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How do you design your campaigns?
Let me define a campaign as an episodic story with a clear hook, rising action (or actions), climax, and ending. It would ideally be a story that goes for multiple (at least 4 or 5) play sessions so as to distinguish it from a one shot.
How do you, as a DM, develop and run these?
Over the years in my group we've all taken turns running campaigns, one shots, sessions, etc and what's always fascinated me most is how everyone's planning style is so different. Some get into ridiculous detail, while others (guilty...) tend to improv.
As a forever DM/GM, I find I am most invested in my games with a lot of planning, most of it extraneous to the actual gameplay, where I build up the world and the characters involved. Without being excited about the various characters I'm going to be voicing, it's really hard for me to get motivated to run a game.
One particular thing I picked up in the last few years that's become essential is creating a custom campaign questionnaire for all players to answer as part of character creation. I've found that just providing a broad backstory and leaving it open ended for my players has led to really imbalanced engagement with the plot. By providing a set number of questions for them to all answer about how they got to the start of the adventure, it gives me a much more balanced set of plot hooks for everyone and gets all the players much more hyped about the story.
Would you be willing to share the questionnaire (or a generalized version if it's heavily customized to the campaign)? I do something similar but I'm curious what others do and if I can improve.
The last campaign I ran was for Legend of the 5 Rings 5th edition, which has its own 20 questions for the process of character creation. I added 2 more resulting in a lot more detail than most campaigns need, but here it is:
Part I: Core Identity
What Clan does your character belong to? (Core Book p. 41)
“Races” in this setting are split between Clan and Family. The Clan is your character’s overarching political affiliation and background.
What family does your character belong to? (Core Book p. 49)
“Races” in this setting are split between Clan and Family. The family is your character’s place within your Clan.
Part II: Role and School
What is your character’s school? What role does that school fit in? (Core Book p. 56)
Generally speaking, you must choose a school that belongs to your Clan. Speak to me (the GM) if you would like to use a different school - we can probably work out a narrative to make it work, particularly if the two Clans are allies. “Role” speaks to the general categorization of the school: Bushi, Shugenja, Courtier, Shinobi, Artisan, Monk or Sage.
How does your character stand out within their school? (Core Book p. 88)
Now we’re getting to the backstory/narrative flavour questions. Try and come up with a sentence or two describing what your character did.
Mechanically, you receive +1 to one Ring (Remember, max 3 in any one ring) of your choice:
Fire - creativity, passion, or drive; OR
Air - grace, eloquence, or empathy; OR
Water - adaptability, friendliness, or awareness; OR
Earth - thoroughness, patience, or calm; OR
Void: self-awareness, insight, or mysticism; OR
Part III: Honour and Glory
Who is your lord/lady and what is your character’s duty to them? (Core Book p. 88)
The Core Book provides good details, but the short of it is: you need to specify who directly you serve. Rokugan is a very feudal society, so it is unlikely (though not at all impossible) that your character directly serves the Daimyo of your family. The mechanical element of this question is to create your “giri” or sworn duty. Your giri should be an overarching task that your character must see through. This can change over time if you manage to complete it, or your lord/lady changes what is asked of you. In our campaign, it is fair game to ask the GM if an Emerald Magistrate goal should instead be your giri.
What does your character long for, and how might this impede their duty? (Core Book p. 90)
Again, see the Core Book for details, but this question chooses your “ninjo” or human feelings/deep personal desires. A core component of the L5R flavour is the tension between ninjo and giri, and how characters resolve that tension (or the outcomes of their failure). This question should be fairly broad, but can range from answers including: “finding and marrying my true love”,“killing the man who murdered my sensei”, “retaking Toshi Ranbo for the Lion” or “forging a magical ancestral blade for my family”.
What is your character’s relationship with their Clan? (Core Book p. 91)
It is not at all uncommon for characters not to fit in with the overarching worldview of their Clan. However, in a conformist society like Rokugan, this brings obvious drawbacks.
Mechanically, you get to choose one of the following:
+5 Glory if your character believes firmly in your Clan and its values; OR
1 rank in a skill which you have 0 ranks in a skill which represents a divergence from your Clan’s typical training or values.
