Frustrated with camapign design

[Runesong42]

Hey all,
Just wanted to vent for a few minutes.

I am currently running a campaign that is set in a similar vein to the real-world discovery of the New World. The PC's have landed on a new, uncharted area and have begun to carve out a piece of civilization for themselves. They have met several new, bizarre races and have begun trading with them. There is an opposing force of 'evil' individuals who are harvesting human bodies and creating Necrotech (merging machine and undead) soldiers for use in a war that is yet to happen. I have a small cast of 'core' NPCs which help the story of the lone PC progress.

But, now I am overwhelmed.

He is going to start branching out and exploring the new area, and most of my campaign has been told 'on the fly' with pre-made adventures to round out the non-RP segments. And, of course, I haven't been too diligent in keeping track of important things. But now that we are starting to get into full swing, I feel as though I must 'catch up' on all kinds of work.

I don't really know where to even begin.

I know youo have all suffered through this before, so I ask for some words of encouragement and perhaps some key pointers I may be overlooking.

Thanx!

 

[Odhanan]

It happens to just "loose your breath" when you are faced with multiple things to do for your campaign.

My first advice would be: take your time. Your brain is a muscle. Like any muscle, it needs to slow down and rest sometimes. It needs some exercise too to go on functioning. So get a break from your campaign design for a few days.

Then, when you feel like it, refreshed and inspired, you can go back to it. Try to work on one thing at a time instead of multiple works that end up leading nowhere. While mapping for instance, keep a notebook beside you and take notes of whatever's going on in your head and go back to your map. When you're done, take a topic like "Religions", or "Tribes" and try to make overviews of them in a page or two. Then you can always go back to these notes and expand them bit by bit, adding a sketch here, a coat of arms there, some notes about the clothing of "that guild" there too, and so on.

Important thing is: breathe and take one thing at a time.

I hope this helps,
Odh.

 

[Graf]

You're basically running a homebrew campaign.
By which I mean that you've chosen a story which requires you to make up both macro parts of the world (histories of ancient and existing civilizations, societies, magical styles, cultures, etc) and micro (NPCs, small locations, dungeons, etc) on the fly.

My advice?
Focus on Micro!!!

Macro content is a crippling time sink for most games because it takes a lot longer to create than for PCs to get through. Also you can't run a game entirely on macro content (no matter how cool this king who lived 500 years ago was the PCs aren't really going to be able to interact with him, etc).

If you're running this kind of game you obviously have a macro itch you need to scratch up info before sessions just so the PCs aren’t inhabiting a barren wasteland but whenever possible try to be "creatively focused". So if you make up a supercool king from 500 years ago then plug his tomb in walking distance from the party’s base and let them find out his story from murals and artifacts as they explore it.
Even if that means moving his tomb from the capital you want them to travel to in the final campaign arc.

Also you need to be comfortable with telling characters "Your character is familiar with the history of the ancient Suel Empire, the only things that you can recall that would be relevant about this particular situation are a) b) and c)."
If you wind up making up the d) then make a note and transcribe that relatively quickly.

Also, PS Steal rampantly from published books and change the absolute minimum (ideally only visual stuff).
Also, Keep notes. If you start to get confused about what's happening stop and take notes. Getting hopelessly confused isn't going to help anyone.
Also, Be frank with the PCs. "You've moved into the world I haven't got fully mapped out yet. My focus is preparing content for the next session. There may be times when I need to be vague about some tangential pieces of information. If a minor NPC comes from a town from far across the continent I may not be able to tell you much about all the details of that person’s voyage here. If you guys can let the small stuff slide for a while that would let me keep the focus on the game" Players are much more understanding if you're straight with them about what's happening.

 

[Hand of Evil]

World building site that may help out: http://www.io.com/~eighner/world_builder/world_builder_index.html

Also see my sig for DM Advice.

 

[Runesong42]

Thank you for the input, all, and thanks especially to Graf -- that's what I needed to hear. Hand of Evil's link is highly useful for people who want great detail for their campaign world.
Odhanan has an excellent point about taking things one step at a time and trying not to force your brain to create when it is not able to. Saves lots of headaches.

I am back on track, for the most part. I now have several ideas for the PC in question, and what was once a high-action, super-heroic campaign is going to change into a very 'personal' one where people, not monsters, are the challenges.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Another thing to remember: You do not have to do all the work yourself, take from other sources, give your players homework (NPCs, names, places, landmarks, etc.) for you to pull from.

 

[Aris Dragonborn]

Another thing to remember: You do not have to do all the work yourself, take from other sources, give your players homework (NPCs, names, places, landmarks, etc.) for you to pull from.

I second this. Listen to what your players are saying. If one of them wants to find the legendary sword of ogre decapitation he recently learned of, you have an adventure. If your mage wants to establish some sort of school sometime in the future, you have an adventure. If the thief wants to find the fabled tomb of monty haul - well, you know the rest.

The players may know what they're going after, but they won't know what kind of opposition they might face (and those villains may become sources of adventures themselves).

They great part about this is you don't have to have detailed notes. Just write a quick note down, something like: "Fighter wants to find the sword of ogre decapitation". That's it. It's like just like writing down any adventure ideas you might have, only instead of wracking your brains for ideas, you let the players give you the ideas. Players are probably just as valuable as t.v., movies, or books when it comes to adventure ideas.

Something else to keep in mind: K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid. I've caught myself more than once over-writing an adventure. My problem is that once I get going on and idea, I tend to go off in all directions, even if it doesn't directly relate to the adventure.

Since the PC's are interested in carving out a little bit of civilization for themselves, they will probably come into conflict with the natives sooner or later. The natives won't trust these johnny-come-lately's very much, so you engineer an adventure to change this - not all at once, just a little. Maybe the chief of a native tribe wants the party to retrieve the Staff of Justice, a symbol of his authority. It's been lost for five years (or whatever), and he wants it back. Why? Maybe he wants to see how much the party is willing to do to earn his trust and friendship. Maybe he has an inferiority complex and believes he's not a 'real' chief unless he has the staff. Maybe the tribes shaman is undermining his authority, and he needs the staff to set things straight (that's a two-for-one right there; recovering the staff could lead to other quests from the chief, as well as earning the enmity of the shaman for thwarting his plans).

Anyway, hope this helps.