I gave a talk at synDCon 2010 on how to use the 5×5 Method to plan a campaign arc. I took suggestions from the audience and walked through the process, and by the end, we had the structure to start planning.
This one is a bit more heavily edited, since it was a lot of audience participation and the recorder didn’t pick that up as well. Hopefully it still flows pretty well and you can follow along- be sure that you check out the table below to see the final 5×5 grid.
Planning Your Campaign Using the 5×5 Method Seminar (33 minutes, 14 MB)
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| Kill Orcus | Purge Genericland from Evil | Bring Back Universal Healing | Collect Magic Dragon Skulls | Find the Artifact | |
| 1. | Find Local Cult | Orcish Warband | Discover Necrotic Aura as Source | Find Library | Find the Owner |
| 2. | Confront Doresain | Gnolls | Thrown into Power Struggle | Find Piece A | Chase |
| 3. | Find Abyssal Skiff | Evil Cult | Mingle | B | Chase |
| 4. | Enter the Abyss | Dragon Home | Ally with Church or Nobles | C | Chase |
| 5. | Fight Orcus | Lich Necromancer Vampire | Discover King/Vizier | Gotta Catch ‘Em All | Find It |
This really brought 5×5 into focus for me. Thanks!
I’m lazy about guessing or figuring out what my players want. It occurred to me listening to this podcast that I could make my players fill out the first (header) row of the 5×5 table around the time they make characters. I would reserve one quest arc, but the others could be decided on by the group, similar to how the seminar went down. I’d mediate to to make sure each player was interested in at least one or two arcs.
After that group character gen / campaign planning session, I would complete the 5×5 process by filling in the remaining rows alone. The players would choose the directions of the campaign arcs right up front, but I’d still have room to surprise them and connect them in interesting ways.
Thanks again for this great spark of inspiration!
Glad you liked it, and very cool idea. Part of what I went over is making specific entries tied to a character’s backstory. The way you’re proposing it, I could even see each quest-line being related overall to a character’s backstory. You’ve almost got some built-in links between the PCs at that point (almost soap operaish) and explains why they’re working together.