DMing styles

How do you build a campaign? I mean, games may be ran on different kinds of rails.

I'm pretty experienced DM, who hit a "block" earlier this year. I took my time analyzing my previous games, and realized it was always the same pattern, similar to Bioware games or Star Trek:
1) 3-4 locations to choose from;
2) local story arc in each;
3) some profit in the end;
4) goto 1

I think that's because my first successful game was Rogue Trader. From this time, it's always goddamn Rogue Trader with a leader in party and his henchmen, who are trying to build some collective profit or profitable endeavor.
First it was OK for me and my players, but now it feels dull. I'm feeling like I'm not getting better as a DM, and players are definitely bored despite saying it's still OK.

So, what are the different game styles to employ? "Action movie" with no time to breathe, just shoot and punch? Sandbox? Anything else? Also, have you ran a party without a leader figure? Seems to me, players just follow their boss and don't want to think of their own goals and ambition.

Pretty much the same way.
>players enter location
>intro to problem(s) in area and notable NPCs that all usually tie into each other
>end reward
>players go towards new location
>rinse, wash, repeat

I've never had a party with a leader figure. Sure there's sometimes players that like to sit in the background until its their turn to roll the dice or an angry npc is yelling at them, but one person calling the shots seems strange.

I generally give them an illusion of choice but always railroad them.
>would you like to go to x, y, or z?
>hmmmm, lets go somewhere you didnt mention!
>fine by me, you see before you "exactly what x, y, and z would have been"

I give them role playing and hack and slash fun time at about a 2-1 ratio unless the entire session takes place in a dungeon then its more like 1-1.

>I generally give them an illusion of choice but always railroad them.

Good job. I do that as well.
>Plan a kobold ambush
>Tell players the path splits, north or east ( either will lead to a kobold ambush)
> " Lol, fuck the DM, we cross between the paths"
> Get ambushed by kobolds anyway

Illusion of choice.

Depends on system

>I generally give them an illusion of choice but always railroad them.
>I do that as well.

And here I thought I was always being a selfish asshole for doing this.

I've done it this way my entire time as well, but my new session im trying something different. Im going to give them the entire world map and a ship. planning A story adventures in certain notable towns and B story baddie of the week ones in the other notable areas. took a lot of planing but im only 2 games in

I think, like you, my method of GMing has also basically been set by my first successful campaign. In my case it was MonsterHearts, so I follow it's method of running sessions
>open the session with a mystery, fight, or announcing a social event
>after that do whatever needs to be done to keep the conflicts going until the end of the session
>reincorporate any unresolved threads into the opening of next week's session

I always require my players have a personal goal that their characters will pursue if there aren't more pressing concerns. You could be the best DM in the world and it won't matter if the main characters of your story aren't self-motivating. Having a leader character is fine if the players are loyal to that leader because it helps them get closer to accomplishing some personal goal. Not having a leader is fine, but again, requires the characters will actively seek out their goal. You want the characters to be ACTING, not REACTING. (This is why "you all start in a tavern" or "you're all running from a thin" intro's are utter shit, because once the immediate danger has passed the player characters have no reason to pursue anything other than because they're "supposed to".)

thats a really great, simple idea and im sort of mad i havent thought of it

>This.

Give your players a "premise" for the RP, like "you're all members of a bounty hunter group" or "you're all members of a guild", or "you're all in service to this noble" and then tell your players to make characters who have motivations and reasons to be part of that organization. Yes, obstensively they're following the goals of the organization as a whole, but they're got a good reason to be doing so on a personal level.

If the player is unwilling to do so, then they can fuck right off. Good storytelling requires effort from both player and DM. A good story needs good characters. Good characters are as much the responsibility of the DM as the player.

Pic-related isn't mine, but I think it's a good example of how to do it almost perfectly, at least as far as the final bit goes.

>If the player is unwilling to do so, then they can fuck right off
This is the impasse I'm at. I've been doing some pretty minor campaigns and some silly one offs with my current group for about a month now and the whole time I've been working on a pretty long 1-15 level campaign that will take them all over the world. What I've been noticing over our sessions is that like half of the players are kind of passive and not all in. One of our players will actually text during combat when it's not his turn, like he's not even interested in being there. I've been working hard on this campaign on making it interesting and open ended so the players don't feel like they have to do the thing I want them to do. I want them to feel some sort of connection so that instead of me saying, "You have to do this, I wrote it." they'll say, "I want to do this because I'm invested in this campaign and I feel like I'm helping shape the ending."

