This question came up on twitter today: “What do you wish you knew before Dungeon Mastering 4th edition?” It was asked by someone about to jump into the DM’s chair for the first time, and he wanted responses from a few of us on there that have been DMing now for a bit.
The question made me think, and it sort of made me realize that in the beginning I went about my campaign the wrong way. In fact, I went about it in such a wrong way that now I’m thinking it may have led to the collapse I’m sensing is about to happen at any minute to my game… Let me explain why…
When I began my campaign, I started with a story that went way beyond the scope of what a first level game/adventure should be. I tried to introduce concepts that in my mind were foreshadowing future events in the story, even though these weren’t locked down in my story just yet. The truth is that in the summer of 2008, I was more interested in where my story was going than in learning the rules of the game and crafting interesting adventures and encounters.
And that’s where the problem lies. You see, I believe that stories and adventures are two different animals. While in the context of a D&D campaign, neither can exist without the other, an adventure and a story are not the same thing. And in my opinion, the adventure deserves the extra attention and care, not the overarching story that facilitates the adventures.
Now this may seem like heresy to many people. I’m putting story second, and placing adventures and encounters first. Some may ask “aren’t they the same thing?” I argue that they are not. Look at WOTC’s Dungeon Delve book for example. While there are some duds there, some of the adventures are pretty cool encounters. They are definitely capable of providing a decent night of gaming with absolutely no story to propel them. There’s just enough flavor text at the top to justify why you are about to jump into those three encounters, and off you go.
While there are many players that crave an in depth role play experience, there are those that simply want to kill monsters and take their stuff. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think my players mostly fall into that category. Come to think of it, perhaps one or two of my players are overly concerned with storytelling, the rest just want to hang out and roll some dice while killing monsters. Fine. At the end of the day, I never had the “expectations” talk with my PC’s when our game first started, and I probably should have. (I wasn’t kidding when I named this blog “Newbie DM” when it began).
My answer to the question on twitter was the following: “I wish I wouldn’t have tried to be Tolkien. I concentrated too much on world building.” It’s this exact thing that is now biting me in the proverbial ass, and hurting my campaign. I am now forced to keep the storyline focused towards those things I planned and foreshadowed, while at the same time providing an entertaining game for my players. But what if the story is not entertaining? What if they are bored? More importantly, what if I am bored with it? The solution to these things would be to dissolve the campaign and start over, failing in my attempt to craft a story that takes my players all through to the end game of level 30. The other option would be to take the story in another direction, but the reality is that once you’ve painted yourself into a corner, it’s rather hard to come out of it without acknowledging that you are doing just that. There’s also my preferred choice: Forget epic story lines and do quick little stories and once shots. Yeah, I like that already.
So, after writing this weird article, I’m not sure what the moral of the story is. I do know one thing though, it seems I have some thinking to do in regard to my game.
www. Newbie DM .com 
Gandy
May 25, 2010
That’s a bad feeling for a DM. How are your players feeling about the campaign?
Mazetar
May 25, 2010
Hey mate!
I would acctually recommend that you take 10-15 minutes to chat with your players, ask them what they think of the campaign, why they think so? and also ask them for what is the best things so far in the campaign? and the worst? what do you want to experience more off in the rest of the campaign?
Talk with the players. usually they have a totaly different view on the whole stuff than you thougth 🙂
so ask them and see what replies you get, and if you ask before planing the next session you migth even be able to change a few plans to fit with your players ideas and hopes for the campaign? 🙂
Snarls-at-Fleas
May 25, 2010
Oh noes. You are my clone DM? I had a huge break in the campaign (2 campaigns) and my thoughts now are so closely resemble yours…
Besides I’ve found so much wonderful stuff I want (and cannot) incorporate into the game from the beginning, that I eas seriously thinking about finishing the campaigns at the end of the nearest tier and start anew.
@Mazeter Thanks for a solid piece of advice – I’ll use it.
Elderac
May 25, 2010
Definitely something worth thinking about. I generally have an idea of where I would like the campaign to go and let the characters find their way there. Sometimes they don’t, but the story they find is as interesting as the one I originally had.
Tim Jensen
May 25, 2010
Talk with your players. Be transparent and open to their suggestions.
Have the characters fall through a portal to another world. An unknown world full of possibilities might be just what you and your players need. Let your players’ suggestions guide your world design.
