This post is part of a series that revisits Robin Laws’ classic work on Gamemastering, called simply enough Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering.
I tackle each chapter in order. It’s not so much a review of the book but more my views on the subjects Robin touched then. If you want to get better at GMing, this system-neutral book is probably the best 8$, you can spend .
This time it’s about designing and starting a new campaign.
So you have chosen your rules set for your next game (or settled on what everyone agrees to play) and now you want to design your own campaign… Robin Laws discusses a few areas you may want to explore while building your campaign
Planned vs on the Fly
A planned campaign is one where the GM has a defined plot and has created specific areas and NPCs that PCs will meet at various key points (in time and in space) (Edit: I used an erroneous example here so I removed it).
On the opposite end of planning is the On the Fly campaign, where it starts with a single adventure, often a published one and the plot and developments grow from there as the GM preps is next adventures based on what happened in prior ones. The world map often starts with a single base of operation and the nearby adventure sites.
My campaigns tend to be mostly on the fly.
Of course campaigns are rarely just one or the other. But if as a GM you tend to have a binder full of background notes and maps before the players show up for your first game, chances are you have a planned campaign on your hands.
That doesn’t mean that a planned campaign isn’t improvised or that an On the fly one isn’t scripted. Robin makes the distinction between designing a campaign (over arching themes and plot) vs the actual adventures (the next chapter).
For instance, while my campaign are mostly on the fly things, my actual adventures are scripted and follow well defined scenes.
On the other hand, my friend Yan will have a 50 pager background document for his campaign world and a plot worked out in advance but has a completely improvised, open-ended approach to adventure design.
Both can be good. In truth, I’m pretty sure that GMs mix and match pre-planning and On the Fly depending on available time and natural style.
Genre
Robin then touches on Genre. This was a very relevant choice to make in the late 90’s, even once you had settled on rules, because each game system had an abundance of styles. Gurps had worldbooks, each World of Darkness games had a distinct genre and even the A D&D 2nd Edition game had a large number of very different settings that mixed genres.
Now, in the late 00’s, genre is still relevant but the choice of game often sets the main genre. Still, as you build your campaign, you may decide to add genre additional elements to your game. A common example is to add Lovecraftian-type horror to Heroic Fantasy games. Or re-visit the old ’70’s classic of mixing Sci-Fi elements with Fantasy.
Published vs Home-Grown setting
The next choice is to go with a published setting or create your own. This mostly goes down to a matter of player/GM preference.
In D&D 3e, players can chose the default setting (that I call Greyhawk lite), the Forgotten Realms or Eberon. Third party ones like the Scarred lands, Kalamar, Pathfinder’s Golarion to name a few are also available.
If your group chooses to go for a published setting, chances are you’ll have real fans of that setting in your groups. That’s why Robin Laws suggests that players be allowed to read all sourcebooks of the settings. While it will most likely reveal settings secrets it will increase player immersion and buy-in of your game.
As long as the group agrees to stay off published adventures that the GM intends to use, I really think this approach is best. Provided the group has an agreed upon stance against meta-gaming and out of game knowledge.
Much like Robin, I have found that campaign setting secrets are not worth keeping because the reveal is never as appreciated by players as you’d like.
Reserve big reveals for NPC plans and actions you created and that aren’t found in the books. 🙂
That brings me to touch a similar point for home-grown campaigns. These are great because as the GM who created the world, you know all about it and you can shape it in whatever direction you without being limited by a setting’s Canon.
Canonical Aside: Actually you can do whatever you please in a published settings too, but you may face resistance if some of your players are ‘Real Fans’…. “What do you mean Elminster is a female Warlock??? ” Heck I discarded a good 60% of the established Ptolus meta-plot, I plunked the city in my world (when it’s supposed to be a Demi-plane), and I’m actually destroying it… At 120$ for the book and 60$ for the PDF, I can well do what I want, no?
