Struggling with DMing

[Mercurius]

Here's the situation: I'm running a twice-monthly 4E game with a group of 5-9 people, depending upon the week (there's a core six including myself all of whom make it most weeks, two others who have played infrequently, and one who is joining). We've been playing for about a year and a half and are at 8th level. I really enjoy and want to keep this game going, but with a very busy life am pressed for prep time. I do have some spare time, but whenever I have "creative/fun alone time" I want to work on my novel, which is frankly a higher priority.

The good thing is that 4E is the easiest edition I've played to quickly cook up an encounter and have a fun session. The bad thing is that most sessions tend to be of that variety. I have had trouble developing a larger campaign arc or detailing the world enough to do a good sandbox style, so am left floating somewhere in-between. Plus, the only other player who wanted to DM--we were going to alternate adventures--dropped out.

This is what I want: To run a sandbox/megaplot hybrid with lots of big events happening, but a wide variety of options and player freedom. I want a game that is immersive and atmospheric but without getting too serious. I do love world-building, so prefer using my own setting, and realize I am just going to have to squeeze out a couple hours a week for world development. I don't mind running pre-made adventures but rarely find ones that really speak to me. I (and my players) like a blend of styles and encounter situations, with an over-arching vibe of lost civilizations, arcane magic, and elder mysteries. So more towards sword & sorcery/quest/adventure fantasy than dynastic/political.

The world itself is conducive to this sort of play in that it is very much a "points of light" style setting, centuries after a magical apocalypse that destroyed most of civilization and wiped much of (human) racial memory clean. Civilization is just getting going again with only a couple hundred years of development, so it is somewhat like America in the 17th to early 19th century. In other words I don't know what has to exist beyond the edge of the map (yet!) because the players don't, nor do many people.


The hard part for me is the "middle stuff." I can do the world design, I can think of larger plot arcs; on the small scale, I can design encounters. But the middle stuff, that which links the encounters together and fills out the larger megaplot; I guess you could call it simply "plot" or the adventure "storyline."

Basically what I'm looking for from you are tips on how to optimize prep time. How can I provide a sandbox with numerous mini-to-mega plot opportunities without spending hours and hours preparing? Again, some time is ok but I just want to minimize it, or rather optimize the time that I do spend.

The floor is yours.

 

[Blackbrrd]

First a suggestion to take a look at War of the Burning Sky campaign, it's been great for me so far. If you run it in the native setting it feels pretty close and personal, not like one of the mega settings like Forgotten Realms.

Regarding your problem getting a story together... Well, that is quite hard if you haven't got plenty of time or the knack for it. I haven't and have resorted to pre-created modules. Finding a good one is a problem as I hate dungeon crawls.

Paizo is creating a hexcrawler retro campaign, and I think they have released the first part. I think you would find it interesting. I haven't looked at it myself, but that is just because I am part Scottish.

 

[Mesh Hong]

The question I find myself asking is; is a sandbox what you really need?

It seems to me that you might be better off with a slightly more linear campaign, I’m not talking railroad here, I’m talking more focused than fuzzy.

To be honest the best advice I can give you is to just concentrate on the next session rather than worrying about the campaign. In my opinion most wasted prep time comes from a DM getting carried away with trying to manipulate the end of the campaign rather than preparing the next few encounters. Understand that you have no real control of how your campaign will end, but you do have a lot of control over what will happen in the next few encounters.

In my own game we have gone from level 1 to 24 so far so I have some 4e experience. We also usually play twice a week for a total of about 11 hours combined, I can handle this by concentrating on designing the encounters needed for the adventure (which I design all the monsters for myself) then spending any random moments thinking about the immediate plot and the overarching plot.

The mechanics come first – the encounters and monsters.
The fluff comes second – the plot and adventure.

Having said all this I have been running games for a long time, and the approach I have developed or at least become accustomed to is pretty close to “make it up as you go along”. I am very comfortable with the random whims of my players, but my players also understand that an adventure or side quest has a prepared encounter design that is as much for their benefit as my own.

This means that my players know that they can do anything they want, but this freedom relies on a mutual respect not to screw each other over. They are happy to let me present a story that reacts from their actions. This is really easy to do when you aren’t focused on a fixed ending.

I’ll leave it at that for the moment because I am running out of time, and I am probably starting to ramble anyway.

NOTE:
Actually I have just reread your post and I am not sure I have really answered it, I'll have another look tomorrow.

 

[the Jester]

Just drop plot hooks everywhere. Let the pcs draw the connections.

 

[Janx]

doing all that your talking about seems like it would take a lot of time and energy.

You don't seem to have time or energy. Therefore, your goal seems unrealistic.

I reckon there are DMs who can handle what your wanting to do, but if you're having troubles now, it's not something you're ready for.


If time is tight, only write material for what you're likely going to need.

