There are times when we all have to make a fresh start. Creatively – and GMing is a creative aspect of the broader RPG hobby – a change of scene may be needed.

Enthusiasm may have waned.

The old campaign may have ended.

One or more key players may have dropped out and you want to make a new beginning with the core players who remain.

There are many different reasons why it may need to happen. They aren’t important right now.

This article is about the process, which is a bit more complicated to get right than people sometimes realize.

There are nine phases:

1. Inspiration
2. Baggage Dump
3. Reinvigoration
4. Development
5. Surroundings
6. Mindset
7. Skeleton
8. Enfleshing
9. Beginning

There is a limited capacity for some of these to move around within the sequence, but in general, those are the sequential steps that need to take place.

Back when I was younger and more foolish (about 30 minutes ago, as I write this) I thought that it might be possible to deal with everything that needs saying in one big article; but each of these needs an article in their own right (at the very least). This introduction is only going to hit the high points so that the reader has a coherent framework providing context into which detailed examinations of each phase can be slotted. This is just the starting point, a preface to what has turned into an 11-part series which, if all goes according to plan, will feature on Mondays all the way through to the end of March! Some parts will be bigger than others, but I’m deliberately giving myself time, and room, to roam and explore any byways and side-topics that come up.

The intention is for this series to be as systemless as possible – tricky when you’re talking game mechanics – but when necessary, I will prefer to retreat into D&D / Pathfinder mode as an example of the general principles. Except for those times when I diverge into some other game system because that seems more illustrative (or free from copyright headaches). But the general intent is for this to work for ANY campaign genre.

Because I don’t want to be forever writing synopses of past parts of the series, I’m going to employ the same methodology as I’m using for the “One Player Is Enough” series – which is to say, Table Of Contents at the start only, and very short introductions/recaps.

The content of some parts of the series is very clear to me, as you can judge from the detail in the ToC. Other parts require further thought and research, and will be further broken down into sub-topics and sub-sub-topics when I get there.

Anytime a new section or subsection is inserted (or, heaven forbid, one gets removed), I will come back and adjust this table of contents. Right now, it spells out my intentions; by the end of the series, it will index the actual content.