I feel like with the current group I have, they just aren't interested in making multi layered characters with realistic backstories and realistic goals. I feel like half of my team just wants to play pretend combat while they slaughter through the countryside. They aren't interested in stories or creating a world alongside me, they just want to text and roll dice. One of my players is especially bad because he will literally just sit there and doodle on a scratch pad until we get into a fight. He has no interest in the current game our DM is doing even though he's giving all of us room to improv and change the flow of the story. How do these people even get into a hobby like this? Isn't the fun of D&D hanging out with your buddies and having make believe adventures in a world completely unlike our own? Why reduce it down to autism dice combat when there's so much more to it?

I can't give a good answer to everything except "find a better group", but I'll at least adress a small part of this.

>the whole time I've been working on a pretty long 1-15 level campaign that will take them all over the world.

This is something of a trap in my opinion. Sometimes BIGGER AND MORE EPIC actually has a negative effect on player investment. The BIGGER AND MORE EPIC you make a thing, the less relateable it actually becomes. Like, if you play a small self-contained story limited to one province or region or even as small scale as a city, the limited scope means you can introduce NPCs and locations the players become familiar with over time. They're not constantly being shuttled to the next huge attraction. Have you ever played a huge expansive RPG like Skyrim and thought "Wow, this would almost be more fun if there WASN'T there some big world-ending threat hanging over my head the whole time"? Yeah. That.
Believe me, if you stick players in one location and they come to like an NPC, say the magic shop girl who gives them potions at a discount and picked up a little bit of magic-item crafting from her sorceress grandmother... yeah, bandits ransacking her shop or kidnapping her for ransom is suddenly going to mean to the players than generic demon lord #12 threatening to break it's generic dimensional prison and threaten the world again. I mean, the world is cool and everything and we keep our stuff there, but man, fuck those bandits who kidnapped Noelie! She didn't do anything to deserve that! Aint nobody giving us shit for saving the world, but Noelie gave us potions just because she liked hearing our adventure stories. Fuck those bandits.
(And then when they go and kick in the Bandit's faces in, you as DM drop some little hint that were hired to do it by the Monk's rival, the one that killed their master so that he alone could be the master of that style of fighting... or whatever other easy player-backstory thing feels easy to drop in.)

I like to think of a general theme for my campaign first. Last one was beeing a refugee in a medival fantasy world (DnD Rules). I was interested, how my players would act in a situation I only see from the other side (I'm from germany and we had a lot of refugees, when I started the campaign - actually there are still a lot of them.)

Than, I build a map. I thought about, where would be tectonic plates, what kind of mountains would develop and what would be the climate in the zones.

While I was building the map, I thougth what race would ffel most at home in which region. I put them there.

Than I added wars, politics and conflicts (mostly in my head) of the last 100 years - and there I had a few newly developed boarders, cities and potential for new conflicts when the players arrived.

Than I fleshed out the races a little more (culture, technology, looks) and gave every region at least one importent decision maker.

That's where I started the campaign. I add to the ma whereevr my payers go (the islands in the south where design this way) and let the world interact with them. But there is a lot happening around the players, which they seem to like. When they come back to a place after a month or two there could be much change.

For example they retourned to the coast after 6 weeks on a slaveship and a city of the steampunk hobgoblins was grinded to dust in the war between lizardman an kua-toa.

I should really spellcheck my posts. Sorry for that.

This is good. The world means nothing if the players aren't invested in the characters who are part of it. If you let the players become unstoppable world-saving demi-gods, it sorta becomes harder to care. The world just becomes a big videogame full of enemies to kill for loot and EXP. That's not to say every NPC needs to have a huge long multi-page backstory, but keep some quirks or backstory elements in your head to implement if the players take interest in a particular NPC or interact with them alot. Usually when starting a new campaign, I'll actually prepare a short little list of the noteable members of the community or characters the players would know, with a short few lines about them. Encourage the players, be like "All of you have at least one friend from the people on this list."