Josh
May 25, 2010
I agree with everyone above that you should talk with the players… what you might find is that one or two players are hooked on the story, but the rest are along for the ride like you expect.. and if that is the case, you might be able to keep the story going for those 1 or 2 players, and let the others being the supporting cast who are there, but who are not necessarily all tied to the outcome as tightly. Think of most of the D&D fiction you have read – not every character is the linchpin that can unravel the evil demon or diety’s plans, many of them are just friends and allies who decide to stay and fight despite given the option to leave and stay safe. Your party may be like that already and it may be way easier to foreshadow and finish a campaign arc bases on one or 2 players without worrying about how the other 2 or 3 or 4 are involved.
I think that all DMs get into DMing because they have grand ideas… there is nothign wrong with that.. but yes, the old saying “keep it simple stupid” is true again… too much detail or complicated story lines do tend to confuse players and make campaigns drag .. unless you really have a cast of story driven players.. but that is rare.
And finally, I don’t think you have to scrap your campaign, but you can always take a “pause” where you re-assess what the PCs are doing, where they want to go, and where the story is taking you… maybe have some time pass in the campaign and have the PCs get back together after 2 years or 5 years or 10 years and kick-off a new set of adventures…
anyway, best of luck! (and thanks again for sharing) – Josh
shimmertook
May 25, 2010
What I realized after running for the past 1.5 years of a campaign very much like yours newbieDM (as in, I built a large world, prophesies that must happen, even a vision for THE epic threat, when they started at level 8), was this:
There are two kinds of games: the sandbox, and the highway. Most people recognize the sandbox term; a game where the world is just there, but incomplete, waiting for the players and the DM to bring in a new structure, NPC, theme, etc whenever they choose, so the adventure feels fluid, continuous and like it was always there and happening. The sandbox is great for versatility, but can lack in drama. The highway is a term I keep using to describe how a DM lays out more of a plan, a world, and important moments, NPCs, themes, encounters, etc. I call it the highway because I envision the campaign like a cross country trip. You, as the DM, get the fun of building in the cities, the strange people along the way, the challenges one might face, etc…but the players are the ones who are, or still feel like they are driving that trip. They have a vague idea of where they are going (like, the west coast), and they have a good idea that there will be problems along the way (like, flat tires, sketchy ghost towns, man-eating vultures, etc). But those are the things that make being the DM fun in the highway scenario…that you can devise a “hitchhiker” or some famous noble to hijack the campaign for a level or two, and it can happen in Tampa Bay, Cheyenne, or New York City…you’ll figure those details out when the time is right. You can still do this with the sandbox style, but it could lack the dramatic buildup unless you’re a particularly shrewd DM. For instance, in a sandbox game, you’re rolling with the punches all the time. You didn’t expect the PCs to take that goblin hostage and ask him all those questions. That could throw off a highway style game…but in the sandbox game you could make that goblin into an important NPC down the line.
That’s the description of play style that I would clarify for someone starting a campaign today. Choose a direction and embrace it. They both have their flaws—but both have potential for a good time. There’s nothing wrong with world building early in your campaign, you just need to roll with the punches sometimes. The story will work itself out.
DrOct
May 25, 2010
I think I’m in a similar, though not quite identical situation to yours. My game is going reasonably well, but I’m wishing I’d been a bit slower to introduce the wider story. I’m actually pretty happy with the wider story I’m trying to tell as the game goes along, and I think my players are digging it too, but I wish I hadn’t thrown so much of it at them up front. My original plan was to set up some sort of reason for the players to go on lots of seemingly unrelated quests and to slowly start to notice connections between them, and start to realize that something bigger was going on in the world. The campaign would shift over time from these individual quests to a larger quest to save the world.
Unfortunately I got a bit carried away and threw a lot more of that bigger plot at the players at the start and so I haven’t really had as much chance to do the smaller quests that eventually tie together into a larger whole, and I feel a little locked into story elements I introduced early on that may or may not really work out as well as I had hoped.
I think it’s ok as it is, the players seem to be fairly interested in the story and I can certainly still do a lot of what I was planning but I feel like if I was going to do it over again I’d have been a bit slower to introduce the wider story elements.
James
May 25, 2010
Great article. I have been thinking a lot about this same thing lately. Fortunately the current game is coming to the end of heroic. I think I am going to follow your advice and leave paragon much more open and just find the best adventures and let them shape the story.
CJPost
May 25, 2010
4e is the first D and D exposure I have had. I have been playing off and on with @Timsmartini for the last 2 years.
As @timsmartini has been blogging about our campaign I’ve been thinking about some of the same things.
