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I recently started a new campaign with an Original Campaign SettingTM, and was wondering if y'all had any recommendations re: campaign planning and/or world building. My previous go-to was using Google Docs outlines for characters/locations, but this was aided by there being a big ol' wiki of content for Forgotten Realms. A lot of it was useless or irrelevant, especially to me, someone who gives no fucks about Forgotten Realms, but it meant I had an organized resource already pre-made for me. My players did a lot of help in creating the setting, it's just I feel like I need a better system for organizing the DM-only info I have to build their plots and adventures for and Google Docs, as decent as it is, aren't really as efficient as I'd like. Malpais Legate fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Feb 20, 2019 |
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Feb 20, 2019 18:40
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Malpais Legate posted:I recently started a new campaign with an Original Campaign SettingTM, and was wondering if y'all had any recommendations re: campaign planning and/or world building. My previous go-to was using Google Docs outlines for characters/locations, but this was aided by there being a big ol' wiki of content for Forgotten Realms. A lot of it was useless or irrelevant, especially to me, someone who gives no fucks about Forgotten Realms, but it meant I had an organized resource already pre-made for me. As far as organizing notes goes, I swapped from Docs to OneNote a little while back and I think it's tons better. Just the ability to put text anywhere is super useful to me. It also has tabs and I can easily create more pages which is great because everything used to be in one Google Doc.
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Feb 20, 2019 21:00
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I'm currently in the same situation and I think I've hit on the best solution: It's called "have stuff all over the drat place and a million notes on your phone titled D&d". It works really well and definitely isn't stressful.
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Feb 20, 2019 21:38
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About two thirds of the big pile of differently sized notepads, pieces of paper, boxes of counters etc in a drawer that you've pulled out of your desk and now can't get back in, as well as the stack of stuff on the far left of the desk behind the spare keyboards. E: Or these days a single a5 notepad page with the ceremonial beer cave w 4 rooms goblins? portal fight ask dave about pirates scrawled on it. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Feb 20, 2019 |
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Feb 20, 2019 21:43
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OneNote is good but I've always been able to keep.my notes confined to two word docs, one with an index of characters and the other with adventure notes.
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Feb 20, 2019 21:46
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For real though I just get a small (like 32 page) notebook and write setting/NPC stuff from the front and take notes during play from the back. I'll make notes in my phone sometimes but the act of physically writing makes me remember things so I'll write them into my notebook anyway. It works because the stuff I'm writing is for me to run a game with, not to be a setting wiki that someone else could easily understand and use. The biggest problem with it is that a lost book is gone forever.
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Feb 20, 2019 21:56
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I do super rough sketch maps for my players during combat, just scrawly lines and crosses and scribbles and it's still bizarre to me how I can recognise and remember literal decades later exactly what that fight was about at a glance. In terms of prep, the big thing is lists of names and 2 line character descriptions that you build on through play, because fundamentally no one gives the slightest of shits about your world building but you, but they'll remember a good character forever if they had some part in its development. In fact I'd say that's a good approach to world building - give yourself two lines for each country, city, religion or w/e, and build on them through play (so make sure there's some way of recording what develops).
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Feb 20, 2019 22:01
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If you've written more than a tweet about any one thing it's probably too much - anything worth saying is worth saying concisely.
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Feb 20, 2019 22:09
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:If you've written more than a tweet about any one thing it's probably too much - anything worth saying is worth saying concisely. One of my players has literally just Skyped me asking for a breakdown of trade relations between the city they’re in and his home city, and his family’s position in any trade or diplomacy taking place. Can’t do that in less than a tweet. Should I wrote back and say no you tell me?
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Feb 20, 2019 22:16
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:If you've written more than a tweet about any one thing it's probably too much - anything worth saying is worth saying concisely. I don't do big homebrew campaigns any more (Eyes of the Stone Thief is my waifu, expecting to finish it in a year or so) but a while ago I had the idea of taking a classic goon Dominions 3 group LP and using that as the political backdrop for a game; the clashing kitchen sink fantasy is so rich in that game, and all the detail work has been done for you.
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Feb 20, 2019 22:19
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Man, I guess I need to throw out all this stuff I wrote about the history of my alternate timeline and the way the different nations interact and just wing it. Continuity? What's that?