As a group, ask the players what their next immediate goal in the campaign is. Ask what each PC wants to do next as an individual.

Take that list, and write up material that presents an opportunity to pursue the stated goals, and complications and barriers that arise.

During this design stage, consider if any past events or NPCs tie into this new material, and do so.

Now, run yyour next adventure. be sure to explain to your players that you have only generated material for their stated goals. No wandering around aimlessly or contrarily.

Is it a sandbox? Maybe more like a slow motion sandbox. They tell you they want to head west, you stop the game, and order more sand and stuff and put it on the west side of the current play area.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

If you have a few ideas for the bigger story arcs thought out, then my suggestion is to take notes during the game sessions. After the session, look at the encounters and interactions the PCs had and think about how they could retroactively be linked into plot ideas. As a retroactive idea, they will be things the players won't have found out yet. Once you have some ideas going, you can then start to look ahead and plan future encounters to link up the older encounters and provide information about the bigger stories that are going on. The players will be impressed when they realize there was deeper plot to some of those earlier encounters.

One of the most important things I always took notes about was what the players discussed during the game. They were great at drawing links between things that I never considered. My best example of this was when the players took off in a direction I never expected right at the beginning of the session. I pulled out a simple one-shot adventure as a delaying tactic so I could prepare for where they wanted to go next time. By then end of the one-shot, they had concocted all kinds of ideas about how the NPC at the center of the adventure was connected to the BBEG from the previous adventure. I never intended there to be any connection in that way, but some of it was so good that I used it, making myself appear to be smarter than reality, and making my players feel great that they had figured it out.

 

[Imaginary Number]

Just drop plot hooks everywhere. Let the pcs draw the connections.

This. I'd add that your players also could make your life easier if they told you in advance which plot hooks they intended to follow. That lets you focus your limited prep time on what the players actually want to do for the next session or two. You can put off developing the rest until such a time as the players get around to pursuing them.

 

[Nagol]

My favourite method of devloping the middle ground is to cheat. By cheat, I mean assign after play rather than during planning.

Design the major forces in play -- who they are, what they want, what they'd be willing to do to achieve their ends.

Start running adventures. At the end of each adventure, document loose ends -- who got away, what the group found out, what the group failed to find out.

Every couple of sessions, look at the loose ends and assign the motivations for the adventure to the original powers. Look for cross-purposes, alliances of convenience, and inspiraton for further adventures to maintain the momentum of interaction with a current force.

The campaign should start to gel on its own. I find the collection of loose ends a tremendous resource for adventure inspiration that has the added advantage of immediate player engagement.

 

[Harlekin]

What you need to design the adventure is interesting encounters and a way for the PCs to go from the first encounter to the last encounter. As a tool to facilitate designing this, I found Masterplan to be a really nice timesaver.

(Masterplan)

It allows you to set up a few encounters and then set up simple connections between those encounters. Which is all an adventure really needs. At the table you then fill in the extra fluff that makes everything come to life.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I'm running a 4E sandbox campaign now. The "middle stuff" is that gooey caramel center that binds the chocolate coating (encounter detail) to the crispy base wafer (world backdrop).

My caramel mixture has three (or four) basic ingredients which begin as lists, which are then combined with an activator (a combination of PC's and a timeline) to produce the yummy campaign caramel.

The Lists:
Start thinking about populating the following lists-

1)People/Groups of interest & influence:
Power players of all types. These can be religious leaders, nobles, factions, crime bosses, humanoid leaders, etc. Generally these types have some power and pull some strings somewhere.

2) Places of Interest:
Locales that are important in some way. A dungeon, some ruins, thieves guild hideout, a temple, etc.

3) Events of Interest:
General happenings that take place in an area. Market day, holiday celebrations, religious festivals, shipment arrivals, etc. These are things that generally go on regularly that the PC's would be familliar with.

4) Items of Interest:
Famous treasures, lost magic, treasure maps, damning evidence (against someone!) or a general mcguffin.

Brainstorm a few ideas for each of these independently. Since you already have a world sketched out, pick a general area where you would like to start.

Once you have several items for each list its time to start drawing links between them. Think about how an important person fits into the world. What are thier goals? Based on this are they likely going to be up to no good? Think of things that link this person to an event, place, item or any/all of these.

Once we have links then we can start to flesh out more details. Our villain with a hideout in the ruins has plans to swipe a relic during a religious festival because he has an interested buyer that will be arriving next week on the scheduled caravan stop coming to town.

How powerful is this villain and what manpower/resources does he have access to? Once decided we can put this plot module into the activator. Sketch out a rough timeline for the activities needed to pull off this scheme and what will happen barring interference and let the PC's get wind of it somehow.

You might have several crunchy detailed encounters that would work for this setup. Of course other parties will have plans of thier own which might be at odds with this one.

The lists will grow and the timeline will progess and you will have good picture of what is happening and when prior to the PC's doing things.