Balance is important. With no story there is no reason to fight. With a great story and cookie cutter encounters you lose interest in the story. When the balance of story and encounters is just right – you could write a novel of the experience after the fact and actually enjoy the drive behind the entire package. The encounters become zen with the story.
Swordgleam
May 25, 2010
How strong/specific was the foreshadowing? Reversals are always fun. Maybe “the goblins will bring a wave of darkness over the land” refers not to an invasion, but to a goblin accidentally unleashing an evil artifact, or to a politician who rose to prominence on goblin-hate introducing evil laws. Maybe “a great hero shall stand strong at the final battle” refers to someone other than the PCs – they’ll be halfway across the world stopping the /real/ villains while the ‘final battle’ is just an elaborate distraction. It might not be too late to shake things up.
I was panicking partway through my 4e game, since I’d only built the world immediately around the PCs’ village. But as I looked, I realized that I had enough to last them through paragon and even epic tier without venturing too far from where they’d started. They were sideplots that had developed more or less naturally. I won’t get to explore them since we’ve all graduated and scattered to the four winds, but it did make me realize that I don’t have to worry about that kind of thing ahead of time.
Colmarr
May 25, 2010
Another handy way of constructing epic stories is to layer them.
Have a heroic tier plot arc, with its own villain. Then have a paragon tier motif or theme (but not a plot arc), and some way to link the two. Then have an epic tier motif or theme, with a way to link it to both.
If you get to level 7 or 8 and everyone is still jazzed with the campaign, then that’s the signal for you to start considering dropping hints and clues as to what will be going on in later tiers.
For example, in a defunct (because I moved away) 3.5 campaign, levels 1 to 7 were strongly focused on a massive goblinoid invasion with sprinklings of fiendish cultists.
At level 8, the PCs were going to start encountering half-dragon goblinoids and learn that dragons were the masterminds behind the invasion.
At even later levels, the PCs would have learned that the tainted dragons were allied with the fiends in trying to raise one of their own to godhood, and that the goblinoid invasion was a ruse for their attempts to recover an artifact that they needed.
Each of those story segments could stand alone, and if the campaign petered out at any stage, I could have left the unused plots unmentioned. No need to seed level 1 with talk of a pact between dragons and fiends.
Michael
May 25, 2010
This is a very helpful post for me to have read right now, as I’m basically where you were in 2008. I’m DMing my first campaign, and we’re starting out with a published adventure (The Keep on the Shadowfell). It seems pretty clear that the players are really into it, and we’re going to eventually finish the adventure and move on to other things. Thus, I’ve been spending some time thinking about what’s next and how to link it to what’s going on now.
I’ve found myself wanting to think bigger and bigger. I started with some ideas for the next adventure and how the party might discover it (giving a couple of different options). Since I was inspired, I started thinking about a bigger picture beyond that… and that’s where I am right now. After reading your post, I think I’m better off stopping here. I know roughly what the next adventure is going to be like (with a couple of different directions it could go), and that’s probably enough for now. I might drop a few little foreshadowing hints here and there that point toward bigger things down the line, but I’ll try to keep them light and offhand rather than big and ominous – because the campaign might go in unanticipated directions!
fauxcrye
May 26, 2010
Creating a balance between game play and story can be a real challenge for any DM in any system. Fourth Edition gives you a lot of tools for story telling and building encounters of any type at your finger tips. One thing that fourth edition has taught me is I don’t need detailed maps of the world nor every NPC and plot device mapped out. And that adventures/encounters can be really fun to create and personalize.
Stories are awesome, but you shouldn’t lock yourself into a story so tightly you feel you need to start over to fix your campaign. And also don’t forget to have fun or add elements outside the story.
My current campaign is turning out a lot more better than I expected. I have been a DM from way back in the day. And skipped both 2nd and 3rd editions of the game and found myself picking up fourth edition cause that is what the shop had. And I have found it ideal for story driven campaigns. The system is so easy in flow that you can easily match players’ actions and spur of the moment brainstorms in a flash. I have had a grand time creating encounters that can be resolved through reason, combat, bluff, and a myriad of other ways. Plus the system works very well for my players. We all got back into gaming thanks to playing lots of board games so the tactical aspects of the combat works very well for us. They have all bought into the role playing with great eagerness and the game world is slowly unfolding for all us. I think for every hour we spend in a fight we spend 2-3 talking to NPC’s, exploring, or other RP activities.
