We’ve talking about about pre-campaign prep and scheduling your game prep in previous instalments of this series, now it’s time to talk about the sort of things that you should be looking to have prepped for the start of your campaign. Continue reading “GM Tips: Preparing for a Campaign Part 3 – What sort of things should you prep at the start of a campaign?”
Tag: campaign management
GM Tips: Preparing for a Campaign Part 2 – Scheduling Prep
Scheduling your prep
I generally try to be organised when it comes to getting my prep done for a campaign, some people prefer a more seat-of-their-pants approach but I like to know what I have left to do and organise it into managable pieces, it helps me get the prep done and also helps relax me at the start of a game session. If I know that I have the necessary prep done I can go into a session confident that I am prepared and ready for whatever the players throw at me.
When I say ready for whatever the players throw at me, I don’t mean that I’ve scripted everything down to nth degree, that would make for a not very entertaining game, I mean that I have enough of my world and campaign prepared so that I feel comfortably able to create consistent details if my players do something unexpected. Continue reading “GM Tips: Preparing for a Campaign Part 2 – Scheduling Prep”
GM Tips: Preparing for a Campaign Part 1
A while back on a YouTube video I did about preparing for a Star Wars game Fábio Fontes requested some more advice on prepping for a more long-term campaign; I’ve been thinking for a while about how best to do this, and I think that doing it as a video probably isn’t the best way since the videos would end up being massive, so I’ve decided to write it in my blog instead. The topic is an extensive one, I’m not going to create an exhaustive treatise on it, but in the interests of avoiding a huge wall of text and of splitting my workload–I discuss this later in this series–I’m going to break the advice down into a series of blog posts. Continue reading “GM Tips: Preparing for a Campaign Part 1”
Storm & Sails: Reference Document
Okay, so I’ve started the planning for my forthcoming Storm & Sails campaign, I’m currently working on a gazetteer style Google Doc that will contain setting information and character creation for the campaign so that my players can peruse it. Although it is not complete the document can be viewed here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rKn4veeiiylh69GJUmuL8Q_516A6ZEpVj04CngiUto8/edit?usp=sharing
I’ll be updating the document over the next couple of weeks, once it’s complete I’ll be turning it over to my players to get some feedback before we start getting into the serious business of making characters.
Moving 3Brothers D&D 5E Campaign Notes
Previously my 3Brothers campaign notes have been stored using Obsidian Portal, by and large I’ve found it easier and user-friendly to create the campaign wiki, etc in OP, however due to Google Hangouts seemingly eating up all of my bandwidth when I’m running a game using it (as most of my TT games are run nowadays) using it during a session has been very problematic, which is unfortunate since that’s when I really need to check my notes.
So this weekend I’m transistioning my notes onto a Tiddlywiki that will be hosted on my dropbox account, since I will be able to use the dropbox version saved on locally on my machine and not have to rely on the scraps of bandwidth Hangouts leaves me.
At some point in the next couple of days I’ll be removing the campaign from Obsidian Portal, from that point on anyone wishing to see the campaign wiki can access it at this link (and previous OP links will become inactive):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/129688634/3Brothers%20TW/3Brothers%20TW.html
The Tiddlywiki is already active but not all of the information has been moved over yet.
3Brothers Obsidian Portal
After watching the second session of TheRogueDM’s excellent Clockwork Opera steampunk D&D 5E game I noticed that Jenny had set up an Obsidian Portal page for the game (you can see that by clicking here), I remember using this campaign management website years ago but had never really got into it, I took a look and was please to see that it looked like a possible solution for my note/plot management concerns for my 3Brothers Campaign so I rolled up my sleeves and dived in.
You can find my the 3Brothers Obsidian Portal page here: https://threebrothersdd5ecampaign.obsidianportal.com/
Skyless City Jadepunk Campaign Notes
Since my Skyless City Jadepunk campaign has now come to a close I wanted to make all of the notes I made and used within the campaign available to people to have a look at so you can see how I prepare a campaign and in-case there is anything of use for people in there.
A zip file containing all the notes can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByVpAo4rxDGuc3M2MGNKTWJHNEU/view?usp=sharing
Please note: During the game some of my notes were stored on dropbox and some (such as the newletters, etc) were stored on my Google Drive; now the game has finished I have zipped these files and put the zip file on Google Drive, previous links to my Jadepunk files will no longer function.
These notes are in the same state they were when the campaign finished, some were for plotlines never used or developed in a different way in play, but I hope you’ll still find them interesting.
[GM tools-RPG] Edittable old newspaper template
RPG Blog Carnival – December 2013: Taking Charge
“Taking Charge. This could be interpreted in any number of ways, such as (not limited to), outlining ways a group of characters can be more proactive in their affairs, a group of players choosing to improve their existing gaming habits (including the GM), players stepping up to make more effective use of their agency as co-conspirators an contributors to a campaign, and/or getting a good grip on a game that is out of control and going nowhere. It could entail fiction, examples of actual play, discussion of tools like social contracts or statements of purpose, and more. As the year comes to a close and people get retrospective (and wonder why there is so much left-over turkey still in the fridge despite days and days of sandwiches) a topic like ‘taking charge’ might take a tone of cleaning house, evaluating the current state of affairs in your own game, or your chosen niche zone within the hobby, or setting the stage for what will come next at your table, real or virtual. There are many places this topic can take writers and readers during the December Blog Carnival. “
- One of the players prefers heroic fantasy.
- One really enjoys a sense of place and recurring background NPCs that change and can be interacted with.
- One of the players generally prefers to play a mage or something magical.
- The other player is pretty flexible and will try most games.
- What sort of genre would people prefer to play in?
- My group, having been currently engaged in a dark science fiction setting wanted to try something a little different and after a bit of discussion decided that they wanted to play a fantasy setting, but not the normal faux-medieval fantasy that we were all so familiar with from a number of previous games.
- What rules system would people like to use?
- After a bit of a debate the players were quite keen to use the Dungeon World rules, having played a couple of one-offs we all really enjoyed those rules and wanted to keep to a fairly fast-paced, story-based system but, given that the current game is Fate based (and i’m already running an additional Fate game), wanted to try something different and Dungeon World seemed like a good match; it also encourages a group world creation and collaborative story-telling between players and GM, something that we have all been enjoying in recent games.
- A rougher, grittier, more survival based game.
- The PCs playing underdog heroes fighting against overwhelming odds.
- A semi-permanent base of operations/game area with a number of background NPCs.
- A Robin Hood-esque feel where the PCs are outlaws fighting for the right against an oppressive government.