Creating a campaign for Bob's..

[Oompa]

Welcome, this is about 4th edition, but i just want general advice

Some background info:

I've been running adventures for my 6 players for almost 6 years now, i've always ran the official modules and magazine adventures..

Now it is time to try and evolve my DMíng skills and create a home made campaign.

But..

My 6 players are all 'Bob the gamers', we play once every two weeks, they don't read any D&D book between sessions (they have a PHB).
Only one of them reads other fantasy books or watches fantasy, science fiction movies.

My players don't like to roleplay much, just hitting up a bar or talking to the king is enough, but no reall investigating, just snooping around or try and capture a monster and question it to death.. (actualy after about 10 minutes of doing roleplay my players want to fight)

My players are no tacticians and often need to be pushed into the direction they need to go.. They dont have background stories, they just don't really seem interested in writing a half A4 of background..

So now for the question:

Does anyone else DM for such a group and have advice about making and running a campaign for them? I just threw lose adventures at them and they seem to like it..

I was thinking about some kind of invasion campaign, orcs and monsters invade their lands.. but for 30 levels?

Advice? Anyone?

Edit: We started 4th edition in june last year..

 

[S'mon]

Model it on (good) TV series - they have to appeal to viewers with a short attention span. Lots of short adventures, 1-4 sessions, tops. Some overarching themes are good, but don't plan them for 30 levels. A TV show will often have a BBEG that gets defeated after several seasons (Buffy's Mayor, Stargate's Apophis), once he's served his purpose.

You can have an invasion theme, but I'd suggest that for 4e you link the themes to the tiers; so an orc invasion sounds appropriate for Heroic tier. A demonic or Far Realm invasion might work for Epic tier. A tier is ca 20 sessions, that's not so long to get lost or bored.

Edit: Oh, and don't be afraid to throw in published modules (adventures of 1-4 sessions length) into your homebrew campaign.

 

[TerraDave]

Its good to have broad themes and milestones (finding something important, beating a main bad guy) but don't overcomplicate it. Don't count on much detail being remembered session to session, and feel free to put in reminders ("have you found the high priest who is seeking the ritual of all destruction?"). Have more detailed things be resolved in session or in a few sessions.

In play, as you probably know, just keep with the hints, and know when to pull punches (but you can probably also kill charecters once in a while). As noted, you can use prepared adventures in your homebrew. The new Dungeon Delve, along with Draconomicon and Open Grave, have miniadventures that would relatively easy to drop into an ongoing campaign, and seem ideal for short attention spans.

 

[Oompa]

One important thing i forget to mention is, my players are..

Not so really fast..

But that should not really be the problem if i indeed use short adventures with different stories trough out the campaign..

I shall check out the books mentioned

Thanks already for the bunch o tips

 

[The Ghost]

I would consider doing a "Night of the Living Dead' sort of thing. Actually, you can use any monster type to make the campaign work, not just undead. You start with a basic town and have the PCs goal to be something along the lines of get everyone alive to safety and then free the town of problem. It provides a general theme for you and the players to work from. And, like a lot of these types of movies, the game is pretty focused on combat, which, it sounds like your players are interested in. Just a thought, I ran one once in 3.5e and it worked quite well. Feel free to ask questions if you are interested in this.

 

[Oompa]

I would consider doing a "Night of the Living Dead' sort of thing. Actually, you can use any monster type to make the campaign work, not just undead. You start with a basic town and have the PCs goal to be something along the lines of get everyone alive to safety and then free the town of problem. It provides a general theme for you and the players to work from. And, like a lot of these types of movies, the game is pretty focused on combat, which, it sounds like your players are interested in. Just a thought, I ran one once in 3.5e and it worked quite well. Feel free to ask questions if you are interested in this.

That is a great idead, and off course now with minions it should be a lot easier