Table Of Contents:   Phase 0: New Horizons Introduction Preface: Reinventing The Wheel The Fumanor Example The Relevance Strange New Worlds New World, New Beginning The “Reality But Not As We Know It” campaign idea How much world do you really need? The Cosmological Headache Scale The Gameplay Axis The Detail Axis The Headache Scale Don’t Get Wedded To Procedure The Modular, Story-based Approach Defining the modules The Inputs: What does each “module” need? The Fundamental Need: Inspiration Work backwards to the top Work forwards from the beginning Enough Is Never Enough Room For Growth Assemble The Adventure Who Needs To Know What? The Fractal Microscope   Phase 1: Inspiration Finding Inspiration Concept Rules Mechanic Sequel Reaction External Philosophies Art & Music Lyrics & Poetry Genre Fiction Related-Genre Fiction Non-Genre Fiction Non-Fiction Fact (Anecdote/Transposition) Fact (Metaphor/Symbolic) Myth Domesticity/News Radio Older TV Newer TV Movies Intersections & Collisions Working with inspiration Don’t Be Derivative Inversion has been done before The Metaphor Looking Glass The Wrong Idea   Phase 2: Baggage Dump Why To Dump When To Dump How to Dump The System For Review Needs/Dump Analysis Processing Interpretation Broad Interpretation Verdict Fringes Clearing Your Head Avoiding The Red Line What to dump: categories of baggage 1. Old Assumptions Timeframe Old Rules 2. House Rules 3. Official Rules 4. Old Rulings 5. Old Interpretations 6. Old Background Old Background, existing campaign Nexus Points Conspiracies The X-files mistake The Key Person Old Background, new campaign Background Elements (sidebar) No Written Background? (sidebar) 7. Old Attitude 8. Old PCs Old PCs, New Campaign Old PCs, Revitalized Campaign 9. Old NPCs 10. Old Assumptions Redux What to keep – for now   Phase 3: Reinvigoration Unwind & Recharge Three Moods Three Surprises Three Things The Pcs Will Hate But The Players Will Love Three Things The Players Will Want To Do Preliminary Games Session Structure Rulebook Reference Skim   Phase 4: Development Basic Research Theme Development The Sets Of Threes Still More Ideas Reinterpret the list of discards Possible Alternatives Links to Theme Links to the sets of threes Reinterpret the list of undecided items Questions Answered Questions to be answered Research Rulebook Reference Reading Rules Conflicts Rules Extensions Other Reference Sources The Sea Of Ideas Organization Incorporate the Three Moods Incorporate the Three Surprises Incorporate the Three Things The Players Will Love To Hate Choose Three Nexii The Primary Plot Nexus The Secondary Plot Nexus The Tertiary Plot Nexus The PC Focus Incorporate The Three Things The Players Will Want To Do Character Arcs Compile, Cross-link, Cross-reference Compile Cross-link Cross-reference Tonal Similarity Tonal Contrast What you throw away The Campaign Plan Recompile Sequence & Sandbox Collate & Compact   Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment The Onion The Eleven Questions 1. Where? 2. When? 3. Who? 4. Distinctiveness 5. Neighbors 6. Authority 7. History & Geography 8. Society 9. Economy 10. Oddities? 11. Connections The Development Process What Has Been, What Is, and What Will Be Final Thoughts Some Final Food For Thought   Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings Philosophy & The Game A tale of two Buckleys The Deliberate ‘Why’ Central Philosophy – In Game Common Knowledge, Same As Official Game Content Not Common Knowledge, Same As Official Game Content Common Knowledge, Different to Official Game Content Not Common Common Knowledge, Different to Official Game Content Need-To-Know Central Philosophy – Players Central Philosophy – Behind Screen Central Philosophy – Secrets & Surprises Central Philosophy – Briefings The Attitude to Game Theme The Pigeonholes Archetypes Key Races Plot Pigeonholes The Philosophy Of Choice The Philosophies Of The Campaign   Phase 7: Skeleton A status check The Process The Scope Of Work What Goes Where Deviations From The Source Quotations From The Source Archetypes (Careers/Professions) Profession Vs Calling Connect Archetypes to Nexii Connect Archetypes to Themes Comparative Archetypes and Racial Exceptions Authority Structures Archetype Relations Internal External Professional Fees Professional Courtesies Key Figures Races/Societies The Rarity Sequence Population Index Relative Population Index Connect Races to Nexii Connect Races to Themes Physical Capacities Personality Profile Scope for individuality Social Stigmas Population Levels Geography Population Density Population Center(s) Natural Resources Enemies Strategic Position Vulnerabilities Most Recent Conflict(s) Allies Most Recent Alliance(s) Politics Government Authority Type Level of Authority Domestic Satisfaction Religious Authority Religious Tolerance Other Secondary Authorities Key Individuals Society Family Unit Domestic Life Economy The Arts Theology Religious Practices Education Recent History Race Relations Current Social Issues Hot Topics of Conversation Distilled Cultural Essence & other further reference Organizations & Relationships The Keys to The Ten Part Zero: Introduction/Grounding Beginning, Middle, and End Tone & Content PS: Ideas   Phase 8: Enfleshing Bone, Cartilage, and Flesh: A metaphor A Tale for each Archetype The PC Assumption Archetype Tales Archetype Tales 1: The Procedure Archetype Tales 2: Revising the Archetypes A Tale for each key Race A Tale for each Significant Adversary Adversary Tales 1: Introductions, Please Adversary Tales 2: The Initial Confrontation Adversary Tales 3: Adversarial Destinies Adversary Tales 4: Reaction to Setbacks Adversary Tales 5: Reaction to Failure Adversary Tales 6: Master Plans Adversary Tales 7: Flaws Adversary Tales 8: Flaw Impacts Adversary Tales 9: The Ultimate Objective Adversary Tales 10: A Preliminary Encounter? A Tale for each key NPC NPC Tales 1: Plot Relevance NPC Tales 2: Position & Place NPC Tales 3: Personality Important Opinions NPC Tales 4: Agenda NPC Tales 5: Introduction NPC Tales 6: The First Meeting NPC Tales 7: Reasons to care NPC Tales 8: Intended Evolution NPC Tales 9: Deserved Destiny A Tale for each key Location Location Tales 1: History Location Tales 2: Geography Location Tales 3: Language Location Tales 4: Society Location Tales 5: Most Noteworthy Features Location Tales 6: Other Claims To Fame Location Tales 7: Strangers Location Tales 8: Folklore Location Tales 9: Getting There Location Tales 10: Staying There Location Tales 11: Shopping There Location Tales 12: Visuals Location Tales 13: Uniqueness Location Tales 14: An opportunity for exploration? Location Tales 15: Name Connect Ideas to empty content boxes Final Decisions What to Keep/Dump Revisit Anything I’ve overlooked! The Initial Sandbox   Phase 9: Completion Campaign Structure Adventure Format House Rules PCs Structural Organization Internal Organization Expounding on the notes Cross-linking to House Rules Read-through, spell-check, edit, revise, polish Briefings & Backgrounds Exit Strategies Initial Adventure Infrastructure   Phase X: The Beginning No Plan Survives Contact with Reality: Revise. Again. (Just a little). Square Pegs In Round Holes Square Pegs In a lathe: Fixing The Problems IKEA, not LEGO: Campaign Prep The Difficult First Adventure: Creating Work Habits LEGO, not IKEA: Adventure Prep, times two or three First Draft: Preliminary thoughts and existing content Second Draft: Structural Completion Third Draft: Essentials Identification Actual Adventure Prep (Take 1) Fourth Draft: Other Narrative & Content The balance of time The End is the beginning: Start again. The Secrets To Success Enjoy The Fruits Of Your Labors

