Building RPG Campaigns

Out of all the people in the world, precious few are gamers.  Of those, only a small portion have it in them to actually coordinate an RPG game as the "Game Master".  A Game Master needs to be very prepared before he steps into the ring at the Wargate.  Having a strong campaign theme is critical, as well as having a good idea of how the individual game world will react to the players.  Today's diatribe contains bits of my methodology when creating new adventure stories.

For those that don't know me, I've been RPG gaming solid since 1992.  I've done lots of different genres, games and even been lucky enough to have a few players who've been with me for more than a decade.  Aside from that, I've run countless games for more folk than I can remember.  I've had hits and misses, and in this methodology article I'll elaborate on what I've found works best for me to constantly crank out adventure stories for our club!



A Million Systems
The first choice you will have to make is what system you are going to use for the campaign.  Sometimes this will be an obvious choice, as sometimes the system itself is what spurs you along.  Other times, there is an overwhelming number of options as to what you can do with the same system.  Do you run your D&D game in Dark Sun or in Ravenloft?

This seems like a "gimme", but choice of system is quite critical to the delivery of your game.  Certain schools of thought tend towards the "any game system can handle any genre", and to an extent that's true.  Online you'll find tons and tons of "house rules" that modify systems to more accurately reflect another genre.  D20 is a great commercial example of this, but remember - if significant conversion to the basic system seems necessary, you might want to rethink the choice of system.  There's not any reason to spend a lot of time changing minutiae of the systems to reflect some tiny thing that seems out of place - unless you want to make that the point of your project.

In particular, at the Wargate, we have TONS of games that are on constant rotation.  Dungeons & Dragons, World of Darkness, Warhammer Roleplay - all these games are pretty much known quantities to our players.  The rules are in firm grasp by everyone, and even new games take very little time for the group to learn.  Don't be afraid to introduce new systems, as they will be devoured by the members of the club quite swiftly and without any warning.

Personally I like to change systems every few months, but in practice few GM's will run more than one system or setting for a myriad of reasons.  For just as many reasons, this is actually a desirable effect within a large gaming club like ours - it allows each GM to "own" a different portion the world(s) / settings and specialize in that system!

There's lots of options even within a single setting to keep gamers coming back for years, and the amount of material available for each line is staggering.  Fantasy settings tend to have "Oriental" or "Arabian" type settings in addition to the standard sword & sorcery routine.  When beginning your trek to Game Mastery, think about the sorts of campaigns you'd like to run and decide which systems would be best for those campaigns.


A Million Adventures
Now that you've got your system in hand and your books all studied up, you can begin structuring your campaign.  For the moment, we're going to assume you aren't using any published adventures but will have the basic rules collection on hand - whatever you consider the 'basic' rules to be.  That is - I generally include all the 3e player's books (Sword & Fist, Defenders of the Faith, etc..) in my games of D&D 3e.  Not all GM's will include the same books in the same system.  The Smith includes Palladium FRPG books in his Megaverse games, but I stay far away from that planet - even though we both use Ninjas & Superspies as a basic rulebook!

So armed, where do you begin?  What sort of campaign are you going to run, within the system you have chosen?  Do you already have an idea, or just sort of a vague notion of something cool?  Do you have a theme you want to present?

I like to brainstorm campaign ideas long before I ever actually get around to fully fleshing them out, much less actually running them.  I keep a list of campaign ideas I've written down during brainstorming sessions where I sit and try to organize my disparate thoughts of destruction and adventure into tangible stories that make sense, and fit well with the system I want to use.  Try it out and see what sort of results you get - you'll frequently surprise yourself by coming up with new ideas, or new ways to use your old ideas.

Try this brainstorming excercise - begin with an idea list.  To start with you'll need, lets say, 10 ideas for different campaigns.  If you want to use different systems, divide it up however you like, but the idea is to get "slots" that you want to "fill" with an idea.  Blank slots are meant to be on the list in order to drive your creativity!  If you want to focus on particular supplements for your range, be assured you can get a whole campaign out of adding one book!

