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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Metus" data-source="post: 3409784" data-attributes="member: 185">I'm getting ready to run an Eberron game on Fantasy Grounds for some friends, so I started working on some plot ideas.  However, I wanted to do something different this time - I wanted to make an overarching plot instead of a self-contained one.  The latter are my forte and how I've always run my games.  Somewhere along the line of my visiting here and playing D&D in general I had the notion ingrained into my head that overarching plots are better.  For instance, when I read Sagiro's very good and very popular story hour, it had an overarching plot in which everything was connected.  Looking at Age of Worms or Shackled City, both have an overarching plot, and both are popular and considered well-crafted.  A lot of times when people discuss D&D on here, they mention the main villian or arch-nemesis.  My games don't have that.I would compare it to a movie versus some television shows.  A movie you start, the protagonists and villians are established, and the entire plot revolves around them and their conflicts, direct or indirect.  Then there are shows like Star Trek or Firefly where every week the protagonists find themselves up against a wacky new threat, or explore a new world, or whatever.  If there happens to be an overarching plotline it's in the background filling a secondary role.So I racked my brain for an evening trying to come up with a superior, overarching plot and I finally did.  It involved fighting The Dreaming Dark, and I had a timeline figured out, and they would eventually make their way to Sarlona; I was satisfied with myself.  And yet, a day later, after I had it all established...  I realized I didn't like it.  I realized I don't enjoy overarching plots in general, or at least not as much as the fresh new adventures every week.  This confused me, because while I don't like them as much, they are considered the superior method... aren't they?  After all, it requires more foresight and more planning to make a plotline that follows from level 1 to 20 than it does to just throw a new encounter every week.How do you run your campaign, or how is the campaign you play in run?  Is there an obviously superior method and if so, why?  I have this perception - perhaps incorrect - that 95% of the people playing D&D generally have an overall plotline weaving its way through the campaign.  Is that the better, more difficult way?</blockquote>

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