The tenets of Bushido are discussed in greater length on page 301 of the Core Book. The 7 tenets are: Compassion (Jin), Courage (Yu), Courtesy (Rei), Duty and Loyalty (Chugi), Honour (Meiyo), Righteousness (Gi), and Sincerity (Makoto). Generally speaking, the Clans have the following views on the tenets of Bushido:
The Crab value Courage and dislike Courtesy’s restraints
The Crane value Courtesy and do not value the mistakes uncontrolled Courage can bring
The Dragon value Sincerity and question the dangers that unquestioned Loyalty can cause
The Lion value Honour and view Compassion as a source of weakness
The Phoenix value Righteousness and care little for Sincerity if it accompanies an evil act
The Scorpion place extreme value on Loyalty, and care not at all for Honour or Righteousness
The Unicorn value Compassion and do not respect Courtesy’s sneering disregard for customs outside of the “norm”
The Mantis value Courage and dislike the restraints of traditional Rokugani “Honour”
Mechanically, gain one of the following:
+10 Honour if your character believes strongly in the tenets of Bushido; OR
Gain 1 rank in one of the “low” or trade skills normally left to the peasants: Commerce, Labour, Seafaring, Skulduggery, or Survival (GM note - Medicine is included in this list but I don’t know why, lol. Medicine definitely isn’t a “low” skill. If you really want Medicine, lets talk).
Part IV: Strengths and Weaknesses.
Note: These questions give you your advantages and disadvantages. Advantages are split into Distinctions and Passions. Disadvantages are split into Adversities and Anxieties. A character may gain additional advantages and disadvantages through play: Distinctions (no cap), Passions (max 3), Adversities (no cap), Anxieties (max 3). Gaining these should always be significant narrative events and will be separate from normal ‘levelling up’. For more information on Advantages and Disadvantages, see the Core Book p. 99.
What is your character’s greatest accomplishment so far? (Core Book p. 92)
A fun backstory question. Mechanically, choose one Distinction Advantage that is related to this. Distinctions can be found in the following locations:
Core Book, page 100
Courts of Stone, page 99
Celestial Realms, page 89
Shadowlands, page 96
Emerald Empire, page 241
Path of the Waves, page 68
What holds your character back most in life? (Core Book p. 92)
This question gives you one Adversity Disadvantage. Very generally speaking, Adversities should be tied to something external, whether that be an enemy your character has made or a reaction people have to your character. Adversities can be found in the following locations:
Core Book, page 116
Courts of Stone, page 101
Celestial Realms, page 93
Shadowlands, page 97
Emerald Empire, page 245
Path of the Waves, page 71
What makes your character feel most at peace? (Core Book p. 92)
This question is more everyday than the ninjo/ deep personal feelings you decided upon in question 6. This question might generally be described as “what is your character’s favourite hobby?”
As part of this question, gain one Passion Advantage. Passions can be found in the following locations:
Core Book, page 111
Courts of Stone, page 100
Celestial Realms, page 90
Shadowlands, page 98
Emerald Empire, page 243
Path of the Waves, page 70
What concern, fear, or foible troubles your character the most? (Core Book p. 93)
This question gives you one Anxiety Disadvantage. Anxieties tend to be internal and mental. Anxieties can be found in the following locations:
Core Book, page 131
Courts of Stone, page 103
Celestial Realms, page 91
Shadowlands, page 97
Emerald Empire, page 246
Path of the Waves, page 73
Who has your character learned from most during their life? (Core Book p. 93)
This question gives your character a great teacher - a sensei, an informal mentor, a friend - or a painful learning experience.
Mechanically, choose one of the following:
One Advantage (Distinction or Passion) related to your character’s mentor and their relationship; OR
One Disadvantage (Adversity or Anxiety) related to your character’s mentor and their relationship plus 1 rank in a skill that your character developed as a result of your character’s closest confidante and their relationship.
Part V: Personality and Behaviour
What do people notice first upon encountering your character? (Core Book p. 93)
This question is purely flavour, but I think it’s great for the GM to add flavour to the game. It can be an item, a physical feature, or a habit.