For example, take D&D 4th Edition.  No one at the Wargate has really put this one on the table, though the idea has been broached before.  Let's say I wanted to introduce it into our club's rotation.  Eventually, it will happen...so I'm going to brainstorm a few ideas for it.

I know that I want it to fit neatly in with our other D&D adventures that I'll be running...from AD&D 1e, through 2e and 3e.  I won't be exploring old school D&D (BECMI) or the white box.  At this time.  So, the "basic" rules for the campaign will be Player's Handbooks 1-3, the Dungeon Master Guide and Monster Manual I-II.  This is for no other reason that I think those books include enough material not to infuriate my players.

I also know that our club's campaigns tend to last about 15 weeks/sessions, almost 4 months of actual time.  I also know how the 4e games are organized into tiers.  So armed with this knowledge, I proceed to my list of 10 ideas for 4e campaigns, along with potential products I would be interested in obtaining as an RPG consumer.

1. Points of Light (Dungeon Delve + other published adventures for 4e)
2. Rise of the Spider-Kind (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
3. Into the Northlands (Neverwinter Campaign Setting)
4. Beneath the Icewind Dale (Underdark + Caverns of Icewind Dale)
5. Sands of the Serpent (Persian Flavor Homebrew + The Shadowfell)
6. The Orbs of Dragonkind (Draconomicon 1 + 2)
7. The Magical Mirror of Five Suns (Manual of the Planes)
8. Into the Abyss (The Plane Below + Demonomicon)
9. Dark Sun (published adventures for Dark Sun 4e)
10. Dark Sun: The Edge of the World

It took me about 40 minutes to come up with this list.  Most of that time was spent looking at the 4e product catalog for ideas, which I haven't really explored much yet.  Pretty nifty, there's a lot of campaign sets available.  I don't actually have any of this material, but it sure looks cool on the outside.  This is a totally top down experiment, as I've not done a 4e brainstorm, ever.  Well, I really wanted to run Dark Sun when it came out.

Colored sets represent ideas that can "ramp" into one another - that is, use the same characters when we reconvene for that game.  Other products I saw that I could totally brainstorm on include Hammerfast and The Plane Above.

If you have the idea for your campaign, then you're ready to proceed to the adventure building stage.  


What Stories? Keep it focused!
Well, you've had your system and campaign idea in mind all along, so how do you begin plotting adventures?

There are two broad schools of thought on how campaigns should be run:  Linear or Sandbox.  Linear adventure progressions occur much as video games do - sure you can change things around a little, but in the end the final boss is the final boss and he's on level 8.  Sandbox games sort of plop you into a realm and let you run into things.

I take a middle stance.  I usually use a linear progression for adventures (events) but allow the players lots of free reign to do what they like, within the context of the current campaign.  This is done with a set of Plot Threads, which I'll discuss later on.  There's all sorts of ways the linear progression will change due to player action, since I don't actually write the adventure until the week before the session.

The biggest problem is laying out a coherent arc that will resolve enough of itself within the allotted campaign time, which is 3-4 months at the Wargate.  It's difficult to present a coherent story without first taking the time to think about how the story will progress.  If you want your players to perform occult investigations and unravel the secret of the Witch-House, that's a great campaign idea and has a story arc - but you'll have to work carefully to present the arc.  You know roughly how long the campaign will last and have final say on how many sessions you run - so plot for between 12 and 18 sessions' worth of material.  Hmm...sounds like another outline...



Story Outlines for Campaigns
Who said nothing we learned in school wouldn't help us in the future?  Since RPG's are run mostly on the fly, with a little help from some reference materials, it makes sense that an outline can help hobbyists in almost every circumstance that could possibly call for one.  This is one of the reasons I like them so much.

This time, however, we're outlining the campaign itself!  Let's see...to continue with our current club model as an example, we know we need to plot for about 15 weeks worth of game.  Our sessions typically last 3-5 hours, so short scenarios are best for 1 night games, but longer adventures simply stretch over week to week. We are frequently resuming play where we last ended the session, like face down in the Electric Lizard Pool.

