Gloomshroud
First Post
I'm spending a healing surge to bring this thread back from the brink. There are more ideas out there, don't remain silent, folks!
DM Dilemma - I Need Help, ENWorld! - *UPDATED* - Putting YOUR ideas to work!
- Thread starter Gloomshroud
- Start date
Lord Captian Tobacco
First Post
Like Nagol said in point #1 decide on the structure. Decide what you want the adventure to accomplish.
The next part is a little more time consuming. Look at each main encounter/session and decide how it should turn out. Jot these down like you would an outline for a school paper.
Now, for each main point, address what you need to have happen. (PC’s must find the map. Talk to the barkeep. Etc.) Then consider how to handle what to do if the party does not do this ONE important action of the scene.
Plotting what players are going to do is harder than most people think, so take some time and consider what they are likely to do (based on the party makeup), what they are really likely to do (based on the players makeup) and think of ways to, not counter their mistakes, but how to seamlessly get them the same info without breaking the flow of the game. Maybe a small side action (chasing down the thief who stole the thingie) or maybe this is a major change (the only guy who could stop the bad thing from happening is dead maybe his spell book has a clue in it…)
It takes a while to get the flow of seamless corrections but the more you do it (and have a couple of ‘random’ but controlled encounters on hand) the easier it will become.
Hope this helps…
(reading later, Ogre also had some great ideas.)
The next part is a little more time consuming. Look at each main encounter/session and decide how it should turn out. Jot these down like you would an outline for a school paper.
Now, for each main point, address what you need to have happen. (PC’s must find the map. Talk to the barkeep. Etc.) Then consider how to handle what to do if the party does not do this ONE important action of the scene.
Plotting what players are going to do is harder than most people think, so take some time and consider what they are likely to do (based on the party makeup), what they are really likely to do (based on the players makeup) and think of ways to, not counter their mistakes, but how to seamlessly get them the same info without breaking the flow of the game. Maybe a small side action (chasing down the thief who stole the thingie) or maybe this is a major change (the only guy who could stop the bad thing from happening is dead maybe his spell book has a clue in it…)
It takes a while to get the flow of seamless corrections but the more you do it (and have a couple of ‘random’ but controlled encounters on hand) the easier it will become.
Hope this helps…
(reading later, Ogre also had some great ideas.)
Quickleaf
Legend
Haha, great thread! Definitely many approaches... lots for me to think about. Here's what I did for my last campaign (in some detail), but I'm reconsidering a lot of it after reading through this thread... while it worked for my group, there was definitely a (concealed) "railroad" element.
“The Heir Apparent” Design Process
I ran a 10 month long heroic-tier D&D campaign involving lots of court intrigue, and did extensive planning for it. My process for designing the campaign was highly structured. Full disclosure: we had a group of 7 players, several newer to D&D, seemed to get through 3 encounters every session, and met twice a month. I decided to level the PCs every 6 encounters yet still follow the XP guidelines in the DMG; this meant my encounters were significantly harder taking both a smaller number of encounters and the large group into account. So, I had no room to waste time on “filler” fights or tangents not related to the main story. My process went from macro to micro: campaign, adventure, encounter.
Campaign Design
1: Idea Seed
What kind of campaign do I want to run? What’s my inspiration?
My initial inspiration came from Shakespeare and the Tudors HBO series, as well as our previous DM’s campaign. I wanted an intrigue-laden game but without sacrificing the combat our group loves so much. As a DM, I like a vivid cast of NPCs and challenging the players with dilemmas, puzzles, mysteries. While listening to the Henry V soundtrack I thought up a campaign where the PCs fight a burgeoning tyrant they can’t just walk up to and kill, and the strongest weapon they have against the tyrant is his bastard son and political maneuvering.
2: Brainstorm
I set aside a page to doodle, mind map, or just write down anything that comes to mind. This helps me to overcome writer’s block and I’ll often return to this brainstorm page throughout the design process.
One of the brainstorms I wrote down was a made up quote from a holy book called the Canticles. “The dawn rises and what was ere invisible becomes clear as day, yet the stars fade from the sky. Thus, light is both revealer and concealer, for verily you may be blinded by your own brightness to what is truth. [Canticle of the Sun King 3:2]” I had no idea what I’d do with this until I was designing a dungeon and looked at my brainstorm sheet for ideas, saw this idea and made a cool puzzle out of it.
