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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marius Delphus" data-source="post: 308548" data-attributes="member: 447">Golden Rules of Kit-Bashing?My campaign's plot draws heavily from "elements" published elsewhere. One rule I've found essential to obey when assembling a campaign from assorted bits: "Don't contradict what's gone before; everything else is fair game."For example, you might need a "hook" for the next adventure. Before introducing something new, check over all the "throwaway" bits you've accumulated and see if anything strikes your fancy. Perhaps the end of a previous adventure wasn't really the end. Perhaps an established NPC has a problem the PCs will be eager to help solve. Perhaps an established NPC has a problem with the PCs that he/she is eager to solve. Et cetera....After assembling quite a few bits, I discovered another rule that made a lot of sense to me: "Make sure to account for the ramifications of your choices." That is, make sure everything that happens follows logically from things that have already happened. (Of course, it's all right to keep the players in the dark.)For example, let's say you notice that your map needs altering. (When you drew the map long ago, you mistakenly landlocked your big capital city.) Don't just change the map and declare a paradigm shift next session... engineer the change in-game and let the PCs hear about it. (You could start a canal project and let that progress for a few game years, you could say that a bunch of wizards and spades of colossal excavation are involved, or you could say that a small cabal of wizards got together and cast an epic spell or two... depending on your campaign model.)Finally, I found one other rule that helped me keep things manageable: "If if doesn't fit, throw it away." Doesn't matter how important it is: anything from major features to nitpicky rumor table entries can be discarded or retooled if it's important to your campaign's continuity.That piece of the Forgotten Realms I mentioned before came with NPCs, plot hooks, trade routes, and all kinds of other things that just plain didn't belong in my world. My version of this region, therefore, lacks one of its main (canon) villains and links to other major regions in the Forgotten Realms that have no reasonable analogs in my world.You can apply these little rules even if you're not kit-bashing, but to my mind fitting pieces ("quilting") is sort of a different art than creating everything from scratch ("weaving"). That's why these little rules came to mind as I was kit-bashing... enjoy!</blockquote>

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