 
It’s going to be a wild, wild, ride…

Preface: Reinventing The Wheel

If your current campaign has lost some of its sparkle but is still working to some extent, consider applying the process described in this series to it, retroactively. You might just reinvigorate it.

This requires some alterations in Phase 2 – rather than a complete dump, you need to start with a stocktaking, deciding what is worth keeping. You should also find that the process proceeds rather more quickly because part of the work will already be done; but, be prepared for the possibility that it will take even longer than starting from scratch with a new campaign. This is because established campaign elements to be preserved each constrict and constrain your creative freedom.

The best attitude to take when setting out to reinvent the wheel is to actually think of the reinvigorated campaign as a sequel to what you are doing now. This mindset requires you to have material generated in the current “campaign” that will carry you through to “the grand unveiling” at the end of the reinvigoration process.

It may also be necessary to invest effort into a fourth plot nexus, the seeds of which you should begin to incorporate right away; the purpose of this fourth nexus, at a metagame level, is to justify sweeping transformations to the game environment. This can be a little tricky because until the completion of the penultimate step, you will have no fixed ideas as to what the changes should be.

For example, if you decide that Goblins need to be reinvented or reinterpreted head to toe, or that Orcish Society needs a radical transformation, or whatever, you will need some suitably massive in-game events to justify those changes. In some cases, these may be magical, in others they may be social or political.

The Fumanor Example

I wanted to reinvent the central Kingdom in Fumanor because it was growing too large and politically unwieldy to really work as a political entity. Population growth had outstripped the capacity for a single central point of authority, and as a result, on the larger estates, the nobility were ignoring that authority and doing whatever the heck they wanted – to the detriment of the authority, since what a lot of them wanted was to overthrow the current authority and replace it with themselves. In some cases, this was out of a sense of duty or obligation, because they thought they had the answer to the problems facing the Kingdom; in others the motives were rather less pure.

