End of a Campaign

[Henry]

This may sound strange but I create timeline, listing each group and drawing a line for their plots, this is very short, short, long and very long. This defines the goal. Plots have a setup, a process and then a conclusion. Now I create my group matrix, this tells me what groups work together, which hate each other, and which are in the middle. I then assign my NPC to the groups.

Sounds like the poor man's version of Microsoft Project.

I like it!

 

[LostSoul]

You'll probably want to come up with a list of factions, their goals, means, methods, and who they like/hate.

Read The Prince. It'll give you some ideas.

You can treat a city like a dungeon. A dungeon is really just encounters spaced off by corridors, right? Well, cities are the same way - just lots more corridors. You can always put up gates and walls to block things off, though. If you want to get more abstract, you can look at the dungeon rooms as "encounters" and the corridors as "player choices" so that a dungeon, in essence, becomes a flow-chart of encounters linked by the actions the PCs take.

I'd give the players a pretty strong plotline in the beginning, and use that adventure to show the city to them. In the next couple adventures, you can relax things and hopefully the PCs will want to explore the city on their own - without any goading from you. Just make it interesting (another way of saying "tailor it to the PCs and Players").

 

[Silver Moon]

Sounds good, but don't be surprised if it doesn't go quite as you have planned. I ran a long complex city campaign last winter and spring, where the party had to protect the rulers and nobles. Guess what, they didn't really enjoy the module. Seems that they prefer "offense" over "defense". Be prepared to run into the same.