New GM planning

>Plot motivation
Most likely the macguffin at the top will be wishes, and I plan on telling each of the players to think of a reason for climbing the tower to get that wish. What's actually up there? Who knows ;)

I plan on the game being more adventure based than combat based. I love developing weird and awesome set pieces, I plan on having them travel to many different planes and dimensions to explore, each with a certain goal to complete in order to get the next portal key. Things like a waterworld-esque flooded planet with pirate overtones, A dark sun / mad max like desert planet with crazed kings, or a long-dead planet with lost civilizations. Yes, maybe one of the worlds will have the goal of "Slay the big bad", but it will be more varied than that.

Sounds neat, gives you lots of flexibility. Might be a lot of legwork to build so many standalone little worlds

Yeah, it'll be a lot making so many seperate worlds, but they're not going to be too complicated. At most there'll probably be 4 planes to visit before they get to the top, and each of these places won't be too ridiculously big, maybe 4 major locations and some little encounters here and there.

I was also thinking: How would they discover where the spell key in each world is? Knowledge of portals is really esoteric knowledge, so it's not they can just go up and ask some random townfolk.

I was thinking, maybe that first session the monster they find in the ruins is some sort of automaton from near the top of the tower (I guess kind of similar to dabus), which has malfunctioned, descended the tower, and started "repairing" living creatures. After the heroes destroy it, maybe they can find a device that helps them detect portals / spell keys. Is that a decent idea?

Yeah that's a pretty good idea, people always hang on to odd loot so you can take your time revealing what it actually does.

So they need to spell key to go up to the next level of the tower, basically? You could always obscure it a bit, meaning not a physical key but just some goal within each portal that they have to figure out 'unlocks' the next one

Maybe you could try old School play. Stop narrating out a story path and start procedurally generating story elements to create an emergent story. In short take all the elements of a story; characters, monsters, locale, treasures put them in a blender and see what kind of story you will tell.

Read these two

But remember that the PCs are likely to do things you didn't plan on and have a backup plan

OR

if you are quick on your feet, you imagine everything that is happening outside of said adventure, the political climates, economics, other threats aside from the ones the PCs are dealing with, and you improvise when they jump off the rails.

Don't have a "story line" have a "story web" so that if they jump off one thread they can very easily land on another

Also welcome to the club you sad miserable bastard

That's fair, if we're going by the planescape definition of a portal key, it could be anything from a piece of scrap metal, to a certain emotion, a tune you have to whistle or a specific dance

Yeah, I've had my fair share of PC's doing unexpected stuff even with the modules, so I'm expecting it, which is why I'm giving them sort of playgrounds to achieve objectives how they want.

For example, let's go back to that waterworld example. Let's say the specific portal key is a skull of the old king Ferdinand, which is currently being held in dread pirate Duke Nukem's stash. There'll be no definite path to getting there, all I will have written down is

- The personality of major NPC's.
- Major details of locations
- Possible routes the PC's could take

For example, the PC's could try and strike a deal with Duke to take down his long time enemy Roberts in exchange for the key. Or perhaps they can go undercover as his crew and attempt to steal it from under his nose. They could join forces with the local navy to take down Duke and raid his island, or discover the location after saving mermaids from slavery, and sneak into his isle of dread. Of course, if the PC's decide to say "Fuck all of that", build a giant catapult to destroy Duke's ship and explode the island, I'm 200% for it.

Point is, so far I'm making general notes for each area / NPC / places the story can go without naming specifics. Is this a good way of doing things?

I respect that style of play, but I think that style of play just isn't for our group. We like exploring exotic places and finding miraculous sites, something a random generator or generic story can't make.

Then again, I guess don't knock it till you try it

??

just give up
the moment u plan anything
the moment i go out of my way to derail it
fuck you op go write a book

If they don't want to play in that setting, we'll do something else. If they decide "Fuck this gay ass tower shit, I wanna open a bakery", then we'll do that. I just wanna have fun

what if I just want to kill all the npcs in your towns?

I'll second what this guy says. Players are a strange breed, and when you think they'll follow the most logical path, they end up challenging the mayor of a town to a duel and shitting all over your plans. However, you've got to improvise and adapt from there, placing set-pieces and major beats in different spots as they deviate away from the beaten path.

