I recently made a quick plan of a brand-new campaign. It is just a framework, all adventures etc. still need to be prepared. I made the campaign completely by myself in a world and setting made by myself (before). It took me about 40 minutes, I wrote the plan during a rather dull class at school. I don’t think it is the only and the best way to plan (and invent at the moment of planning) your campaigns. I also don’t say it is a technic made from A to Z by myself. However, I do not know where I could have found about it and if it was the exact way I used, so I like to believe it is mine.
Well, enough for the crappy introduction. Let’s take a closer look at the plan. What we need is a A4 sheet of paper (or two A5, or another size… any paper) and a pencil (or a pen, or anything else that writes). I divided the paper into four parts: NPC, Main Quest, Side Quests and Factions. It all looked more or less like that below:
The first part of planning and inventing a campaign(using this method) are NPCs. Basically, what we want to do is write down like 20+ NPCs. Just write who they are and one or two details for each of them. It is good if the list contains few characters from some prior campaign. There should be both allies and bad guys included. All the NPCs serve us as the base of the history. I took a look at them and thought about what they can do in the campaign and if there are any connections between them. Not all of the characters have to play an important role in the campaign. As we all know, adding characters that have no purpose in the plot mades the world more realistic.
Then, when we have the NPCs written down and we spent some time thinking about them, we should have some idea for a Main Quest (if we don’t - we need to spend more time on thinking… or maybe combain the NPCs’ characteristics with the world in which we play and so on) . So, we write down the quest, in simple points, as shown above.
Next, we can write down some Side Quests. Again we want notes to be as simple as possible. One sentence is enough, three are too much. The more side quests the better and the longer the campaign will be. I suggest about 15.
Lastly, we want the campaign to have some deeper, serious plot and the world to be more realistic. Here comes the factions section. What I did is I jot down factions’ names (like “Druids”, “Peasants”, “Shopkeepers”). It doesn’t matter what the factions are, it depends on the world in which we want to play. Than I put the arrows from one to another with a word “like” or “dislike” so I know how they relate to each other. Now, I have the framework of the campaign done.
What we have to keep in mind is that it still needs quite a lot of work. We need to write the adventures in more detail, work on NPCs a little bit etc. However, as I have the framework I have the general picture of the campaign, its events and heroes.
Do you like the method? What is your way to plan your campaigns?
This is a great technique for more character driven play too. You might appreciate The Well of Souls for a similar use of interacting NPCs and groups. You might also appreciate Bankeui’s Conflict Web post for similar ideas on a slightly tighter scale.
The sketch is very similar to relationship maps.
Conflict Web post link doesn’t work (not to mention the new domain to which the blog was moved).
I normally come up with my main plot first with just one or two major NPCs. THen I work or the other NPCs. I have never done hte faction chart before, is it helpful becuase this is the third or fourth time I have seen it
Michal,
For me, your methodology would create far too much detail. It also involves planning a campaign ahead of time, which, to me, makes little sense. All that fun is, for me, seeing how things turn out, so planning that before play is actively counterproductive.
A reliationship map with factions is a nice idea: I did one with NPCs and faction for the Burning Wheel game I GM’d. They are great tools for connecting the parts and making the PCs central to the action.
Joey: It is helpful for me. Except the obvious purpose, it also helps to organize your ideas in a way. Everything is clearly written down.
Tommi: There are many ways to GM RPG. Some people like to plan a campaign, some appreciate the freedom that playing without any specific framework gives. I usually try to combain both (general plan + rather loose adventures).