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Feb 20, 2019 22:26
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Sanford posted:Should I wrote back and say no you tell me? Yes. Then spend like 15 minutes coming up with complications that you can deploy where what the player/character will want to do will conflict with their family's investments. Stuff like "the party discovers that company X (which your family is heavily invested in) makes significant use of undead labor (say the souls of the dead are being bound to their bodies to keep them animate, which prevents them from passing on, because it's cheaper than hiring a legitimate necromancer.) If this gets out, then the family will lose a fortune as the company is investigated and it's owners are jailed for crimes against decency." chitoryu12 posted:Continuity? What's that? A vile demon that restricts your true creativity, and should be vanquished at the earliest opportunity. Keeshhound fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Feb 20, 2019 |
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Feb 20, 2019 22:30
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Sanford posted:One of my players has literally just Skyped me asking for a breakdown of trade relations between the city they’re in and his home city, and his family’s position in any trade or diplomacy taking place. Can’t do that in less than a tweet. Should I wrote back and say no you tell me? The situation's obviously all hosed up because if it was running smoothly there would be no adventure hooks. Write back with something like "It's all hosed up. There's talk of conspiracy and even treason. Some people are scared. Others are in trouble, some unjustly. Tell me how it's affected you." There doesn't have to be actual conspiracy and treason that you flesh out. The idea is that you're setting up for "tensions and stakes are high for the participants" and letting the player decide how much they want to engage. E: for my group I would literally say "obviously hosed up or it'd be no fun, how much of this do you want in the game?" chitoryu12 posted:Man, I guess I need to throw out all this stuff I wrote about the history of my alternate timeline and the way the different nations interact and just wing it. Don't throw it out, use it to write your novel. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Feb 20, 2019 |
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Feb 20, 2019 22:35
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When preparing my latest adventure, I wrote out a detailed description of exactly what the NPCs' plans were, their schedules in the mission, and what their reactions would be to different scenarios. Excessive? Definitely not. It was incredibly useful because it took a surprisingly short time for the party to gently caress everything up beyond all reason and I already knew beforehand how the increasingly complex situation would play out. I didn't need to improvise really anything off the top of my head except exact dialogue. Prior preparation makes the actual act of playing very easy and free of headaches. In terms of backstory, it becomes much easier to help guide a player to something that fits in with the campaign you're planning if you can respond to a really off-base idea with "That doesn't really work as it is, but how about you tweak it in this way and work your character into this thing I've established?" By comparison, I had done a live session of a campaign where all the players rotated DMing and I had about a week to figure out everything I needed for the next part of their quest while also having school and a normal social life and interests outside of Pathfinder. When it came time to actually play, trying to deal with a particularly stupid and impulsive player who acted in ways I didn't expect (and arguably, no reasonable person would expect) derailed the session so badly that there wasn't even time at the end of the night to do a proper climax.
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Feb 20, 2019 22:49
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Since we're all airing how we organize poo poo, I do a lot of planning with my players in discord and reference material and tiny notes get shoved into my one drive. I think the most effort I put into this season (no I don't know why I'm calling campaigns seasons) is that I created a cheat sheet of all my PC's and formatting it in excel and getting it to display properly in OneNote took so much effort that I haven't gone back and updated it now that they've leveled up. This is what the notes section of my OneNote looks like. Most of the pages aren't filled in, they just help me have a timeline of events. 
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Feb 20, 2019 23:07
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I do everything in Evernote, makes it easy to manage, access, and share.
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Feb 20, 2019 23:08
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I use Dropbox for everything. I have all of my campaigns organized with folders of reference and atmosphere photos, maps, documents, stats, etc. Like I said, it's a lot more work before you actually sit down to play but the act of playing becomes extremely easy. I also create wikis to help compile info in a way that's likewise easier for the players to sort through. It's a lot easier to compare custom weapon stats for purchasing on the company account if you can just go to https://dsa1955.fandom.com/wiki/Weapons and look at everything available.
