How Do You Focus Your Campaigns?

[RavensCall]

Hi there. New to the forums but an old 2e AD&D DM who is now playing with a new group of players in 5e. I've been itching to run a full-blown Ravenloft campaign with native player characters. We are about 75% through my current campaign so I have plenty of time to work out the details of the groups third campaign. I'm going to run it in Ravenloft. The rules changes to 5e are simple, but I've noticed that gameplay is so different from back in the day. When I ran my old D&D group way back, I just set them in Darkon, used a mix of homebrew and Dungeon magazine games and set the group along a path to various adventures. We played through the Grand Conjunction modules and got almost to the end of the Requiem before the group finally called it quits. Being a DM is nothing new to me but I'm finding that the way the game is played now feels a little different. In the past, these campaigns and characters seemed to go on forever and now it seems the current trend is to play a campaign for about a year or so and then move on to something new. I'm fine with that and have run two successful Pathfinder campaigns revamped for 5e. But now that I'm attempting to start a Ravenloft campaing I'm finding it hard to focus the main narrative. I'm thinking of using the "Carrion Crown" adventure path and starting the group in Mordent with the first part of the adventure. Obviously if I use this path it will bring the characters to various domains around the core, (I'm thinking Lamordia, perhaps Verbrek and I haven't decided on the others just yet). My question is, how do you guys plan a campaign in Ravenloft? I feel weird asking this question as I feel I should already know the answer. Do you just pick a few adventures and go with the flow? Does your campaign have a meta-plot and an ending or do you just kinda wing it? Do you focus on one domain or one darklord and build a campaign around that? Our first campaign went for a year and our second one will be about a year and a half. I feel like if I start a new one in Ravenloft, they may get more than they bargained for. In the end, it doesn't really matter as long as everyone is having fun but I'm just curious how some of you plan out your Ravenloft campaigns?

[Dark Angel]

When I plan an adventure series, I try to plan on a setting to get the PCs to about 4th or 5th level. I ran a Barovian campaign in small town where the PCs were kind of the 'go to' people for the village. They eventually were 'hired' by agents of Strahd to do some investigations in Borca, but got pulled into a series of political adventures. And so on. I try to come up with a larger plot for them to deal with and a bit of filler to raise their level and give them minor things to take care of. That setting had them bouncing all over the Core and mixing their personal business into the local situations. The funny thing of it all was they ended up leaving a domain after it 'sucked' with the sole exception being Lamordia. They were well received and may have stayed longer until they realized their magical items and abilities were being drained slowly. The other setting was in Central Darkon and based around the Grand Conjunction. Same thing, but the scope was the 6 key adventures and them leaving their home base and returning. I had filler adventures, basically a Greyhawk campaign.

My players are not too keen on a specific setting, domain, or style of play and I work with that to change it up. I offer them several ideas and they pick what they like or leave it up to me. I work from there, reading up on adventure ideas, looking at adventures, fan sites, Dungeon Magazine adventure, and personal ideas/adventures of my own. Change things up and make them work in your setting. If your players are familiar with Ravenloft, they may offer you ideas and suggestions to work with.

[RavensCall]

Thank you. Yeah I'm just going to wing it. The players are a mix. Some have role played before and some started at my table. But none of them know Ravenloft which I'll use to my advantage. I'm going to use the adventure path as my outline and I'm thinking I'll use the Grand Conjunction along with it as the meta-plot. (Plus I'll insert various modules and homebrew as I go). Otherwise I'm going to see what characters they create and dig for any plot points I can use as well. (Perhaps one of them will have the Shadowborn bloodline in them for example). Them not knowing the setting will be great because none of them will have any expectations or preconceived ideas going in. I'll let the "mysteries" of the setting play out as we go. I'm probably just over-thinking things. Player involvement will gauge how I take things. I think I'm also missing the sandbox style we used to play back in the day so I'm just going to go back to the basics and approach the campaign like I did back then. Either way I'm sure it'll be fun. Well, as fun as things get in the Domain of Dread.

[DustBunny]

I think I'm also missing the sandbox style we used to play back in the day so I'm just going to go back to the basics and approach the campaign like I did back then. Either way I'm sure it'll be fun. Well, as fun as things get in the Domain of Dread.

An old series of articles which may be of use regarding adventure types (railroad vs open world) can be found here. Also of use is the Three Clue rule which can be used to nudge the players to where you want them to go - without railroading them.
I always liked a node based as it gave direction but allowed 'free will'.

Some more half remembered bits from an old forum for running an open world. I apologise if I am retreading old ground for you/
• Players want information.
Give them scrawled paper maps, photo-shopped images, scrawled letters, etc. I especially like Joel's adventure writeups as they have images, maps, buildings etc. You can 'see' the world as opposed to a vague mental image. It also takes a lot of work off the GM's shoulders if they have to revisit a person/place/thing.