3: “Core Ethos”
Next I describe the campaign’s story in 100 words or less, basically a paragraph. This should make clear any conceits of the campaign, such as the PCs are all opposed to a wicked prince, or the church is different than the core D&D religion. It also defines the scope, in my case limited to one kingdom over the course of a couple months. The story’s theme should also be evident – intrigue, power corrupts the best of us, etc. Finally, you can tease out several tropes from this “core ethos”, things like the Evil Prince, Succession Fight, or Royal Bastard. I use this “core ethos” to bind the campaign together, and whenever I get stuck I go back to it and use it to guide my design.
The core ethos for “The Heir Apparent” was: A power-mad prince stands to inherit his dying father’s throne, and the people are in fear as his abuses are already terrible. The PCs rise from across the land, united in opposition to this evil pretender to the throne. In so doing, they shepherd a bastard heir who may be a prophesied enlightened king, gather allies against the prince, and stop the prince’s schemes in a succession fight to determine the next sovereign of the land.
4: List Required Elements
Now I make a laundry list of NPCs, locales, events, artifacts, moral dilemmas, mysteries/puzzles, and any props that I think will feature in the campaign. I don’t have to use all of these, but this page helps me formulate my ideas. At this point I’m not interested in names or well-developed ideas, just the concept – a few words to serve as a touchstone for me later on.
In “The Heir Apparent” the NPCs included the evil prince, his bastard son, the bastard’s witch caretaker, the bastard’s mother, the good prince, and the rest of the royal family. Obviously the village the bastard was hidden in would be a good starting place, and the king’s castle would feature at a later point. I also wanted to present a dilemma of what to do with the bastard heir and who to put forward as the new sovereign. Prop-wise I knew I needed a good kingdom map and a royal family tree so the players could keep all these recurring NPCs straight.
5: Main Villain
My favorite part is designing a compelling and vicious villain with a powerful motive, interesting backstory, and devious plan to achieve their ends. I’ll also take note of their modus operandi, defining trait(s), henchmen, and how the villain sees him or herself as the hero of their own story. Often I’ll draw on tropes or historical/literary/film characters as an influence. Knowing what steps the villain needs to take helps me plan out adventures where the PCs can foil those plans with panache. I’ll also come up with 3 secrets about the villain which the PCs can exploit or will simply surprise them.
For example, my evil prince needed to accomplish four things to take the throne. First, fake the king’s will. Second, acquire the lost high crown. Third, get the kingmaker stag to acknowledge him (or, failing that, kill it). Fourth, obtain support from a majority of nobles/power figures.
6: Setting
Here’s where I choose what setting best matches my campaign’s “core ethos”, required elements, and villain. I could see deciding this at an earlier point. When designing my homebrew kingdom I restricted myself to one page at first, capturing the vibe, major conflicts, snapshot of geography/culture, ruler and government, economy, religion, military, etc. Like with the villain I create 3 secrets pertaining to the setting.
7: The Player Handout
So far I’ve been designing in a vacuum, but now that I have a strong sense of the campaign I want to run, I talk with my players and get their input. I then put together a one-page campaign handout (setting brief, limits, house rules, character creation guidelines, and so forth). Once I know what sorts of PCs they’ve created, their backstories, and what they’d like out of the campaign I move forward. Others might make this step 0, but I do in this order because I know I’ll burn out if I’m not really excited about the campaign; in my experience DM enthusiasm is contagious.
My handout basically boiled down to the setting info above, limiting PCs to non-monstrous races and non-evil alignments, and requiring they all have a reason to oppose the evil prince.
8: Garden of Forking Paths
To steal the title of a Flashforward episode. I’ll sketch out major decision points for the PCs (usually 1 every level or two) and possible scenarios resulting from those. What to do with a defeated villain, which nobles to approach for aid, how to handle a cursed monster, that sort of thing. This isn’t meant to be comprehensive or even to provide complete freedom of choice – it’s the top two or three meaningful choices the PCs can make at each point.
For example, I began with the first decision: What to do about the bastard heir? At the end of the first adventure it’s clear he’s no longer safe in the village, but it’s equally clear he matches the description of a prophesied wise king. He’s young and easily influenced, but he’s a biddable king having both royal blood and the blood of a rival noble family (meaning he could establish a truce), and understands the plight of commoners as he grew up as one. Do the PCs decide to take him to the royal court to have his birthright acknowledged despite the risk of the evil prince’s influence? Do they decide to take the boy to his mother’s hiding place? Or do they decide to support the boy as heir and go after the king’s stolen will (expecting that the boy is named heir, or that they can forge it/destroy it to put him forward as heir)?
