[Vaskre]

Anyone have a sort of checklist they run through before launching a new campaign? Things that are absolute must's within a campaign, etc, etc?

[Dthclaw]

Erm... nope. I mostly just wing it and start building things later.

[Jimp]

I think that the most important thing is to stay consitant. If you bring up any notable figure/myth/legend/beast/place while playing jot it down in your note book so you won't end up forgetting it later. It's never good when an NPC tells the story of the sea beast Galgotha and then later in the campaign the party is travelling overseas and one says "Hope we don't run into Galgotha" and all you can say is "Er. . .Yeah. . . Which Monster Manual was that in?"

[Raven Bloodmoon]

I just start up with a basic concept of what makes the campaign world different than the published ones (otherwise I might as well just use a published one). Then I run with that until i have a region. Then the PCs get dropped in that region. I try to have some political friction, some religious friction, and something at least a little interesting somewhere. The more chicanary and subtrafuge, the happier we are, but that depends on the players. After that, I establish whatever PC knowledge should be appropriate, inform the players of that and begin playing. Oh, and take good notes. It sucks when you have to ask your players about something you wrote...

[Vaskre]

I don't mean for a world. I mean just for a campaign, general plots, and the like.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Oops, sorry. Then I'd start with international affairs and their impact on a local region where you plan on gaming. Also any economic or social intricacies that will impact daily life in the area. Oh, and never forget the complexities that religions bring. Then flesh out some major players in teh region in each of these areas of study. There are probably a few high-level clerics, some aristocrats, major merchants, etc. They all have agendas and plots of their own. These should provide a good backdrop from which to pull adventures. Oh, guilds are good, too. Anyone with a longterm goal, or idiological belief. They will have plots and schemes. Some are good, some are bad. And they will all want the PCs on their side.

[Vaskre]

Thanks for the tip.

I'm hopefully going to be organizing a campaign soon, since I've been a bit RP-deprived in recent months, but I'll be using FR as my setting. (I can be patient, but I lack the determination to flesh out an entire world at the moment, and I need to expand on my knowledge in some areas before I take that big of a step.)

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Do remember, also, that if you are dealing with low level characters, they probably will not have the means or the will to leave even the little countryside you start them in. That should buy you some time to flesh out the area. Also, there are the FR series of books that deal with specific regions of Faerun. Those are very good at completely fleshing out each of the areas they describe. These are:

The Lost Empires of Faerun
The Shining South
The Silver Marches
The Unapproachable East

There could be more, but I do not know of them at the moment. Hope this all helps.

[SchizofranicDM]

Must Have good story (given)
Focus style (hack n slash or thinker -based on the group)
Dungeon vs Outdoors mapping
Major players (NPC)
Maps (Local at least)
World Events (any points of interest to note about the current time?)
Good handle on player chars (last thing you want are moments where the players surprise you with hidden char secrets that lead to messing up story, events, etc. but good surprises are always welcome)
Among Other things....
or just wing it, if you've already been playing in the world and have a good handle on it.

[Jimp]

Another thing to keep in mind is how easy communication is in the world. How do people find out about what else is going on? A group of wizards communicating using Teleport of Message spells? Travelling messengers? Or are most thing kept fairly local between kingdoms/states? Depending on how communication is, the players mightn't find out about world events straight away

[growamitt]

My first post to this forum, and it's a mish-mash...

First, as far as plotlines, etc., there's a decent reference book called Gary Gygax's Insidiae, although it's really written by Dan Cross. Gygax wrote the foreward.

Running campaigns - this is my first one and it's working out really well, if one can go by the efforts of the players to try to make it for game night! I started with what I know best - specifically all those things pertaining to the Silmarillion (and the Lord of the Rings, by extension). If any of you have read the Silmarillion, you know the gods flooded Beleriand and it was sunk. By the time of the Lord of the Rings, it has been under the ocean for many millenia. In my game, it didn't sink; it was just flooded clear up to the peaks of the Erid Luid (but not high enough to wash over the mountain range's passes). The waters have receded and it's about 800 years after the flood - enough time for the area to repopulate and for evil to once again rear its ugly head, but long before the heroes of the ring that everyone knows too well for me to run a good game. There are ruins above and below ground - some still awash in water, some drained and ... well, who knows *what's* down there?

