World of Warcraft taught me how to DM again.

[maddman75]

The biggest problem with the overarching apocalypse plot is that it can lead (at least with me) to too much emphasis on setting up the big plot arch, and not enough on making tonight's game fun. I'm completely cured these days.

While I usually have some Big Bad working behind the scenes, I don't work out all the details. Usually I just presume that the Big Bad is behind all manner of nastiness, so anything the PCs want to poke at is going to reveal 'Oh no that evil Duke is behind it again! But the emphasis should be first and foremost on making *tonight*'s game fun. Otherwise, the game is likely to fizzle out, or when they get to the BBEG they won't really care.

 

[Janx]

I think overplottting and trying to have grandiose storylines is the bane of "traditional" storytelling and adventuring.

D&D as I see it sets the stage for how to write for a group of characters that increase in power and prestige.

At low level, you write adventures for the local area, because that's all the PCs know, and all that know of the PCs.

As they level up, you make up NEW problems at a larger scale. And so it goes.

The result is, during the early stages, the GM has no plan or clue about some major threat to the universe. Nor do the PCs. Nobody does.

And in terms of campaign survival, that's smart as well. Why invest a whole lot of writing and planning on players and PCs that might not be there at the end.

Now, go watch ANY long running TV series. Pretty much the same thing. At most they plot out a season (a couple levels worth of plot). The next season, they invent a new threat, or bring back some element from a past season as a twisted new threat. See the pattern.

The same thing should go for a WoD game. I'm not going to worry about writing twisted giant conspiracies before the first game. The PCs are not the top dogs yet. They only see the local conspiracies. Once they've risen in prominence and power, the greate scheme of things (that I invent right about when they get there) is revealed.

To sum up, here's my "adventure writing program":
-Choose a problem the PCs can solve from:
--a) a new source that the PCs can stumble on
--b) an element from a past session becomes a new problem
-Setup the problem such that the PCs will probably want to solve it
--a) make it relate to something the PCs care about
--b) make it so the PC knows it will affect them
-Choose a barrier to overcome to solving the problem
--a) This is something that a NPC can't solve, but the PC can
--b) use multiple if needed
-Choose a setback, to complicate the story partway through
--a) bring in a 3rd party competing for the solution
--b) incorporate a mistake the PC made earlier
--c) reveal that an earlier assumption was false (betrayal, lie, misinformation)
-Prepare the climactic confrontation
--a) assume it'll be at the BBEG's base (man vs. man)
--b) invent an interesting location/scene with skill challenges (man vs. nature)

That's rough summary. A few holes, and more clarifications could be made. But ultimately, I don't plan too far in the future, other than rough ideas in my head. I write for what I need for the next session. Each session I write builds up on material from the past. Each session's problem gets bigger to match the level of the party. As does the scope of the adventure.

 

[Alikar]

I think overplottting and trying to have grandiose storylines is the bane of "traditional" storytelling and adventuring.

In general I tend to agree, but I do think that you should paint some big threats with a general brush. In my current campaign my players have just invaded and then killed off a hidden kobold's base and are now searching through a local swamp convinced that this is where the kobolds are from. Wither this is true or not isn't all that important, the important thing is that I know about the existence of the large threat that placed the kobolds there in the base in the first place. In fact I have at the moment 4 general big threats in the world, but I have only really given real thought to 2 of them. However, if my players wonder off into one of the others I have something ready to work with. Also I can slip into the slow news cycles events surrounding these other threats. They are free to ignore these threats, but at least it gives a bit more life to the world, since not everything revolves around them.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

The big thing for me is the lessening of pre-game stress. In the past I have acutally cancelled sessions because I was having writers-block and couldn't plot out the backstory for the session. With my new mode of thinking I can always just have an NPC approach the PCs with some problem with some monsters, haggle the reward, then start throwing down Dungeontiles and start populating it with baddies. Heck, I don't even have to preplan the dungeon as long as one of the PCs is playing the role of "Mapper". I can just throw down the tiles in any shape I like and keep it up until the players tire of it or the end of the session. This works especially well for 4E since the Monster Manual has various "strengths" of the same monster already statted out.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I think overplottting and trying to have grandiose storylines is the bane of "traditional" storytelling and adventuring.

I disagree. Both are valid methods of storytelling.

D&D as I see it sets the stage for how to write for a group of characters that increase in power and prestige.

Now, go watch ANY long running TV series. Pretty much the same thing. At most they plot out a season (a couple levels worth of plot). The next season, they invent a new threat, or bring back some element from a past season as a twisted new threat. See the pattern.

Yes, this is the best idea if you plan on running a game forever or writing a TV show that never ends. That's why most long running shows use the formula. It means that as long as they get renewed for another season that they have something more to put into the show. It also means that if they get canceled after 1 season that the show can feel "ended".

