I am hath returneth, and with a wondrous new idea!
What’s New?
I’ve ended an urban intrigue campaign of thirty-three sessions, one set in a mythic city where the players uncovered an ancient secret and resolved it, thus setting the world on a purer path. It was pretty excellent.
The Next Campaign
In any case, I am mere days away from the pilot session for the new campaign. I’m excited because we’re going back to an old school style of play, a classic tale of adventurers in a mystic land, a sandbox fantasy campaign, and this time, I am running in GURPS, arguably the most detail-oriented TTRPG system, one that will create a solidly grounded feel as the players face the dangers of the the decrepit caverns beneath the earth and the untamed wilds above.
The Plan
I plan on documenting each session both in terms of the narrative and gameplay. I figure, what better way to give insight about how to run a good campaign than to run a good one myself - I’ll bring you into the mind palace so that you can see how I think as I plan and run the game. That is the goal of this series of articles.
Secondarily, it’ll be cool to have such an epic documented here. If it goes as well as I expect, that’ll be wondrous. If it doesn’t go so well, and perhaps better if it doesn’t go perfectly for the sake of this series, I’ll analyze my blunders so that they don’t become yours.
Hey!
If you are one of my players, do not read further as I’m going to spoil a ton!
The Goals for the Next Campaign
I don’t have a title for my campaign yet, but I’ve coined the acronym SAF, meaning standard adventure fantasy, which I think is apt for this style of play. And no, I don’t think that because it’s standard that means it’s boring. There is a reason that the adventurer’s tale is so classic, and that excellence I wish to tap into. Until I figure out a better name for the campaign, we’re gonna refer to it as the SAF Campaign.
I think that it’s important, before you start running a new campaign, to clarify to yourself what you want to accomplish. Obviously, you want to have a good time as do your players, but there are many varieties, many routes to accomplish that. Further, if you were attentive, you probably noticed several areas in your last campaign where you want to improve your DMing, and now you have an opportunity to do so.
Goal 1 - The Aesthetic Vision: I seek to tap into that feeling of wonder that comes from imagining a strange, fantastic world. Whether or not I will succeed at this has a lot to do with the design of the location and creature aesthetic in the game. Would you rather fight orcs on the open plains or on a rickety bridge over a vast chasm? Better yet, on that rickety bridge over a vast chasm, would you rather fight orcs or a giant heron forged of lunar energy?
Goal 2 - Invest the Players in the World: The wonder of the world can only be accessed by the players if it is the locus of the game for them. Further, the sole focus of everyone in the campaign should be on making decisions and taking action in the campaign, meaning during the sessions of the campaign. This is because the real meat of any TTRPG game, especially a sandbox like this one, comes when the players make choices in scenes where their characters have something to gain or lose. Therefore, we must structure character creation such that the players are unable to invest in anything prior to the start of the campaign, save for a minimal investment in the potential of each of their characters. To this end, backstories aren’t allowed, nor are extensive character concepts. All that is required is the bare minimum to have a mechanically-functional character, including a very basic motivation which each player chooses for their adventurer.
Now for an anecdote about why this method works, featuring Elden Ring and the souls series in general:
When you step out into Limgrave for the first time in Dark Souls 4 Elden Ring, you immediately see a gargantuan tree made of energy that extends into the clouds, a vast and foreboding castle on a cliff in the distance, and several temple ruins between. It’s majestic - and it immediately gets you interested. Your imagination posits all sorts of things about what could be in any of those locations, and that thrill incentivizes you to go somewhere and begin the exploration. Most people understand this concept, but it is actually only half the picture. The other half revolves around what you don’t begin with when playing a Souls game. Part of the reason that the Souls games get people invested so quickly and so deeply is that they give you very little that feels like it’s “yours” in the beginning. You get to make a character, and you get to choose a basic starting loadout, but beyond that, you are a weak adventurer in a weird and terrifying world. You don’t really know anything about anything, other than having a basic sense that you must go forward. You have no backstory, no parents who died to the dragon that you now must seek revenge on. In fact, you don’t even really know where you came from. In other words, you have nothing that could disrupt your focus on the world, and the world being the only thing you have to interact with, you do. These two dynamics facilitate investment.
