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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Atreus" data-source="post: 204419" data-attributes="member: 3173">I like River's advice. I advocate what I call a Daoist approach to adventure/campaign design.The best prepreations are the prepreations that let you do your adventures on the fly.I take out a sheet of paper, and then I jot down very generalized ideas about the game world.  Details are bad.  All I want to know is that there is an great forest that contains a xenophobic wild elf nation.  They are known and feared for their powerful druidic magic, and are ruled by the dreaded Forest Queen.  Maybe throw in a secret, like everyone assumes that the high elves and the wild elves split from a single ancentral elf, but they really didn't (damned if I know what that means, but I like the sound of it).That is good stuff.  It handles nearly everything I'd need to know about the area if the PCs aren't actually there.  NPCs can talk about that place, and what they say might be right or it might be wrong, I can decide that later.  I also threw in a unknown secret that I can decide the meaning of at any time.Once you have a general idea of a world at large, you can start your campaign anywhere.  Pick a region, make up a specific location, like a town.Decide why the town is there, lets say its a mining town that mines iron.  Pick out some major NPCs and give them agendas.  Lets say, you want to have a major iron merchant, his agenda is to make money in a neutral manner.  Think to yourself, what would he need to do in order to accomplish that.  He needs iron, so he has a vested intrest in the mining and smelting of the iron, he needs to move the iron, so he would have a vested intrest in transporation, he wants to keep his iron safe so he has a vested intrest in soliders and bandits, he's making money so he has a vested intrest in storing, protecting and spending his money.Figure out how he generally meets all of his needs.  He probally interacts with other NPCs, like say the mine owner, the caravan master, or the barge captians, the commander of the towns soliders, and the captian of the mercanary guards that protect the shipments, etc.  If the PCs meddle in any of these areas, you'd better belive the iron merchant is going to have something to think about it.I don't stat out each and every one of these people and write their life story, I just kinda know they exist in a non-specific conceptual form until such time as the PCs bump into them.  When they do bump into them, I just fill in the details on the fly.When I design like this, I don't have a plot on rails that will collapse if the PCs want to do something I didn't plan on.  By having a general framework but no details, I know what is where, but exactly what is what and where is where isn't set in stone.  I can weave in major plot twist on a whim and not have it invalidate anything that hasn't happend yet.It is also more fun, because you as the DM don't know what is going to happen, and players dig it because they don't have to wait for the DM to decide what they can do.  Players can go in any direction they want, I just tell em what is there.</blockquote>

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