This post is “From the Vault” – a collection of old writings. Any images or videos are long gone, but the words remain! Enjoy this throwback!

I noticed that it’s been a whole year since I started my 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons campaign! Since this is my first time acting as a Dungeon Master, I thought I would lay out some of my experiences with world building and running a campaign (along with a few lessons I learned along the way).

I started out with something of a naive vision: I had some grand tale I had penned in my head, tales of daring-do and epic adventures. Lots of non-player character interactions, environmental challenges (surviving scorching deserts and the like), and most importantly a coherant plot that kept people coming back each week. However, as Robert Burns once wrote “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley.” I had made my first rookie mistake: I had attempted to craft a narrative where the players were puppets in an ‘on-rails’ tale, rather than allowing them to craft their own story. I quickly realized that if the mercenaries of the Death Llamas were going to stay interested, they needed to feel like they had control of the plot.

This is a lot more difficult to do than it sounds. Being able to improvise is a learned skill for most of us, improved with practice and hard work. I rapidly arrived at the conclusion that I was terrible at handling pivotal plot decisions on the fly, so I ended up compromising a bit. Rather than adhering to a rigid plot (no fun for the players because every event is a forgone conclusion) or giving my players complete narrative freedom (which requires lots of rapid improvisation from the DM and a 100% story-committed playerbase), I decided to take the middle ground. By preparing two or three ‘options’ at a given plot point in the narrative and some sketchy frameworks/ideas for the eventual impacts of those decisions, I found I could give my players choices without taking away the advantages of four hours of preparation each week.

While this might sound obvious, I found that it’s extremely important to take each of your players’ wants and needs in to account. Sending a combat-loving, ‘dungeon crawl’ type of party in to the duke’s annual Winter Ball is a recipie for disaster. Ask each player (preferably in private) what they want out of the game. As an example, my group leans heavily towards combat, broken up with the occasional skill challenge and NPC interaction. They rarely need an excuse to slay monsters (although they do appreciate some world building — more on that in a moment).

Even if your campaign is light on plot, you still need to make your player characters feel as though they are the focus of the tale. When the locals welcome them home with open arms or a visiting bard sings tales of their exploits, it makes everyone feel more attached to the world you have created. As an example, the Death Llamas were granted a guildhall early on in their adventuring careers by a local lord (who would eventually become their benefactor). Through the course of their adventures, they put their treasure and time in to transforming the hall in to a bustling tavern. When a beloved companion perished trying to save them from the martial arts of an evil monk, they renamed the tavern in his honor. Eventually, the tavern became their base of operations and a source of income. The running joke nowadays is that most adventures begin like this:

  1. The Llamas have recently returned from an adventure. Everyone is using the downtime for training, running the tavern, working for their affiliated factions, or just chatting with the locals.
  2. A haggard figure/panicked villager/old sage from 5 adventures ago bursts in to the tavern with some dire need or task that needs doing
  3. The price of doing said task is agreed upon
  4. The Llamas set out on their newest adventure

A few other tips I’ve picked up along the way:

  • Keep an adventure log. Not only will it help you remember what you did last week, your players will appreciate it as well!
  • Use a campaign management system (like Obsidian Portal). This lets you keep all of your party’s treasures, gold, maps, etc. in one place!
  • Encourage your players to add descriptions and depth to their characters.
  • Even if you use boxed adventures, take the time to tweak them for your players. I try to work in subplots for at least one player each adventure.
  • If things seem slow and/or boring, ask people what they think is wrong. (In my case, combat often reached a ‘forgone conclusion’ state where victory was assured, but it would take another 20 minutes to kill the monsters. Consider having the enemies surrender or offer to take away some health from the players to skip to the end of combat.)

It’s been an exciting year so far. Here’s to the next one!