Move a dungeon or encounter, alter it a little, and they'll never know they missed it the first time around.

*teleports behind the DM*
heh

What are you confused about?

Then they kill you, or you kill them. What's the next step of your master plan?

What do you mean by mitebuseful?

Mitebuseful = mite- (might) b- (be) useful (useful)
Also, I'm not . Just so you know.

>Point is, so far I'm making general notes for each area / NPC / places the story can go without naming specifics. Is this a good way of doing things?
yes

Dont make a story and expect them to follow. Some of my finest and most fun sessions came from my players completely walking off in the opposite direction.

After session ask them where they think they heading/doing next so you can maybe stew on it.

I'm not OP, but anyway, in that situation do you still have the same final goal or do you totally change the story?

You can still have exotic places but the content, monsters and loot is randomized. You can even have adventures it’s just multiple elements are randomized. An adventure is more thematic then a linear story path.

If i make a campaign i do it inbroad strokes. So example of one.
>dnd 5e
>heavily Norse themed
>norse gods, forests everywhere, the elf and dwarf races lore are rooted in norse myth versions ect.

Instead of planing every session months in advance and mapping dungeons. First session i gave them a very distant goal and told em to go for it.
Session 1
>opening speech about the world
>brief discription of the town and inn they start in.
>roleplay them drinking in bar let them get into character explain back stories ect
>say theres a ruckus outside
>everyone goes out into the cold night
>Everyone sees a huge meteor shoot across the sky. And crash to earth beyond the horizon
> a Rat Race style gotta get there first adventure starts.
>the party is racing against other adventures, orc tribes, dragons and kings to be the first to find the shooting stars landing place to claim its spoils (its core being made ofprecious metal and gems, and ore that is extremely rare and great for making magical weapons)

What happens every adventure i dont have planned. What i do have planned is a bunch of things that could happen. Party gets abushed by orcs one day. The other they come across the camp of a minor lord and hes men sent toretrieve the star first ect.

And if the party doesnt care about the star and wants to fuck off to a town and start a whore house that growns into an organized crime syndicated then fine. (Thats what actually happend)

Tld;r Dont make a campaign with what WILL happen is THIS order. Make a campaign of what COULD happen is almost ANY order. A great DM can make any premise good. The most fun I've ever had playing dnd was a 6 month long campaign where we fought 3 fights and the rest was a Microsoft exel spread sheet of all of my characters financial holdings

(Sorry for the ramble im waiting for my car to be fixed at my dealer ship)

So, if I’m understanding, you lay out a world map of whatever size you deem reasonable and then fill it with different scenarios and events. And you drop the players in the middle and see what happens?

Not him but that’s essentially the essence of DMing a game. You shouldn’t write a story and expect your party to play it out. You should make a small part of world, drop them in and see what they do. They tend to help you make a story dynamically.

So would OP's example be alright? The setting of the tower is there, while there is impetus there's nothing stopping them from taking over the local town and turning it into a slave dictatorship

In fact, by that logic as long as you don't start en media res, you're fine, as long as they're not in the middle of something they can go fuck off and do what they want

Oh, in that case that's basically what I'm having. The cool ass places are there if the PC's want to go there, but they can A: ignore it and go jack of on inn wenchrs or B: exploit that location to their hearts content.

Going back to that earlier water world example, if they DO decide to climb the tower, once they enter that plane they can do whatever the fuck they want, I'm not going to have a scripted sequence where the mayor rushes to them and begs them to save the town, they can go start their own pirate gang if they truly desire that

I don't think it's always fun though

We had a campaign where we just decided to open up a bar instead of adventure. Yeah, it was fun for a session or two, but eventually it started getting boring. We even went into global cooking competitions, had to cook for an entire army in a upcoming war, started a bar in sigil, but in the end we just had a lot more fun when we went adventuring for ingredients, to the point where we basically sold off the chain and went back to the main story

Yeah it's a fun story and all, but there's nothing wrong with making a grand story with your GM without massively ruining their plans

I'm having some trouble interpreting this, someone explain it as if you would to a retard.

Along the lines of this, has anyone got any experience with, in larger settings, just outright asking players at the end of a session what their next step will be (in order to have some idea of what to plan for for the next one)? I'm all for player freedom, but when you've got multiple planes/planets with multiple plots and intrigues they might run at I don't see how it's possible to prepare for everything they might want to do.

