Tips on running a long-running campaign

After GMing for a long time and never really running a campaign that I haven't grown bored with after a few months, I really want to run an epic campaign that can run for a long while. My homebrew, which has been swimming around my mind for a long time, is now nearing completion, and I really want to run a great campaign in it, and to do justice to all the time spent writing and thinking it up.

So, my question is - do you guys have any tips for a longtime GM (who's lacking in staying power, and who's attention span is appalling) for running a campaign, and keeping it exciting and fresh? My setting is low fantasy/magic, but is full of secrets, mysteries and intrigue, with lots of possibilities (I think), but how can I keep my players focused over a long period of time?

Thanks in advance,

DS.

8 Players; all 24th level.

Some are demi-gods.

It is a grind to try to put together something on a weekly basis. (I've been DM'ing for over a decade). If you find yourself getting bored or frustrated, Epic is not the way to go.

And allowing PC's to be Epic from the get-go makes them super-powerful. Many of the feat chains that grow to full power by 20th level are countered by weaknesses at lower levels a PC has to adjust for (i.e. Iron Will to help at low level, but at high level has magic & could have spent that feat elsewhere).

Plus, D&D breaks down at Epic Levels.

If your a DM that insists on every Skill Point of every NPC & knowing the exact number of Hit Points each foe has. You will burn yourself out.

From someone who's been there. THink carefully before jumping in to the extra deep end of the whirlpool.

Whoops... Bummer, I should have made myself clearer. What I mean is I want to run a campaign starting from 1st and then moving up to higher levels. By "Epic" I meant one that has huge consequences for the PCs actions and with some big earth-shattering scenarios. Sorry.

What I want to do is to plan the campaign out in series, with each series leading up to a huge climax. I'm not sure how well it will work, but I really want to challenge the players in terms of role-playing and to let my world evolve into a huge dynamic living thing - not just the static stereotypical RPG worlds I seem to spend so much time playing in.

So, yeah, I meant epic like Tolkien is epic, not like level 20+.

Vraille Darkfang said:

8 Players; all 24th level.

Some are demi-gods.

Click to expand...

I think he was asking for tips on how to start and then keep a longterm game going and staying fresh and focused, not on how to start an overpowered game. And besides, I find that if you're going to do a highlevel game with any decent depth you have to work your way up to those levels and let the characters develop, not just toss twenty odd levels at your players and expect the same quality of game.

But to the original question:

Start out with one or two possible metaplots in mind before the game even starts. Focus those around several NPCs or groups of them that you could conceivably have interact longterm with your PCs in a realistic manner.Then plan a plot hook to snag the players attention and forge a link to those plots or groups with that plot hook. My own campaign started out with the PCs being blackmailed and forced to perform certain seemingly unrelated tasks. This unfolded into more complex arrangements and drew the PCs into what ended up becoming a massive political upheaval on the lower planes and the rise of a new Oinoloth.

Have well developed and interesting NPCs to keep the attention of, and in my case, the utter and sincere loathing of the PCs and even the players to keep them in conflict and running along with or into any metaplots that you might have in consideration.

Now this won't work for everyone and it takes an adept hand to not railroad, but if the plots are interesting and complex enough, you won't need to force adherence to any storyline because the PCs and players will want to explore the themes and plots that you've woven around them, and they hope to find some strings to pull and make an impact on it all.

My advice, and this is coming from having run some long-running, epic (the way you mean it ) campaigns in the past, would be not to hinge the action on anyone one PC. Especially since it is low magic and, of course I am not sure of this, they may not have access to the various raise dead/resurection spells.

As for keeping yourself and the players interested, try keeping individual adventures as short as possible with clear cut goals. This way the players are always feeling that they are accomplishing something. And try cliffhangers. They work well too.

DragonSword said:

Whoops... Bummer, I should have made myself clearer. What I mean is I want to run a campaign starting from 1st and then moving up to higher levels. By "Epic" I meant one that has huge consequences for the PCs actions and with some big earth-shattering scenarios. Sorry.

Click to expand...

I understood wht you meant, at least. You're probably going to have to go for a low-magic world. A lot of Fantasy books are "high magic" but D&D is about forty standard deviations above that. Midnight is good for this, I hear. There are also a lot of suggestions in the WotC books for low magic worlds. Limit how many Wizards, etc there are in the world, limit magic and magic items severely, and make everything into an adventure -- be it travelling or meeting people. The worlds are immense with big histories that permeate the settings.

take small bites.

make small goals. and have the party achieve them.

don't go leaps and bounds. it means certain doom or a quick end.

