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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 2743949" data-attributes="member: 32740">This is the only way I really know how to run a campaign anymore.  For years now, unless I'm using a published module I have at best a page of notes or some pre-generated stat blocks for specific encounters I want to run.  Oh, and sometimes a general idea of what direction I want to specifically take the game during a given session.  The rest is off-the-cuff, by-the-seat-of-my-pants, on-the-fly improvisation.In some ways I just keep throwing things against the wall until something sticks.  The thngs that the players pick up on is as often as not the trivial details rather than the neon-lit signs that say "THIS BE THE PLOT HOOK MATEY!"  It is when I am most descriptive that the players seem most apt to pick up on ideas that I didn't even intend to be there and run with them.  If I simply plop the world down and ask them, "Where do you want to go today?", they know they have all the options in the world but their characters have none of the motivation to do anything except what they've written into their backgrounds (if they WROTE a background which they don't).As an example: When I'm describing a room in a dungeon with a book on a shelf rather than say it's a book about history in a kingdom across the sea, I'll give them a title and author off the top of my head, I'll mention the author again later when they find a letter in a desk, I'll decide I may be giving them a bit too much money and tell them that the coins are from another country and they'll get lower value for them when they exchange them at the money-changers - and the coins are from the country mentioned in the book.  The players may or may not pick up on these connections that I'm just throwing out all the time at random, but when they do the adventures write themselves as we go along.  The world feels alive to them because it IS alive.  Not even I know what shape it's really going to take when I start the game.When I start a new campaign I may have a general story arc about the release of captured evil gods upon the world that will cover the entire campaign but it will be the players reactions to my random descriptions that will create secondary themes like statues making repeated appearances, or having a lot of the information they discover coming from books rather than people, or repeated travel to foreign lands, or other planes of existence being prominently featured, etc.One of the techniques I use is that whenever the players are talking about the piles of information I've been giving them I SHUT UP and let them talk.  They WILL ALWAYS find connections and ideas that interest them that were never intended to really be there.  The really difficult part - and the part that most challenges MY creativity - is finding a way to tie together a lot of loose ends into a cohesive whole.  Failure to do so tends to make the game a lot like the X-Files - there's always more questions and seldom any real answers.  You have to know when to tell them that what they THINK is important and related information actually ISN'T in order to wrap up some of the plot and story lines that you wind up weaving.  In fact that's a good analogy - you're weaving a cloth out of random threads but you can't weave it in every direction at once.  Some of the threads make up the EDGES of the cloth you're weaving.I would recommend Terry Pratchett's Discworld books as good inspirational material for how your campaign might wind up looking as you use this technique.  As his books initially unfold you get information about seemingly unrelated events, people, and things.  As they progress you find that certain of these are more important than you might have thought at first.  As they reach the story climax it is revealed (sometimes gradually, sometimes all at once) how these things actually relate to each other - sometimes intimately so.  Then it's all wrapped up and you can proceed with the next book.Edit: forgot to mention - one of the keys to making this really work is to take lots of notes.  I actually slack off even more because I have a player or two that will wind up taking all the notes I need.  As long as I can occasionally read THEIR notes I can devote even more of my time during the game to making it up.  If it weren't for that I'd probably end up taping our game sessions so that I could review later, take notes, and mine for ideas.</blockquote>

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