However, home-grown worlds have a tendency to activate GMs’ authorial genes and cause them to spend countless hours filling reams of paper (or Wikis, or Word Documents) on the minute details of Livestock commerce, Barbarian court etiquette, epic timelines, etc.
When all this work is done, a GM tends to want to share all this (it’s only natural, when you pour a lot of effort in something,seeking validation is normal). Thing is, the tendency of many GMs is to present this in the form of non-interactive presentations… (which often leads to this type of reaction from players)
My advice to you, if you are the type who enjoys creating worlds in detail, is to make all this info part of your adventures. Make learning key tidbits (not whole pages) of the background core elements of some of your adventures. If you must, hand out a 1 pager summary of what players should know about the world (more than that and some won’t read it).
Of course, if players ask for more, go wild 🙂
Tone
If current rulesets often pre-determines Genres, the actual tone of your campaign is another issue. Even in fantasy, you can set different tones. You can go the classic Heroic, PCs-are-Badasses path (which D&D 4e is embracing at full speed), or you may decide to go for a darker, grittier game using the same system.
You may also decide to explore a key emotion/feeling for your campaign like, for example, a pervading sense of Paranoia.
You may go for pure action, investigation, silliness, etc. For example, my buddy Dave the Game has a fascinating campaign where places and NPCs have a distinct Pop-art feeling and/or pun-filled names. The last log I read was called Fear and Loathing in Van Legas! 🙂
It’s a good idea to check with your players if the tone you’d like to go for is different from the mainstream.
Campaign Mission
Robin laws concludes this chapter with a very important point that remains as valid now as it did 10 years ago:
When you create a Campaign, you already have in mind what it is that the players will be doing. Make sure you convey that to your group and get thier buy-in…
If your players expect a Hack N Slash heroic fest of mayhem, springing a Paranoid Dark age Court Intrigue campaign on them will likely result in a lot of slain Gothic Princesses. 😀
Laws calls this the campaign’s mission. I wouldn’t suggest that you write one down and mount it to your game room’s wall like corporations do. However, actually sitting down and writing your campaign’s elevator pitch will force you to crystalize what it is you want the game to be about and convey this to your players in just a few lines…
Conclusion:
Once players know what the campaign is going to be about (Genre, Setting, Tone and mission) they’ll be able to think about and choose interesting character concepts that fit into that picture.
What about you, what are your campaign design strategies? Feel free to link to your blog posts on the subject or forum posts you once wrote. Or use the comments here, I’m always interested to see what other GMs do.
As for you players out there (I had a poll once that showed the majority of readers to share playing and GMing duties), what do you expect of a GM to be ready to tackle creating a character for a new campaign?
Have a nice weekend all.
I read Robin’s Laws years ago, and reading your article today, reminded me how much of it has seeped into the very DNA (no pun intended) of my gaming.
For my current Iron Heroes campaign, I decided to craft most of the campaign on the fly. I started with a central theme, and initial background for the game, was a set of paragraphs told in narrative style. I then let the players ask me questions until we had fleshed out the parts of the world I needed to get started. Since then, I have created only the parts of the world I have needed.
But when it comes to actually running a session, I am a heavy planner. I like to really craft my stories and sessions. I never railroad my characters, but I generate a decent amount of prep material.
The think that has really kept my IH campaign going over the years (wow its nice to say that) was that it had a set Tone and Campaign Mission. The game is overly heroic, as the players struggle against the Evil Demon King. It sounds cliche, but I put my own spin on it to keep it fresh. But with that Tone the players know what kinds of actions are going to cause intra-party strife, and with the Campaign Mission, it gives them focus and drive.
I think its safe to say that every new GM should read Robin’s Laws, and every seasoned GM should go back and read them every few years to brush up on them. It is a quite non-descript book, and yet is so profound in its gaming wisdom.
LOL I’m sure Robin Laws would appreciate to know the retroviral properties of his writing.