Kind of a DM cheat here, but I found a really good way to get players invested in an NPC, and fellate their egos at the same time, is if they have a non-combat skill, have an NPC notice and ask for tips or lessons. One of the best games I ever had involved a Paladin character teaching a poor street urchin boy the art of smithing in between missions for his guild, and said urchin eventually getting good enough to get an apprenticeship and make a life for himself. If that's too overt of a pity play though, it can be anything from a tavern maid who dabbles in alchemy to a stablehand who has a passion for classic bardic tales.

My games tend to be more focused on the overall "main quest" which the PCs tend to pick up after a few sessions. The PCs can pick which leads they pursue and there's the occasional sidequest available, but overall most of their time is spent on something that's at least tangentially related to the main quest.

>ACTING, not REACTING
I thought about it before. Maybe it would be better for me to take on more passive approach? Like reacting on players' action instead of shoving opportunities right into their faces. For example, "You wake up in the morning and look into window. It's raining. What do?" instead of "Today there are three bounties posted near the tavern. [Contact town guard captain for details on each]". I somehow afraid that players will describe their wake-up routines, shopping, etc. instead of some proactive efforts, though.

Goddamn, so true. It's really frustrating, but I think I don't have any other players, and I don't know where to get them. Partially that's why I haven't put much effort in my latest game. However I feel really bad about it now.

That's cute. I never actually thought of this. Thanks!

Whoa! That's also nice. Thank you too!

Their wake up routines might not necessarily be a bad thing. Sometimes the most mundane things are actually the best for getting into character and making the characters feel like real people.

But yeah, at least make them ask where the bounty board is, or go see the guildmaster, or whatever the impetus for the RP may be. A simple task like accessing publicly-available information shouldn't be too hard for them, and the very act of it on their own will make them feel like they're responsible for the course of the story even if it was all already kinda pre-planned.

>I'm somehow afraid that players will describe their wake-up routines, shopping, etc. instead of some proactive efforts, though.

I'd say to let them do this, for awhile anyway. Any time the players are doing something besides Combat is a good thing, in my opinion. Combat has it's place, of course, but combat is better for showing off what a character can DO, not so much who they ARE.

If the players take too long though, it's fine to give them a little nudge.

>"The Guild isn't paying you guys to loaf around all morning, you're never gonna climb the ranks at this rate." - a group of rival adventurers teases as they head out the door, clearly packed up for an expedition of their own today.

or

"You notice a city this big moves at a pretty quick pace. You've only gone a few days without picking up a bounty, and already people are starting to forget your group exists. Here your fortune and resources depend on your reputation, and that reputation needs constant upkeep."

Something like that.

If you like these people, it's time to introduce them to board game night.
If you like yourself, additionally, it's time to find a new group.

My general GMing style is very player focused. I'll have a vague idea for the setting, the themes, tone and a primary plot arc that will be occurring throughout, but then I let my players make PCs.

Their choices, the characters they make and the aspects of the game they attach themselves to, guide my planning, shaping the world around the PC's, linking their personal stories, goals and connections into the overall plot.

When the game starts, events might occur every now and then based on the main plot, but the primary motivator for action is the PC's, as the actions they take will tug on the plot threads from their backstories I've woven into the setting, resulting in events naturally leading on from their actions. They're still linked in to the main plot, and will maintain connected with it throughout, but from that tether they're free to explore the setting as they wish, with the guarantee of interesting events no matter what aspect they explore.

And to think my players threw a bitch fit at me when I tried to explain and enforce this to them, to the point when I was considering whether it's something wrong with me.

I make write up characters/places and their motivations whenever they come to me and just implement them into the game when I see it is appropriate. Then when the players do something i think about how the characters would react and make them do so. I make up pretty much everything on the spot pretty much and after doing it for so long I have gotten pretty good at it.

>How do you build a campaign?
I build a lattice of a precarious balance of power between a dozen or so potential BBEG factions.
Then each action the PCs take unbalances things, weakens some, and strengthens others.
Each Boss they take out eliminates competition.
Slowly, one power player remains, having grown in power exponentially as the PCs grew linearly.