Hot answers tagged campaign-development
42
I would do the following. Note this is also found on my blog here .
Using one page sketch a world or continent mapLabel important regionsWrite one page of background giving no more than a handful of sentences to each region.Pick an area roughly 200 miles by 150 milesGrab a 8.5 by 11 sheet of hex paper. The scale should be so that it represents a 200 by 150 ...
37
I've run a variety of tones of campaigns over time and some could be considered "evil"; in fact currently I'm running a three-year long Pathfinder campaign where the PCs are pirates - not all of them are technically evilly aligned, but murder, torture, rape, slavery, etc. have all come up in the game. Here's how you make it work.
Decide on Limits, Within ...
34
You've got a blank sheet of paper, and you want to play ASAP. Excellent. This is what I've done successfully:
Decide with your players what kind of setting it should be. You can skip this if you're playing in the assumed setting of your game. Otherwise, find out what elements your players want to explore. Should there be firearms? Political machinations? ...
32
From the ever-essential Medieval Demographics Made Easy, I find that:
A square mile of settled land (including requisite roads, villages and towns, as well as crops and pastureland) will support 180 people. This takes into account normal blights, rats, drought, and theft, all of which are common in most worlds.
From Medieval Manors I learn that a ...
31
Lions and Tigers and Bears... Oh my!
I think the number of dangerous creatures out in the wilderness is almost innumerable, so I will just list categories with a few examples.
Reptiles
Snakes (Venomous or large)
Poisonous frogs
Alligators
Insects
Mosquitoes (with or without diseases)
Army ants
Bees and Hornets
Large Mammals
Large Cats (Lions, ...
31
It depends. What are you trying to achieve?
As the author of the campaign, you have a tremendous amount of freedom to create whatever world you wish to. You don't have to stick with the world created in the books any more than you want to. In many years of playing I have spent far more time playing in "generic fantasy world populated from the Monster ...
30
Thus far, the party has tended to follow up more on smaller leads, like interesting caves, a village with a plague, etc., rather than major leads,
Why do those leads end up being minor? Can you turn an interesting cave into a major lead? Maybe the cave leads into the massive underground dungeon that was rediscovered. Or maybe the cave has a family ...
28
Tell your player to suck it.
Your world works how you want it to.
Neither of the critiques you cited from your powergamer make a bit of sense at all. "That's a 1e monster it wouldn't be in a 3.5e world" makes me doubt his sanity - people have ported absolutely every monster forward, and what edition they have rules for is totally separate from whether ...
28
Pacing
The key to a good horror game/movie is the pacing; if the characters are constantly in peril and exposed to horrific things then it will become bland. From my Cthulhu games I've found keys to this are:
Build up Slowly lead the players into somewhere dangerous, use mundane things to build tension like smashed glass, scrawled notes, lightning blasted ...
26
Wolves
I have torn more than one group of adventurers to shreds with wolves. Wolves are smart team-hunters. They harry and feint. They wear groups and individuals down. They work together and coordinate their attacks.
Make them spend a night or two being howled at all night. Make sure to use whatever rules your system has for fatigue. Don't neglect the ...
24
I see a lot of insightful comments in the answers here; but, I think that there is a key element that hasn't been explicitly.
PCs get angry when something that they like is threatened.
Players get annoyed when something that they like is taken away.
The best way to engage your players is to threaten something dear to their characters, and give them a ...
22
My recommendation is to work from the other direction; instead of taking the mortal population and extrapolating how many vampires "should" be there, start with the number of vampires you want to have and decide how it is they survive on a fief that's overtaxed. Use the 50K-100K as a figure of stability; once you get twice as many Kindred in there, you've ...
20
In Sandbox campaigns, what the players are doing is the centre of the campaign. If they do not investigate and stop the fire falling from the sky, then there is a consequence and you should play it out as if real history is unfolding before them. I find that the best way to do this, is to image what the major characters of the world are doing (in shells ...
20
Well, for starters, I'd say don't use D&D. It is a game tailored towards violent conflicts, which is exactly what you're avoiding, it seems. Mind you, I said "violent conflicts". No story, thus no game, can exist without any conflict whatsoever. I'm not also saying it's completely undoable with D&D, just mainly... a waste of its design and practical ...
20
Location.
They will live near a water source, and probably near their fields...
Neolithic hill forts are fairly common. It's a walled village atop an artificial hill, built on the floodplain. It may also have a cistern and/or a well down through the motte/tel. Walls are likely wood, possibly also dry-fit stone for part of the height.
