how campaigns begin...

i saw this thread on the paizo boards, and i wanted to bring it up here:

what do you do (as a player or a DM) to prepare for a campaign? before the adventure begins, how do you go about character creation and campaign brainstorming as a group?

I'm sure the word tavern will appear in this thread.

In my Creation Schema campaign we were returning from a Tavern. Does that count?



Generally I talk to players about what they want and what type of characters they will be playing. Based on this I start with a basic beginners game until I can create a long term game idea and connect it to their backgrounds or wish for progression.

So creating a campaign is a joint thing. Their ideas with my molding of story / concept / and their ideas. This will morph regularly as the game goes on.

BRP2 said:

I'm sure the word tavern will appear in this thread.

Click to expand...

if we were talking about characters instead of players, i'm sure that awful cliche would rear its head. but let me clarify: how do you (players and DMs, real people in the real world around a real table) prepare for campaigns?

In my campaign, the players did not meet in a tavern. They were all part of the Adventureres Guild and some of them knew each other from there. There were called to a meeting at the local guild hall and ended up in the middle of an attack/diversion by some kidnappers who were abducting children. This got the group to start working together as they went after the kidnappers and slowly unravelled a larger plot.

I've been playing with most of my current group for over 6 years now. We've had a couple of other players come and go over the years. The latest additions to the group are a former coworker and the brother of one of the players. As for preparing for campaigns, three of us take turns DMing. One runs a homebrew, another an Eberron campaign, and I run my homebrew. I gave all the players an overview of the type of game I would run and a basic understanding of what the world was like. They all said it sounded good. From there, I gave them guidelines on charatcer creation. No evil PCs, certain feats, PRC's, Spells, races, etc were not allowed or did not exist in the world. They had to begin as humans but other races would be allowed later in the campaign as they encountered them. At the start of the game, Dwarves and Elves are rare. Almost no one has ever seen one. As for splatbooks, I told them to let me look it over first then I would decide if it would be allowed or not. Foryunately, I have a couple of players (the other DMs) who let me know what would be too powerful for my game.

As a DM, I make a character generation guideline and e-mail it to the players. The first session is (ideally) nothing but character generation. I like having everyone there so that we can bounce ideas off one another and build an effective team. It just works much better when everyone is there discussing their characters as they make them together.

As a DM, I give the players a basic idea of the type of campaign and what the first adventure is going to be about. "This campaign is going to feature alot of undead and demons. You'll definitely want a cleric and probably a paladin. There will be some wilderness adventures: a druid, ranger, or barbarian with wilderness skills would be handy. Your first adventure will focus around investigating strange goings-on in the graveyard of a small village. The local priest fears that something sinister is going on but can't deal with it by himself."

I also let the players work out how they know each other. It's just another detail that taxes my creativity, and there are only so many party-uniting cliches out there. So I assume that the characters are already acquainted- including any new characters that come into the group later. This also helps me largely ignore the issue of why the party would trust a new character they just happened to meet in town.

As a DM, I try to give the players some kind of overview that will let them know what kind of world in which they're going to be adventuring. I then let them know what books they can use and what kind of HRs I'm most likely going to use. I also tell them to talk to me about their PC concepts, and before I'll accept a PC, that I want some kind of written background. For some games, I have to do more- for a RIFTS campaign with several players who weren't familiar with the game, I actually went through the books and made a typwritten list of the OCCs (classes) and RCCs (races) that would be permitted in the game, along with a blurb as to what they were and where they could be found. Sometimes the blurb does it all- a superheroic game set in the world of Jules Verne/HG Wells/Space:1889 and played in HERO was easy- everyone showed up with truly solid PCs, complete with visuals, histories, etc.- probably the best campaign I ever ran...

As a player, I try to get as much game-world info as I can, and try to envision what kind of PC would be best for me to play in such a campaign. Sometimes I design a PC particular to that campaign, but most often, I pull a concept from my files and customize it to fit that world. I'm not talking about recycling characters- I just have a file of about 100 or so PC concepts that range from a 2 paragraph outline to fully statted. Some concepts are statted out in multiple RPG systems. I have a PC, Slapstick, who is an insane mercenary who wears clown makeup- he's statted out for HERO, GURPS, RIFTS/Ninjas & Superspies/Heroes Unlimited/Beyond the Supernatural, D20 Modern, Torg, Ace (unpublished), and a few others.

However, I realize its not all about me, so I also try to find out what kind of PCs my fellow players are running. Occasionally, I've even done PCs that had prior relationships with other PCs- brother/brother, brother/sister, sister/sister, employer/employee, or even romantic rivals competing for the affection of some NPC.

On occasion, I get asked to play a particular concept (like a variation on Morley Dotes) or class (usually Cleric or Thief archetypes). I'm cool with that.

AbeTheGnome said:

if we were talking about characters instead of players, i'm sure that awful cliche would rear its head. but let me clarify: how do you (players and DMs, real people in the real world around a real table) prepare for campaigns?

Click to expand...

"Real World" I think I heard that term before.... Not sure what it means, though.
To start a new campaingn, my two players and I sit down around the table and talk about broad campaign premises, or published adventures like the adventure paths, large dungeons or just about anything. In most cases our broad campaign premises are Wilds, city, druid-based, arcane-based, theives guild or so on.

After we have a premise or have chosen an adventure (Last time we chose Red HAnd and ae currently in part II) then we start to discuss who will be which role this tiem around. With three total people, we always play gestalt so not only do we discuss main roles, but also secondary roles as well. In most cases one player ahs a "I've always wanted to play a ..........." so we let him have it and the other two build from there. At this point we usually allow/disallow concepts or builds to make the world a bit different from last time. Last time we had no druids and arcane magical items wee very rare. This time no psionics. It varies

Then we have a make-the-characters session, the second half of wich is usualy some mini adventure form Dungeon where we meet each other, show off a little (or a lot) and see if our abilities mesh in any meaningful ways.

The only problem we have msottimes is one player who has a very very limited selection of characters, so the other two of us don't get a lot of choice.

But that is how it goes, and overall it works well.

As a group? Little to nothing. The players make their characters using the guidelines set down by the DM (either verbally or via email), and the DM does his thing.

I've tried doing surveys of players before, listing a number of in-game elements (combat, exploration, romance) and asking them to rate those elements on a scale of 1 to 5 according to preference. Sometimes, I even got responses. :\

Now, gaming with newbies is a different story, and something that I am currently doing. After the spectacular wipe of last week's session, I will be starting a new campaign with them in a couple of weeks. We'll be meeting tomorrow to cover character generation, as it's Iron Kingdoms and only two of the six of us have the book.

Something new that I will be trying this time is what I call the "hat trick." I'm going to create a bunch of personal plot hooks ("your parents were killed by orcs," "you have an odd birthmark," etc.) and write them on slips of paper which will then go in a hat (or a jar, whatever). Each player will then take 1-3 of these and incorporate them into the background. It gives them something to work with, and it allows me to start thinking ahead on personalizing the campaign without having to wait for backgrounds to be turned in (something which doesn't happen until at least the first session, if not way later).