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Planning, prep, motivation and you?
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<blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 9390959" data-attributes="member: 7016699"><p>I wrote up a setting ... it must be coming up on seven years ago, now, and I'm running my second and third campaigns in it (the third campaign is the same table as the first one, new characters in a different part of the setting). My idea when I wrote the setting up was that I'd be running multiple campaigns in it, and that's held up.</p><p></p><p>I've worked out some high-level choices, like what I'm allowing as far as classes, subclasses, folk, and what houserules I want to adopt. Those have been pretty stable.</p><p></p><p>The first thing I consider before starting a campaign is where in the setting I want to start it. The first one, I started in what was at the time the only city I had worked out in even any vague detail. The second one, I started at a remote trading outpost. The third one, I started in what is the largest city in the setting. Making that decision kinda narrows down some of the next few options, I've found.</p><p></p><p>After that, there's some consideration of what I want to do for the instigating event. Generally, my approach when starting a campaign is to get the PCs in the same place at the same time, establish that the status quo is pleasant, then threaten the status quo. Usually this entails that there's some larger thing threatening at least the local setting, so whatever I go with here, I'm going to be running with for some time, so I want to choose well, here.</p><p></p><p>Once I have an idea of the where, at least, I'll tell the players about where they're going to be starting. For my third campaign, that was a 5000+ word overview of the city, and the statement that they'd all been in the city for years and knew it pretty well. Then, once they'd made their characters and given me as much backstory as they were going to (ranging from a paragraph or two to a handful of pages) I asked all the players, one at a time, to fill in some of the intentional blanks in the city by giving me a couple of people, a place or group, and an event there, and how their characters connected to this. Their backstories are up to them to share, but the additions to the city were public.</p><p></p><p>Once I have the characters, the place, and the instigating event, I'm ready to run the start of the campaign.</p><p></p><p>While the campaign is running, I pay attention to opportunities to drop in connections to the PCs' backstories, or to their established ties to the setting ("established ties" here could be from before or during the campaign). Since the campaigns are fortnightly, I have plenty of time to think about what's going on between sessions, and I have a player who takes pretty extensive notes and shares them, so I always have good references for what has already happened. Most of the time I do the actual sit-down prep the day of the session or the day before, it's mostly just looking at the situation and seeing where the PCs seem to be taking it (or trying to take it).</p><p></p><p>At the table I run a mostly improvisatory style, I don't prep where the session is going to go, or where the campaign is going to go, I just trust that I know what's going on well enough that I can answer any relevant questions reasonably quickly. If I need to decide a narrative thing, I try to do so quickly and with consideration for what the PCs have done (and I believe I mostly succeed at this).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="prabe, post: 9390959, member: 7016699"] I wrote up a setting ... it must be coming up on seven years ago, now, and I'm running my second and third campaigns in it (the third campaign is the same table as the first one, new characters in a different part of the setting). My idea when I wrote the setting up was that I'd be running multiple campaigns in it, and that's held up. I've worked out some high-level choices, like what I'm allowing as far as classes, subclasses, folk, and what houserules I want to adopt. Those have been pretty stable. The first thing I consider before starting a campaign is where in the setting I want to start it. The first one, I started in what was at the time the only city I had worked out in even any vague detail. The second one, I started at a remote trading outpost. The third one, I started in what is the largest city in the setting. Making that decision kinda narrows down some of the next few options, I've found. After that, there's some consideration of what I want to do for the instigating event. Generally, my approach when starting a campaign is to get the PCs in the same place at the same time, establish that the status quo is pleasant, then threaten the status quo. Usually this entails that there's some larger thing threatening at least the local setting, so whatever I go with here, I'm going to be running with for some time, so I want to choose well, here. Once I have an idea of the where, at least, I'll tell the players about where they're going to be starting. For my third campaign, that was a 5000+ word overview of the city, and the statement that they'd all been in the city for years and knew it pretty well. Then, once they'd made their characters and given me as much backstory as they were going to (ranging from a paragraph or two to a handful of pages) I asked all the players, one at a time, to fill in some of the intentional blanks in the city by giving me a couple of people, a place or group, and an event there, and how their characters connected to this. Their backstories are up to them to share, but the additions to the city were public. Once I have the characters, the place, and the instigating event, I'm ready to run the start of the campaign. While the campaign is running, I pay attention to opportunities to drop in connections to the PCs' backstories, or to their established ties to the setting ("established ties" here could be from before or during the campaign). Since the campaigns are fortnightly, I have plenty of time to think about what's going on between sessions, and I have a player who takes pretty extensive notes and shares them, so I always have good references for what has already happened. Most of the time I do the actual sit-down prep the day of the session or the day before, it's mostly just looking at the situation and seeing where the PCs seem to be taking it (or trying to take it). At the table I run a mostly improvisatory style, I don't prep where the session is going to go, or where the campaign is going to go, I just trust that I know what's going on well enough that I can answer any relevant questions reasonably quickly. If I need to decide a narrative thing, I try to do so quickly and with consideration for what the PCs have done (and I believe I mostly succeed at this). [/QUOTE]
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