Putting Adventure First

Before I get started, I have a few disclaimers:

• 1. I am not claiming that this is definitively better than any other approach to campaign design. For me, I think this is better but, certainly, the conventional approach of designing world followed by adventure works. It's worked for years. This is an attempt at creating an alternative approach, not a replacement.
• 2. This is a work in progress. The ideas I have in my head have not been tested in play and are not fully formed yet. I will likely contradict myself as time goes on. This does not invalidate my process; it merely reflects a refinement. Also, I will work on this as time permits. Please be patient.

Ok, from the monster thread on World Building I proposed that instead of the conventional method of designing a campaign of building a world (either top down or bottom up) and then creating adventures to fit in that world, we start with the adventures and then fill in any cracks that need filling later. In that thread I identified what I believe are some salient points.

First, to design a 20 level campaign, you need about 8 medium sized adventures plus maybe half a dozen side trek style short adventures. It takes 13 1/3 CR's to gain a level, so, a medium sized adventures, one that takes you 2 levels up, needs at least twice that xp. Note, that doesn't mean twice that many encounters, since many encounters can contain multiple CR's, and encounter doesn't mean combat. The awards can come from combat, role play or whatever. We just need a minimum of 26 2/3 in each. More on this later.

Here's the process that I propose:

• Choose a theme.
• Begin to work out how that theme will fit into 8 adventures. Very rough, couple of sentences each.
• Start creating adventures from the beginning to the end. The process may very well enforce changes in later adventures.
• Attempt to create ways for adventures to be recursive. The more able the players are to bounce back and forth between adventures, the better the experience, IMO.

((Note, I know that's really rough, I'll probably add more to that later))

Right, so, first off we need a theme. Something that interests you as the DM and you think will interest your players, plus be broad enough that you can carry the theme throughout 20 levels. Recently, I happened to run three encounters with dragons. It was the first time I'd ever really used dragons in 3e and, quite honestly, I hadn't used dragons very much before either. One thing I noticed was that when you drop that dragon mini on the battle map, everyone pays attention. There is a certain cachet of battling the game's namesake that just resonates.

For this experiment, I'm going to choose dragons as my theme. Every adventure (or at least most of them) will either feature a dragon or focus on dragons somehow. I could see a side trek adventure being a quest type scenario to grab the Macguffin of Whacking Dragons and that sort of thing.

Ok, so, I have my theme. Dragons. Cool. Now I need to sketch out 8 adventures related to my theme. I'm going to save the side adventures for now. They're smaller anyway, so, they don't need to be done right away and, well, I want to give myself some wiggle room later on. Doing a bit of brainstorming, I have come up with these 8 adventures:

• ((Note, I absolutely suck at giving titles)) 1st. 2 Hatchling dragons (black? Blue?) have recently hatched and are butchering livestock. The PC's are called in to deal with the problem.
• 2. The PC's discover that a third hatchling escaped from their hunt and was taken in by a kobold tribe that worships it as a god. The dragon has allowed the kobolds to begin uniting other kobold tribes and they are becoming a serious threat to the area.
• 3. After dealing with the third hatchling and his kobold allies, the PC's discover a cabal of druids (?) who collect and protect dragons. This cult sees dragons as the ultimate expression of nature and are experimenting to combine draconic traits with various other species.
• 4. The actions of the PC's has attracted the attention of a larger dragon. The dragon sends its assassin minions after the PC's. The PC's must deal with the assassins, and then turn the tables and hunt the dragon down. A possible twist is that the dragon is good? ((Not sure how that would work, but, an idea))
• 5. The PC's discover that the cult is very wide spread. It has fingers in nearly every level of the society. The cultists have begun actively opposing the PC's, attacking their homes while they are away, poisoning attempts, character attacks, etc. The PC's are driven out of their homes and safety nets.
• 6. The PC's discover that a triumvirate of dragons control the cult. If they can destroy the three dragons, they can restore their name. The first dragon is a Green hidden in a forest near a large settled area.
• 7. After defeating the Green, the PC's move on to a Black whose lair is deep in a swampy area filled with all sorts of nastiness.
• 8. The ultimate challenge. Has to be a Red. Preferably near a volcano, because that's just cool.

There's my campaign. Well, ok, there's the very barest scratch of my campaign. Next, I'll actually start working out some of the math needed for the adventure design based on Wolgang Baur's analysis in the Adventure Builder feature on the WOTC boards. Once I've plotted that out, I'll hopefully actually construct our first adventure.

Nice. I like it; I think it has a lot of potential. I don't have much to add at the moment but I've got a few thoughts:

-Are the side treks going to stay within the theme or represent a brief departure from it? I think it would be cool if they were something different.
-As far as the cabal is concerned, I'd consider making it just a cabal (rather than a druid cabal) that has all kinds of classes as members. Gives you some versatility. On the other hand, I do like the flavour of it being a druid cult. If I was going to make it a cult featuring a single class I'd pick druids too.

Well that's all I've got at the moment. I look forward to seeing how this pans out.