I started with a small town on a backwards isle and an idea of what was out there. I didn’t layer it on very thickly and kept the details dim so it could build out in a graceful organic way. There were a few things I knew about the world that they still don’t know. And these facts will slowly be revealed in the 6th and 7th gaming sessions. But, also during the first 5 sessions they have learned a lot about the forces at play in this world through separate adventures. Not all the adventures were tied into the story at all. A couple were to give them hints of what the world used to be like, or to introduce aspects that lurk just out of their reach for flavor. They know they are up to their necks with a vague divine mission but not sure where it will go beyond a vague hint.
Meanwhile, a throw away boss in the first adventure has managed to survive through his own luck, player error, and cunning to become a figure they loath. I mean these guys really hate him. And now he has his own mysterious subplot taking shape. At times the players are more obsessed with finding him then the main storyline. And this has all been made up and slowly evolved as the sessions marched on. That is something you could never plan sitting at your writing desk on day zero of creating your campaign. Some things need to be allowed to grow on their own. And I think that is a good plan overall. Too much planning or plotting and you find yourself in a painted corner down the line.
One aspect of encounter building I have really gotten into is changing the expectations. Many see an encounter as a single fight. I see it as a series of events or locations. The players much leverage their resources through a space of time. You can create arcs of action that break the mold in terms of what they are expecting. But, one thing to remember is not all encounters need be tied directly to your main story. Subplots are wonderful things and it can be a fun shock to players that the quest they were pursuing is actually a red herring or aiding an enemy they didn’t even know existed. But, also don’t be afraid to have an encounter/adventure that is just cool and random at times. Some oddity found in the back hills while they trek to another plot point. Look at TV shows that have a long plot thread. Not every episode is about the plot. Some are about the characters and others are like the monster episodes of the X-Files. Something to sprinkle a bit of flavor and fun into the mix.
There was a couple things I decided to change after the fact. But, I did through the story itself. I recently realized that the home town the players came from really had too much going for it in terms of races they could use. As the campaign has developed I decided I wanted races to be tied to certain origin points in the game. Luckily the origin of the small village was pretty unique. And I had created a smaller village of outcasts on the other side that has become the player’s home base after they got banished from their true home in a much earlier session. Needing to correct the mistake of too many races living in that town. I am weaving a plot into the main one where the down is basically doomed and will lead to a big showdown for the players to destroy the evil that is slowly rising there, but it will be too late and the village they know will die in the process. And this was all done by tying together separate elements and events and adding some hints in the last session. So it is never too late to make drastic changes if you can look at your world and player events that have taken place and use that to make it seem like you had it planned all along. And yeah, it will all be the accidental villain’s fault. Now they will really hate that guy and the great thing is that the players made him up for the most part.
elopingcamel
May 28, 2010
This is very timely for me. I finally have a group that I believe can make a run at a LONG campaign, from level 1 to 30. After every session I write up nice big long recap posts on my blog and then spend time brainstorming what and where my PCs’ decisions will lead them. After the latest session I had about 6 strong ideas all come in to my head of locales their adventure can take them. I started to try and find a logical way to have them go to all of these places, but now I am realizing that what is better is to just back off, realize that we now have 6 great options for the PCs to choose from and whichever path they choose to go down will become the focus for a time.
Great advise from all who contributed to the comments. Thanks all.
David
May 29, 2010
One of the tools I use is a mindmap. Every conceivable idea I have no matter how absurd or illogical i’ll put in the mindmap and start branching off from there. That way regardless of the situation I may have a side quest or a bit of info to weave into the over arching storyline which oddly enough will be created by the players themselves. You may have initiated the campaign but players will certain make the world their own, if you let them, and then the stories will flow on their own. I try not to dictate too much of the story but give the player options and let them choose their fates. Of course some play sessions I take a page from television and have the episode that features a player like an episode of SG-1 where Tea’lc moves into an apartment off base, you can then also include the completely comedic episodes like episode 200 of SG-1, then follow in fringe foot steps and include only a tidbit of the over all storyline to whet their appetites. One very cool thing you can do if you can manage how the session is unfolding is end the session with a cliff hanger, this gets everyone looking forward to the next play session. “You open the door and see…..” Well lets stop play here. hehe.
anywho just relax and let whatever occurs happen you’ll find things will work out for themselves and you yourself will be entertained on where the players will take you!
-david
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http://www.d4d6d8d10d12d20.com – A Game Blog
Nightson
May 31, 2010
I wish I had known how to set up the party when I started DMing. Have players makes characters with ties in between them, discuss expectations before the game starts, build off PC motivations. When you make an arc, it’s a good idea to give an arc an early termination point in case things don’t turn out as interesting as you thought they would.