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Feb 20, 2019 23:10
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Sanford posted:One of my players has literally just Skyped me asking for a breakdown of trade relations between the city they’re in and his home city, and his family’s position in any trade or diplomacy taking place. Can’t do that in less than a tweet. Should I wrote back and say no you tell me? The larger city ends up largely setting terms, except for lemons - your home's control of citrus lets them avoid most other tariffs. This year the locusts will return, only your family knows - why haven't they warned the other merchants? My point isn't that all your ideas take a tweet when you first conceive of them, but if they can't be distilled down into one, they're probably more complicated than they need to be, and the random stuff you come up with in the moment will end up more interesting than the magnum opus of words you've written down in advance. I think you're overestimating the power of lots of words, and underestimating the power an idea expressed simply - "distillable" is the property I want more than "detailed". Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Feb 20, 2019 |
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Feb 20, 2019 23:17
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Honestly your approach to worldbuilding should suit the game you're playing and your style of GMing and nothing else is important. If your players are the kind of people who will ask for seemingly-irrelevant setting details looking for the kind of information they can spin off into a bizarre and generally-more-successful-than-it-had-a-right-to-be plan, and you're not great at coming up with that poo poo on the fly in a manner that remains internally consistent with the established rules of the setting, then go ahead and write that poo poo down. Have a novel's worth of data if you need it. Hell, it can be a lot of fun. One physical methodology I've found useful for that kind of data is actually 3x5 index cards - write a few details on each one, get a giant stack of them, and stick them in one of those little 'recipe holder' boxes you can buy at an office store. Maybe divide them up with tabs by region or city or whatever. Have a day! If your players aren't looking for details, if they're looking for broad brushstrokes - or if you're good at building that stuff in your head - go ahead and have a minimal amount of notes. Wing it! Have a day! gently caress planning, let's get to the part where poo poo is exploding. If you're like me and you're sort of in-between those two poles, I find a few rough ideas on paper or in your program of choice will suffice - enough to build a skeletal framework for you to fill in details as you go. Every so often what I would do is put together a handout for my players with "here's the interesting poo poo we've learned over the last few games" so they'd have a reference, and keeping a copy for myself meant I had a reference too. I also liked to build NPCs with no established place to put them and keep them in a big stack, so when I was like "okay I need a nobleman here for the PCs to meet" I could rummage through the stack and pick out an NPC from my "nobility" pile; they had a statblock or character sheet and a few thumbnail personality notes (example: "vain, scheming, doesn't have a very loyal staff") and then I'd just plug them in to the relevant plot point. The upshot is, do what works for you. I find that more spontaneity suits my style of GMing better, and helps my players feel like they've got narrative buy-in by avoiding any appearance of rails; that might not work for you, though, so don't fuckin' sweat it.
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Feb 20, 2019 23:37
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Personally, I tend to write reams and reams and throw most of it away before the session. The stuff I threw away isn't wasted: writing the stuff I throw away is a way of getting myself into a frame of mind so that the fun, keepable ideas bubble to the top quickly. But that is because writing reams of setting is something I really enjoy doing. If you don't enjoy doing that, don't do it, and if you do enjoy doing it, do it but definitely be aware that you're going to throw a ton of what you write away.
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Feb 21, 2019 00:38
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Whybird posted:Personally, I tend to write reams and reams and throw most of it away before the session. The stuff I threw away isn't wasted: writing the stuff I throw away is a way of getting myself into a frame of mind so that the fun, keepable ideas bubble to the top quickly. Yep. Goons optimise, and minimal prep is objectively better from a pure effort/ reward standpoint, but if you love prep and it makes the game better for you then go for it. The thing to avoid is feeling like you are a bad dm if you don't have reams of detailed notes. Do as much as works.
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Feb 21, 2019 00:47
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Yeah I didn't say "don't prep a lot", I said "I don't prep a lot". I can't imagine what your prep looks like if a regular week where you also have to do regular stuff feels like "not enough time", but if that's how you do it and it works, great. I'm not arguing, but I sincerely can't imagine what that workload even looks like. I used to plan weekly in a way that I'd now regard as massive overkill it and it'd take 1-2 hours. If I somehow had the inclination to detail a setting to the point where it was taking significantly more work than that, I'd be looking to use it for something publishable.
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Feb 21, 2019 02:19
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Yeah I didn't say "don't prep a lot", I said "I don't prep a lot". I mean, my currently played setting (think Crimson Skies but after WW2) is definitely detailed enough that you could set other works in it. I just haven’t tried. The planning also causes ideas for new missions and scenes to show up. Like the nation of Appalachia uses helicopters more than anyone else because of the mountainous terrain, so why not find a way to work in a helicopter chase?
