Avoiding obsession with detail, or How to Build a Campaign?

grodog · Aug 20, 2002

Isawa Sideshow said:
grodog: That's some pretty old material you're referencing; I doubt I'll be able to find it.

Well, if you or a friend have the Dragon CD ROM set, the Dragon issue's in there. It's a very, very worthwhile investment: easily the single best D&D resource ever published.

On the T1 front, my point was mostly that the model of T1 is good: if you have access to other really good adventures to model from, they can serve just as nicely, as can good fiction/film, etc.

Also, fwiw, T1 is available as a .pdf from WotC for something like $5.

grodog · Aug 20, 2002

BigFreekinGoblinoid said:
Hey grodog --is your site down right now? I'm getting error 404 for both links...

May have been, rpg.net's been spotty a bit lately. It's back up now.

grodog · Aug 20, 2002

John Crichton said:
This is the best advice on here. I made mistakes in the past of trying to create a story, not a world.

If the PC's wanted a pregenerated story they could read a book.

Can't disagree with that. What I meant by the "plot" of T1 is that the setting is rife with relationships, background plotting by evil NPCs, etc. I wasn't particularly espousing that you outline the novel that you never wrote, and then force your players to participate ;-)

Isawa Sideshow · Aug 20, 2002

Hand of Evil said:
First comes the idea, most of them I take from the news or history and add fantasy elements, sometimes it is better to use more than one. Like the snakehead fish invasion, is a kobold invasion.

...

Now comes the adventures. These are moments in time, they may not touch on the campiagn plot but I try to add at least one bit of knowledge to leak out (this week Maryland started to poison ponds to kill snakehead fish, this means the kingdom is trying to poison the kobolds). This may be a rumor or the characters next job, I follow stories and adjust and add elements as I see fit, This is why using history is fun.

Now the tie ins. Every few adventures I try to tie one adventure of event to the plot. This is where player background comes in, player gets word younger sister is taken by kobolds! This creates motivation, it gets the player involved with their world.

Now just because the kobolds were stopped does not mean the game ends, now you can add more plots...who released the kobolds? Who was the El-Vas dude that saved your sister!

Play loose.

This is pretty much exactly what a friend of mine walked me through the other night - turning a news story into a plot. It really helped loosen up the mental blocks, and got some interesting ideas going. We managed to take a story about his local college no longer giving RAs free room and board and turn it into a conspiracy story involving drugs, blackmail, assassins, and dark magicks afoot.

Again, thanks for the tips, everyone! These suggestions are really helping.

rounser · Aug 20, 2002

This is the best advice on here. I made mistakes in the past of trying to create a story, not a world.

Heh, I think even the "make a world, not a story" soundbite is flawed.

I understand the underlying sentiment of "don't build a story" because people tend to build stories for RPGs as if they were for a novel rather than a roleplaying game, and end up with stories which railroad, create plot bottlenecks, and assume too much about player actions. But the same goes for worldbuilding. For instance, many DMs spend time on worldbuilding elements that the PCs will never interact with, the players will probably never care about, or will never enter play at all - as if they were doing it for some novel. Nice for verisimilitude, but not really very good use of time.

Instead of a world or a story, I suggest focusing on building a campaign, where "campaign" is defined as "a framework for running a game", whatever that means for you. That can involve both worldbuilding, story arcs, NPCs, encounter details, adventure creation - whatever. Whether that is done through preparation or on the fly is personal preference. The balance of these elements which works best, and the flexibility with which players can interact with them or change them is also up to the DM.

It's not a sexy little soundbite like "build a world, not a story", but it makes more sense to me.

DynaMup · Aug 20, 2002

Agreed. A campaign should just give you a framework within which you can build your adventures.

When I designed my campaign world, Realms of Allancia, I created simple things - a general map of the main continent, guidelines on how society works in general, known major religions - that sort of thing. Once I'd defined general principles to work with, adventures just seemed to flow - the campaign framework gave everything a purpose and made it all believable and consistent , which is surely the advantage of campaigns over loose, independent adventures.

As players explore new areas, I design new parts of the world - with their interaction, and the result is a very detailed, rich world that never loses its relevance to the characters. There's no point drawing intricate maps and creating millions of NPC's for places that your players will never visit.

It's far more dynamic for your players and you, this way.

jester47 · Aug 20, 2002

rounser said:
Heh, I think even the "make a world, not a story" soundbite is flawed.

Instead of a world or a story, I suggest focusing on building a campaign, where "campaign" is defined as "a framework for running a game", whatever that means for you. That can involve both worldbuilding, story arcs, NPCs, encounter details, adventure creation - whatever. Whether that is done through preparation or on the fly is personal preference.

It's not a sexy little soundbite like "build a world, not a story", but it makes more sense to me.

Actually this is a very good point. I like to think of a campaign world sort of like staging in a play. You need just enough so the actors and audience can believe that the action is taking place somwhere else.

Aaron.

barsoomcore · Aug 20, 2002

More than anything else, you need bad guys.

Bad guys are bad guys (and of course I'm using the non-gender-specific form of "bad guys", here) because they are trying to do something the PCs want to prevent. If the PCs don't intercede, bad things will happen.

Good bad guys (er, you know what I mean) are what makes a truly great campaign. Some can be dealt with immediately, some may take ages to track down and defeat. Some aren't even revealed as bad guys until it's (almost, but never quite) too late. Nevertheless, it's the bad guys what make a campaign a story.

Thing is, with well-done bad guys, you don't have to have a PLOT figured out. All you need to know is the bad guy's desire -- what is he trying to do? Let the PCs find out at whatever rate you deem appropriate and give them chances to get involved. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won't -- but if they ignore the bad guy he gets closer and closer to his goal -- and remember he's a BAD GUY because what he wants conflicts with what the PCs want. So if he succeeds they're in a bad way somehow.

This means that the PCs' actions will affect the outcome of the story -- the bad guy will adjust tactics in accordance with their actions and his own way of thinking. There's no railroading, no pre-determined plots. It's way more fun for you the DM, too -- you get to play these nasty villains and figure out ways for them to circumvent the players. And you never know which way it's going to go.

Of course, sometimes the players pop up unexpectedly and kill your main bad guy five minutes into your first campaign session. This is where improvisation comes in so handy.

(sorry, hit submit before I was done)