9: Quest Outline
Using all of this I then outline the major quests. While this is railroad-ey, I do it with an eye toward situations which I can plunder for encounters and ideas if we pass over the adventure for whatever reason.
My outline went something like this…
Level 1 – Learn about, find, and protect bastard heir from prince’s redcoats. What to do with the bastard heir? Trust witch caretaker or knight?
Level 2 – En route to wherever they are headed they stop in town with corrupt tax collector. Must deal with tax collector to gain information/lead, how is up to them. Risk drawing attention to depose tax collector?
Level 3 – Go after king’s will stolen by thieves’ guild in prince’s employ. Alternately, recruit thieves’ guild to fight evil prince. What to do with will? In play my group chose to bypass this quest, but I plundered nearly all of it in later adventures.
Level 4 – Rescue the boy’s mother from borderland fortress governed by militaristic lord. Alternately, warn good prince of assassination plot. Trust boy’s mother? Accept good prince’s aid?
Level 5 – At king’s castle with political agenda of their choice. First run-in with evil prince over dinner (duel?). King asks help stopping strigha killing loyalists (I know they will to win points with nobility). Strigha is princess. Kill her and end curse forever? Save her and put curse into dormancy for now?
Level 6 – Beat Prince’s henchmen to the high crown in Drowned Amanteur. Confront oracle dragon about prophecy. Who will they support as sovereign? The catch: All 5 NPC choices are prophesied to lead to civil war, but the one PC who has a very remote claim to throne is “prophetically safe” choice.
Level 7 – King’s Tournament. Two quests: First, gain support among nobility. Which ones? Second, stop evil prince from killing the kingmaker stag (and its protector). Lots of mini quests to choose from: hastiludes, grand melee, romance, vengeance, embarrassing evil prince, etc.
Level 8 – Crucial potential ally is under siege by evil prince’s forces. Alternately, the magic banner in the besieged city would help raise army. Mystery werewolf sabotaging defenses, feuding werewolves, hag’s curse. End werewolf’s curse or allow it to continue as weapon against evil prince? In play, we were running out of time so I cut this from the campaign.
Level 9 – Evil prince either attempts coup or retreats with forces to his citadel. What to do with defeated evil prince? How to evade prophecy of civil war?
10: Props
Lastly, I gather any resources I’ll anticipate needing to run the campaign, not on an adventure-by-adventure basis, but overall. For example, CDs that evoke the theme, creating area maps, written center pieces (prophecies, secret documents), lists of names, crucial NPC stats, etc.
For “The Heir Apparent” I created a beautiful family tree for the royal line in Photoshop and a kingdom map in Campaign Cartographer.
TheAuldGrump
First Post
I don't know how long it will be available, but the Storyteller's Notebook that used to be on RPG Sheets is currently up on Google Docs. The Storyline Arrangement & Development Sheets are particularly good.
The Auld Grump
The Auld Grump
Just googled myself to this thread. I'm working on a new cmapaign under... let's say stressful conditions. We have 2,5h sessions and use this campaign as a gap-filler when we are one player short of our normal group. So a session is run every now and then and I have to find easy to remember conclusions at the end of each sessions so we don't have to spend half an hour telling what has happened 2 months ago.
Mustrum_Ridcully told me about narrow-wide-narrow. I have started to use that concept in a micro version. I start every session with a definite starting point, give some room for decisions and come back to a definite end. The end needs not to be the only one possible, just a definite one. The setting is Dark Sun, so it's quite clear. But I don't plan much on an overall arc, I just think maximum two sessions ahead and have some kind of rough idea what might happen in background and in the future, which gets more and more clear once we come closer. And every further inspiration I get from the actions of the players. Just let it flow
For such a type of campaign that is not used in regular sessions preparing and thinking too much ahead is just a waste of time to me. I'm prepared to jump in for the next session if one player has no time, and a second session is maybe also roughly laid out and that's it. After the session I think on what might happen next. With the creature catalog creating some battle is fast and easy. Just put some skill roles in between, save some time for role player the characters and you're done.
This is not my usual type of play, but since the discussion was on narrow-wide-narrow it might be a good addition. Usually I'm the sandboxy type of GM.
1. I make up my own setting, ruthlessly thieving parts from other settings and putting them together to a rough idea. It's mostly brainstorming. I also have some rough ideas about possible larger background plots.