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Feb 21, 2019 02:31
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Malpais Legate posted:I recently started a new campaign with an Original Campaign SettingTM, and was wondering if y'all had any recommendations re: campaign planning and/or world building. My previous go-to was using Google Docs outlines for characters/locations, but this was aided by there being a big ol' wiki of content for Forgotten Realms. A lot of it was useless or irrelevant, especially to me, someone who gives no fucks about Forgotten Realms, but it meant I had an organized resource already pre-made for me.
For story content, try to get each of your players to settle on or acknowledge a concrete goal of some kind - something which motivates them to move from place to place - and build your campaign around that. In the current campaign I'm running, three of my players independently came up with goals that involved finding missing people they'd been separated from, so the plot I've been constructing in the background deals rather heavily with the subject of human trafficking and people from your past showing up changed. Someone else is looking for a miracle cure to a disease that's been ravaging their homeland, so that gave me a specific point of interest to place on the horizon: a city of alchemists, but it's a whole country over. Bad Seafood fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Feb 21, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 02:37
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Or these days a single a5 notepad page with Kaffo's last session of Dungeon World posted:Session 14 But really, I'm with the 2 setences thing. I have a big rear end Gdoc and as the game runs I type down a couple of quick, important bullet points for each thing I think I'll need to remember. People, places, stuff, lore... Whatever Then I use the Gdocs headings to organise sections so ingame I can just quickly click a section without having to scroll through it, ez. Worst bit is when I forget to write something at the time and need to backfill a bit, but hey it's good enough
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Feb 22, 2019 14:48
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Mine just look like bird scratch cause my handwriting is garbage and only serves to cement information further into my slowly dwindling mind.
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Feb 22, 2019 19:48
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kaffo posted:Here's the unedited notes from my last session, no kidding Yeah I was only 10% kidding with that post. My last DW game began the first session as maybe 6 lines of text and a sketch map on a single side of a notepad page. I had a second page by the end of the first session. After that it looked a hell of a lot like what you posted.
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Feb 22, 2019 22:17
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I have a question about surprise and initiative that is probably well worn discussion territory for 5e. Its related to these discussions and came up in my game last week: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/62920/at-which-moment-does-the-surprised-state-disappear https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/72889/what-happens-when-initiative-allows-a-player-to-act-before-the-player-that-start Group is trying to sneak up on some folks and give the ranger/rogue first move but the fighter/enemies get higher initiative. Is there a way to sneak up on enemies and construct the opening round so that sneaky types get their advantage? I guess you can set a full surprise round and force people to ready moves/movement if they don't want to break surprises or you give the sneaker a free attack, or give the sneaker advantage in initiative. Anyone have experience wrestling with this?
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Feb 23, 2019 01:20
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Glory to Italia!
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The Search for Grog is live on the CritRole twitch channel now if you're interested in that kinda thing. http://www.twitch.tv/criticalrole ILL Machina fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Feb 23, 2019 |
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Feb 23, 2019 04:30
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ILL Machina posted:I have a question about surprise and initiative that is probably well worn discussion territory for 5e. I'm not a 5e GM, but I would probably houserule that removing the Surprised status at the end of their turn is something an enemy will only do if they are aware that there is something untowards going on.
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Feb 23, 2019 09:55
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ILL Machina posted:I have a question about surprise and initiative that is probably well worn discussion territory for 5e. - determine whether one side is surprised; you take PCs and enemies as a whole, you don't muck about with who's trying to be stealthy and who on the other side notices them - if yes: the ambushers pick one of their number to start the ambush, then roll initiative - only the designated ambusher and their ally with the highest initiative get to act in the ambush - then roll initiative for the opponents and play normally For clarification, I presume this means: the ambusher acts first of all regardless of their initiative, then their high initiative ally, then everyone has an initiative and you take it from the top. I think that's very elegant, avoids most of the usual problems that come with micromanaging initiative counts and perception checks and readying actions, and is a balanced advantage for the ambushers. I also wouldn't allow anyone to ready an action until a combat has started. Usually when people do it, they essentially want to start off an ambush, so just use the ambush rules straight away. e: clarification: usually when people do it they specifically want to sidestep the ambush rules and all act when the ambusher does. I've found, in 4E at least, when the whole party gets a free attack in at the start, that's that encounter done and dusted. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 10:39 on Feb 23, 2019 |
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Feb 23, 2019 10:15
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My usual worldbuilding method is to ramble at random friends about it until I finally get confident enough to ramble in Notepad about it, as well as my actual notepad when I'm away from the computer, and occasionally scrawling a map in a fit of inspiration. Relatedly, since I can't shut the hell up about King Arthur Pendragon lately, my friends have suggested running a one-shot of it. Which should be nice, but I think I could use some advice or even a premade one-shot story for it, does anyone have any suggestions or directions for one of those that's up to date with the latest editions?