My suggestions:

-Start small, don't plan some grand plan to the smallest detail. Keep a vageu idea where you want to go, but too much planning will tempt you with railroading, which some players don't like.

-Keep it fun for each player. Find something that each players likes to get from each session (some want power, some want character development, some want to just play, and some want to kill things). and find the best way to harmonize these things that you can. If you keep your players wanting more, they'll keep coming back.

-Don't push it if the players want to do something else. If you have grand plans, but they want something smaller, either plan for this, or discuss it with them and see if you can come to a compromise. Know what THEY expect from a campaign, and make sure they know what YOU expect from it.

-As a corollary, don't run week in, week out. Plan for games in set arcs. Stop after every 10 weeks, 12 weeks, 6 months, whatever. Play from 1st to 6th, then 7th to 14th, etc. and take a break between each. VERY few DM's can DM week in, week out, for years. Play board games, run another game system, have another DM run his grand epic, etc. By the time you get back to DM'ing, your brain will be bursting with new stuff to try.

-last but most important, don't despair if the game group alters. It's great to find that fantastic group of friends who have gamed every week for 20 years since they were 12, but most of us won't have that. Keep the campaign fresh, and don't despair with new characters, etc. rotated in. Look at the Defenders of Daybreak in Piratecat's story hour. The last original character left JUST died, 13 years after the game began. His players have almost all moved away, some moved back, the ranks changed, but the campaign still attracted people. Just because the group changes ranks doesn't mean it's over, and it took me personally years to understand this.

I hope some of these provide useful info and perspective, and good luck!

I think an importnat part for me is not to plan too much. I finished an "epic" sort of game running from 1st to 18th.

I knew the first step of the story arc and I knew what the end should or most likely would be like. I planned little of the in between. One aspect of keeping it fresh is for you not to know a whole lot more than your players on what is gonna happen. This allows you some area to adjust things as the pl;ayers have an impact on the story arc.

Also I told my players there will be some railroading but not too any extreme. They could take time off from the story arc when they wanted and seldom was it extremely time sensitive. If it was time sensitive or a little more railroady it was for a short session or two not for long. I told them simply it might be railroading but hop on the train and I promise a goode ride with ineteresting sites and every once and a while a train station they could get off of and look around do their own thing before reboarding.

Now that I have dragged that anology through the mud.


I also built the campaign world expecting them to get to that level and adjusted it as needed for the powers/magic they would have.
I didn't nix teleport, raise dead, scry or divinations but gave them rules that they operated by. For example.
You could teleport lots of places but it wasn't like the spell wasn't unknown so people who could had ways to block it, All large and mid sized churches, by thier very nature, were proof against teleport, scry and divinations. The Gods liked keeping their business private.
Raising the dead worked like the book but you still had to make a deal with the Gods to get back usually giving something up or accepting a geas/quest or something. It meant something to come back from beyond.
Divinations such as commune were treated with respect and had a few added rules that were well known to those that could perform the spells. Ask a God a question and usually an agent of his answered and could be wrong or not as well informed usually not knowing before being wrong, also they answered things from their point of veiw not from the point of veiw of an uninvolved nuetral third party so Gods and their agenst may answer honestly but an honesty from their point of veiw.

Now all those things were still usefull just not abused.

I suggest you think about what the players can do early enough to make these things a normal part of the back ground. Even before the characters in my campaign could scry or teleport they knew where those things were not liekly to work so it wasn't like I suddenly pulled the magic rug from under them they knew limitations up front and still used all those powers/magic.

Don't hook the plot to one character or backgroound that the campaign may wander away from. I had lots of plans for different scene's or story arcs that never materialized becuase the characters headed somewhere else. This is fine and meant tobe just don't make it so they have to make X city their home base since likely they will pick somewhere else.

hope this helps

later

The best DMs resource is a subscription to Dragon. You probably won't use all of the adventures, but each issue contains a low, mid, and high level adventure. So if you ever get stuck for an idea, you can take an adventure and modify it to your campaign. That's vitial if you're the kind of DM who burns out.

A great way to go low magic without chaning half the rules is to simply stipulate that no PC can start as a spellcasting class (yes, this includes paladins, bards and rangers). That one level hit in spellcasting may seem small, but it can really effect the game. Plus you'd still be keeping close to the core rules, which may be a concern given that you've been working on your homebrew all the time and may not want to drop it due to a new ruleset.