Hussar said:

Ok, from the monster thread on World Building I proposed that instead of the conventional method of designing a campaign of building a world (either top down or bottom up) and then creating adventures to fit in that world, we start with the adventures and then fill in any cracks that need filling later. In that thread I identified what I believe are some salient points.

Click to expand...

I'm in process of winding up one long campaign and starting to more seriously tinker with design on the next, and by whatever means I've found myself going the opposite route, with caveats - I designed the geographical/historical/cultural world (or the chunk where the campaign will be set) first, and have since come up with a few plotlines and story ideas...enough, I think, for maybe 20-30 adventures total. That may seem like a lot, but I'm projecting a 5-10+ year campaign and planning for longer; with quite possibly more than one party running at a time, so maybe 40-70 adventures total (Riveria is winding down on its 64th adventure). That said:

First, to design a 20 level campaign, you need about 8 medium sized adventures plus maybe half a dozen side trek style short adventures. It takes 13 1/3 CR's to gain a level, so, a medium sized adventures, one that takes you 2 levels up, needs at least twice that xp. Note, that doesn't mean twice that many encounters, since many encounters can contain multiple CR's, and encounter doesn't mean combat. The awards can come from combat, role play or whatever. We just need a minimum of 26 2/3 in each. More on this later.

Click to expand...

You're obviously planning for a RAW advancement rate and a campaign life of 1-2 years. Me, I'd prefer to plan every campaign on the base assumption that it'll last for the rest of my life, and go from there. So, the more large-scale design I can do ahead of time the better, to avoid writing myself into an inescapable corner in Year 5 because I made some significant and poor design decision on the fly in Year 2 and now have to live with it.

• Choose a theme.
• Begin to work out how that theme will fit into 8 adventures. Very rough, couple of sentences each.
• Start creating adventures from the beginning to the end. The process may very well enforce changes in later adventures.
• Attempt to create ways for adventures to be recursive. The more able the players are to bounce back and forth between adventures, the better the experience, IMO.

Click to expand...

This is fine for a short campaign, if only because if the whole thing is one pre-set adventure path the PCs aren't going to have much opportunity to explore parts of the world the adventures don't take them to. (and, what if the players decide to go where the map is blank and drop the adventure path halfway through?)

Lanefan

Lanefan said:

I'm in process of winding up one long campaign and starting to more seriously tinker with design on the next, and by whatever means I've found myself going the opposite route, with caveats - I designed the geographical/historical/cultural world (or the chunk where the campaign will be set) first, and have since come up with a few plotlines and story ideas...enough, I think, for maybe 20-30 adventures total. That may seem like a lot, but I'm projecting a 5-10+ year campaign and planning for longer; with quite possibly more than one party running at a time, so maybe 40-70 adventures total (Riveria is winding down on its 64th adventure). That said:

Click to expand...

Honestly, other than scale, this is pretty much the standard way of designing campaigns. Work out the setting first and then move on to designing adventures. Now, if you happen to be in a stable enough place that you can reasonably expect to be playing in the same campaign for the next decade, that's great. Me, I don't. I've never had a group last more than a couple of years, even in high school, let alone a campaign.

You're obviously planning for a RAW advancement rate and a campaign life of 1-2 years. Me, I'd prefer to plan every campaign on the base assumption that it'll last for the rest of my life, and go from there. So, the more large-scale design I can do ahead of time the better, to avoid writing myself into an inescapable corner in Year 5 because I made some significant and poor design decision on the fly in Year 2 and now have to live with it.

Click to expand...

Yup, thinking RAW advancement. By RAW, I generally find that my groups level up about every 4-6 sessions or so. I find it a nice pace. Again, you're coming from a position completely foreign to me, so, I don't think this idea is going to help you too much.

This is fine for a short campaign, if only because if the whole thing is one pre-set adventure path the PCs aren't going to have much opportunity to explore parts of the world the adventures don't take them to. (and, what if the players decide to go where the map is blank and drop the adventure path halfway through?)

Lanefan

Click to expand...

I'd hardly call 1-20th level campaigns short. For me, that's about an 18 month to two year campaign. Compared to you, though, I suppose it is very short. I'm more aiming this at those who are playing close to RAW.

Now, if the PC's decide to drop the path half way through, then the campaign is a failure. You scrap it and try again honestly. Or, if you are fast enough, you crank out a different path dependent on what interests the players. Hopefully the side treks can spark interest again, but, if not, you throw in the towel.

This will take some cooperation on the part of the players. They actually have to buy into the campaign. OTOH, I've seen far too many campaigns stutter and fall because of a lack of focus as well. This has the advantage of having focus. The players have goals. Many of the adventures I've outlined above can be almost completely non-linear, so, railroading within each adventure hopefully won't be an issue. Because of a unifying theme, the players are somewhat expected to follow that theme.

On a completely side note, do your players just randomly strike off in various directions without any goals? They look at the world map and say, "Hey, let's go to this town."? I've found that the people I've played with over the years appreciate having some sort of goal to work towards. Granted, no one likes to be pushed through the steps of achieving that goal, but, given that the goal is known, anticipating steps isn't usually too difficult.