I’m taking Angry GM’s advice on how to run character creation to the aforementioned end of removing distractions from the investment of the players in the game. Each player picks two basic character ideas. I secretly choose one, of their two, for each of them to play. I reveal my choice day of character creation. Thus, it is very difficult for any player to create an extensive character concept before the start of the campaign, since they do not for sure know which of their character ideas they’ll be playing until the day of character creation. Further, it establishes the understanding that the PCs aren’t merely the property of the players, but rather, beings in a world, and thus that world gets some say in what they are.
Lastly on this hefty goal, I must keep the game moving. This means summarizing the transitory happenings between more substantive encounters. Moreover, as the DM, you have absolute control over what the proverbial camera of the scenes of your game. You can decide what to focus on and when. Thus, it’s your job to focus the camera on situations where the players have substantive decision points - situations where the choices the players make can actually harm or help them. For example, an utterly awful thing that is super common is for the DM to say something like, “You enter the dungeon. A path leads ahead into the darkness. What do you do?” This, on a surface level, seems reasonable. But ask yourself, what substantive decision points do the players actually have? They could leave the dungeon which would stop the adventure - presumably they are in the dungeon to adventure, so this is not really an interesting option. Or they can move forward into the dungeon, the obvious option. So all the DM did by asking for the players to make a decision was basically, “Do you want the adventure to continue?” Yes! Don’t stop the game to ask dumb questions. Here’s an example of how to do it right, “You enter the dungeon, and as none of you have darkvision, one of you lights a torch. You continue down the foreboding halls until you hear the sound of bandits drinking and reveling. Creeping forward so as not to be noticed, you can make out four bandits, obviously drunk, armed with swords. A door lies on the other side of the room they’re in. They don’t see you. You can charge in or attempt communication.” BAM! You summarize the obvious stuff and put your players into a situation where they have substantive decision points. If the players talk to the bandits, maybe they can strike an accord, but if that fails, they lose the element of surprise. Conversely, charging in shuts down any hope of diplomacy but grants a combat advantage. These choices matter. Obviously, don’t offer the diplomatic route if it is known that bandits don’t negotiate, but in my campaigns, I like there to be the option for diplomacy between the PCs and their rivals or foes.
Goal 3 - The Gameplay Vision: I envision a sandbox campaign set in a fantasy world. This means that the players go where they want, depending on what sparks their interest. There are a few things that are necessary for this to work.
First and foremost, I must not present any quest that feels like a “main quest” such that the players feel like they have to drop everything else and urgently embark. I want all of the adventures in the game to be substantive, but no adventure hook should warp the entire campaign around itself - that is, not until the players decide that something is so worthwhile to them that they will warp the campaign around it. At that point, they will have forged their own main quest, and that will be awesome. It will also likely provide the means to wrap up the campaign satisfactorily with something larger in scale than everything else up to that point. If there is an obvious “main quest” that I present, then the campaign isn’t a sandbox campaign, and the goal is to run a sandbox campaign. Thus, this is a potential pitfall.
Secondly, the world needs to be awash with cool things: artifacts, dungeons, ruins, castles, statues, creatures, landmarks, secrets, etcetera. In other words, the world needs to be interesting enough and those interesting things need to be clear enough that the players feel like they can bite. Sandbox does not mean creating an empty world so that the players will fill it in - players will simply stagnate and not enjoy themselves, nor will you. Creating a sandbox campaign means creating several options for adventures which the players can then choose. Once they do, the campaign functions like any other campaign until that adventure is completed, and then the players pick the next thing they want to do.
I think that these three goals are enough for now. They are the core of how and what I want to do with this campaign.
The First Session
The first session is going to be different from the rest of the campaign because the players will not yet have a basis on which to make any decisions. They need to be introduced to the world before they can actualize their agency in it. Further, I have a new player who needs time to learn the mechanics of the game. To this end, in the first session, the players will be thrown into a dangerous situation that they must get out of, and it will involve a healthy dose of most of the mechanics they can expect to use in the rest of the campaign. Once they escape, the world will be opened to them. We want something simple, but we also want to frontload the cool stuff that the players can find in the world to wet their appetites.