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Feb 25, 2019 17:38
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Bad Seafood posted:[*]If you're playing a game where races are a thing, ask your players what races they're considering. Make those races matter in your setting. Everyone else is optional, salt and pepper to taste. If you're gonna be turning any races on their heads, make sure your players know in advance. Their desire to play a dwarf because dwarves are awesome may be dampened if dwarves are not quite as awesome, or awesome in a different way, in your setting. Once you have your races, populate your countries with them as makes sense. Elves live near forests (unless they don't), dwarves live in mountains (unless they don't), and humans live everywhere (unless they don't). This is really good and key advice, worldbuilding can be hard enough so make it collaborative when convenient, and keep in mind the roles people want to play. I feel a key piece of advice for maintaining the interest of players and yourself in a setting is to liberally include things that you particularly like. My own campaign setting is basically built entirely out of them. Figure out how they fit together later, that's often easier than you'd think.
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Feb 25, 2019 17:42
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One issue I have with my world, exacerbated by the players’ insistence on a world map, is that everything is really close together. Like from Vultan’s Wall, the great fortified city of the North, to the mighty trading empire of Kesh in the south, is... 200 miles? Then there’s the centaur tribes to the west, and another player says she ran from there to where they are now, so that can’t be far. Is that just a “suspension of disbelief, don’t mention it” job?
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Feb 25, 2019 18:14
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"An accurate, full and complete map of the known world"
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Feb 25, 2019 18:16
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Sanford posted:One issue I have with my world, exacerbated by the players’ insistence on a world map, is that everything is really close together. Like from Vultan’s Wall, the great fortified city of the North, to the mighty trading empire of Kesh in the south, is... 200 miles? Then there’s the centaur tribes to the west, and another player says she ran from there to where they are now, so that can’t be far. Is that just a “suspension of disbelief, don’t mention it” job? I mean, what counts as "close together" by the standards of your technology? 200 miles is a day's drive on a modern interstate highway, but it could take 2 weeks or longer on foot through rough country roads even in good weather and a caravan would likely go even slower. In the days of the Oregon Trail, for instance, a wagon train would only go 10 to 20 miles per day. They could only travel in the sunlight due to the obvious lack of roads and streetlights out on the prairie, so they would start moving at sunrise and stop at sunset (with a noon break for at least an hour or two). chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Feb 25, 2019 |
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Feb 25, 2019 18:18
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Regarding maps and travel, one of the interesting things about historical travel is that ancient maps shared more in common with modern subway maps than physical ones. A Roman map for a traveller was called an Itinerarium and one of the surviving ones shows the known world from Britain all the way to Sri Lanka, with the towns connected by straight lines representing the roads, and basically no other features except major rivers and major mountain ranges. Even simple things like curves in the road are literally not relevant to someone travelling, just distance in miles and distance in days. Supposedly it took about 80 days to travel from Britain to Syria (mostly by ship), about 2,300 miles, but about 30 days to travel from Belgium to Milan (over land), about 500 miles. I think that generally, a world map similar to an itinerarium is better than a modern-style map for campaigns set in any sort of civilisation with a road network; if the players need a map from Dunsburgh to Bitterroot, write both towns names, circle them, draw a line between the two and write “five days” above it. The best thing about it is it encourages you the setting designer to put multiple towns along the same road, so the players travelling to a big city at level 14 get to pass through the village they saved when they were level 3 again and see what’s going on.
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Feb 25, 2019 19:12
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Here's one of those real itineraria. It's arranged with the west at the top, with Italy being the phallic protrusion in the center. Very rough, but the minimum for navigation.
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Feb 25, 2019 19:19
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I think the West is at the bottom?
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Feb 25, 2019 20:30
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Freudian posted:I think the West is at the bottom? Sorry, that’s what I meant.
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Feb 25, 2019 20:54
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