I can tell you from ...
20
Major threats include
Any large predator that is faster than humans.
most reptiles during the day
all apex predators
anything that hunts in groups
any large (150# or larger) herbivore
Especially Moose and other semi-solitary herbivores in rut
also especially dangerous is any herd with calves.
any disease vector
a rabid bunny is a threat whether it ...
20
Building Tension to Build Horror
I’ve played RPG’s since I was a kid, but I’ve also written narrative as a hobby for years. RPG’s combine the intellectual stimulation of board games with the deep engagement of storytelling (books and films). When the players calmly intellectualize their attempts to WIN, they’re in board game mode. When players FEEL ...
19
As a long-time V:tM and V:tR fan, I have always thought the 1:50k and 1:100k ratios were unimaginative, unrealistic (well, as unrealistic as a game involving vampires could be) and poorly thought out. In fact, I generally think any set ratio of vampires:humans is arbitrary and silly because ratios fail to take into account numerous real world factors.
For ...
19
Running Parallel Campaigns
My experience with running parallel campaigns mostly involves the World of Darkness games, Aberrant, and Call of Cthulhu. Some ran longer than others. The WoD games lasted years of real time, and were designed to be open-ended.
I used Vampire: The Masquerade as the baseline game, with players in three separate factions ...
19
Any sensation, experienced in full without stop will eventually allow or force those who experience it to adjust to or move away from it. For a 'horror' campaign to be effective, memorable, and successful for a good duration of time it is necessary to have a solid understanding of two things, everything else is secondary and dependent on your performance ...
18
Really getting people in emotional place IC involves a bit of currency with the players and a little bit of trust. I have a few rules of thumb I always go for first when creating situations:
Plot and punishment are not the same thing.
I could just be sensitive about this but sometimes when a GM gives me plot by destroying something my character has ...
18
Use a very strong central theme and mood. Think of your campaign as if it was a TV series held together by these things, as well returning props, characters, places etc.
Use a strong, universal antagonist, possibly an organization that has agents from all the various supernatural factions as well. Even better if your party are members / helpers of the same ...
17
Start with what you know you and your friends like.
You should establish a basic setting and campaign focus, depending on the themes you know your players will enjoy. Decide if its going to focus on combat, investigation, exploration, etc, and if the setting fits or inverts that style of play. For example, a campaign that takes place in Rome during the ...
17
Since your setting is effectively a dungeon:
Clean Air
There are air tubes installed. These are shunts from the subterranean levels all the way to the surface. Some carry fresh air in. Others carry waste air out. Giant fans (mechanical, magical, or otherwise) control the vital flow of air.
Plot Hooks:
Finding a larger shaft could be the event that ...
17
I'll assume you mean a verbal pitch, like you're sitting with your friends at a burger place and want to sell them on your new game idea.
This is sales, right? Not because you want to sell them a bill of goods, but because you have something that you think is valuable and that they will want.
Believe in your idea. Don't waste your friends' time with ...
17
Telephones began arriving at the start of the century. At first, they were strikingly modern, available to the rich and well-connected. For example, in Connecticut in 1901, a hotel advertised "a telephone in every room" as a luxury.
(That "telephone in every room" is a nice marker. A hotel in London was advertising something similar around 1920.)
For cars, ...
17
Ask them about their experience. People are hesitant to criticize both friends and authority figures (and as a GM you fit into both categories). The answer to "how did I do" is always "fine." The answer to "did you have fun during the session, what did you enjoy or not like" is always much more evocative (and frankly casting it as about them indicates ...
17
Medieval peasants and most tribal cultures...
Typically, children under age 1 were nursed by mothers who nursed them frequently whilst doing other work. Children aged 1-2 might still be nursing, or might already be transitioned to the next group...
Ages 2-4 were supervised by aunts and grandparents, and had as much play as they would ever see; the basic ...
17
For me it's about how the GM verbally conveys the situation. I've tried the "be specific but slice out important details" approach with some success. For example:
GM: "You open the door to the hut and everything turns to cotton candy. It's sticky, you're surrounded by it. But now it's gone; you're on a grassy slope, looking out over a foggy, shrouded ...
16
I would say that you want to have a sort of reverse-donut shape for the detail-level of your campaign: Lots of detail at the top levels, lots of detail about the areas surrounding the players, and not as much in between.
Think about how the information will be used by the players. Obviously the lowest-level stuff (inside-out) is vitally important... That's ...
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