The chief goal of any RPG campaign (usually) is to present a coherent adventure story.  It has to make sense.  If your players can't reconcile in their minds that the strange scenario could be likely (given that people have superpowers or what have you) then you won't achieve verisimilitude.  If your players can't make logical leaps because the story is out of place in the genre, it will stop making sense to them.  This can happen when the "feel" of the game changes, such as setting or genre swaps, if it's not handled well.

To illustrate, I'll use an outline for a Dark Heresy campaign I ran last year - Under a Vast Grey Sky.  This outline comes from my adventure notebook, and is the first thing I wrote for it.  It was modified a few times as the game went on and PC actions altered events, so here's the final result.

1. Distress at Lucruzu - how the PC's come to Lucruzu
2. The Mission - base of operations
3. Death at Tithesgiving - Attempt on the Governor's life
4. Band of Basterds - Mercenary group is fingered, PC's go hunting
5. The Windswept Steppe - Chasing after Andrei, the PC's must cross a huge wilderness
6. Band of Basterds, Part II - Second portions of original adventure #4
7. The Pogrom - Moving back into the city, the PC's encounter the rough end of a pogrom
8. The Outlaw Torn - Meeting up with Andrei, the players expose traitors in his men
9. The Murderous Truth - The PC's confront the corrupt High Priest
10. The Steeple - PC's confront Liev at the Cathedral

In this campaign, agents of the Inquisition arrive on a world that doesn't welcome them at all.  An attempt is made on the governor's life, and the players begin a hunt for the perpetrators.  All is not as it seems, however, and the players must hunt one of the governor's own sons.  However, it is eventually seen that the other brother wishes to seize power by any means necessary, even by exterminating his own people.  The players confront the masterminds of the governor's overthrow while eluding the ruling houses' military elite as they work to restore the governor to his seat.

Neat campaign.


Outlining Sandboxes
Sandboxes present a little more of a challenge.  You still have to put the adventure thread in there, but it requires a little more lateral thinking, and focusing instead on what I call Player Character Plot Threads.

To begin with, you need your milieu...any sort will do.  Let's say, Smokefall Ridge - a western town in 1875 Indian Territory.  You want to do a sandbox your players can play with, but how do you design one that seems believable?

Start with the basics...a plot progression that is independent of the players.  They can interact with this segment of the campaign progression as much or little as they like, but you need a constant "timer" that clicks out time in manageable segments.  For example, the War of the Red Band (as it will come to be called) is going on around Smokefall...but the players have only encountered the Red Band in small groups.  Several campaign events hinge on battles between the U.S. Cavalry and the Red Band not far from the town, but the players don't have to seek out the war.  It still happens, though - and that gives you plenty of opportunities to throw new things at players and use the context of the changing world around them to create a sense of verisimilitude.

I'd start with five points you definitely want to use as adventures during the campaign.  If they have to occur in a specific order, be sure and put them in the correct order.  I'll use Smokefall as an example, so my players can consider this as the jumping off point to the next western campaign.  This game is run with World of Darkness and I'll still be using The Book of Spirits as my main supplement for this next campaign.

1. Red Band Warriors only go where the spirits tell them.  Eventually occult players will have to deal with them.
2. Simmons Lumber will be moving into Smokefall.  Disputes over land are likely to arise.
3. The town may soon have a new Locus in the Lodge, if those two hooligans keep at it.
4. Twin Pines Fine Horse Mall will need plenty of top-quality horses, and lots of hands!
5. An alarming number of outlaws pursue outlawry right to Smokefall Ridge.  That's where the PC's live.

Ok, so I can get a good night's game out of each of those items.  There are other things to mention though...Player Character Plot Threads.

I run them in non-sandbox games also, but find that they work best to direct the action in sandboxes very well.  Basically, a Plot Thread is a subplot involving that character, and tailored to that character.  These can vary wildly from character to character, and when they are resolved you replace them with another Plot Thread.  For instance, take my players in the above western game.