I use D&D 3.5, although I also have included as NPCs the races that were in the Silmarillion, with necessary adjustments to make them playable characters. This includes monsters. The Halls of Menegroth, where King Thingol ruled, are now extensive ruins for which I have plans to use an adapted form of The World's Largest Dungeon. I have a story line that gets revised in some way or other nearly every game (hey, real people can do some pretty unplanned-for things <grin>). Still, I've been sticking to the main plot that I've roughly outlined, which is your basic struggle of good against evil. There are wilderness treks; environment when not in a dungeon plays a huge factor. One character was fatigued all the next day because he failed his saves when spending the night in a tent with a couple of garden-variety mosquitoes. At some point in the game, the characters are going to be in a winter environment, with rules and survival concerns out of the Paladium Books 'Northern Hinterlands' series. Plus, I live in Canada in a rural area. I know winter.

So far, I've used 3 mini-campaigns that I made up myself and 2 drop-in modules - The Sunless Citadel and The Standing Stone. We're almost finished The Standing Stone. These aren't bad, as far as modules go.

Which brings me to my next bit... I know there are eight in the series. I know the titles of seven (though I don't have all the modules) - The Sunless Citadel, The Forge of Fury, The Speaker in Dreams, The Standing Stone, Heart of Nightfang Spire, Deep Horizon, and Lord of the Iron Fortress. I can't even find the title of the last - the eighth in the series. If anyone knows it, please write me via private email. I don't often get to this site.

I've checked all the sites that sell or offer DND stuff, and some others as well. No title there. I've checked the copies of those titles that I do have, and there's nothing there to show it. Those modules are working really well with the game I'm running, and they have a built-in continuity of their own which adds nicely to the whole thing.

We've been playing this campaign for little more than three months, and there's enough room in it for years more of play. The characters started at level 1 and in different places. They all eventually met up and formed the party we have now. Having them start in different places was like having six different little campaigns going at once, and there are some things I'd change about that if I knew then what I know now. We have lost one character to death and another had to be written out of the game (he got a different shift at work and couldn't get it switched). All are now levels 4 and 5 (character levels), although the female sorceress half-elf is a level 3 because of some things she had to do for her class that cost XP.

Yeah, I'm cheap.

It'll be epic by the time we're through, if we all stay close enough to get together every week or so for the game.

Anyway, thanks for reading - or not, as the case may be.

[Vaskre]

Long post.

Nice campaign you have running, though.

[growamitt]

Sorry bout that. Been a member for a year, so I guess I'd worked up a lot of stuff to say. Thanks for even reading it.

[Vaskre]

At least you posted.

Most people make an account, post one time for some obscure thing, or to advertise, then leave.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

As someone who once wrote a book report on the Lord of the Ring trilogy complete with quotes purely from memory, and who has read the Silmarillion no less than 9 times as well as Tolkein's Unfinished Works and The Hobit (of course), I must say I am intrigued. That is a really impressive campaign and must ahve quite the epic feel. I can say that I am also working toward that sort of a game feel, though at the moment, we are still in the early days of humanity's recorded history. The next campaign may be a tad less dire and just a welcome killing spree, though, I hope to keep it all tied together. After that, who knows. It is always interesting to take a world people are very familiar with adn weave yoru own tales around it.

As a side note and a tad more on topic (though not very), I have found another great source of adventure ideas, though it is a tad cheap. Find a really good but very obscure (or at least unknown to the players) movie and rip it off completely. I just finished that with Ringu 0 (the 4th Ring movie in the series). It made a good impromptu side-adventure and the players had a lot of fun with it. You might even be able to take such an approach and extrapolate an entire campaign out of it.