How much work for a new campaign?

[Zandy]

Hello all - Time to delurk to ask a probably envolved question/opinion of the DMs out there.

First of all, I've been playing since the original box set and the cutout chits in a cup. Call me ancient... I've spent all that time DMing about 50% of my time. My preference; long, envolved campaign with the same group of PCs unless one of them does something stupid which deserves a fate of death. I LOVE to see PCs go from 1 to higher levels, and I LOVE to play in that type of game. My DM style; lots of prep, throw out hooks, let the players bite on what they want. What they miss usually comes back to bite them... My Strength; on-the-fly DMing and characterizations of NPC (I perform some).

So, my group has just finished a 6+ year campaign. Time to start over. I came up with an idea where I provide basic outlines (only descriptions, no specific idea of class or levels, just hunches) of about a dozen PCs, and the six players in my group each chose one. I detailed the town they live in, some of the area, create a player canon. They chose, I work with them to flesh things out and get ready for my first session.

I've put in over 60 hours and we're still weeks away from the start.

When I mentioned to my group how much time I put in, they were thankful, but a bit incredulous all the same. I think that any good campaign MUST have that much time spent on the background or it will just lay there gasping for any shred of fun.

Thus, my ponderence. How much time do DMs put into getting a new campaign off the ground? Am I just too meticulous? Am I just plain goofy? Please, everyone, tell me I'm "normal" so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time. I probably won't change, but it is interesting to know what goes on in the rest of the world.

Thanks...

 

[kamosa]

10 - 15 hours on maps, geography, politics etc.

10 - 15 hours on background story and such

Lots of time spent day dreaming about the plot

2 -3 hours with the players flushing out their characters and how that changes the world.

3 or 10 hours putting together the first adventure.

 

[EricNoah]

Doesn't seem like an unreasonable amount of time to me and you seem like you're having fun doing it. The more stuff you're making up yourself, the longer it takes. And the more you do ahead of time, the less you have to do later.

 

[Hand of Evil]

A good bit, maps and backstory, groups and megs-plots, selection of monsters, building of trade ideas, naming of places all take a lot of time. For me 40 to 80 hours, if I thought about it that way, just to get the game up and running, after that about 10 hours a week.

 

[Janx]

Nope, you're crazy.

My current world did not have that much time spent on it.
I probably spent about 10 hours on it to get it ready for the first game. Here's the breakdown:

nation/race definition : 1 hour
world map : 3 hours
starting country expansion: 2 hours
starting area expansion: 2 hours
long term plot road-map: 1 hour


Bear in mind, I try to spend spare brain cycles thinking campaign stuff out while mowing the lawn and such. That way I can sit down and just design or write stuff.

I spend about 3-4 hours writing an adventure for our once a month game.

I've spend about 4 hours working on ship design rules, and I've spend about 4 hours working on ship combat rules. But those things were developed AFTER my campaign had started.

Even give or take a few hours, the time I spend is much less than Hands of Evil seems to spend. I designed my campaign world in less than a month of real time, and we're on our sixth game this coming week.

I'm pretty confident in my campaign surviving, but conversely, I have less invested to lose. I'm trying to stick with a "build as I need it" philosophy. Up until now, I haven't had a need for clerics, so I've left the religion system undesigned, other than the name of the popular god and a brief description.

Janx

 

[Belegbeth]

I guess I am crazy too ...

I spend hours and hours building my world before my campaign begins. It would be hard to quantify the exact number of hours, since many of them are spent doing things like daydreaming on the train, sketching ideas while sitting in a coffee shop, etc.

A lot of the fun of DM'ing for me is this preparation "work". I really enjoy coming up with a unique world: introducing distinctive cultures and peoples; working on history; thinking about how the different peoples, nations and organizations in that world interact; and so forth.

And once the background work has been done, I like sketching the major plot-lines for my campaign. Generally they cannot be too detailed, since I often revise them extensively in response to the actions of my players. But I usually start my campaign with a clear idea of what the main conflicts and goals will be.

The first adventure is generally the most important, since it sets the tone for the campaign, so I spend a lot of time on it as well. (Later adventures I can partially improvise, so long as I have some notes and stats to work with.)

All good procrastination fun!

 

[Painfully]

A person can put as much, or as little work as they want into campaign preparations. Personally, I like to keep a folder full of idea "rough drafts" at my disposal. I'm just as likely to borrow maps as I am to make my own. I'm more interested in putting good ideas together, "just in time" for the next few sessions, than I am in compiling my own version of the FRCS.

There's something to be said for efficiency when you're a DM. You need to do enough to keep all your players interested and involved. You also need enough background to make the world seem alive and independent of your players. Beyond that, it's all extra and unnecessary work.

I never spend more than 4 hours to prep for any session, including the first session to a campaign. Depending on my preparation from previous sessions, I often don't need to prep at all for my next one.

At least in part, I think it has to do with resources. My, "DM's kit" is filled with maps, NPCs, and ideas of every kind for any D&D campaign I can think up. At home I keep a file box filled with ideas, articles, and more. And still I find time to develop completely new NPCs, "on the fly" during my gaming sessions, which fit perfectly into the campaign without seeming out of place. My "kit" is like a chef's kitchen--it provides an endless source of ingredients for me to cook up new ideas for my campaign at any time. Just the mental exercise of thinking through the things in my kit can develop new ideas for me.

I don't think I would ever want to build a campaign world that didn't allow me to be fluid in my development of it. Everything in my campaign is very, "up in the air" until it is presented to the PCs. At that moment, is when my campaign is actually "being built."

 

[Cor Azer]

Depends on the campaign idea for me. I've done as little as determining the name of the kingdom, starting village, and a campaign name and then leaving the rest to the PC backgrounds and developing stuff on the fly, to creating multiple page backgrounds/world histories, complete with maps, and several long, consecutive story arcs.

The next D&D campaign I start will also have a lot of beforehand prep work, but that's because I've got a lot of ideas floating in my head that I want to flesh out before playing. Of course, before I get to that, I may take a break from DMing D&D and either play in someone else's game, or run a non-D&D game like Buffy RPG.

 

[BlackMoria]

How much time is spend in preparing for a new campaign is up to you and what the rest of us think is irrelevant.

Do you feel you have wasted your time or have gone overboard? If not, don't sweat it.

Don't compare yourself to others. Everyone is different with how much time and how much detail is required to kick off a campaign.

For some people, when it comes to campaign building - it is the journey and not the destination that matters. And for others, it is all about the destination.

 

[Henry]

As an estimate, I put my work at about 8 hours a week, with about 20 hours into that initial startup. These are not consecutive hours, but more like half an hour here and there, with one night of real 4 hours' serious work.

Some people fly off the seat of their pants, others like to be very detailed beforehand.