How does your character react to stressful situations? (Core Book p. 94)
Another flavour question - this is meant to draw out what happens when you gain strife, and what happens when you ‘unmask’ to remove all your strife and no longer be compromised.
What are your character’s pre-existing relationships with other Clans, Families, Organizations, and Traditions? (Core Book p. 94)
Given the highly political nature of Rokugan, it’s important that we establish where your character fits into the world at least. It’s a large part of why I wrote this big guide. Choose at least two external groups that your character has some experience with to describe (this isn’t mentioned in the book, but I think 1 isn’t enough).
Mechanically, choose one item of rarity 7 or lower that your character received as a gift from one such group, took in battle fighting against them, or otherwise relates to or symbolizes your character’s past/relationship with them.
Part VI: Ancestry and Immediate Family
Like all East-Asian society, filial piety (devotion to one’s parents and ancestors) is an expected aspect of life.
Mechanically, gain one rank of one skill in which your character has 0 ranks. Decide whether your parents approve or disapprove of this extracurricular interest.
This question implies that your character must be named to honour someone in the past. While that’s certainly a very common outcome, I would say that it’s equally possible that your character was named or chose their ‘adult’ name at Gempukku (each clan varies on whether the child chooses their name or are granted one) to instead reflect a strength/concept or an aspirational goal. Feel free to go either route.
Mechanically, it asks you to roll a d10 twice for the Samurai Heritage Table, and pick one of your results as the ancestor/trait that relates to your character. You then may have to roll a d10 again to see what you get out of it. As a GM, I am not a fan of random rolls to determine your backstory in any way, so feel free to instead just pick one.
Samurai Heritage Tables can be found at:
Core Book, page 96
Courts of Stone, page 105
Celestial Realms, page 95
Shadowlands, page 101
What is your character’s personal/courtesy name? (Core Book p. 95)
Honestly, this is the only question I don’t like. Having a personal name/nickname is indeed a common East-Asian historic practice, but it’s also really confusing. Feel free to ignore this one or work with it as you please.
How should your character die? (Core Book p. 95)
I love this question. Purely flavour, but I think it’s a really interesting way to capture your character’s personality and/or your imagined ‘arc’ for that character. Keep in mind, this could speak to how you want your character to change over time - they might be a coward now, but you want them to die a hero’s death.
EXTRA CAMPAIGN SPECIFIC QUESTIONS:
Why did your character join the Emerald Magistrates?
Although the Leadership of Kakita Hojatsu has led to a remarkable rebound of the fortunes of the Emerald Magistrates in recent years, the Magistrates still have a mixed reputation at best, and many samurai continue to view them as annoying interlopers rather than authority figures. In particular, the Lion and especially the Crane have continued to ignore the Emerald Magistrates as best they can - the Lion remain incensed that Hojatsu halted their previous offensive against Toshi Ranbo, and the Crane continue to bear a grudge against the Kakita who forswore his duty to the Crane. The reasons your character joined may range from personal (maybe a desire to see justice restored in a chaotic Empire, with many suffering heimin?) to orders from above (perhaps your Daimyo wants to curry favour with the rising Emerald Champion).
How did your character pass the entry exam for the Emerald Magistrates?
In this campaign, all of the Party will start as new recruits to the Emerald Magistrates. To join the Emerald Magistrates, all applicants must pass an entry exam: martial, magical, or scholarly. I have intentionally left this open ended, but consider this an early narrative opportunity to describe how your character stood out. Each party member will be describing how they passed the exam to the group as the first “RP question” - the assumption being that everyone took the test at the same time and would have witnessed each other’s performances. The presumption is that you are all at the top of your class, but that’s easily modified.
I put in a fair amount of prep work, but the actual sessions are wholly improvised. The two feed into each other - a really common mistake is to prep what's going to happen, when it's much better to prep the stage.
I prep all the details of stuff that helps me improvise intelligently. If I know so-and-so NPC's motivations, I don't need to prep exactly what he's going to say - and I can easily flex based on what players do.
This doesn't take all that long. When you get a feel for what details you need to know in advance, it might be 3 sentences for even a quite important NPC.
