Sculpting a Campaign, How do you do it?

Hello
I know that this question is addressed in many issues of dungeon, RPGtips, and various source books, but what i'm interested in is how you actually start crafting your campaign before the players even think of picking up any dice. I imagine that the responses (if any) will be wide and varied.

I, myself find it particularly hard to create a campaign. I've tried various methods but i never seem to produce enough information to satisfy the players curiosity. Another fault of mine (although i'm currently working hard at reducings this) is i always seem to miss a path, method or problem that a adventure's villian could use exploit or use. Often i realise this when one of the players asks "Why didn't he...".

Hmm, OK that makes me sound like a terrible DM, but i have my excuse! The group which i'm currently playing with have about as many years RPing experience as i have been born (...some 20 odds) additionally the group numbers around 10 (including the DM) depending on who all turns up on the night (another very infuriating point!). With that number of players we struggle to run anything bar hack'n'slash and I tend to be more of a Role-player. (I have played with a party of 3 in a very successful RP driven campaign, even if i say so myself)

Ach, I spun myself off topic there, hmm, so how does everyone plan/craft/sculpt/write a campaign.

Hanx
Elrond

I usually start by coming up with an idea for the main villain of the campaign and then make up whatever plans he/she/it might have for world domination. I don't have that many exact plans, but I usually make a time table for certain events that the main villain is orchestrating and if the PCs don't show up for those, the events happen and the villain is one step closer to world domination. That way the PCs' actions have an effect on the villain's plans and he will change them accordingly. By not planning further ahead, I also leave space for personal side quests and then the PCs can't derail the entire campaign as easily as if I had everything prepared from the very beginning. It allows me a certain amount of flexibility in re-arranging the campaign as needs arise.

I did something very simple before creating Midwood: I opened the Players Handbook and wrote down what races and classes I wanted to be local (and thus defining the first characters the players could create). Then I went through my monster books, especially MM1 (I knew I wanted it to be a mostly classic D&D game) and wrote down my favorite monsters, then closed the book.

Armed with those lists -- allips, dwarves, gnomes, green dragons, kobolds, scrags, shadow creatures, sprites -- I started figuring out how they'd all fit together in an environment where they're 99 percent of the stuff in a setting.

Once you've dumped most of the D&D stuff for your basic setting -- stuff can always come in as something exotic or be put in just at the edge of the map later on -- what's left shapes the campaign, IMO.

With my list, I knew I wanted the green dragon to have taken the dwarf homeland away from them a la Smaug (told you I wanted a classic setting), so I needed a mountain, and a place for the dwarves to be displaced to. I carved out a location for gnomes -- after deciding what sort of gnomes I wanted them to be -- and then started finding places for the other monsters.

Pretty soon, I had a setting that all made sense, and was defined by the races and monsters. The kobold servants of the green dragon scheme against the human/dwarf/gnome settlements in the shadow of Green Mountain, while other threats, including a just put-down attack by scrags, threaten from other quarters. My entire campaign has been defined by that original paging through the PHB and MM1.

Easy and, for me, a lot more satisfying than running adventures with monsters I don't like and creating NPCs and settlements of races or classes I'm tired of.

I usually start with a 'Big Idea', and extrapolate stuff from that.

My current campaign's Big Idea was a simple one - the bad guys won, and the sun was destroyed hundreds of years ago, and the world is pretty much post-apocalypse D&D in an eternal night. From there I went through the core rulebooks and jotted down some quick notes on how the major elements of the game would fit into that setup. The next step, as it has been for my last couple of campaigns, is to go through Ray Winninger's Dungeoncraft articles. I don't know if they're on the web anywhere, but they are the most useful articles from Dragon Magazine ever. Seriously good stuff, and I'd love Paizo to release them in a single volume.

As for long-term storylines, I usually work in broad outlines. Start with a couple of broad plots that the PCs could follow. For me, restoring the sun was an obvious one. I've placed Civilization to the north, with passage to be bought at a price, so the PCs could make getting there a goal. I also decided that an army of orcs would show up eventually to attack the PCs settlement. Why? Dunno - these things have a tendency to link up eventually. Checking PC backgrounds is also a good idea for adventures.