An Orcish invasion precipitated by an alliance with one of those rogue nobles as part of his play for the throne was just the ticket. As it played out, the Orcs were brought into the Kingdom and so were the Drow, while the Elves seceded; more than doubling the population. If the old system had been limping, it now faced imminent total collapse. However, physical barriers – some new, some old. (plus some political and theological ones) divided the Kingdom into three, where subordinate monarchs appointed by the central authority could rule in the name of the original Monarchy. This is very much a half-measure, a partial step in the process of growing from a Kingdom into an Empire.

In effect, these three semi-autonomous Kingdoms face, collectively, the problems of an Empire, including the attention of an older, larger, more powerful, and more established Imperial enemy. One way or another, the former Kingdom of Fumanor Will become an Empire; but whether that’s through it’s own internal political and social growth or through the conquest by one of several enemies, especially that aforementioned rival Empire, remains to be seen.

That’s the premise behind the two simultaneous campaigns that are ongoing in this campaign world – one looking at the internal pre-Imperial development within the old Kingdoms (from the perspective of the Church Establishment, half of which oppose the changes and half of which are more progressive; and the other dealing with a couple of the most significant external threats – the Golden Empire, the Elves (and their new Draconic allies), Drow in whom old habits die hard, and a population of Orcish new citizens, whose own society is not really up to the job of being part of a Kingdom, never mind an Empire, and who outnumber the rest of the population two to one or more – but who are cut off from the main Kingdom/nascent-Empire by the presence of those afore-mentioned Elves.

These are legitimate sequel campaigns, but they serve as illustration of how dramatic and sweeping the alterations in a refurbishing can be. The problems and plot threads of the pre-War Kingdom have either been transformed (usually exacerbated) by the new context or have been swept away, irrelevant in the face of bigger problems.

The Relevance

When creating the sequel campaign, I viewed everything that I wanted to keep from the old campaigns as a starting point, to be modified in response to the changed circumstances of the new Campaign(s) – they started out with the intent of being one, but were bifurcated for real-world reasons.

This avoided the worst of the problems of these established elements being “set in stone”, clearing the decks for a complete reappraisal as necessary.

There are times when the best thing to do is to reinvent the wheel!

Strange New Worlds

Back when this article was first being conceived, it was intended to be part of the January 2015 Blog Carnival. At the time, all I knew about the subject of the carnival was the working title, “New Beginnings”. While the article was growing into the 11-part monster that it has now become, the subject of the carnival changed to “New Year, New World.” That’s the sort of headache that you encounter now and then when you jump the gun.

It’s not akin to spending time doing speculative prep for a game session or campaign only for events to move in an entirely unexpected direction. A lot of GMs seem to throw away or archive such displaced prep-work, but a fair amount of the time, that’s not actually necessary; whatever you’ve done can be re-skinned, relocated, or adapted to suit the new circumstance.

So it was in this case. Having finished the series outline, and deciding how many parts it needed to be broken into to be a practical exercise in writing, I contemplated what I would write on the subject of creating a new world to be part of an existing campaign, and found that a lot of the material that would be involved overlapped with what was already planned for the article. Creating a new world is a cut-down mini-sized application of the same basic principles; some of the steps involved could be skipped, and others abbreviated, but the overall process was remarkably similar.

And that makes this month’s Blog Carnival discussion a great prelude to the main series to come. And that’s why this introduction is still offered as part of the January Blog Carnival being hosted by Nils at Enderra, and why this section has been included in this series.

New World, New Beginning

Every new world that you create for the PCs to explore – taking a fairly liberal interpretation of the term “World” – represents a new beginning within the established campaign. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new Plane Of Existence, or a new City or Realm within the same game world, or a whole new planet. It doesn’t matter whether it’s for D&D, for Pulp, or for a Sci-Fi campaign. The process, and opportunities, are the same.

The new world represents the opportunity to tweak your existing designs and principles, the chance to revise structural errors, even the chance to rewrite the past if that’s necessary. After all, if the world is to be different, you would expect things to work just a little differently there – at the very least.

The “Reality But Not As We Know It” campaign idea

To show just how far this principle can be pushed, I have devised the “Reality But Not As We Know It” campaign as a blend of Space Opera and Star Trek.