But, honestly Lanefan, you're coming from an experience with the game that I've never had. The idea of a campaign lasting that long is something I've never come anywhere near. And, to be honest, doesn't appeal to me all that much either. I don't want to play the same character for ten years. I certainly wouldn't want to DM the same PC's for that long. I'm just not creative enough to come up with unique experiences for that long. Obviously YMMV.

It depends whether you want a setting to run this campaign in, or a setting to run campaigns in. In the former case, it is, indeed, better to design the two concurrently. If the latter then the setting needs to be built with at least one eye on reuse, and that suggests building the setting first, and then the adventures.

So, it really depends on what you want.

In addition, I would argue that 12 adventures, rather than 8, may well be better for a 1-20 campaign, simply because high level adventures are more complex and time consuming to write and run, and so taking more time in this segment of the campaign may well be beneficial.

Thank you, Hussar, for demonstrating admirably the adventure-first design.

One way that I tweak it is by estimating the number of sessions I want to play that campaign for (as one who likes to switch campaigns every 6 months or so). So if I know now, in June, that I can basically play until September without a major interruption, I know I've got 4 months, with about 3 games/month, I have 12 game sessions. Each game session runs about 4 hours, and in that time, I have about 4 encounters.

So I have a total of about 48 encounters in this campaign. So my PCs will gain about 3 levels over the course of the game. This gives me a starting level: I'll start them at level 4, so that by the time the campaign ends they will have had a chance to qualify for most PrC's and gain some standing in the world.

If they're already level 4, I know they're already heroes above the average level of many of the NPCs in the world, so I'm not going to start them off as farmers or whatever. They've already killed a few goblins and the like, so people already know their name, can seek them out, and have a reason for paying them to do dangerous things.

If my theme is "dragons," I pick 4-5 dragon-style monsters or NPCs of CR 3-5 and use them for the body of my first adventure. The connections between them will reflect the foundation on where I build my campaign. For instance, let's say I choose a few different types of wyrmling dragons, and maybe a Dragon Shaman NPC. This Dragon Shaman NPC has kidnapped several types of wyrmlings and is using them to sacrifice to his own totem dragon, a vile Red Dragon named Balzidir. The PC's are contacted by the contingent of Good Dragons (perhaps a Bronze Dragon posing as a human) to end him and rescue the wyrmlings. The reason they can't intervene themselves is due to ages-old Dragon Pacts which lay out territories for the different types to hunt in that cannot be violated. If the good dragons were to go get their youths back themselves, they would start an all-out Dragonswar that may lay to waste the world.

And not only do I have my first adventure, I have a good arc for the next 11: the PCs are caught between warring dragon factions and must somehow prevent the outbreak of all-out war. They'll never face Balzidir himself, but the great wyrm is old and senile...they may face one of his young spawn, the Young-aged twins Sarabel and Vriktal, who hunger for a great war.

So the PC's start in the coastal city of Vargis, a city under the protection of the Bronze Dragons, at the base of the volcanic mountain kingdom that is ruled by Red Dragons, a range that smokes and smolders with a barely-repressed explosion...here, where gnomes run the city and where animals are given rights as humans, the PCs have been contacted by a mysterious green-cloaked figure, with an urgent message...

While they're making characters, I'll jump into the MM (or other sources) and pull out a few encounters...half-dragon orcs in the Simmering Mountains who won't let them pass a bridge, a stray wyrmling silver dragon who doesn't understand the PC's are here to help it, a five-headed pyrohydra with a passion for fine art, and a lone Winter Wolf warrior who is on a personal vendetta mission against Sarabel.

Now, let's play!

Nice ideas, Hussar. Personally, it wouldn't work at all for me as a DM, since I like to run open-ended campaigns, with no pre-existing plot arc(s) but rather throwing out a half dozen plot hooks every once in a while and letting the campaign develop out of a combination of the one(s) the PCs choose, their backgrounds and motivations, the actions and decisions they attempt to carry out, and the surrounding world. But for the particular aims you're going for, I think you have a pretty good approach.

Very interesting approach. In fact, so interesting that it's the first thread I've ever subscribed to in my time here.

Good stuff Hussar.

I will say that, while a theme is good, depending on her group a DM could get away without one. All one needs is a series of adventures, and from this series of adventures a setting can arise. This is basically what happened with Goodman Games's DCC line - DCC 35 is a campaign boxed set based on previously published adventures.

The problem with this seems to be that you have similar problem solving techniques for almost every setion of this campaign. If you want a living campaign, the best option is to have multiple factions involved (3 is a good number for the sake of simplicity), each of which has a stated goal- and the party should have the option of dealing with any of them, by whatever means. This way it can interact organically and adapt when players get bored of a certain approach.

Basically what I'm saying is that this just looks like a string of find/kill adventures.

1.find/kill
2.find/kill
3.find/kill
4.defend/find/kill
5.defend/flee
6.find/kill
7.find/kill
8.find/kill

Aren't you worried that this is going to become tedious? It's not exactly Corridorquest X (ie walking down a hallway and killing the monsters the pop out), but unless the combats are all really awesome, my interest as a player would flag within the first 3 sections.