See my sig on DM Advice, lots of older threads of different subjects.
Don't do all the work yourself, get your players in the creation process too.
Don't do all the work yourself, get your players in the creation process too.
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Running a homebrew campaign is HARD
- Thread starter turnip
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TheAuldGrump
First Post
Either I am a miracle worker, and can read my players' actions months in advance, or this is less than 100% true....No it isn't.
My role-playing group has almost exclusively only played/run what you call "homebrew" games. In my experience running pre-made or published adventures is a complete hassle - Not for the players, of course. The DM has to pretty much read the entire adventure in advance and know about all the encounters/combats and then be able to alter the entire damn thing when the players inevitably stray from the established course of the adventure, kill or ignore a major npc. Plus most of the adventures I've read are. Screw that.
Here's what we've almost always done; the players make the adventure. They go and do what they want. The DM just needs a setting and possibly some story hooks. If you really want a story arch, I just make a series of bullet points leading up to the inevitable conclusion. Here's a handy chart I found on Google image search:
Basically that's it. Let the players create the drama. The DM just creates the atmosphere and does the math bits. If you're doing a more character-centric game, make a list of characters and make a couple notes on their personalities/motiviations.
And after I've written down my notes, I really never even look at them again because I've made mental notes about what I want to happen. My notes for entire campain generally don't take up more than a page.
The more you plan ahead, the more your players will derail it and mess it up.
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I'm a miracle worker!
Joking aside, I really do plan things out waaaayyyy in advance, and do a fair amount of second guessing myself (AKA 'spinning my wheels', 'running around in circles', 'chasing my tail'), but generally fall back to my original plans and find them good enough.
I find preparing with the idea that things will happen even if the PCs aren't there, but that if they are there then I will need to change plans works well. I chart out what I see as the most likely courses of action that the PCs might take (including 'ignoring the plot and ordering pizza instead') and what the likely outcomes are for those actions.
It gives a framework that I can hang results from.
The flip side is that I am absolutely rotten at improvisation - I need that framework. I can modify from that framework in a snap, but having the framework gives me a good idea as to what direction I might need to jump, and how a villain is likely to change his plan to fit the needs of the day.
As it happens, I am pretty good at guessing what the players will do, and am genuinely pleased when they jump in an unexpected direction - when someone decides to pay court to the not-an-evil-necromancer-hiding-in-an-abandoned-tower.
(She really wasn't evil, so the bard decided that she needed to get out more.)The only times that I get caught flat footed is when half the party decides to swim across the Rhine in flood. (And the half that stays behind are the ones with ranks in the Swim skill.) Planning for idiocy is hard. (Store game, random players. I really appreciate my usual players now.)
The Auld Grump, they were surprised when most of them drowned and the survivor came down with pneumonia.
Dice4Hire
First Post
€It can be hard, but most DMs I've seen who are having lots of trouble are either really too busy in RL (understandable) or are doing too much.
Yes, if you have a whole campaign set up, that can be a lot of work, basically planning things out.
But when you play, just know where they are going next week, and set that up. Maybe set up a few generic encounters that can be guards on a building, city guardsmen, a group of bandits, some temple soldiers, or a mercenary group. Same stats, but refluff as needed.
Oh, and it is ok to occasionally tell your players that you are not really ready for them to go to some particular place. Make it sound like they are ahead of the curve and they will be too happy to be annoyed to be put off till next week.
Yes, if you have a whole campaign set up, that can be a lot of work, basically planning things out.
But when you play, just know where they are going next week, and set that up. Maybe set up a few generic encounters that can be guards on a building, city guardsmen, a group of bandits, some temple soldiers, or a mercenary group. Same stats, but refluff as needed.
Oh, and it is ok to occasionally tell your players that you are not really ready for them to go to some particular place. Make it sound like they are ahead of the curve and they will be too happy to be annoyed to be put off till next week.
I agree with this - under the proviso that "setting" here needn't be much more than a map (or some other way of communicating the lay of the land to the players) and a page or two of backstory. Of course that page will get longer as time goes by, but that is what play is for!
I'd add - instead of building a world and then trying to lure your players into it, encourage them to build hooks into their PCs - either via background or via goals expressed during play - and then you only need to design encounters/challenges that respond to those hooks from your players!
I think this depends a lot on playstyle. These days I basically never have a village or town map - if crosstown travel comes up I can just handwave it - but quite often know quite a bit about the kingdom or region, if its history is an important part of the backdrop to events in the game.