The PCs are the captain and crew of a science vessel akin to the Enterprise – Let’s call it the USS Schroedinger. Their normal mission is to explore and understand the universe, traveling from world to world and cosmic phenomenon to cosmic phenomenon, getting to know the natives, showing the flag in a strange and sometimes hostile universe.

For three years now, their 5-year mission has been going smoothly, a new location every week or two being examined, cataloged, analyzed, and stored. The ship’s course is a series of loops through space, hitting top speed whenever they are in known space and slowing down to smell the roses only when they push the boundaries. This looping course, like a slinky, explores a series of flat slices through the unknown before the ship loops back to Earth to report their findings, take on fresh crew, enjoy a little R&R, and replenish their supplies.

For the fifth time since their mission began, they are approaching just such a break in their mission, and eagerly looking forward to a little time off.

That’s all Player briefing. They have also been told what the game system is that they are to use to generate their characters – this can be any game system that is appropriate and that the GM knows well.

At first, as the crew approach the outer limits of the Solar System, everything appears routine as Adventure One gets underway. The GM gives the players a chance to introduce the PCs to each other, to interact with the ship (which badly needs maintenance), and do a little unimportant roleplay. This is officially known as “The Calm Before The Storm.”

In mid-communication, everything goes crazy. Earth stops responding, sensor readings make no sense, and the first thought should be that there has been an accident or calamity of some kind. The PCs are already approaching Earth as fast as they can safely go, though they can push the speed higher if they want to risk something breaking that they might need when they get there.

When they arrive, they discover that Humans have been reduced to a technologically barbaric society, that they are vastly outnumbered by all sorts of sentient non-human species that no-one has ever heard of before that also appear to be native to earth, that many of these species have strange powers, as do some humans. Several mountain ranges have been extensively hollowed out with tunnels, forests cover large swathes of the planet, huge winged beasts are spotted flying from place to place – the earth has been Pathfinder-ized! Or D&D-ized, if the GM prefers. Has the ship somehow broken through into a parallel world? (Answer: No – something has actually transformed the Earth and the natural laws of the planet.)

As soon as the PCs touch down/beam down, the GM gets out his PFRPG rulebooks or his D&D core books. Everything except the PCs and their ship operates according to the rules therein.

Exploring the strange new world that used to be home, they eventually make contact with someone who has records, hundreds of years old, which mark the beginning of history – no-one knew what the world was like before this date. A strange obelisk appeared amongst the people, who had no memory of it never having been there before (or of anything else prior to its discovery). The obelisk then rose up into the sky and flew off. This scholar has collected accounts from many different places of many different groups seeing the same thing, and has compiled their statements as to the direction of flight through the heavens of the obelisk.

Feeding this information into the ship’s computer, the PCs are able to extrapolate a course through space for the obelisk, and even data-mine their own records to reveal it approaching the earth from deep space, unnoticed by anyone at the time. Ordinary sensors don’t show it. The precise moment that its course intersected that of the Earth is when everything changed.

And so begins the quest, chasing the obelisk through space in search of a way to undo what it has done, and ever-so-slowly catching it. Each adventure on a new inhabited world, run using a different game system, and incorporating the setting and precepts of that game system. This week they are privateers fighting pirates on an almost-endless sea; next week, they are dealing with Vampires in a Gothic nightmare; the week after, it’s feudal Japan; after that, Lovecraftian Horrors; and so on.

Anytime the PCs attempt something while on-planet, the GM uses the base rules initially specified to evaluate the results, then interprets those results within the context of the game-system-of-the-week. None of the transformations extend beyond the inner solar system of the planet in question (out far enough to contain a Ringworld, for example). Only when the GM starts to run out of interesting game systems should the PCs finally catch up with the Obelisk and discover who or what is behind it, and why, and can attempt to establish a solution to their problems. It could all be a practical joke by Q, or a piece of scientific research by another from the Q continuum, or it might be some almost-Q-level power, or it might be that the obelisk has inadvertently traveled from its own reality into this one and keeps trying to recreate the world it’s expecting to find – each time getting it all completely wrong. There are lots of possible explanations for you to choose between.

