The prospect of starting a new Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) campaign (or any RPG campaign) can seem like a daunting task. The idea that you are in charge of creating this big elaborate campaign, making sure you and the players understand the rules, and making sure you plan for everything (sort of -- we’ll get back to that later). For some, getting past these things is one of the main things preventing them from starting a campaign.
While it does seem like a lot of work, it really comes down to one key part “is everyone having fun”. Being the Game Master (GM) does not mean you have to be flawless in your approach to things, it means you are just the soothsayer that weaves the threads of this reality into the tapestry that is the adventure. Becoming a GM, with some time, becomes quite an easy task. However, it will take a bit of time to hone your skills and to get the hang of things.
So where do you begin? Do you need a big adventure where your group of players will uncover treasures and slay great beasts? Do you need to plan a new kingdom with details that would put any census to shame? Do you need to buy minifigures, dice, books, and more to supplement your campaign? Eventually you may want to do these things, but before any of that can happen, you really need to know what your players want out of this campaign.
Where Do I Even Start?
The question “what are you looking for in a campaign/adventure?” might be a tough one to answer for new players, but in general, if your player has played any sort of RPG (tabletop, video game, or otherwise) they can at least describe their favorite facets of the games. Personally, I enjoy a good balance of combat, puzzles, and roleplaying, but I’ve had groups that are looking towards the next fight at all times and I’ve had groups that take combat in stride, but they tend to roleplay a bit more.
On the off chance that you don’t know your group or that you don’t really glean anything on what they look for in an RPG, you can still prepare puzzles, roleplaying and combat situations and see what your group enjoys the most. The nice thing is when you meet up for the first time you do not have to have a large-scale adventure ready in your back pocket. I like to make the first session or two be about making the group mesh together and slowly introduce the players to the environment that they’re in.
Most of the campaigns I have participated in (as a GM and as a player) have not had anything really barred or limited from the start, but this does not mean you cannot setup limitations though. For example, if for some reason in your world has some variation of the Spell plague where arcane ability has ceased to exist; you may prevent players from playing arcane classes. Something like this would require you to think a bit about your world before you start the character building process.
World Building
A majority of my campaigns that I GM for utilize the Faerun (Forgotten Realms) map, but they do not necessarily follow the lore from the books. A few of the campaigns I have played in have existed in entirely homebrew worlds. The awesome part of being a GM is you can make a world; however, you want it to be. I have heard of groups using a map of Earth as their world. Realistically, if you can imagine the world it can exist.
Your world can go beyond a simple landscape and city map. If you want you can build stories into cities and flesh out details about town likes, dislikes, government types, how they feel about the government, how they feel about other towns, motives, etc. In theory your players are from somewhere in your world, so there should be a way to incorporate their backstories in as well. Philippe A. Ménard (@ChattyDM on Twitter) posted a great way that you can get your characters into building a homebrew world/city. Ménard’s system requires players to answer five, 2-tiered questions in order to flesh out some details.
1a) Name/Describe a Place IN the city 1b) Name one NPC linked to it.By answering these questions, you have created cities, Non-Player Characters (NPCs), Lore/Legends or possible rumors to discover, and a few possible plotlines that can branch off into larger scale adventures. Even if you as a GM just went through and answered these five, 2-tiered questions you could flesh out each metropolitan area in your world.
2a) Name/describe a place OUTSIDE the city 2b) Describe a NPC/Rumor/Legend linked to it
3a) Suggest a Theme for the Campaign 3b) Suggest a City Event linked to that Theme
4a) Describe a person (Not necessarily humanoid) of note from IN or OUT of the city. 4b) What is your relationship with that person?
5a) Describe a strange Phenomenon in the City/World 5b) Describe its impact on everyday life.
Building Characters
Most of the standard books for Dungeons & Dragons various editions have a step-by-step list of things players need to do to create their characters. As a GM your role is to help facilitate that process, so they not only build their characters correctly, but so you also get them thinking about why their character is an adventurer or why they are where they are.
As a GM, you should encourage your players to be as elaborate as they’d like in their backgrounds so when they provide you the details you should in theory be able to take people, places, events, strengths, and flaws from their story and keep them in your back pocket to use later. It is great to be able to throw a situation in where one or more characters have something at stake from their past -- something that they may not have shared with the rest of the party. It also makes the player think about who they are as a character which should help them react to how their character would react rather than how they would as a person playing a game.
