25
Aug/2008
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Curmudgeonly Ramblings: Assembling a Campaign
As promised in my previous blog entry, this one deals with how I approach a campaign, design an adventure, and what my characteristic quirks are. We had our first session of our newest campaign this past Saturday (Recap to come later), so since I have campagin design fresh in my mind, let's jump in!
When I start planning a campaign (and we're talking D&D here), I usually ask myself three questions:
"What have I already done?"
"What do my players like?"
"How can I take the answers to the first two questions and mesh them into something original and fun?"
So, when I started planning the new campaign, I ticked off in my head all of the plots I'd done before. Quests to find an artifact, quests to destroy an artifact, quests to hunt someone down, quests to remove a curse, etc. Eventually I found one that I hadn't done in a long time, so people have had a chance to start missing that sort of adventure again, if you know what I mean. In this case, the new campaign is a rescue mission.
Secondly, what do my players like? Now granted, you can't tailor your campaign to fit every single players' needs 100% of the time. In fact, this is YOUR sandbox. YOU make the rules. YOU determine what kind of sand's in the sandbox, how much sand there is, and even how big the sandbox is. But that being said, it makes things more fun if you incorporate elements that the vast majority of your players like. In other words, play to your audience, and give 'em what they like...just do it in YOUR unique style. In my campaigns, my gamers especially like good vs. evil campaigns, the chance to be heroic. OK, so a heroic rescue....something or someone evil has captured something or someone good. Rescue him/her/it.
The final question is how to take all of that and add your unique spin to it. This is where the characteristic quirks mentioned earlier come in. For instance, here are my quirks:
1. Things are not always as they seem; there's either a twist, or more than meets the eye, or something like that.
2. There WILL be a nearby settlement for the purposes of resting up, resupplying, healing, and gaining XP. Of course, it may be a chore to find it, but it's around.
3. That settlement will also have some interesting NPCs to interact with, thus fulfilling players' desires to so some role-playing, not just hit things.
4. No matter how grim, how dire the adventure, there's one NPC who will provide comic relief of a sort. Hey, even Macbeth had a humorous scene with a drunken doorman of the castle (NOTE: I am NOT comparing some silly D&D campaign with a classic piece of literature). And the comic relief more often than not also serves a useful purpose.
5. My campaigns are like well-written software programs: there's a back door if you can find it. 
6. No matter how dire the circumstances, there are NO unbeatable scenarios. There's always a way out.
7. There's no such thing as "just" a +1 longsword, or a +2 short sword, or a +3 bastard sword; each sword (and to a lesser extent other weapons) is unique, with its own name, history, and powers. The name is usually a clue as to what powers it has.
8. There is a prophecy somewhere in the game; in our first session of the new campaign, the mysterious figure confronting the party said "As your path has begun in fire, so shall it end in fire." ooooo, ominous!!!!
9. There's a tight self-referencing continuity. I incorporate/mention elements, events, PCs, of previous campaigns. This not only gives a "real world" sense to things, players are gratified when their previous PCs are referenced; it makes them feel, and rightly so, that in their own way, they helped create the current adventuring world.
10. There has to be a cat in there somewhere.
11. I plan weather, including lunar phases, wind, temperature, precipitation, for the entire gaming month in advance. That way, if the party's stuck on an overland trip and a snow storm comes crashing in, the players can't go "Oh you're just throwing that at us to make things tougher." That's when you smile and show them the date entry, shrug and say "I can't help it if you decided to spend two extra days in town, buying figs". Now, all of a sudden, the weather is the foe to be overcome!
12. Graphic sex and violence are down-played or soft-pedaled.
13. I don't dwell on kids' deaths.....sure, some orcs may slaughter an entire human village, which implies kids and infants, but that doesn't mean I'm going to include color text that mentions dead babies scattered everywhere. Surely there's a more creative way of expressing the total devastation of a town without resorting to a lurid, cheap, nasty shock like that; especially since dead kids is one of my hot buttons that is better left unpressed.