While I’m actually am going through my 1st reading of his work, I find myself in agreement of most of his points. I find his player types a bit restrictive (and I prefer the DMG II ones he adapted) but the rest is absolute gold.
I should have read that years ago… but at that time I actually thought I didn’t need to mature more as a DM… HA!
Thanks for the comment Phil.
Another great reference for campaign building is chapter 3 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide II. It’s one of the fluffiest chapters ever in a WOTC book.
As far as my own stuff goes, I used to do some heavy planning when I started a campaign. But I eventually realized I was planning the wrong things. I was planning cities, continents and peoples that the players would likely never see . I was planning for the epic encounters at high levels, but not putting too much thought in low level adventures. My scope was just way too big.
In my current campaign, I really tried to keep it small and simple. I planned one city and tried to fill it with unique places and NPCs. Things that players would see over and over again. I planned a few surrounding adventure sites. Instead of planning for the “Big Bad” that players would face at high level, I planned a couple “small bads” that made sense for low level characters.
Handouts have worked great too. For example, I have a “Public Postings” bill that appears at the local Inn that I fill with news and plot hooks. The players have the option to check them out, or not. Every week I add some things and remove others. My players say that it gives them a real sense that the world is moving and changing around them.
I think it’s the best campaign I’ve ever run.
But I guess my overall point is “Carpe Diem.” I think it’s helpful to put 95% of your planning effort into this weeks game. Save the 15th level planning for when the characters are 14th level.
I was going to mention the updated version he wrote for the DMG 2. (If you want a physical book, that’s probably the place to go since, I think, Robin’s Laws is out of print and used copies sell for upwards of 40 bucks.)
Planned? I don’t think that applies, simply because the “campaign” I ran was essentially a single, though long, scenario or adventure (it could be written as a D&D adventure, but would not work as well for a random party of characters). It had a prepared starting situation and one prepared NPC (Nifur) before the player characters were created. After their creation, the NPC cast further increased to encompass 5 relationships.
I’m not exactly sure about what you call metaplot. At the start of the game I only had a bunch of NPCs with motivations. At some point the killer of Thorvald was decided by me due to player narration. I was absolutely uncertain about the destiny of the giant or the destiny of the village. Mori’s death was a surprise. That Brunhildr lived was even a greater surprise. The witch I was pretty certain about.
If that is a metaplot, yes, I had one.
The point of all this is that the planned/on-the-fly distinction works better with several scenarios or stories. The scripted or improvised seems to be a more useful tool for such short games as Burning vikings was.
Tommi: My bad, seen like this, it is just a single scenario, but the approach I gathered from your prep posts and game logs reminded me of planned campaign design. I removed the example…
Greenvesper: I do own the DMG II and this is what motivated me to go and get Robin’s book. I’m much like you in your current current approach to design… Seize the Day indeed…
Michael: Man you gave me quite a surprise… my boss is actually called Michael Philips and he has played RPGs in the past! Welcome to the blog! As mentioned above, I own the DMG II, one of my favorite RPG books and one that will remain in my gaming bookcase once D&D 4e rolls in.
Great Post! This has given me much to contemplate as I am planning my latest campaign…
Thanks for the info, Chatty!
-Scotticus
Ha, if you think my D&D game is pop-art inspired, you should see one of my d20 Modern games…
I too plan very little long term. Broad strokes and genre only, and even those I find broken easily so I don’t rely on them exclusively.
I take a lot of lessons in planning from writing (especially novels.) When a story gets going, events will start to suggest themselves, and your work will be done for you AND it’ll help the campaign feel more organic. Plus, if done well, the stuff that just happens to come together will look like you planned it from the beginning from your player’s point of view, and you’ll look like a genius.
Plus there’s the old danger of railroading… but even that side, the players are going to feel a lot better when their characters are shaping the events around them.
My current campaign world was built over a period of about four months. I was determined to lead with the cool, so I decided every area should have strong fantastic elements and something memorable.