It's typically the people who prep what's going to happen that drown in prep work, because they need to either script out everything (very bad) or have branching possibilities to allow for player choice (not as bad, but extremely difficult).
(Cf. Don't prep plots, prep situations)
I'm running a pre-written D&D module (Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk) as my first D&D game and the sad part is that most of what they provide you is telling you what's going to happen. (Justin Alexander had a particularly scathing review of it, in fact.)
We had our 42nd session on Sunday and I still have to wonder what it would be like to run a completely sandbox game. I overprep like crazy, and I'm not sure if it would be better or worse. I don't really love to improv anything but dialogue because I like to ground everything in the campaign in verisimilitude. I don't have enough of an intuitive feel for late 15th century Western Europe to come up with a lot of that off the top of my head. (And I tend to approach the Forgotten Realms in 1492 DR as Western Europe circa 1500 plus magic. Which I greatly prefer to what a lot of people tend to do with these settings as far as I can tell which is to treat them as rural America circa 1950 but with magic and no cars.)
I tried a completely sandbox game and my players hated it. Hated it. Being able to go anywhere and do anything really freaked them out, it turns out.
I hear you on versimilitude. I've found that versimilitude is more linked to internal consistency than to realism, though, meaning that even if I don't know what quite the right details are, I'll pick something that sounds good and then stick to it. I can always use magic to explain it later, if necessary.
I'll freely concede that that requires a fair bit of comfort with imagining stuff, though.
I put a truckstop/campground on the road between Neverwinter and Phandalin in one of my first sessions DMing. You know what actually would've existed between places of habitation in the pre-modern world? Roadside inns, particularly near clean water sources. And villages that grow up around them. That's great flavor. But, no, I put a truckstop instead. In retrospect, it was mortifying. WTF was I thinking?
That said, I doubt my players cared. My wife (who was our previous DM) said she, for one, didn't.
Coincidentally, I stopped writing fiction shortly after high school because my perfectionism kept getting in the way of my ability to actually write anything. If it was fantasy, I needed more historical knowledge before I could possibly write anything. If it was sci-fi, I needed to know more about science/technology. I may have a problem.
GMed for about 3 years and PC for about 2-3 years. I admire those who can plan and prep, but that wore me out. I improvise 95% of my sessions. I have more fun that way and my players are enjoying the sessions more. Having said that, I felt DnD was difficult to improvise. Playing Wildsea now and it lends itself to that style of GMing far more readily.
As someone who is only familiar with 5e D&D, what makes Wildsea better for going full improv? (I've never heard of Wildsea.)
I get a good sense of what the BBEG's plan is, why they want to do it, and what will happen if the party doesn't intervene. For context, my most recent campaign had ~600 words in my notes before I decided to start running it. I had expected the campaign to run 40-60 sessions and would have filled in more context as we got further along in the plot (we ended up shuffling DMs at about the 20 session mark because we had some major turnover in the group and it made more sense to shelve this game and start a new one).
For any given session, I try to have a combat prepped (whether or not we end up needing it) and a sense of what the players are likely to do. Ideally at the start of session N, I have enough prepped that I can run sessions N+1 and N+2 if I've misjudged where the game will lead. Realistically, I have an outline of what I expect session N to do and a vague sense for the rest.
Surprised to see no mention of the Session Zero method. That's where I get the players to do most of my planning for me. First step is talking to the players and finding out what kind of game they want to play. Are we doing an all rouges thieves guild run? Or is this an epic planar adventure? Is everyone from the same small town, or coming together for some major event that puts the players in competition? Perhaps everyone is on a prison galley or is the crew of a pirate ship, possibly even a spelljamming ship - I've got no real preferences. I usually leave it up to them.
Once that's out of the way we roll up the characters and I give them their homework assignment - a couple of pages (5ish) of character history. I'll break rules with impunity here and allow them just about anything they can reasonably justify with useful story bits in the character's history - you want a +3 flaming rapier? That'd better be welded into the story like Inigo Montoya and then I'm good with it. This gets them invested into the characters more and they'll always take the time because free loots - I find it the most devious and useful bribe a GM can make in any tabletop game.