Kevrock
June 9, 2010
I could not agree more with this blog post. I fortunately, but completely inadvertently, did what NDM was explaining in this blog. My 4e group started with Keep on Shadowfell and had a horrible time due to another inexperienced DM running it. When I took over after that adventure, I wanted to make it as un-KoSF as possible. I started by just making what I thought were cool encounters with no rhyme or reason: a giant carrion crawler gets teleported into a crowded throne room; fighting a dracolich at the top of a tower while thousands of zombies slowly climb the spiral stairs; an artificer’s lair with one trap room after another; etc. Only after a couple months did I retcon all these into a cohesive storyline, and a couple months after that I managed to work all of it into a campaign setting (i.e., Eberron). By the end of the campaign, they were heroes for stopping a cross-continental, pan-dimensional conspiracy between Mind Flayers and the Quori to start another world war. I actually used the bizarre, disparate nature of the earlier encounters as an element of the campaign: the conspiracy involved placing false blame on as many varied evil dudes as possible to hide the true puppet masters.
hbunny
June 17, 2010
I’ve experienced something similar in my campaign. While my players seem to enjoy the backstory, it has lead to a couple of sessions with hours of straight roleplay. Two of the players liked this, one liked it only if it involved his character directly, and the others were bored out of their minds. I always intended for the campaign to be dungeon-delvy and sand-boxy, but I inserted some story elements in to help set the tone. Unfortunately, I let my story take over and it lead to bored players (with a few skipping out on subsequent sessions).
After playing on and off for a while and taking turns as both player and DM, I came to a few general guidelines:
– Follow the just-enough principle – just enough backstory to link together your encounters, just enough combat to keep the game moving, just enough downtime (shopping, what have you) to provide breaks from the action. I now try to have a minimum of two encounters planned per session and will be trying a timer to make sure no one type of gameplay goes on for more than an hour. I think one of the recent minicasts suggested doing your RP as part of an encounter, which is a fantastic idea.
– Don’t houserule unless you know what you’re doing. The 4e rules have been extensively playtested, and just about every rule is there for a reason and makes sense in the context of the other rules. We learned the hard way to stop using rules like batching monster initiative (it stacks damage too much without giving PCs a chance to react) and to stop creating custom monsters for everything (often making combat too hard and forcing me to fudge the dice). Unless we identify rule that is consistently problematic in multiple sessions, we won’t houserule it.
– Don’t mess with the world unless you know what you are doing. I wanted to make my world very points-of-light. But, the dark age became so dark that there is virtually no economy. So, magic items are relatively rare as is some every-day equipment like plate armor. This had the unfortunate side effect of removing all motivation for the PCs to acquire treasure. There’s no where to spend it.
– Front load your good ideas. You will have more. My early sessions were all trying to build to some big reveal/encounter. I kept running what I considered “linking” encounters trying to build up to my good ones – until I realized we’d been doing nothing but RP and linking encounters for several sessions. The players weren’t being given the opportunity to change the world and make real things happen. When I looked at my notebook and realized I had about 100 ideas for encounters that I was really excited about it made me wonder what I was waiting for. Now, I’ll use my current best/favorite ideas every session. If I ever run out, I can fall back on standard encounters. I’ll try to have a world-changing adventure every time. While I’ll keep my backstory in mind as we play, I’ll never plan out more than a few sessions (or rather, only plan out 3-5 places in the sandbox).
dovearrow
April 20, 2011
I don’t agree with your premise that encounters should come first, and story second. On the contrary, I think story needs to come first, and encounters second. That said, I think the way you tell a story in Dungeons & Dragons is very different than a story you read, or see play out in a movie. For example, you mentioned Tolkien. In the novel, Gollum is introduced very early on in the story, but he later plays a pivotal role in the destruction of the ring. That’s a fine plot device in a book, but a Dungeons & Dragons game is very different. You can’t count on Gollum surviving long enough to play that pivotal role. You have to take into account that the players might kill him, or leave him behind, or turn him over to the elves, or any number of things that prevent him from playing his role in the end game. You also have to ask yourself, what happens to the quest if he doesn’t make it to Mt. Doom. Can the players still destroy the ring, or are they automatically doomed to failure?
Roleplaying games are like the ultimate Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story. As you design your encounters, try to take some of the most plausible outcomes into account, and think about how those outcomes might affect the story later on.