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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 6240033" data-attributes="member: 23240">1. Craft the campaign to the characters.Before you plan anything more than a single session, ask your players what they are interested in doing and have them define motivations, goals and weaknesses for their characters. Then, use this knowledge to create situations that directly engage the characters. This way, you don't need to "hook" players into your plot, because they gave you various plots and hooked themselves. 2. Remember that the PCs are the main characters and the NPCs the supporting cast.Don't make any NPCs so important in your plans that you don't want them tricked, persuaded or killed by PCs. Your players may do something unexpected or just roll really well and it will destroy what you planned. You'll be tempted to protect "your plot" by blocking PCs. This way lays railroading.Instead, stay flexible and focus on consequences of players' actions. Have each significant NPC play two or three different roles, so that messing with them can cause something interesting. For example, have the criminal mastermind be a well-known and generally liked person in the town (innkeeper? apothecary?), or have the necromancer's zombies also be the reason why goblin tribes keep away.3. Push hardDon't plan with the assumption that you need to get PCs from where they are to some pre-planned point and that you should keep them safe until they get there. When players notice that you're not really challenging them and putting them in danger, they'll be bored. On the other hand, if each encounter has a significant chance of TPK, it won't be fun either. So give the PCs things to care for and put them in danger. Give them opportunities to achieve things they want and put obstacles on the way. To stay engaged during a longer campaign players have to lose a few times (due to poor luck or poor judgement, not a pre-planned "you get captured" event) and it needs to be painful, but not something that makes the characters unplayable.</blockquote>

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