2. I work out the surroundings of the starting area of the PCs. Those will be more detailed, but just the part that they have access to in the beginning. The further away, the more vague it gets. In one campaign I even have a "border" around the starting area, a circle of almost impassable terrain and nobody knows anything about the outside. I just did that to keep things simple for me and to have the players focus on solving the problems inside the circle first (if not people will die, so they have to).
3. I work out interest groups inside the starting area. What do they do now? What are they goals? What are their opponents? Is their armed conflict? What territory do they occupy? If there is a chance I will have those groups in combat with the pcs involved (as opponents or allies), I generate some sample members of the group with full stats. Like the standard member, team leader, single important persons and so on. If there is no chance for combat, the important npcs get maybe a class and level or a few keywords with whom I may generate some stats on the fly.
4. I work out some quests or plots for the pcs to follow. Maybe some initial goal, some side quests and such things. Mostly based on the results of 2 and 3. Maybe I'll twist in parts of the background plots I have from 1. Those background plots usually have become more clear by now because they interact with what I have fixed already.
5. That's it with initial prep.
During the sessions I see where the pcs go and where they get involved. I check how that works with my idea for the interest groups and see what changes. Who knows what and will do what. Who want to have something from the pcs? Does he use diplomacy or force? Which groups become stronger rivals and might engage in war? Which groups rise due to their resources of the influence from the pcs? So the pcs are the may force behind the world. Their actions often are the impulse to change. From what the cps do and what the ideas of the players are I put up new quests and change the world. And depending on that I'll also start to develop the world further and tie in the background plots more strongly. Sooner or later the pcs will stumble upon the background plot and then they might see the red string and follow it. If not, next idea. Just listening to your players during the sessions, especially when they discuss and you have not much to do gives you tons or ideas.
Mustrum_Ridcully told me about narrow-wide-narrow. I have started to use that concept in a micro version. I start every session with a definite starting point, give some room for decisions and come back to a definite end. The end needs not to be the only one possible, just a definite one. The setting is Dark Sun, so it's quite clear. But I don't plan much on an overall arc, I just think maximum two sessions ahead and have some kind of rough idea what might happen in background and in the future, which gets more and more clear once we come closer. And every further inspiration I get from the actions of the players. Just let it flow
For such a type of campaign that is not used in regular sessions preparing and thinking too much ahead is just a waste of time to me. I'm prepared to jump in for the next session if one player has no time, and a second session is maybe also roughly laid out and that's it. After the session I think on what might happen next. With the creature catalog creating some battle is fast and easy. Just put some skill roles in between, save some time for role player the characters and you're done.
This is not my usual type of play, but since the discussion was on narrow-wide-narrow it might be a good addition. Usually I'm the sandboxy type of GM.
1. I make up my own setting, ruthlessly thieving parts from other settings and putting them together to a rough idea. It's mostly brainstorming. I also have some rough ideas about possible larger background plots.
2. I work out the surroundings of the starting area of the PCs. Those will be more detailed, but just the part that they have access to in the beginning. The further away, the more vague it gets. In one campaign I even have a "border" around the starting area, a circle of almost impassable terrain and nobody knows anything about the outside. I just did that to keep things simple for me and to have the players focus on solving the problems inside the circle first (if not people will die, so they have to).
3. I work out interest groups inside the starting area. What do they do now? What are they goals? What are their opponents? Is their armed conflict? What territory do they occupy? If there is a chance I will have those groups in combat with the pcs involved (as opponents or allies), I generate some sample members of the group with full stats. Like the standard member, team leader, single important persons and so on. If there is no chance for combat, the important npcs get maybe a class and level or a few keywords with whom I may generate some stats on the fly.
4. I work out some quests or plots for the pcs to follow. Maybe some initial goal, some side quests and such things. Mostly based on the results of 2 and 3. Maybe I'll twist in parts of the background plots I have from 1. Those background plots usually have become more clear by now because they interact with what I have fixed already.
5. That's it with initial prep.
During the sessions I see where the pcs go and where they get involved. I check how that works with my idea for the interest groups and see what changes. Who knows what and will do what. Who want to have something from the pcs? Does he use diplomacy or force? Which groups become stronger rivals and might engage in war? Which groups rise due to their resources of the influence from the pcs? So the pcs are the may force behind the world. Their actions often are the impulse to change. From what the cps do and what the ideas of the players are I put up new quests and change the world. And depending on that I'll also start to develop the world further and tie in the background plots more strongly. Sooner or later the pcs will stumble upon the background plot and then they might see the red string and follow it. If not, next idea. Just listening to your players during the sessions, especially when they discuss and you have not much to do gives you tons or ideas.
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