However, my favorite show is Babylon 5. It was plotted pretty much from beginning to end before the show even started. Which showed in the character development, storyline and a number of other things. It seemed to flow more effectively than other shows because plot threads continued from episode to episode and from season to season way more than most shows on tv. It got to more effectively use foreshadowing and growth to tell the story. Because of this, IMHO, it was more engaging.

You want to write episodic if you expect different players every session who don't know what happened the session before hand(like most TV shows do). You want to write in closed "seasons" if you expect to have to keep writing them ad finitum. On the other hand, if you know your game is going from level 1 to 30 and you know that you want your PCs to end the game fulfilling their Epic Destinies and saving the world, then you have the ability to plan in advance. You don't have to put in an overarching storyline immediately, but you can put hints and foreshadowing in.

I'm not saying that you have to know what the 2nd encounter in session 48 is going to be before you start the game. But take this as an example:

Plot - Orcus wants to conquer the world

Heroic Tier: PCs deal with some orcs who are troubling the nearby area. They eventually deal with them and defeat them. There is a hint they are working for someone else bigger than them.

Paragon Tier: The PCs slowly begin to discover that there are armies of giants and other creatures rampaging the countryside under the same banner. The PCs will eventually track down the person in charge and find out he is a priest of Orcus.

Epic Tier: After defeating the priest of Orcus, they find out he has already performed a ritual which is tearing a hole in the dimensions and will allow Orcus' hoards to spill out into the world and wreak havok. The only way to stop the ritual is to go into the tear and fight Orcus on his home ground in order to close the portal from the other side. They eventually beat Orcus in a climactic battle.

And that's all I need planned, a couple of paragraphs describing the entire adventure ties it all together nicely and keeps the individual adventures on track. I can flesh out the details as I go, but I know that the plot is about Orcus and I can keep that in mind. Perhaps early in the heroic tier they find a town overrun by undead and a strange black portal that goes away shortly after they arrive. Later, they can discover that it was related to the overall plot because the priest of Orcus was just starting the ritual.

 

[Rechan]

I have never really dug "Save the world" stuff. Even from non-gaming related things. Watching Buffy/JLU save the world on a weekly basis, it becomes very yawn-worthy to me.

One thing I really like when it comes to gaming is goal-driven things, particularly from the PC's perspective. The campaign can have a theme or an over-arching notion without it being grand. It could be as simple as 'we are criminals in jail. We must escape, then flee, then try to clear our names/take out our enemies' or 'we must flee, then get somewhere safe, and carve a niche for ourselves'. If my PC's goal is to just become the Guild Master of the Thieves Guild, that's a campaign in and of itself; working up the hierarchy.

 

[Iron Sky]

Is it even possible to run a non-Gehenna campaign in V:TM?

Our game wasn't, at least not that I'm aware of. He kinda lost interest and the game fizzled out when my Assamite invented the Kevlar Blood-Stillsuit(TM) and we spent a session ignoring the plot so we could put a couple of them together... so I'll never know.

 

[Janx]

Bear in mind, Oakhear, I've run B5 as a D&D campaign. We finished season 0 (my material to get them to B5), and got part way into Season 1, before it fizzled. It took about a year to get there.

The probability of keeping a group togerther long enough for a fully scoped story arc is low. And I've been a part of a long-running group (my original posse back home has been running since 1991).

I suspect I could have done the whole thing in the layer method, rather than having the whole thing planned out. And in my case, to avoid the railroadyness of it I only actually planned out per session, using my sense of how the original series went, and what I had to work with for players/PCs.

FWIW, the Battle of the Line was the best session. Everything built up to the Paladin trying to ram his badly damaged ship into one of the elven ships. Including cutting, so he wouldn't know what happened next, and doing his live-action interrogation after he was found again.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Bear in mind, Oakhear, I've run B5 as a D&D campaign. We finished season 0 (my material to get them to B5), and got part way into Season 1, before it fizzled. It took about a year to get there.

The probability of keeping a group togerther long enough for a fully scoped story arc is low. And I've been a part of a long-running group (my original posse back home has been running since 1991).

LOL. That's pretty awesome. I agree, it's hard to finish a story arc. We've almost never finished one. The crowning achievement of our group was actually finishing the Return to the Temple of Elemental evil from beginning to end(albeit with a couple of changes in players by the end). We play them because we have more fun trying to get to the end...even if we never make it.

 

[S'mon]

I've definitely had more fun with episodic '60s tv serial' type campaigns than with grand-plot, fantasy-trilogy type campaigns. I think the structure of D&D makes it poorly suited to the latter. It's based much more in the pulp short-story tradition of Leiber, Vance, Howard and early Moorcock.