My general advice would be: if a map, or a piece of backstory, or whatever other world element, is not going to come up in play, or matter to the resolution of play, then there's no need to create it (which is not to say that there's anything wrong with doing things that aren't needed!).
Ahnehnois
First Post
For my homebrewed game I generally have a few pillars of plot events I know need to happen and I write a few characters before the session. The session is then constructed by playing around with those puzzle pieces. How can I use said character, will it be in battle or as an ally or something else? I have one campaign map and a few pages of setting info. Other than that I just make everything up. I try to improvise crazy things, listen to players for ideas, and explain how it all fits together later.
Not saying this is the only way of doing things, but I advocate "organized chaos". It makes for a great creative environment and it's easy to prep.
Not saying this is the only way of doing things, but I advocate "organized chaos". It makes for a great creative environment and it's easy to prep.
Stormonu
NeoGrognard
"No plan survives initial contact with the enemy". While players may be not be your enemy, they sure act like it when you have something planned for them.
As the others have stated, develop in bite-size chunks, focusing on what you need at the moment.
Don't plan for too far in advance, as players have a tendency to "do their own thing". You might never get from point A to B, be willing to accept that if it happens. Most cases though, you might have to insert a few extra points before things get back in the direction you were expecting - just don't force the point, so to speak.
Usually, whenever players have exhausted/finished whatever side trek they've headed down, they will be more open to coming back to whatever plot you have in mind. That may be the way to handle things.
In the end, the best games, I usually find is where you, as DM, simple plop something in the player's lap and basically ask them "What are you doing about this?" As they involve or avoid the situation, make notes on what they did or didn't do; after a few levels of doing this, you can start to see trends of where and what they'll do and you can start tailoring things more and more, until you can build up the climax of the adventure.
Do it well, and they'll think you planned it all from the start - even when you didn't.
As the others have stated, develop in bite-size chunks, focusing on what you need at the moment.
Don't plan for too far in advance, as players have a tendency to "do their own thing". You might never get from point A to B, be willing to accept that if it happens. Most cases though, you might have to insert a few extra points before things get back in the direction you were expecting - just don't force the point, so to speak.
Usually, whenever players have exhausted/finished whatever side trek they've headed down, they will be more open to coming back to whatever plot you have in mind. That may be the way to handle things.
In the end, the best games, I usually find is where you, as DM, simple plop something in the player's lap and basically ask them "What are you doing about this?" As they involve or avoid the situation, make notes on what they did or didn't do; after a few levels of doing this, you can start to see trends of where and what they'll do and you can start tailoring things more and more, until you can build up the climax of the adventure.
Do it well, and they'll think you planned it all from the start - even when you didn't.
Quickleaf
Legend
In the way of helpful support Ive gotten q lot of use out of the Ultimate Toolbox: Ultimate Toolbox
What system are you running?
What system are you running?
Gilladian
Adventurer
I have a single campaign world that I have been running for the past 20 years, in one form or another. Let me explain how I run things, and maybe it will help...
1. decide where in the world to set a new campaign. For this example, I chose Tallowsland, a region of loosely-allied villages and towns in a temperate region of heavy forest, light hills and ample rivers and streams. I spent a couple afternoons laying out a map, giving the major towns names and populations, and deciding how the alliance worked.
2. I already had a history for the region that covered up to the last 20 years, so I simply updated the history to account for the alliance, mentioned how a war in a not-too-far away kingdom had affected this region, and I was ready. If I had NOTHING written, I'd have spent a couple more hours roughing out a vague historical outline at least a hundred or two hundred years back, but no further...
3. I picked a town as my focal point for the start of the campaign. I decided on the "feel" I wanted for the campaign - my original thought had been "kingdom building", but in the end my players didn't seem that ambitious, so I decided to focus more on "explore, loot, grow powerful" for this particular campaign. NOTE: my campaigns NEVER have an overarching plot. I don't like them. Sometimes there's a THEME (ie one campaign focused on evil religions with political power). I drew maps of the town and a couple of the major features in town. I outlined the Lord Mayor, Sherrif and other leader roles.
3. I began selecting modules to "fit" the world and my scenario. In this case, I've got a subscription to Dungeon-A-Day, and am using it as the "main" adventure site. I'm also cannibalizing all the set locations from Paizo's Kingmaker adventure path, scattering them to the east in an open area of the world. This is the most work as it entails tweaking the history of my world, the background of the modules, and giving rationales for all of it. This took me about six weeks. Not that I'm finished, but I have a lot of rough ideas in my head or notated.
