Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Boots" data-source="post: 7497376" data-attributes="member: 92239">You and I may be similar.  I've felt that siren call too.Every time I've tried it's always boiled down to five rules and once I put the guideposts in the sand I lost interest.1. Start with the end in mind.  Fully write out the world's meta plot before any player touches it so you have a baseline.2. Decide what cultures you're going to use as a base to further accentuate your plot.  Sacrifice and Honor mean different things based on what cultures you put on top of them.3. Craft your starting adventure adjacent to but not directly in the path of the meta plot.  Let the players find it.  Case in point, there might be an evil necromancer in the old castle in the overgrown woods.. but your first adventure should be about the party held for the halfling mayor's impending nuptials and the fact that the bride is missing once everyone wakes up from the hangover.  Put the party through the process of learning about the locals and dealing with the local kobolds run off by undead burgeoning in the area before realizing that the bride eloped with the halfling stable boy.4. Add multiple storylines, not multiple places.  Storylines are easier to figure out on the fly than cities.  Add a city or region only when you absolutely need to for story reasons.  5. Campaign plot is yours and keeps the game going in the long term.  Player plot is theirs and keeps the game going in the short term.  Listen to your players and add things to your game map based on what they're saying even if they're completely wrong about the meta plot or adventure you're running.  They'll feel invested and not know why.  Most of the time players talk about the things they think are cool.  When they find it they think you're brilliant.  Rarely (or if you're really obtusely blunt about it) will they realize you're stealing their ideas.</blockquote>

Verification