Here’s the whole point: Each new world represents a new game system, showing that in ANY campaign, anything up to and including the rules can change when the PCs discover or enter a new world for the first time. There are no rules save those you permit, and reality bends to your will and whim, because you are the GM and the creator.

How much world do you really need? The Cosmological Headache Scale

Creating a world can be a lot of fun. It can also be a hellacious amount of work, depending on how rigorous you want the process to be. You can spend months creating and fleshing out a world, or you can just hit the high notes and produce a sketch of an environment and a population.

The more work that’s involved, the bigger the cosmological headache it creates. I’ve seen individual adventures that were along the lines of “Seven Worlds In Seven Days” – which doesn’t leave more than a few hours to create each one, at best. And I’ve seen multi-year campaigns in which the GM has spent years building up the physics, the politics, the economy, the politics, the populace, the laws, the religions, the societies, the tensions, and the histories. There aren’t too many games that hit any sort of intermediate scale, because world-creation has an exponentially-increasing degree of detail required.

Create too much, and it will never get used. Create too little, and you’re forced to get inventive on the spot.

I’ve tried to analyze what I think is the “right amount” below, in terms of how big a headache we’re talking about, but the results will be fuzzier than the theoretical values that result.

The Gameplay Axis

The vertical Axis is gameplay, in terms of the number of hours of play that you expect the PCs to be on this particular world. Clearly, the more time the players are going to spend playing there, the more effort you should invest. It’s divided into five regions: 1 session or less, 3 game sessions or less, 6 months or less, less than 2 years, and 2 or more years.

The Detail Axis

The horizontal axis is how much detail you need to go into, in terms of how much time to spend in intensive prep. It is also divided into 5 zones. At the far left we have 5-10 minutes, then 10 minutes to an hour, then 3-6 hrs, 10-15 hrs, and finally, 30+ hrs.

The Headache Scale

The headache scale is color-coded into zones. White indicates a The first zone indicates a broad summary without looking at any topic in detail. The Yellow Zone indicates that you will want to consider each of the major subjects listed previously (which are by no means definitive, there can be more), but won’t want to spend more than a couple of minutes (2-5, max) on any one of them. The Green Zone indicates that you will want to spend a little time – 5-10 minutes – in at least thinking about each of the subjects involved in defining a world. The Blue Zone indicates the need to spend at least an hour on each subject, while the Purple Zone indicates the need to spend at least a six-hour day on each subject. Finally, Red indicates that for some of the subjects, you might need to spend multiple six-days.

How this time is broken up is up to you. If the indicator is 6 hours per subject, that might be an hour a day for a week, or an hour a week for 6 weeks, or whatever you can accommodate.

The Cosmological Headaches

It might look simple, but there’s actually a lot of information buried in this chart. The hatching indicates the areas of greatest probability. The closer to the top-right corner, the greater the number of headaches you are going to get from the creation process, as detail “X” clashes with detail “Y”, as idea “A” doesn’t pan out and has to be scrapped, and as you need an idea to fill slot “B” in your creation – and your mind is inconveniently blank.

The further to the right you are, the more prep time is your enemy. The closer to the top, creativity is the more important requirement.

But the more creative you are, the more time you need to explore your ideas; and the more detail that you need, the more interesting the product had better be, or what’s the point? These two problems – prep time and creativity – are each other’s complications, and each tend to push the creator – that’s you – one step further toward the top right than you would like to be for each step removed from the white and yellow “safe zones”. A shortage of Prep Time requires a couple of good ideas, but those ideas demand an investment in additional prep time to explore – so before you know it, green zone has been pushed into blue territory, and blue has been pushed into purple or even the fringes of red, and red has gone off the charts.

When creating Earth-Halo, the adventure setting for an intended 5 years of play (that turned out to be 12 years), I spent 6 months developing the setting, spending at least 6 hours every day, 5 days a week on the task, usually more. Call it a minimum of 780 hours, but I think the thousand probably comes closer. The campaign background – with no game setting information at all – was over 100 pages in length.