Naturally as a human playing a game, your instincts are to survive, but maybe your character is stubborn or wants glory so they’d be more prone to act dangerously. By encouraging your players to create backstories, you encourage players to engage with their characters and you provide yourself with something that could make an appearance later.
The First Few Sessions
Once you have fleshed out your world a bit and once the players have created their characters, you can start considering a few things (either on your own or with the group). Very rarely have I been in a campaign where all the characters have adventured together before, so as the GM you have to piece together stories to make all your players meet and give them a reason to stick together.
The stereotypical start is “You all meet in a tavern”, but I find it most challenging to try to think outside the box and come up with a creative way to make the group meet. Once I have used a few times to the point that it is getting to be borderline cliché is “a nobility figure has a task and was suggested that this group be assembled to do a task for him/her”. You can avoid this slight awkwardness by bringing the characters together for any reason, but sometimes it can feel forced. Regardless, I cannot say I have ever seen someone have to create a new character because their character never ran into or teamed up with the rest of the players.
The first 1-3 sessions of a new campaign/adventure tend to be a bit more flexible and not always directly tied to a larger, overarching quest, but allow players to figure out how their character acts and how he/she interacts with others and to build a rapport with each other. I have had characters change up a bit during the first sessions, but usually by session 3, I have got my character pretty well figured out so my actions from any situation would be consistent.
If you’re working with a group that’s never played before, these first few sessions are a great opportunity to start introducing combat, roleplaying, traps, puzzles, etc. and you should be able to gauge what your group prefers after these sessions are up.
The Plot Thickens
Each adventure is different and every GM runs adventures differently. Some adventures go on for a session or two and others can last for year’s worth of sessions. What is important is to try to keep track of new characters that you introduce because you never know when they could become useful later.
There are plenty of books which have the sole purpose of creating an adventure for you to follow and can be used as a catalyst for other adventures. Just as it is for your world, your story can take players anywhere you can think of. I have used books, movies, comics, and even songs as the basis for adventures, so if you need ideas you can find ideas anywhere.
To Prepare or not to Prepare
Simply put, be prepared for your plot to advance in some capacity, but you cannot trust that the players will find their way to your plot points in the way you expect. As a GM, you can go into a session thinking you have everything possibly planned out and inevitably, a player will have thought about something that they wanted to do that you did not have prepared. In situations like this, it is easy to railroad your players back to where you want them to go, but that makes the game feel forced and like the players are just going through the motions to get from plot point A to plot point B.
You do want to prepare for most situations, but a lot of being a GM is encouraging players to feel like they are making the decisions, when they may not be making that choice. You may have planned for them to go into a tavern to investigate a group of bandits, but they may want to go out to the forest to collect some potion making supplies. You can easily take much of what you had planned and have the situation stem from the forest now rather than a tavern and to the players it may feel like they just skipped a step to find the bandits early. In theory, this could mean they missed some info, but it progresses the story and allows the players to complete an otherwise menial task.
Other times, you may have an idea that pops into your head mid-session and what you had planned may turn to just improvising. Some of my best moments as a GM have stemmed from when I just have to improvise moments and ideas in the game. At first improvising may be a challenge, but as you get pushed into situations where you have to improvise you start to be able to think on your feet a bit more.
Always Say “Yes”
One of the common rules of improv is that in any situation you should always say “Yes” to the situation provided. This does not mean you literally have to say yes, but if a player asks if they can search for something in a room you can certainly allow them to do so regardless if there is something there or not. For a GM, your role is to facilitate the story and make it progress how the players want, so if a player asks if their character can try and kick down a door, you can allow them to do that, but there will be consequences (positive or negative) from taking that action.
Another way to view this is that a player can try whatever they would like, but there will be varying degrees of success depending on their actions. If a player wants to try and bank an arrow off a wall to stick an enemy in the back they can try it, but chances are there are enough factors that the shot may not reach their target. Nevertheless, if the player wants to take that chance you, as the GM should be able to figure out what happens after the resulting roll regardless of what they roll.
The Ultimate Goal
The best GM’s I have had enjoy controlling the story as much as they do playing. The key to being a great GM is to make sure that the players are having a good time and that you are also enjoying the game. There is a stigma about the GM that they are a villain. It is common to have the players versus the GM mentality, but really, the GM’s role is to ensure everyone is enjoying their experience. If a rule or class feature is causing trouble or is unnecessary, you can make the call to remove it. Make the game as enjoyable as possible and no matter what happens, you can almost guarantee that your players will be looking forward to the next session every time.