Linking to another thread, what do you think of something like ?

Well that’s a campaign plot. The players will like it or they won’t. In session 0 describe your campaign plot and see what they think. If they’d all prefer something less grim or whatever then you can figure something else out. That way you dodge trying to run a game for people that don’t want to play it.

So why is it any different for any other game? Going back to my tower game, what if I explained it to my players beforehand and we all agreed to it? Would it still be railroady or bad?

> → #
Id play it. I've always toyed with the idea of ruining a zombie day of the dead style campaign set in a single location.

>So why is it any different for any other game?
It’s different because the players have a plat barrier confining them to a limited space.
>Going back to my tower game, what if I explained it to my players beforehand and we all agreed to it?
Great.
>Would it still be railroady or bad?
No.

People lie about what they want sometimes though and usually for really silly reasons. Make sure that they aren’t worried about hurting your feelings or something else inane.

It seems like a lot of extra work writing side quests and filler when you have one main interesting story with a specific goal

Alright, thanks
Sorry if I sounded accusatory, I just was trying to suss out what you were trying to say

So lets see if I got it right:
Unless you and your players have agreed otherwise, you generally should only have some setting information, a general goal and some locations to visit, then let your players explore and destroy to their hearts content

It’s less work. You leave gaps in your prep on purpose for your players to fill in. It makes you job easier.

Well everything except that last part. You can let them plunder and destroy sure but there should be consequences for there actions. If guards come along and kill them then that’s on them.

This is terrible advice.
A roleplaying game is not a novel. It's not a movie. It's not a story being told around the campfire.

Those stories are FIXED. The creator has complete control over them and can force them to fit the Hero's Journey plot structure easily.

As a DM, you have not perfect control over them. Not unless you want to railroad your players. And you don't want to.

Don't get hung up on the Hero's Journey or any carefully laid-out diagram of plot structure.

Other newbie gm here, figured I might as well post here.

I'm trying to figure out a nice setting and campaign. I've noticed that I tend to get into trouble trying to make campaigns that are much too large scale and epic proportions.

For this campaign, I was thinking of placing them in a sort of Wizard College. The premise would be that the players get into wizard college, but arrive too late to join any of the established houses. This is bad, because only students of the top X amount of houses get to actually take home that sweet wizard college diploma and ride the gravy train that comes with it. The campaign would consist of forming their own house, finding NPC's to populate said house and going on extracurricular activities to earn extra points so they can beat the established houses to the top.

Somewhat light hearted. What do you guys think, could it work?

3 things. Do your players want to play that? Is this wizards only and are your players cool with that? Is this Hogwarts?

We've been going back and forth on what to play for a few days now. So far they seem to like the idea, but nothing has been decided yet. The responses to this pitch have been generally positive though, especially since it leaves a lot of room for different kinds of adventures.

It can be, but not necessarely. I know for sure one player will be playing a wizard. But if others want to play a non-magic using class I could probably easily turn the entire thing into adventurer college instead. Different departments and all that.

No. True, the houses thing and the points is ripped directly from Howarts, but I specifically did not want to do Hogwarts. Wizard College will be decidedly less OSHA compliant. The teaching will also be more laissez-faire. A bit like the Unseen University from discworld, where the teachers avoid actually giving classes as much as they can.

>It’s less work. You leave gaps in your prep on purpose for your players to fill in. It makes you job easier.
Meaning like, there is an abandoned mine near the town that is rumored to be haunted (it is) and some of the local pub-goers used to work there.

Do you flesh out NPCs and encounters on the fly after that? Can you explain what exactly a player would fill in?

Based on what you've posted, this tower seems to be simply a place for all these portals to exist, yet is at the center of this all. Make sure you flesh out this tower as well. Who built it, why, why is the Macguffin at the top, why are all these portals in there? Right now it's a good setup for adventure after adventure, but beyond "what's in the next portal?" there's no strong reason for players to investigate it.

