Avoiding campaign sameness

[MichaelSomething]

...what does that even mean?

Adventure to find out!!

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Adventure to find out!!

reading this in the break room was a mistake. i looked like i was laughing at nothing like a maniac.

 

[MGibster]

There are only so many kinds of stories out there....the real trick is dressing them up to look new.

This is basically it. @Piperken, there are several books out there, and likely online sources, that go over basic plots of literature, movies, and other stories. Some RPG companies over the years have even published such books like the GM's Survival Guide for Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition that has a whole slew of generic plot ideas. A good source might even be TV Tropes.

Looking at TV Tropes today, 12/20/24, the featured trope is "Gotta Pass the Class." This basic plot usually takes place at a school, where a student has to pass a class or suffer some consequences like summer school, not getting into college, or being sent to military school. In Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, our heroes, I forget their names, use a time machine to go to different points in history so they can pass their test. Really it's just a quest.

Too often the standard TTRPG trope is that the PCs are hired guns scrounging for their next job. Break that tradition, and give them a boss assigning them work. Downtime is handled by the PCs getting uninteresting routine duties for a while

Yeah. It can really help players get into a scenario when their characters have a vested interest in it beyond just making some gold.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One of the best- but most difficult- GMing tricks to master is listening to your players’ table talk and post-session chatter. Inevitably, they will say things you didn’t think of, and that can be a catalyst for improving the campaign. And some of what they say could be better than what you have planned.

In the best campaign I ever ran, I was doing this all the time. Reacting to what I heard, sometimes I altered my plots to conform to their speculations (“Ha! I figured you out!”) or counter to them (“I did NOT see that coming.”) Not always. But often enough to boost engagement & curiosity.

 

[GMMichael]

Really it's just a quest.

Yeah. It can really help players get into a scenario when their characters have a vested interest in it beyond just making some gold.

Didn't notice if anyone else mentioned this, but MMORPGs are a great source of adventures:

• Talk to quest-giver.
• Go to far-away place.
• Kill monster or get item.
• Return to quest-giver.
• Collect reward.

Millions of Morpgee players can't be wrong! But they might suggest that you switch to D&D 4th ed.

 

[Tonguez]

According to Christopher Booker in his book there are The Seven Basic Plots

• Overcoming the monster: A hero must conquer an evil force
• Rags to riches: A poor character gains something, loses it, and then wins it back
• The quest: A character must reach a goal while overcoming obstacles
• Voyage and return: A character travels to a new place, learns lessons, and returns home
• Rebirth: A character changes their ways and becomes a better person
• Comedy: Misunderstanding and Assumption leads to hilarity
• Tragedy: Mistakes, misunderstanding and auumption lead to tears

Ronald Tobias wrote The 20 Master Plots being

1. Quest: A character-driven story that has a hero go on a journey for something that changes him in some way.
2. Adventure: A plot-driven story that focuses on the action of reaching a series of goals.
3. Pursuit: Someone is being chased but escapes and the chase continues.
4. Rescue: The hero has to rescue someone who has been captured
5. Escape: Similar to the Rescue, except the captive rescues himself/herself.
6. Revenge: A wronged person seeks retirbution against the person or orgsnisation that harmed them
7. The Riddle: Mystery plot focussed on discovering and solving a series of clues
8. Rivalry: Character-oriented story based on the interactions of two opposing characters or teams
9. Underdog: Revolves around an underdog (maybe they are underprivileged, poor, disabled, etc.) who triumphs despite overwhelming odds.
10. Temptation: The story revolves around whether or not to give into a temptation, and the consequences.
11. Metamorphosis: A story revolving around a physical transformation of some kind.
12. Transformation: A story revolving around an inner-change, rather than a physical one.
13. Maturation: The character grows up and story is about their gradual transformation
14. Love: Two characters meet and fall in love but face difficulties of some kind.
15. Forbidden Love: The Love story but they are breaking some rule and must plot trying to be together despite the world trying to tear them apart.
16. Sacrifice: Revolves around a character who must give something up for the greater good of other(s)
17. Discovery: A story where the character reveals something terrible or unknown and must make a difficult choice
18. Wretched Excess: Story where the character is in a downward spiral of obsession and bad choices
19. Ascension: The Character starts low, overcomes adversity and becomes triumphant
20. Descension: The character starts high, succumbss and falls from grace

So learn those, change the details and you can probably have a good range of adventures

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There's an idea that goes by several names, including "fronts" (which is kind of a terrible name that doesn't explain what it means). Figure out what your various NPC groups want to do and have them advance their goals independent of what the PCs do. (These don't all have to be traditional villains, incidentally.)

As the PCs hear that "a mining town in the mountains got overrun by someone, but they moved on after killing everyone," or "there's been another assassination attempt on the patriarch of the high church," they should get the sense that A) there's stuff they can pursue if interested and B) not getting involved in some of this is eventually going to mean the campaign setting is going to change quite a bit, and probably for the worse.

 

[overgeeked]

I think this is where the OSR movement has some good advice. Sometimes you dont need a quest or hook or "adventure" at all. Create an unstable situation with tons of potential chaos and just let the PCs bump around in it. The adventure will create itself.

This right here. Create the factions and representative NPCs and give them all goals. Put them in the appropriate time and place, wind them up, and drop the PCs into the situation. Other than updating the factions and NPCs with new goals or thinking about how they'd respond to a new situation, you basically never have to worry about hooks again. The players will naturally go for what interests them.

The alternative is to check out The Game Master's Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying. Take the standard notion of GM writing hooks and turn it on it's head. Simply ask the players what they want to do and create factions and NPCs whose goals naturally oppose or interfere with those desires.

Either way, it's mostly prep the situation, make it drama rich, and drop the players in. Works a treat and is so much less work.

 

[overgeeked]

Didn't notice if anyone else mentioned this, but MMORPGs are a great source of adventures:

• Talk to quest-giver.
• Go to far-away place.
• Kill monster or get item.
• Return to quest-giver.
• Collect reward.

Millions of Morpgee players can't be wrong! But they might suggest that you switch to D&D 4th ed.

There are a lot of great videos on YouTube about good quest design in MMOs. Learning from the good and bad quests isn't a terrible place to start.

 

[Dross]

As mentioned above the why is important, maybe more so than the how.
The missing person could be missing because:
Got lost
Fell in love/lust
Got addicted to a vice, drugs, gambling, crochet
Helping 3rd party
Lost the parcel and is now looking for it.
Has a phobia that now prevents them from completing the task and returning home.
Waiting for a reply/ item made/ event to end before business can be conducted (festival, wedding, funeral etc.) before they can return
Actually missing because of an organisation IS abducting people for some plan outside of each individual mission. Good or evil.