I typed a list of concept areas and made a map (All done with the GIMP):
http://www.unc.edu/~krstraus/maps/world%20map.png
Then I decided what the overarching world defining aspects were. As with the areas, I wanted a short, interesting list, something that would grab players fast.
Finally, I decided on a basic idea for the campaign mission and tone for the game and started fleshing out the starting zone.
Hey, Weasel, if you want an idea for a blog post, tell how much use the different cool things in the setting are or were in actual play. Did you show the quite nice map to the players and if yes, did it help in creating enthusiasm? Nice map, BTW.
That is a cool map indeed. I’m impressed!
Nice work Weasel and I second Tommi’s request!
Even if my analytical side could not put aside some little irregularity concerning the rivers. This is definitely a good looking map.
Hmm. As a player probably the one thing I tend to expect from a GM is if they want to run the same stale, old system that they show me something interesting I can use. For various reasons I could never figure out, the older Vampire: the Masquerade and D&D 3.x have been favorites of game masters. In the last decade or so if I’ve been in a game it’s almost certainly been one of those two and by this point there are elements of both games that have a pretty high twitch factor for me (vampire being run as a celerity fuelled, combat-centric powergame and the poorly designed and implemented attacks of opportunity in D&D to give a couple examples). The campaign kinda has to interest me past all that and give me something interesting to think about.
I don’t think I’m a great GM. When I start up games I tend to work out a general idea of the first adventure and then wing it for the rest. The games I prefer still have some leeway on the genre (Amber diceless RPG allows some genre choices, Earthdawn can concentrate more on fantasy or horror depending, and BESM which I’m still getting into is extremely versatile). I get to have fun conversations like “So… what interests you more as a starting point? Sci-fi, fantasy or something vaguely like the real world?” Tone tends to be whatever interests me at the time and campaign mission I tend not to worry about. Generally if the players wouldn’t like the game I’m describing they don’t get on-board in the first place and we play something else. That probably sounds a bit simple but so far it’s mostly worked even if it sounds a bit hit or miss.
I’ve put the blog on hold for a bit, but I did consider a whole slew of posts with my consolidated info for playing electronically and creating world and battle maps (created using the Gimp, a free version of Photo Shop).
I’ll do a few quick answers here:
Eisenwald is a dark Germany analog (heavy forests). It is a high plateau ruled by a witch. Under her influence the moon is full every night, and there are no flowering plants.
Luxor is located where two rivers meet a river of lava. They poor into a hole in the earth, and a city was built to capture the steam created. Giant iron boilers and simple machinery dominate the city, which is run entirely on steam power.
The world is iron poor, so most weapons and armor are bronze and brass (allows steel to become a useful reward) (mechanically, steel weapons get +1 to hit / damage, masterwork +2). Iron, being the antithesis of magic (think of why fey hate iron), cannot be enchanted.
The oceans are freshwater, so salt is extremely valuable, the ocean’s freeze easily and the coasts are wracked by storms.
The Green Wind is a force of nature, reclaiming all land not actively settled and expanded, decaying structures and corroding metal, bringing beasts and forest back very quickly. Any civilizations not actively expanding lose territory.
I point you to the Cartographer’s Guild, as that’s where I learnt everything about mapping:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/
You’ll have to dig through the forum posts to find the maps you want, but EVERY style is shown there. There’s several guides in the Tutorials section, find a map who’s style grabs you and have some fun.
I use Gimp to cut and resize pictures a lot… but hot damn I can’t even figure how to use text properly in that program… Phased, are there some actually usable tutorials for Gimp out there?
🙂
Oh and great map and tips by the way, thanks for sharing those!
Lanir: Welcome to the blog… While I don’t agree that D&D 3e (or at least d20 gaming) is stale… I too am tired of those I played so far.