14. Ultimately, heroism and virtue are rewarded, and are things people aspire to. That doesn't mean that people all need to be milk-drinking lawful good types; in fact there's plenty of room for some greedy scoundrels with a highly developed sense of self-interest. It's just that, when the final tally is rung up, and you decide if you're on the side of Light or Darkness, it's Light that wins out.
15. Knowing when you're outmatched and consequently withdrawing, is a good idea.
16. Going along with that, I have no compunctions in scattering a few lairs around the adventuring area, lairs which have monsters that are clearly more than the PCs can handle. But they're there in order for the PCs to have something to look forward to hitting when they become more experienced. On the other hand, if they want their 2nd level characters to follow the obvious trail of troll tracks to the lair, well, then they'll get what's coming to them.
17. The campaign area has at least one small to medium-sized "dungeon" area that's level-appropriate, to help the PCs get a few levels before they tangle with the major plot elements, and help them gel as a fighting group.
OK that's a lot of elements, but I've been doing this for decades, so they've accumulated.
Then comes the actual putting together of the adventure. The planning for that is almost like a running monologue in my head.
"OK, where do we set this up?"
"Let's avoid any place in the Realms that we've done something recently, as in the last few years of real time."
"That eliminates Silver Marches, Dragon Coast, the Vast, the Dales, the Moonsea, Cormyr, Sembia...."
"Western Heartlands. That works. But not near any major cities."
"How about here, in the middle of nowhere, south of the High Moor, near the Trollbark Forest and the Fields of the Dead? Desolate enough?"
"Perfect. But if that's the case, how does everyone meet?"
"Well, there'd have to be inns set up as rest stops along the Trade Way road. How about that?"
"Inn? Gee, that's original. OK, if that's what it has to be, than that's what it has to be. But can we at least make it something original and/or interesting?"
"How about if the spirits of the dead customers rise from a grave pit and slaughter the owner and everyone else?"
"Why would they do that?"
"The inn owner is a psychopath who sometimes would kill his customers in their sleep, strip their bodies of valuables, and dump the corpses in a pit."
"And why would the spirits kill other customers?"
"Because all of the other customers, aside from the PCs of course, are in league with the inn owner! They're all part of the same mercenary company, and they're all rotten, so the restless dead wipe EVERYONE out!"
"Why would this entire mercenary group just so happen to be at the inn at the same time? Sounds lame!"
"It's like a military unit having a reunion at a hotel. This mercenary company has taken up most of the inn, invited by their former comrade, the psycho inn keeper!"
"So why would the vengeful spirits preserve the PCs then?"
"The PCs need to finish the mission that the last victim, a heroic knight, was on, before he met his untimely throat-cut death at the hands of the psychotic ex-mercenary innkeeper. Since they're not evil, they're chosen."
"Aha! And that mission would be the...."
"...rescue mission! Yes! Precisely! Good guy knight sets off to rescue innocent from evil clutches, gets cut down before he can even undertake the task!"
"Brilliant! Have a beer!"
"Thank you!"
Once the start point has been decided, populating the area with abovementioned lairs is needed, which usually means a humanoid race to tackle ("Let's see...we've gone with orcs, kobolds, goblins....let's do gnolls this time!"). Then, the "base town" needs to be developed (along with temples, inns, equipment places, interesting NPCs, and sub-plots). Then come the custom-designed weapons and treasure to lair allocations. After that, a chart of available stories, rumors, and bardic knowledge roll results. Then comes the Weather chart.
Voila. First Act is done. You have the start of the campaign, some adventure areas, NPCs, and a direction for the PCs to go in. But that's only the first act; although you don't have to design them right away, it's good to establish where else the PCs will need to travel (picture the world map in the Indy movies, with the red line moving to the new destination), and start lining up the opposition, locales, treasure, further plot twists, and of course the climax.
My players in the new campaign have started off in the Western Heartlands. Naturally, I can't say where they're heading, and where they'll eventually end up, as a bunch of them are on this site.
So there you are! The start of my new campaign, entitled simply "Fire".
Next time: Why Dungeon Masters need to be complete and utter b@st@rds!
Tags: DM Campaign ForgottenRealms D&D 3.5
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