4. Run things. Work the PC backgrounds into the world; they write, I tweak, they tweak back, and we have PLOT hangers! One PC is from far off to the south; she's a six foot + tall warrior. So I gave her a land to be from, and she told me about it, a bit. New meat for another campaign site lateer! We made up a pair of lesser storm gods, too. Another wizard PC is an elf with a real better-than-thou complex. He's secretive, too, so later we'll decide what he's hiding in his past.
This week we ran the third session of the game. They left the dungeon and are now in need of a remove curse. To start showing them the rest of the region, I had them carry a package for the big temple out to a small outpost to the east. They got attacked by (randomly rolled) orcs on the way, and ended up tracking them back to their lair and trying to raid it. Every bit of that from the package to the lair was random, but it was all "part of the scene" developed from the dungeon background and the necessity of fitting other bits and pieces into the storyline.
As time goes by, things will grow from this basis. I rarely write from scratch anymore; it IS too time-consuming. But steal, modify, outline and invent! It will all hang together amazingly if you just take good notes...
1. decide where in the world to set a new campaign. For this example, I chose Tallowsland, a region of loosely-allied villages and towns in a temperate region of heavy forest, light hills and ample rivers and streams. I spent a couple afternoons laying out a map, giving the major towns names and populations, and deciding how the alliance worked.
2. I already had a history for the region that covered up to the last 20 years, so I simply updated the history to account for the alliance, mentioned how a war in a not-too-far away kingdom had affected this region, and I was ready. If I had NOTHING written, I'd have spent a couple more hours roughing out a vague historical outline at least a hundred or two hundred years back, but no further...
3. I picked a town as my focal point for the start of the campaign. I decided on the "feel" I wanted for the campaign - my original thought had been "kingdom building", but in the end my players didn't seem that ambitious, so I decided to focus more on "explore, loot, grow powerful" for this particular campaign. NOTE: my campaigns NEVER have an overarching plot. I don't like them. Sometimes there's a THEME (ie one campaign focused on evil religions with political power). I drew maps of the town and a couple of the major features in town. I outlined the Lord Mayor, Sherrif and other leader roles.
3. I began selecting modules to "fit" the world and my scenario. In this case, I've got a subscription to Dungeon-A-Day, and am using it as the "main" adventure site. I'm also cannibalizing all the set locations from Paizo's Kingmaker adventure path, scattering them to the east in an open area of the world. This is the most work as it entails tweaking the history of my world, the background of the modules, and giving rationales for all of it. This took me about six weeks. Not that I'm finished, but I have a lot of rough ideas in my head or notated.
4. Run things. Work the PC backgrounds into the world; they write, I tweak, they tweak back, and we have PLOT hangers! One PC is from far off to the south; she's a six foot + tall warrior. So I gave her a land to be from, and she told me about it, a bit. New meat for another campaign site lateer! We made up a pair of lesser storm gods, too. Another wizard PC is an elf with a real better-than-thou complex. He's secretive, too, so later we'll decide what he's hiding in his past.
This week we ran the third session of the game. They left the dungeon and are now in need of a remove curse. To start showing them the rest of the region, I had them carry a package for the big temple out to a small outpost to the east. They got attacked by (randomly rolled) orcs on the way, and ended up tracking them back to their lair and trying to raid it. Every bit of that from the package to the lair was random, but it was all "part of the scene" developed from the dungeon background and the necessity of fitting other bits and pieces into the storyline.
As time goes by, things will grow from this basis. I rarely write from scratch anymore; it IS too time-consuming. But steal, modify, outline and invent! It will all hang together amazingly if you just take good notes...
There's a lot of good info in this thread!
I think my problem has been trying to play it too tight, and not relying on improvisation. Perhaps I should also drink less at the table.
Is there a way to subtly encourage my players to sandbox it up? Mine seem a little leery of striking out on their own; perhaps I am just not giving them enough hooks to grab on to, though.
I think my problem has been trying to play it too tight, and not relying on improvisation. Perhaps I should also drink less at the table.
Is there a way to subtly encourage my players to sandbox it up? Mine seem a little leery of striking out on their own; perhaps I am just not giving them enough hooks to grab on to, though.
Rel
Liquid Awesome
The systems I've used for my last few campaigns (4e D&D and Savage Worlds) are ones I find it an absolute breeze to do prep with. I spend lots and lots of time thinking about my games. But I spend only a little time (less than 1 hour per week I'd guess) actually "working" on it.
The single biggest help to me is simply asking the players at the end of each session, "So what are your plans for next time?"
The single biggest help to me is simply asking the players at the end of each session, "So what are your plans for next time?"
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