However, I’m totally with you for BESM. It is by far my favorite non-d20 RPG. It’s the ultimate fast paced, simple generic RPG that allows you to do almost anything. It’s streamlined and easy to master. Heck a character takes a few minutes to make.
How’s the third edition? Is it supported like the 2nd was? Pity for Guardian of Order going under.
Check out the tutorials for the Cartographer’s Guild. Many of them are step-by-step and include screenshots at each step (registration required to see pics).
After doing a few you’ll understand the basic concepts. Beyond that, there are millions of GIMP tutorials for basic projects available on the webs.
If you’ve never used such programs before, play around with Layers, upon which all images are made. Layers are god!
I shall.. thanks!
Heck, I’m having enough trouble with Comic Book Creator… I really should read the manual on these things!
🙂
About BESM… I’m kind of new to it. I’ve only seen the 3rd edition and haven’t done much with it yet. Still in that phase where I kick around ideas and try to build a world as I learn the system. Been kinda lazy to be honest or I’d have a game up and going by now and have more to tell you.
I really like what I see of it. I’ve been gaming off and on since I was 6 or 7 which was… umm.. yeah, we’ll just say that was a long time ago. 🙂 I’ve tried my hand at a whole slew of different games from basic box D&D to a bit of Middle Earth ala MERPS, GURPS, Shadowrun, Star Wars (d6 not d20), Ars Magica, Rifts, more Storyteller/World of Darkness games than I can shake a stick at, etc. The three I like the most are Amber Diceless RPG, Earthdawn and BESM, not necessarily in that order. Kinda thinking BESM will be my favorite once I start in on it. The downside of using it is that it asks you to think of an effect first and then work on mechanics. Most games are a bit more like the old “choose your own adventure” books. You get so many choices or building blocks to work with and go from there. The advantage that comes from this is I think a lot of the system work you do would be easily recyclable from game to game even if a lot changes.
As far as support for it goes you’re kind of on your own. White Wolf picked it up but it’s not a core product for them. It’s under the Arthaus imprint. I’m haven’t looked at adapting any 2nd edition stuff yet but I don’t think it would be too difficult. In 3rd everything is bought from the same points pool and some point values changed. If you decide you like 2nd better there are still some things from 3rd that you’d probably want to backport (templates for instance). What you’d really want more of here would be content. To some extent the system is simple enough to adapt content for other games into it fairly easily. Some things would be really obnoxious to implement fully like the Balor (ugh, spell-likes). Other things would be a lot easier like the tarrasque (it’s a brick/shredder with a few extra attack and defense modes – no problem!).
If I get a game going with this I can talk about I’ll let you know.
Featured in my list of great roleplaying articles, because this is simply an awesome post.
Eric Martindales last blog post..Flock Tip: Add Services To Your Sidebar (Sorta)
Wow! Thanks Eric and welcome on the Blog!
Using a published setting creates it’s own problems, particularly when players know it very, very well.
I GM a Star Wars game, and all of us are Star Wars fans. So there’s really a lot of things we can’t do unless we are all willing to throw continuity to the side.
This is why I managed to win an argument with the GM last week when he wanted us to kill of Quinlan Vos. I refused, and so did another player.
Of course, you can stretch out and do your own thing. But you need to find the right time and place in the galaxy far, far away.
.-= Katana Geldar´s last blog ..There’s one at every table… =-.
My friend Franky is setting up a Star Wars game and in order to avoid any type of ‘don’t you soil my Stat Wars’ arguments, he’s setting up the game in the ‘Knights of the Old Republic’ era.
Since none of us played the game or read KotOR novels, it will all be news to us.
KOTOR era is perhaps one of the perfect eras if a GM wanted to really branch out and do some really big events on their own. There aren’t many times where you can have random Jedi running aboiut and doing what ever the hell they like.
Have fun.
.-= Katana Geldar´s last blog ..It’s nice to play together =-.
Thanks. I’m very much looking forward to it.