Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7069110" data-attributes="member: 29398">I'm allowing for the DM to make some of it up as she goes along (though still ahead of time) to take into account:a) things that arise during play that she hadn't foreseen or thought of but that fit in well, and-orb) new ideas or twists she might come up with after the campaign begins and later integrate, and-orc) pre-visioned story bits that just don't work out in play, or are intentionally or otherwise ignored by the PCs and thus droppedUsing my own current campaign as an example: it's been running for 9 years now and needless to say (well, I certanly hope it's needless to say!) I've had some new ideas for the storyboard during those 9 years, some of which I've incorporated.  Also, the players have come up with ideas of their own that have fit in well* and also been incorporated.  * - some while ago (2010?) one of my players wasn't too pleased with a particular adventure; the look on his face when I told him that he was in fact responsible for its existence due to him saying about half a year earlier what a neat idea such an adventure would be was priceless!I'm up to about version 11 of the master storyboard; which slowly morphs over time as adventures get completed, things happen in the game world (not least of which is the rising average character level, which makes some of the lower-level adventure ideas redundant), and things happen in the real world (e.g. lots of changes when I dropped down from running two parties a week to one).  That said, I've still no real idea of how much of that storyboard will actually make it to play.What the storyboard is useful for is long-term planning, including trying to guess about how long the campaign has left in it (in other words, when do I need to start worrying about designing the next one).  For shorter-term planning it helps me know what adventures I need to dream up as opposed to what I can squeeze out of some canned module, and-or what sort of things I need to keep my eye out for when reading over a canned module.  An example of this: since day 1 (i.e. before March 2008) there's been an adventure on the storyboard regarding dealing with a lich named Saith, but it wasn't until just a year or two ago when I got a copy of Dark Tower that I realized this module would be perfect for that storyboarded adventure.  They're in it now.And there's still things about the basic setting they don't know, though various more or less obscure hints have been laid down over time.So yes, the story is more or less pre-determined; but the farther out it is from play the more malleable some elements of it remain.  Some elements and mysteries, however, have been baked in all along and aren't going anywhere.What I've no idea at all about is what happens if we ever run off the end of the storyboard.  Fortunately as far as I can tell I've still got a few years at least to think about this.  It's always possible that by then I'll have had my fill of this world/campaign and-or will have had some bright idea for another; it's also quite possible I just keep dreaming up adventures for the current one, or even that we start a different storyline in the same world.Lan-"it's also possible that at some point the PCs manage to break the world (and end the campaign) instead of save it; I don't think the players realize how close they've come now and then over the years"-efan</blockquote>

Verification