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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7291802" data-attributes="member: 6778044">My campaigns are a mix of political, criminal, and good old dungeon crawls. Really I throw a bit of everything out there and let the players decide where things go. My campaigns tend to be low-leveled as well, but that always works out fine. Having less healing means they address combat and such a bit more cautiously, but that's fine.For all campaigns, my first recommendation is that you need to ground the characters in the world. They should have families, friends, businesses or jobs. They have bills and they have to pay them somehow. In a more feudal approach, they have work that must be done, etc. Regardless, the more they are tied into the world around them, the more motivations they'll have.For the political stuff, it's all about setting up layers, and not having an end-game predetermined. So you have several groups, each with a group goal, a leader, and a few important people further down the line. They will have their own personal goals, which may not always align with all of the goals of the organization. That's an important fact, because the PCs will need to find things they can leverage within the organization.Nothing in my campaign is set in stone until it occurs in the campaign. So Organization #1 might have a goal to establish an illegal smuggling route into the city. Then you just need to determine where they are now.  Several merchants are working the local taverns to find guards they can get on their payroll to look the other way when they are entering or leaving the city. You can determine a time period where that will happen, determine it randomly, or leave it open-ended.Organization #2 is a thieves' guild that wants to have a better sense as to where the good marks are. They are in the process of placing a few of their people within the guard themselves. That way they can report back who they should target.Organization #3 is the guard themselves. They, of course, are attempting to prevent illegal stuff from going on. However, one of the captains is corrupt. Instead of reporting illegal activities he and his men find, he's extorting them. If they discover contraband, they are actively soliciting payments to keep quiet. Furthermore, he doesn't want anybody else encroaching on his racket. That's some of what's going on in the background. These three groups have a high likelihood of intersecting amongst themselves. So then it's a question of when, how, and what the interactions and meddling from the PCs do to those trajectories. If they do something to oust the corrupt captain, it probably opens up opportunities for the other two groups. Playing the groups against each other is very effective, as is finding somebody on the inside who isn't happy with their lot. As time goes on, you decide when it's time to advance the background activity. The actions the PCs have been taking should have an impact here. You determine the impact, or you can do it randomly with modifiers, whatever. The actions of the PCs should be able to foil plots, and sometimes set back entire organizations significantly. But there should always be something bigger that they discover, like peeling layers of an onion. Each discovery leads to something more. I also prefer to have some very large and powerful organizations that are too big to drop entirely. Like the Zhentarim in the Realms, the Nazis in Indiana Jones, S.P.E.C.T.R.E in Bond. The point is, they'll be defeating individual plots and villains, but some (not all) of the future plots will relate back to earlier ones. Try to provide at least 3 clues for any mystery, and I find that for important things a written handout (letter, journal entry, etc.) is extremely helpful. It also gives you the opportunity to be more subtle since they can keep going back to it. Also, it's not so much about figuring out exactly what you were thinking. One of the reasons why things aren't pre-planned in my campaign is I have no idea what the players are going to do. So you need to be able to handle some improv (I have lots of little snippets of ideas and information), and be prepared to use their input in the direction of the campaign.</blockquote>

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