Also them titbits of information, but don't give them everything they ask for. Those missing bits of information if tantelising will drive them up the wall with a need to know, and they will work on their own to create a plot to find out - especially if it involves them. But dont overload them - they dont care about the price of tea in Darkon when they have assassins after them.

• PC's want action.
Give them something to do - something that involves taking risks, solving conflicts, making profit, or simply saving their skins. It doesn't have to be hitting monsters with sticks, but the ability to change the world by their actions. However, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction of the DM's choosing .
Negotiate a trade deal? Whoops, the local union went on strike in protest.
Heal those sick peasants? Uh oh, the locak snake oil salesman sent thugs to eliminate the competition.
Save the princess? You just started the "glorious revolution" and the PC's are royalist sympathisers.

Players who have to sit back and listen while the NPC's monologue are going to either leave or try and derail the plot wagon.

• Players want choices.
Tying back into the previous one.
It doesn't matter if the players 'Do the Right Thing', 'Doing the Wrong Thing', 'Doing the Smart Thing', 'Doing the Dumb Thing' or 'Do Everything' as long as they are 'Doing Something'.
If they are not allowed to choose, they will do the only thing they can - 'Get Bored and Do Nothing'.
But as always - no good deed goes unpunished.

[Joël of the FoS]

My campaign is 15+ years old and still going. I have hope for it to continue a long time, as it’s still a teen

In 2003, at first I wanted a long story arc for the whole campaign, as it was then the cool idea every DM was trying to achieve, but quickly I found out it could not work that way and still be fun for many years. I was under the impression a long chase or quest would be eventually boring for me the DM (I need to change the style of what I do once in a while, or it becomes boring for me), and then to the players I guess (if the DM isn’t having a blast, it’s difficult for him to infuse fun to the players).

So I chose to make it a succession of mini campaigns, that would last 5-15 sessions each. Many styles were included over the years : dungeon crawls, investigations, beat a boss at the end of a cycle, politics, intrigue …

AND, my best advice for you, is make the world rich, mysterious and vibrant. When you move the PCs to a town, research all the NPCs that are located in that town, and see how they could interact with them now or later and make it so.

Put many adventure seeds here and there and see what catches the interest of your players.

As your campaign go, make links with future and past events, future and past NPCs.

If you can add as many pictures as you can, the better, as DustBunny said. Make it visual, add sounds and music. Think of cool descriptions for NPCs or for a scene.

Make the world rich and alive.

Now I can have 3+ sessions without any battle, just investigations and intrigue, and my players love it. Which is a long walk as they were kill-the-thing-and-grab-the-loot type of players for 20 years before we started this RL campaign.

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Also, ask the players once in a while if they like the game, to make sure you are not the only one having a blast

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I had a lot of fun with Carrion Crown, I took many parts here and there and added these to my campaign, in a long Whispering Way cult chase. Have fun with it!

Joël

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

My campaign is 15+ years old and still going. I have hope for it to continue a long time, as it’s still a teen

In 2003, at first I wanted a long story arc for the whole campaign, as it was then the cool idea every DM was trying to achieve, but quickly I found out it could not work that way and still be fun for many years. I was under the impression a long chase or quest would be eventually boring for me the DM (I need to change the style of what I do once in a while, or it becomes boring for me), and then to the players I guess (if the DM isn’t having a blast, it’s difficult for him to infuse fun to the players).

So I chose to make it a succession of mini campaigns, that would last 5-15 sessions each. Many styles were included over the years : dungeon crawls, investigations, beat a boss at the end of a cycle, politics, intrigue …

much the same here. My campaign has slowed down a lot in recent years due to life changes, but it's still going after 17 years. I had some plans for lang story arcs early on, but eventually I saw that some arcs naturally closed and others naturally opened. So much so, that looking back, I was able to divide things into 3 "seasons", with appropriately epic "season finales" at the end of season 1 and 2. Season 3 is just getting off the ground, so I'm not sure where it will end right now.

For me, the focus has always been on the PCs. I mined the backgrounds that the players provided for ideas of friends and enemies I could use long-term and make it personal. Then I intertwined the bad guys as I went along as much as I could. (NPC1, who was involved with PC1's mother's death, had a vendetta against PC2's mentor (and separately was in the gang that PC2 broke free from). Eventually NPC1 married PC3's father. Now almost everyone in the party has a reason to hate her.) Then all I had to do to get the PCs moving was to drop clues as to what their friends and enemies were up to, or clues to the secrets they were trying to uncover in their own pasts, and off they went. This allowed us to travel all around the demiplane, and for me to include favorite modules along the way, sometimes modifying them to intertwine these NPCs.

[RavensCall]

Thank you everyone. Some really good advice. I'm going to simply make an outline and then at session 0 when the characters are created I'm going to take some notes and go from there. I have a few ideas/modules I want to play but otherwise I'll let the player characters drive the narrative. I was planning on making the first session very open ended, with plenty of hooks and see which ones they bite on and go from there. The great thing about the setting is the various mysteries that the group can uncover and without much knowledge of the setting the possibilities are pretty endless.