some background, which I made up then, and which also gives more context to Arandia. Here's what I came up with: Major racial tensions include elves (Arandians kicked them out of part of their forests about 800 years ago; they hate humans and have never forgotten the insult) and religious divisions between human groups (some worship Norse gods, others Celtic). The Duke hates Celts (the smaller group), and the Celts hate him because some Celts rebelled against him about 10 years ago, and he put the rebellion down brutally. The town is Celtic, so the farmer (I named him Efrech) can be sure the Duke won't help. He makes this sure by going to the Duke and requesting help--but in a fashion that emphasizes Efrech's Celtic background and makes the Duke angry.

And so forth. Once this was done, I had an adventure, but I also had a larger context (which I did not need to populate in a great detail). This setting in turn led to other adventures.

[MortonStromgal]

I write a few words or a couple sentences before each session of something I want to have happen. The rest is "off the cuff". If I am creating my own world I'll usually give the players a 1 page handout before they make characters describing the world in which they live.

For my latest game (Awakening/Requiem for Rome) I said make some characters for 246 BC... They came first session with some concepts and we put them to paper then I said ok we are going to start that an NPC vampire of the Senex (thats the vampire senate) is sending you off to start up trade with Illyria because supplies will be needed for the war with the Cartheans and the Mages have been ordered to help but their role is very mysterious as to why they are helping. Then we started and it was all "off the cuff". I will be doing flashbacks as the players flush out their backgrounds and tying it all togeather as we go.

[nijineko]

my process combines inspiration, free association, and lots of research. like midnight i simultaneously work at both ends: big picture and small picture. when i get emptied out of ideas for the one, i will switch to the other and be refreshed. as i do research and conduct free association exercises i typically experience a progress best described as sudden downloads of inspiration. large chunks of the world setting: cultures, races, classes and prestiges, flora, fauna, cosmology, and so forth will simply pop into my head full blown and ready to go. i am frequently hard-pressed trying to keep up with the speed with which the ideas come. for me the challenge is trying to get it out of my short term memory and into long term memory or onto some form of record before it fades from my short term memory. luckily, i never seem to run out of ideas, or variants of ideas. =D

[emmagine]

I take a non standard approach to creating an immense world for gamers. First off, I have a general idea for what is going on in my world. Big bad evil people, big great good people, and the history that has been developed in previous games. I like to have a good initial short story arch for the players to get their teeth into things. this takes a few weeks spare time to plan, but gives the players a sense of accomplishment, gets them involved in the world, and maybe a cameo of some famous figure, usually a cameo of a bigger villain that they don't know is a villain yet ;P


So that's the easy part. Next I analyze the players for similarities. One game we started at level 3, and all the players were at least partially paladins. Needless to say, the orders of the paladins are now very richly detailed in my world :P Finding something in common, I create some sort of order, cult, fraternity or whatever that the players can all have in common. This is a great way to prevent infighting if you concept it properly. At this point I work the character histories that the players have written together. Add to them, and then tell them what has happened since then.

at this point it becomes history in the making. I let the players personalities become the definition of the portion of the "order, cult, fraternity, militia" they represent. If the guy is sneaky, his branch of that order are famous for being sneaky.

At this point, Some cataclysmic event will begin brewing. A huge war is always a good one Perhaps some other country has begun making an undead army secretly in caves and sewers throughout the players country. Perhaps invaders from another world, Or just a good old fashion invasion. All kinds of other things can take place, civil wars, perhaps the king is going mad and a coupe is being planned, or perhaps the players are more fiscally minded and end up creating a new trading syndicate. I try to let the players carve out their niche in the world, and that becomes history / trivia for later games.

Years of gaming have given me a very rich world, with very interesting stories and backdrop for future gamers. Former PC's make for VERY detailed and well thought out villains and heroes, or other npc's. Players seem to love running into a former player of their own.

One traveler game we ran, the players ended up building up a huge empire. when I say huge, big enough to give even the empire it self second thoughts about mucking with them. They mass produced some of the tech they found / built, and kept the best for themselves.

The next group of players, made starting characters IN the old players company / empire. Many of them the same players. Months later when events came to a head, they were able to switch and play their more veteran players for an epic encounter, and then back to their new ones.

All of these things make games fun to play, and fun to run. When you read something, see something on tv, or hear a story from someone about something cool, jot it down in a notebook. and work it into your campaign binders when you have time.

I won't bore you with more details :P but that's what I do!

[Bearfoot_Adam]

I go for more of an episodic feel for my games. Usually a 12 to 14 episode series. So I start with an emotion or concept and try to come up with episodes that fit in with that theme. As far as the actually session plan I go for a couple paragraphs to a page desciption with any combat already planned.

[Obah Bason]

I have done both starting from a town and working my way out, as well as starting with a whole kingdom and working my way in. Both are a lot of work, but yield very different results. Currently I am using a micro Kingdom set in an Egyptian themed desert. There is 1 city, 5 towns, a river, 2 ruins, and 5 pyramids.

That may not seem like a lot, but my PCs still may never make it to all of those locations.

Now, using the 'theme' of Egypt, I do a lot of my preparations as a simple outline. Stuff like "Easy encounter, then environmental hazard". Since it's in the desert, that means a giant scorpion and a sandstorm. It helps me avoid railroading my PCs by planning too much.

[Jcosby]

As someone said above there is no right or wrong way to create a campaign. It's a creative process for the DM. I've run many campaigns in the 30 odd years I've been playing D&D. Each time I tend to try and approach it from a slightly different angle.

Scope, means a lot to the way I plan out my campaigns. Are the adventures going to be focused on a small part of the world or are they going to be moving through out the whole world.

Some of the types of campaigns I've written have the party going though an "epic" story. Save the world type of stuff. Other's I've had the party at first level ride into a new town and get caught up in the politics/drama of the moment. Another type of adventure I've liked to run in the past is the survival, mystery type quests. Once, I've had the party ship wrecked on an island, another they woke up in bodies that were not there own with partial recall of what happened; still another starting the campaign striped naked chained to the wall and the sounds of goblins and orcs coming down the hallway talking about which PC to eat first.

The style of the campaign will determine the amount of work I do ahead of time. I'm not a world builder; I think there are some great worlds out there to use already. Forgotten Realms, Darksun, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Harn and many others; I've run campaigns in all of them although I enjoy Forgotten Realms the most. In my opinion DM's already have enough work to do running the campaign I don't want to spend more time creating everything from scratch although I know a lot of people that take a lot of pride in creating their own worlds.

Usually when I create an Epic style campaign I will have everything planned out to a fine level of detail. It will almost be written like a book for the players to go through chapter by chapter. Other campaigns will be written almost in module form with each “adventure” being it’s own part of the campaign and I will leave open story hooks for players to choose where to go after they have completed the current adventure. Lastly, one of the hardest types of campaigns for myself to run but most of my players truly enjoy is the open ended campaign. I will ask the players where in the world; say of Forgotten Realms where they want to start. That’s it. From there it’s completely up to the players to drive the campaign. They can go where they want and when they want. Talk to whom ever they choose and do what ever they want. As a DM you have to really be on your toes and be ready to run anything at a moments notice.

In the end, the campaign needs to be fun and enjoyable for all parties involved.

Jeff