Help with Collaborative Campaign Building

[Elodan]

I’ve been planning on getting back behind the screen for several months now. Our current campaign is going strong, so I’m holding off until we hit a good stopping point. Unfortunately, this gives me too much time to think about things. I keep changing my mind about things like what sources I want to use, the flavor of the campaign, etc. Fortunately (or unfortunately), Dragon #322 arrived a few days ago and it contains an article on Collaborative Campaign Building. I think taking this approach will help with my indecisiveness as well as making the group feel more involved with the campaign from the stat. I’ve taken the basic questions the article recommended and modified them somewhat. I’m looking for suggestions or additions to this list. Also, should I limit the sources people can pick from or give them a recommended list to go through?

The campaign is to be d20 fantasy and as such any d20 compatible materials will be considered with the caveat that suggestions for the various items to be included may, in the end, be modified or not added to the campaign to keep things in order with the overall campaign theme. These questions will be used to determine our campaign.

1. What races do you want in the world? What races don’t you want?
2. What classes and prestige classes do you want available? Are there any classes that shouldn’t be available?
3. What flavor should the campaign have? High fantasy (brave and heroic) or low fantasy (grim and gritty)?
4. What kind of role should gods and religion play in the campaign?
5. How prevalent should magic be? Should we use the standard magic system or something a little different (spell points, Arcana Unearthed, or what)?
6. Should we use an established campaign setting or build as we go?
   • Established setting
   1. • Which one?
   • Build as we go
   1. • What kind of cultures do you want to see? Any cultures we should avoid?
      • Who or what should be the dominant race?
      • What should the terrain of the world be like? Earth-like, a water world, desert world or what?

Thanks.

Tom

 

[shady]

My usual general suggestion is to get hold of a copy of the 2e world builders handbook, but some comments herein:

- what technology level - is gunpowder allowed?
- any extra rules from Unearthed Arcana and similar?
- on world terrain, I don't think you need to specify necessarily the terrain for the entire world, so much as the terrain for the campaign ... eg you could start in a desert area of a regular world, which maybe gives you more options later
- you might have more than one dominant race (WBH generates multiple dominant, secondary and minor races and attempts to place them).
- general stability level - from all out world war to all out world peace

 

[Desdichado]

Check out the Dungeoncraft articles by Ray Winninger, check out Unearthed Arcana for alternate rules that might impact the theme and feel of your campaign substantially.

 

[Iuz]

My group is just starting to do something similar to this. But rather than Dragon we got our inspiration from this series of articles. http://www.rpgtimes.net/rpgtimes/article_list.php?author_list_id=6