So, here’s the plan!
The adventurers enter a new land called the Jade Plains, accompanied by a caravanner who is their ticket to this new civilization. I’ll ask the players to describe their character - in two sentences or less (which will be written before the session begins).
Here I could also ask the players to describe what they’ve done to pull their weight on the journey thus far - this is a pretty common thing to do. But I’m not going to, because not only does it not matter (we can assume they helped out along the journey), but it also provides no meaningful decision points. Regardless of what each player decides, there are no consequences to the decisions, and more than likely, the players would simply choose a very obvious and uninteresting option like “guard” or “cook food”, etcetera. They could decide to do something like killing the caravanner and taking his stuff, but that course of action would just disrupt the adventure, which involves this NPC. So, back to the adventure plan.
In my world, there are corporeal gods, gods that walk among men. I said I wanted to frontload some of the cool things about the world, so what better than to show what these gods can do. I decided that the caravanner is actually a corporeal god who has lost his powers - he did something bad and was stripped of his powers by a godly tribunal - but there is a location in the Jade Plains where he can regain them. The PCs don’t know this, but his goal is of course to regain his powers.
Anyway, one of the other corporeal gods decides to prevent the caravanner from entering the land. She shows up, gives one angry line about “bringing the exiled into the land of rebirth” and then hurls a man-sized moon forged of energy at the wagon. (Definitely gonna get some tease from my players for the blatant rip-off, but it’s okay because it’s a really cool aesthetic that I want in my game. Don’t be afraid to rip things off, so long as you don’t do it too blatantly too often.) As it hits, it creates a crater in the ground, the wagon explodes, and the PCs (as well as the caravanner) are sent tumbling down into the bowels of the earth. When they awaken, they will find themselves in an ancient mausoleum that happened to be beneath the wagon when it was destroyed. They are sealed off from the surface, wounded, and must find their way to safety.
This throws the PCs into the gameplay quickly, by throwing them into a dungeon, and restricts their movement early on so that they aren’t overwhelmed and can learn the mechanics in a well-sculpted “starting zone”.
After some dungeoneering and learning some more about their companion, they’ll leave the dungeon and immediately come to the the pool of rebirth. Here their companion must drink enough from the pool to re-ascend to godhood, and while doing so, he is vulnerable to attack. The PCs can choose to side with their companion and fight two minions of the opposing corporeal god, or they can choose to turn against him. In either case, they will gain the affinity of one of the corporeal gods and the disdain of another.
A few notes about design.
The PCs will choose to side with their companion or against him primarily by weighing the threat of the opposing corporeal god’s minions against the benefit of helping their companion re-ascend to godhood, influenced also by how much they like the NPC. Frankly, I’m not sure what will be prioritized, but I know enough not to worry too much about it - I figure that the PCs will want to protect their companion and they’ll at this point have some snazzy magic items to try out as well. One option leads to battle whereas the other does not, but that’s okay. Not all roads must lead to battle.
Secondly, you may question why the pool of rebirth is right there, immediately. There is an instinct to put the epic things later on in the campaign, owing to the belief that they must be earned and doled out slowly. Earned, yes. Doled out slowly, not unless it happens organically. I’ll talk more about this in a future article, but the brief is that you shouldn’t be afraid to frontload the cool things in your campaign. For one, there are infinite potential cool things so it’s not like you’re gonna run out. For two, it is extremely easy to bloat your campaign because you want to save the epic thing for later. Better to put your best ideas into your campaign as early as possible, not only because it makes the campaign more enjoyable, but also because it is likely that your best ideas in combination with the player’s actions will spawn more “best” ideas. This is a powerful way to create an an all-around cool campaign that sustains itself.
Conclusion
It’s time to finish prepping the first session and then run it! Next article, we’ll go over what happened, what worked and what didn’t, and any shenanigans that occurred. I’ll dive into each aspect and extrapolate beyond my campaign.
Lookin’ forward to a grand run!