From there I just let the consequences of the game dictate the direction. One particularly obnoxious NPC became the target of some PC hate, so now he's being groomed as a major villain. One cleric had to atone, so I designed a dungeon which I liked so much I'm expanding it into a megadungeon. The leader of the settlement died while adventuring with the PCs, so there's trouble brewing there as well. One PC wanted an oriental-type character, so I started up a plot with some interdimensional rifts opening up that could become the focal point of a big planar adventure.

So basically, have some broad ideas of where you want it to go, but if something the players does excites you then run with it. The less rail-roading you do the better.

I start with the PCs. I shape the campaign around them. I give them a BBEG based on their backgrounds and little things they tell me without knowing it when we discuss the campaign and their characters. I have my own homebrew with plots and world shaping items going on based on the history of past campaigns. I meld the two together (events from old campaigns and the new PCS) and then I let them loose into the world and see what they do.

I start the PCs out with a few possible leads into only loosely formed plans, and whichever one(s) they lead into I make into a more concrete idea.

I start by feeling out the players for a new campaign. If its a themed idea, I'll just ask them "hey, you want to do a game where we're pirates? Knights of the Round Table type thing? etc" And if its not a themed idea, I'll just ask them why sort of PCs they'd want to have. Their choices usually present an idea of what kinds of adventures they'd like. (we don't usually stray too far from vanilla D&D)

After that, I'll come up with the starting point, usually a town or city. I'll detail the immediate surroundings: what lies north, what lies south etc, but its worded in such a way to leave room for error. Such as:

"A day or two's ride north lies the villiage of Ravenswood, a settlement built around a copper mine. If one were to travel many miles beyond Ravenswood, they would eventually come to the great Forest of Shadow, a place where Demons lurk, ghosts dwell, or a lost colony of elves lives, depending on who you ask. Evidence points to something horrible though, as those who have made the trek into the woods rarely come back."

Click to expand...

The Players will each get a copy of this. Its usually about 3 pages long and not too densely typed.

For game purposes, the PCs either come from around here and ar free to use the handout for background, or they come from Far Away. Either way, they'll be discovering the world as they go, as opposed to having it all laid out beforehand. They pretty much have to discover it as they go, because I'm making it up week-to-week as I go.

Anyway, I'll somehow tie one or all the PCs into the first adventure...usually a short string, a la "Pcs go to rescue prisoners kidnaped by Gobs, find out Gobs sold prisoners to Orcs, find out orcs killed all but one, and sold her to a slaver" So I've got enough to keep us busy for a couple nights. After a night or two I get an idea what the PCs are like. THEN I usually dream up some kind of meta-plot and build from there.

Hope this helps.

Nathan P. Mahney said:

The next step, as it has been for my last couple of campaigns, is to go through Ray Winninger's Dungeoncraft articles. I don't know if they're on the web anywhere, but they are the most useful articles from Dragon Magazine ever.

Click to expand...

Ask and ye shall recieve! Dungeoncraft Index

I second the Dungeoncraft methods, BTW.

I do a combination of what Crothian and KrazyHades posted above. So when I start a campaign, I don't have an overarching plot, I don't have a BBEG planned, and I don't even know what direction the PCs will go after the first session or two. A combination of PC backgrounds and choices makes the campaign, rather than something preplanned I have.

I take it one session at a time. It only becomes a campaign once it's been run through. The BBEG is the one that gets away often enough. EGs who die die. I coat everything with themes I enjoy myself (that's my treat!). I wantonly attack the PCs with whatever villains I like for the moment and then I allow the PCs revenge after some role-playing legwork.

Generally it's all about an ambiance, a feel/flavor that I want to achieve. As such I will have some ideas of what I like, hence what I want to see in the campaign. I start from there and then elaborate, and draw a map when all of this has been determined. Thereafter, once I know what the players' characters concepts are, I adjust the campaign, or make it start in the relevant place with a plot tied into their backgrounds.

For example my next homebrew and campaign, using True20 rules. I determined no divine spellcasters (as a specific class gaining spells from deities), which is easy to use in True20. I wanted a Robert E. Howard / Fritz Leiber flavor, plus horror and chaos inspired from both Lovecraft and Moorcock. Starting from there I created an empire inspired from Byzantium rather than European middle-ages. I also added many things I won't tell there for fear the players stumble on it... Finally I asked them about their characters and backgrounds, and drew upon these to build the scenario.