They like it less around level twelve when some faction one of the characters mentioned in their history as part of a family blood feud shows up as one of the main villains. I'll take every single little detail of their histories and use all of that to do the world building. Once you've got that you'll know what kind of campaign to build around it. I rarely do any heavy planning unless I know I've got the characters on a railroad - such as a dungeon or fortress they have to visit. Then I'll get down to the maps and traps level.
Another handy tool is the lost art of the Hex Crawl. I'll do some of my world building this way and fill in only the hexes the players might reasonably end up visiting. It's fun because you don't have to do it all at once, you can build your world one hex at a time just ahead of the players themselves. There are even self-generating hexcrawl variants which auto-populate the content for you to riff on. This helps with both writer's block (let the players drive plot which drives discovery) and the world builder's disease (don't fill in more hexes than you need for the current session). There are plenty of free tools to make this easy.
Mostly I find I concentrate on location and factions. Weather, terrain, settlements, a handful of notable NPCs or Patrons perhaps... and then it's time to sketch out every group in the area that has 'power' and what their machinations are. Who are the lords, bandits, various clans or tribes, secret societies etc. I don't even need to know where they are yet, just which groups exist out there so I can pair them to plot hooks as they happen, and which ones to hook into the threads they gave me in their character histories.
This creates a kind of self-driving story web that farms the players for story generation. I am one spectacularly lazy GM so this works well for me. ;) I find it to be a better way to make sure all the work I'm doing is going to make it into the game rather than get lost at the bottom of a pile of notes.
I tend to aim for "one-shots" (they may still take multiple sessions, but not full-length campaigns). I don't like the idea of running pre-written "epic" campaigns because of how forced they always feel like whenever other GMs run them. As a GM, I prefer to not know the story ahead of time, I want to be just as surprised by the story as the other players. I plan my games around characters and I try to get a good enough feel for the characters that I know what their motivations are, what they want, and how they're likely to react to things. I plan for specific moments sometimes, but I don't know how those moments will happen, I like to let those moments just sort of spontaneously happen.
The most "epic" thing I'm doing now is Mutant Year Zero and running it as a sort of "hexcrawl"-ish campaign (on a square-grid). While I know some major story beats beforehand, I don't really know how the players will come into those moments or how they'll handle them. I've set the game to be more character-driven, like I'm more interested in how the characters react to each other than I am in how the background story elements play out.
I don't like to plan things out too far in advance, or assuming I know what direction the players will take the story. That always seems to set myself up for disappointment or just wasting time figuring stuff out that doesn't come to pass. Like you can spend all your time setting up a scenario based on a damsel in distress that the PCs will obviously agree to help out... and then they don't and you're like, "Well shit, now how do I get them to the dungeon?"
I’m currently running a game set in a capital city during a tournament called The Choosing. This is a week-long competition to decide on the next leader of the country. It’s a sort of playground sandbox affair with a bunch of NPCs plotting at their own things. The idea was to give my players enough hooks to choose their own adventure and to pick on the threads that are most meaningful. We’ve ended up with some really fantastic character moments, including my all time best moment as a GM; bypassing an entire boss fight with some absolutely excellent roleplay and emergent storytelling.
In terms of prep for this game, I loosely sketched out a setting and a world history (I even wrote a creation myth). Then I drew up a city map, and then came up with major 12 NPCs, 4 factions, and a handful of intrigues. I sketched out a vague “this is what happens if the players do nothing” schedule for each character and then just sort of pantsed the rest. It’s been really nice playing a sandbox where I’m guided by the players as to the session-to-session prep I need to do. Whole subplots have been ignored that I can save for another time.
The downsides are a rapidly waning sense of interest in the game. I think this is a combination of factors including the final boss of all TTRPGs, but also that I’ve had a new idea for a campaign that I want to explore. I’ll try a different approach for that, more along the lines of a hexcrawl.
My main struggle is knowing just how much to railroad. I don’t want to take up too much charge of the story’s direction, but equally if I know there events ahead that are important to the plot then I want to guide my players toward that.