Also, I think you can do better than a wish at the top. A specific artifact the PCs might want to destroy/use (depending on the individual), a wise sage with the answer to something ailing the land, a part of a ritual that keeps the tarrasque asleep, the stolen child of a god...bonus points if there's a time crunch (recover the artifact before the tarrasque awakens!). It raises the stakes, which is important. What happens if the PCs fail? And just as important, why are the PCs the heroes? Are they they only ones who know about/believe what's happening? Are they the only people with hero class levels in the world? Is it a secret mission?

Drawing from Planescape, the City of Sigil has a lot of personality, a billion portals to other dimensions, history, and most importantly, recurring NPCs. Read some stuff about it, and steal what works for you, and discard the rest.

NPCs are what your players are going to attach themselves to, so make sure you have a few wandering the tower, be that a goblin custodian or wizard apprentice maintaining the portals and way in over his head. That lets the tower become a "home base", and if something happens to Tee-mil the goblin, you bet your ass the players will stop at nothing to save him.

Now that I think about it, perhaps instead of asking each of the players of a wish they want, I should ask what they heard was up there that they want, and then develop the answer from there. As for the tower itself, you're right it needs more character.

For one thing, I think that portal guide I was talking about earlier should be a mimir, similar to the one from the outlands guide box. Who made this mimir? Why can it detect portal keys for the tower? The tower will be filled with automatons constantly repairing the tower as well as escaped elementals. They will probably run across the occasional creature or adventurers that found their way from their plane to the mysterious tower.

I like the idea of some wizard caretaker who looks after the automatons, he has no idea who his employer is or why he's doing what he's doing, but the pay is good and he gets access to all of these portals. Why can't the party just ask the wizard for a lift to the top? Sorry, company rules.

Why are the characters the ones who are making it up so high in the tower? That's honestly something I'd like to develop as we play, and see where the story takes us. For now, I'm saying that there was a recent outbreak from the higher parts of the tower, and most adventuring parties scouting the tower died defending the world from its monstrosities, which is also why the local lord has the tower blocked off for now.

What's actually at the top of the tower? Who made it and why? I'd like to wait to see how the characters develop before answering that, I certainly don't want a ass pull, saying "lol its god and he's evil and wants to kill u' or 'oh no it was actually sealing off an ancient evil.and you just unleashed it now u have to kill it"

Thanks for all the tips so far!

>company rules
That's gonna fall apart as soon as they get Charm or Dominate or Detect Thoughts. Maybe he only started a week ago after someone noticed the last guy died, and he really has no idea how the whole tower works. Just got a raven from his old teacher at Wizard School, telling him it's his duty as the best Conjurer of the most recent class to take care of the tower, with no other instructions. Hell, he had to figure out where the bloody tower is to begin with!

The automatons can get some personality when the party disappears into a portal for a month and come back to find the wizard's named and put faces on all of them. It gets lonely sometimes in that tower, you know? Hell, maybe there's some clues left behind by the last wizard caretaker. Some of it looks like he went mad, but there might be a clue as to the purpose, or how to get to the top.

You could also make the tower just weird as fuck, given the concentration of magic. I'm personally a big fan of the endless staircase, or changing gravity depending on which door you use to enter a room.

What if at the top of the tower they find... themselves

What if the true prize was friendship?

Yeah I’d make at least one npc but probably two. I’d map out the mine if I have strong suspicion that they’ll be going there. But the thing is I wouldn’t only have the players hear one rumour. Come up with at least two (whether on a bounty board or from word of mouth). That way players have multiple choices. However alway be open to them doing something else. You never know if a player will come up with something great. Players fill in gaps in the sense that they figure out where they’re going and what they’re doing. Never make solutions to problems that aren’t distinctly puzzles. Make a problem and see how they try to solve it. If there solution makes sense then it works. Also be open to puzzle solutions that make sense that you didn’t consider. It’s annoying when your solution isn’t accepted just because it’s ‘not the right correct one.’ They also figure out where the story is going and what it’s really about. Its like you’re a director and they are your actors but they’re also the writers.

Wing it. There's 2 ways to make an adventure.
1) Prep work, followed by plot hooks baiting the players to go to certain locations or act certain ways. The need for hooks is inversely proportional to the amount and breadth of prep work.
2) Build the road as the players walk it. It can be tricky, but it saves a lot of time if you can master it.