• Samuel Brady - Interested in bringing land reform to the Indian Territory to help the "Red Man" enter civilized society.
• Ignacio & Seamus - Founders of Twin Pines Fine Horse Mall!  It's sort of like the Ponderosa, but in the Twilight Zone.
• Juan Ortega - The Goat Herd of Juan has many strange properties...
• Doc & Injun Hoy - Following ancient Indian rites, these two mystics are about to cross the line between normal and paranormal.
• Caleb Tinker - The best gunsmith in town will invariably be placed for unique intrigues, especially as the town grows.
• John Skinner - A large number of tales involving this enigmatic and seldom seen mountain man have begun to surface.  There's no telling how many are true, or how many folk believe them...

These are all Plot Threads the players have given me.  Not like, filled out on a paper - but by designing their characters and playing in the first few sandbox sessions.  I can see where they want to go, and can imagine the path.  Keeping track of them this way helps when writing the night's adventure, as I can weave them into the games throughout the course of the campaign.  In this way, you have to design your sandbox sort of ... lateral instead of linear.

Need a few more things to make a full circuit of 12-15 weeks, but these two short lists can be developed into at least 10 weeks of gaming scenarios.

Using Published Adventures
Published adventures are fun for a number of reasons.  For one thing it sort of both sets a standard and brings something new to the table almost every time.  If you're going to be using published adventures during your campaign there are a few things you should keep in mind.

Keep in mind, it's hard to judge how long published single adventures will last. A good rule of thumb is 2 full sessions.  Only very rarely will we be able to finish one in one night, but we might get close enough to finish too early in the next session.  That's why if you make your "game plan" and stick to it, you'll never be out of material!

Depending on the module, it will vary wildly how long it takes us to finish one of them.  The best thing to do then, is to be ready to run the whole adventure.  If we have to break too soon, be ready with a small side quest for the next session to pass the time if you aren't ready to start the next adventure in the middle of the session.

Make sure to reconcile the locales of all your published adventures, or be ready with the explanation of travel in the downtime.  That is, if you run your old school Greyhawk adventures, you should probably focus on one area of the Oerth at a time.  Continent hopping adventures are cool, but sometimes it's hard to suspend disbelief if your players are overly familiar with the map of the campaign setting and too much time and space have passed.  Another option is to alter the presentation of the locations in the adventure, which is another great idea.  When doing this, be very familiar with the material in the module - remember to change all relevant setting references during presentation.

Most importantly - research all the published material you want to use and make sure to present it in the correct order!  Most of the time this is self evident, but when you mix module lines it bears mentioning.  You might run two Wizards D&D adventures and one by Mongoose, so make sure that when you present them to your players is appropriate.  If the Mongoose adventure is L5, but so is one of the Wizards modules...some changes to the plan are in order.  Either find a different campaign for that module, or change the difficulty somehow to better match where your players are in the experience progression.


Closing A Campaign
Almost as important as running a campaign is closing it down.  When the campaign winds down, you'll want to have your main plotline for that campaign resolved.  That is, if the Hobgoblin King in your sandbox is the bitter enemy of the players and has been sending them stews of boiled cabbage, if you want this to be the focus of the campaign you should set events in motion to resolve the conflict.

Closing the campaign here at the Wargate doesn't necessarily represent retirement for the characters involved. Indeed the opposite - depending on how far you want your players to advance, you can vary the amount of experience gained per session (in the 15 or so weeks), or you can simply continue the PC's adventures when you reconvene your game.

For instance, in What Lies Below, Bignutt the DM brought our characters up to around level 3 or 4.  His last campaign ended earlier this year, but he's up for a new game as DM in a few months.  We'll be returning to our last characters, to continue with the adventure path and up the experience progression.  I can't say as to how high of a level he will eventually take us, but I'm pretty sure it will be at least L20.  And that's just the one set of adventures - we've already spoken of the Oriental Adventures and other setting details they'll be releasing for Golarion.

That said, you can also finish a campaign up for good.  Some World of Darkness games might be suited to one campaign, and some Call of Cthulhu scenarios pretty much make sure it will only be one campaign.  Decide how you want your campaign to wrap up, as we usually make some sort of deal about these things.  Consider contributing to the Wargate, as we like to post items from the DM before, during and after the campaign.

Well that's enough for now.  It's a bit long, I apologize if you read the whole thing.  Leave us a comment on your own methodologies for building campaigns below!