I decided to run a game. It's been a week and I have nothing for my setting except for a few names. I only have the vaguest idea of a campaign that's just one sentence, not that it could be summed up in a sentence.
What do I do? It's like I have no imagination (anymore).
Jaxon Anderson
You're obviously not in the shape to write a campaign of your own right now, so how about you take a premade one instead.
Kevin Miller
Get the first session planned. Setting can fuck right off, as long as you can fill 3 hours with something vaguely entertaining the players won't give two shits about the fabled milkshake trees of a far-off land. THEN you can make the setting, expanding it as the players move to explore it, filling in details as the players draw near.
Henry Cook
you can't plan a session without a setting
Nicholas Walker
You can plan a session with the vaguest fucking idea though. "Mountain Village" great, that'll do. "Cyberpunk city district" is all you need for a session really
Joseph Ross
>Where the players start (usually the most mundane place in the setting) >Their first quest/task (usually something simple that takes up time) >Who they meet Whenever I DM without a good idea at the moment, I start with this, and then by the next session flesh it out.
Joseph Morgan
Step 1: Accept that no matter what plan you've got, your players will probably murder it right off the bat. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket, and don't put all of your plan on one path. Players can be jerks like that.
Step 2: Figure out why these characters even associate with eachother. What reason do they have for being around and trusting one another? Don't be afraid to tell them during character creation to ensure that "And you are here for reason X" is valid for their character - enforce it, and don't just leave it up to them to figure out.
Step 3: Once you know why they're together, decide why they're here. Doesn't have to be for the plot. Are they old friends having a reunion? Perhaps they're the miracle octuplets, and go everywhere together as a travelling circus act? Whatever it is, they need a reason to be here. Maybe it's just because everyone always goes to Ye Olde Taverne (it's fancy 'cos it's got extra 'e's) on Thursday nights for the porkchop special. Or perhaps they're all travelling between towns? (Ye Olde Taverne burnt down, now they need to find a new place that makes good porkchops.)
Step 4: Plot Hooks - think of some, and provide them to the party. Expect a few of them to be missed completely, with the PCs fixating themselves strongly upon some unrelated item ("No! Ignore that cryptic letter from your recently deceased estranged Uncle Abernathy, We must find the One True Porkchop recipe!")
Step 5: Once they've well and truely wandered off the rails of your plot idea, taken a taxi away from the train yard, chartered a yacht out into open water, and then jumped ship onto a deserted island of "WTF are you even doing here?", make stuff up from there that sounds likely as a result of their actions.
Isaac Gomez
(continued) Step 6: Keep doing that for 4 years, and hope none of them realise all of your game notes are just random generated NPCs in case you need them, and details of stuff you remember them doing so it can come back to haunt them later.
Step 7: Collect congradulations on such a well plotted and detailed campaign.
(This is from experience. Including the porkchops thing.)