Drake by Santos Garijo

The posts have gotten a little quiet here at Roleplaying Pro, but behind the scenes things are really kicking up. I’ve been working on a new layout for the site that I have planned to have out in November for the one year anniversary of the site. But more importantly, our gaming group recently came to a finishing point in our D&D campaign. Our gamemaster needs a little break, so I’m going to jump back behind the gamemaster screen.

My group has had various issues over the last few years both on the player side and the gamemaster side. In this campaign, I’m looking on stamping out problems in specific players and providing the best game for our specific group. I firmly believe that no game is perfect for every group. You have to take the talents of your gamemaster and what your players bring (both pros and cons) and tailor a game specific to them.

GETTING BACK TO BASICS
In order to run the best game I can possibly run, I did a few things differently this time around when I started setting up for a campaign. I decided I wanted to get back to the basics of gamemastering and work on my skills from the ground up. I don’t want to focus on learning a new system of rules, or learning a new campaign setting. I wanted to go with something familiar so I could spend most of my time focusing on improving my basic gamemastering skills and working up to intermediate and expert gamemastering skills. Sometimes, when you’ve been doing something for a long time you forget the fact that sometimes you need to get back to the basics and learn the core skills of the craft you are training for.

HIRING A COACH
Sometimes if your group is having problems internally, or if the game has gotten stale, or you just need to change something, it is better to get someone from the outside to look in and make suggestions. Call them a coach, a mentor, a re-organizer, whatever. Bring someone in that knows, or can learn, your group’s strengths and weaknesses, what they like and dislike, and give you pointers on it. I believe it is best if this person is very skilled at gaming (preferably gamemastering), isn’t part of your group, and has the fortitude to give you straight answers on what is good and what is bad about your game. That way, they can give you the best possible advice on how to improve your game.

TAKING TIME TO PLAN
I used to get real jazzed about a campaign or adventure idea and I’d want to get it out as soon as possible. I’d call some players up, have them make characters, and either that night or next session we were on our way. Well, sometimes that worked out fine. But most of the time I’d realize shortly in that I hadn’t thought things out well enough or that idea wasn’t as cool as I thought. Now where do I go? It’s definitely possible to salvage campaigns, but it is also easier to not have to salvage a campaign with good planning in the beginning.

GETTING PLAYER BUY-IN
Although our last campaign was probably the best campaign our players have ever been in, it ended on a little bit of a sour note. A lot of us were burnt out, both on the gamemaster side and the player side. We were playing D&D 4E for a long time. But, with my idea of going back to basics I looked around and decided that another D&D 4E session would be the best for our group. Here was my reasoning:

- We’re all very familiar with D&D 4E rules, so we can focus on roleplaying instead of learning rules.
- The issues we had with D&D 4E were fresh in our minds, so we could address them and overcome them in this next campaign.
- My coach is very in-tune with the system and would be able to really help me with the campaign.

I got together with my players, threw out the ideas I had and told them what I wanted to accomplish, and they were all completely on board. They told me their likes and dislikes of the last campaign we played. They also told me their likes and dislikes of the last campaign I ran and what they felt I needed to improve upon as a gamemaster.

PUTTING IN THE WORK
One of the things my coach told me was that he continually refers back to the Dungeon’s Master Guide when running games. I really didn’t want to read though another book again, but I decided to follow his advice (being my coach, I figure that is what I’m supposed to do). I started to systematically go through the DMG section by section. The beginning started out a little dry, but then my coach pointed me to specific sections of the book he wanted me to read. As I reached those sections, I started to pick up valuable nuggets of advice. I definitely picked up a few tricks that I hadn’t been told of or read before; especially for the specific game and setting I am running.

In addition to this reading, we’ve been meeting up together several times per week developing the world, hooks for the characters, and the first few session adventures. He also is giving me tips on how to run that I am filing away in my little drawer of gamemaster knowledge.

CREATING A CAMPAIGN WIKI
There are a lot of campaign wiki software pieces out there. The most common that are used in my circles are Obsidian Portal and Epic Words. I’ve used both in the past, but I choose to go with Obsidian Portal for this particular campaign just because my players are familiar with it.

Creating a campaign wiki not only helps chronicle the campaign, but it really helps me keep my notes straight. Also, my coach is able to look through the campaign wiki and give suggestions to me on what direction I could take certain NPCs, player background hooks, or other plot points. And of course, it’s a nice reference for your players in a home-brew campaign.

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Overall, this may sound like a lot of work. Do you have to do this with every campaign? Absolutely not. I’m simply doing this because our last game was having issues and I want to work on resolving them. I also want to start building my gamemastering skills again and I know just going back to the same old thing and hoping it will get better isn’t the trick.

What do you do when you are preparing to create a new campaign?

Do you have any suggestions for me on preparing my next campaign?