Tips: Ask players where they want to go next at the end of each session & prepare that area. Nice players won't change their minds between sessions.
Use quantum ogres. As long as the creatures fit & the players didn't know where they should be, you can make one encounter that works for most any choice.

>Quantum Ogres
Are those related to Tachyon Trolls?

Spoiler alert my fledgling friend:

The random X generators that exist out there? They're not for players. They're for you. Read them, roll them. They are not law. If you don't like something don't do it; but many of these generators are valuable and if nothing else fun to read and parse for usable ideas. The players don't know if you use a random generator or not, and it can be fun to generate just a bunch of nonsense then find a way to convincingly string it together into a satisfying whole.

Basically don't knock it til you try it, and roll the generators AWAY from the table, not in the midst of play, at least until you got a strong improv game.

Once you have strong improv skills you'll be unstoppable.

Practice voices in the car.

I'm not so transparent about it but I try to ALWAYS end on a cliffhanger where everyone knows what's about to happen. Like right before a battle or big event, but a moment after it's initiated so they can't back out effectively.

Basically I'll plan the first ten minutes of the session so we have a strong start, but from there it's out of my hands. All I can suggest is having a strong understanding of your world and a stronger ability to bullshit constantly.

And then, most importantly, remember or chronicle your bullshitting so you expand your repository of lore to draw on and maintain consistency. I tread basically everything the party has not directly seen firsthand as schroedingers box. The only way to know if a certain potential plot hook exists depends on whether or not it's capitalized on; or not capitalized on.

Everything is liquid until contact with the players, and even then, only what they know for sure they know for sure. I'm having a hard time explaining it. It's like the opposite of quantum ogres. Instead of (or rather, in addition to) the concept that regardless of whether a party goes left or right they encounter ogres, entertain the idea that event X might be caused by plots 1, 2 or 3. Players won't know until you let them, at which point you somewhat solidify your setting a bit more. Leave blank spaces on your map. Keep things hypothetical in your own mind in terms of worldbuilding up until the exact moment they are not.

I'm not sure if this makes any sense at all, but I'm finding it hard to articulate. Just keep your options open I guess is what I'm saying. The difference between a red herring and a true conspiracy is your approval, and do with that what you will.

Hey, I didn't name them. Though I suppose I should explain the term:

Let's say the DM plans an ogre encounter for the players. In the DM's setting, the ogres live in the mountains. But the players don't know this. They don't know anything about the mountains. At the last minute, the players change their mind and go to the swamp instead of the mountains. Well, the players didn't know anything about the swamp either, until they arrived. So what is the DM to do? He makes an on-the-spot decision to make ogres live in the swamp instead. As long as players don't know where the ogres exist, they, like quantum particles, exist in both locations (like that guy that poisoned cats) until observed.

Beware of fatigue.

Plans are useless but planning is indispensable.

Don't write plots, scripts, or arcs... instead write story-webs/story trees. Players will always take an unexpected path. Use that to your advantage by moving crucial plot points up and trivial ones around so you never run out of content.

If you only plan one story line or event you will be caught off guard and storytelling will become a chore.

Is everyone engaged? Did everyone get a chance to make themselves useful? Master the basics and you will snowball into a seasoned DM.

>What are some methods of building a session or adventure?
I build a lattice of villainy.
I come up with a handful of loosely developed villains, all with their own plots and plans.
Usually about 6-12 weak antagonists with only a few lines of effort into them. "Darth Vader if he owned a cheese shop.", whatever.
Then I jot down a few idea about what they would be doing to further their goals.
Then I set up those activities in a central setting in a precarious balance of power with no one villain on top.
Then I send the PCs through that balance like bulls in a china shop.
Who they help, who they defeat, who they weaken, and who they strengthen all change the balance of power.
As the PCs encounter and remove villains from the field, the others get stronger.
The PCs help sculpt the main villain if only by removing the competition or by helping society and thereby helping the villains within that society.
As the game goes on, I develop the remaining villains more, as they become more important than the thugs defeated in the first session.
That's it more or less.

Also, have a general idea of how you want the campaign to go, but never "plan" more than one session out.

I will give you the wors possible best advice.

It depends.

Some people plan shit out to the nth degree and it works, other plot the vaguest idea of what will happen and it works too. It really depen on you and how you do things.