When creating the current game setting for the Zenith-3 campaign, I spent 5 years working a couple of hours a week, plus an intensive 12 week period of 4 hours a day, 5 days a week at the end – Again, about 760 hours. After 3 years of play, we’re about 1/6th of the way through the campaign. Events speed up as it progresses, but the individual adventures will get longer. If it (and I) last that long, it should wrap sometime between 2020 and 2025.

In terms of return on time invested, these are good numbers. 12 years at 6 hrs each session, 13 times a year, is 936 hours of play, close enough to 1:1 in terms of development. 16 years (or so) at 5 hrs each session, 13 times a year, is 1040 hrs of play – a ratio of about 44 minutes of prep to every hour of game play.

Many groups play more frequently, or for longer – so let’s assume a weekly game of 8 hrs play each week. Those two campaigns would have lasted for about 2 1/4 years and will last for about 2.5 years, respectively.

Don’t Get Wedded To Procedure

I would estimate that getting locked into a single approach adds as much as a third to prep time, over and above anything that you might save because you know the procedure. Sometimes, it’s more efficient not to start with the physical environment and then do the societies and then the politics and so on, and then work on the adventures that are possible in the geopolitical environment that you’ve created. There are definitely times when it’s better to put the cart before the horse, working out what the adventures are going to be and then positioning the necessary world elements around them. If the adventures that you create have a logical flow, so will the ingredients that you have to emplace upon the world.

The basic premise of sandboxing is not to develop more than you need in the near future. That’s the sort of principle that I mean when I say “a procedure”. Others live by the slightly more old-school approach of creating the world (at least in general) and then applying sandboxing as necessary to flesh out what you need. This has the advantage of providing context to everything that you sandbox, and at least gives a foundation if the PCs zig when you expected them to Zag.

Other GMs have been known to insist on the really old-school approach of creating the entire game world in all its’ details before a PC sets one foot on the place, or using storytelling methods and political-history-simulations to get the players to do a lot of the world-generation for you.

These all have their place, occasions when they are the best answer. But there’s at least one other approach, not as well known, that can be more useful than any of these: the Modular, Story-based approach.

The Modular, Story-based Approach

A module – in this context – is a black box of plot. Put a series of them together in a (reasonably) straight line and you get a plot. Put several plots together in such a way that they can interact with each other, and you will soon have a campaign. Or, in this case, a place for a campaign to happen.

You don’t know the shape of the Module, or it’s color, or anything in particular about it, except as follows: Modules are defined in terms of inputs, or initial conditions, and outputs, i.e. changes made to those initial conditions. A sufficiently-comprehensive set of modules would predict the future history of the game world, blow for blow, if it weren’t for the wild factor – usually found in the form of a pesky set of PCs who won’t follow the-rest-of-the-world’s script.

A Module can also be considered to be an organic plot element that can work it’s magic anywhere within the net plotline, and may even function repeatedly in the overall plotline.

Defining the modules

Creating synopses for a couple of plotlines and breaking them into required Modules is the quickest way to begin defining the modules. Once defined, each module is in existence for every plot event subsequent to their origins, and may also come into existence as a reaction to a set of circumstances.

For example, let’s look at a D&D/Pathfinder module set:

1. Conflict over an inheritance. 3 prospective heirs, one wants the wealth, one wants the power, one wants the prestige & social rank.
2. A Dark Assassin is on the loose.
3. A magical sphere is sought by the servant of Dark Power.
4. Human guard posts to enforce a no-man’s-land between Elves, Orcs, & Dwarves who would all be at war with their neighbors otherwise.
5. An evil, ambitious, man is promoted to a position of authority.
6. An arcane treasure was stolen from the Dwarves long ago. They will take insane risks to get it back, but don’t know where to look.
7. Drow seek to fulfill a prophecy.
8. A Mage is “evolving” Kobolds into something far more dangerous.
9. Something is killing all the Druids.
10. The Black Citadel, long thought destroyed, has reappeared. Has its’ master also survived to threaten all that lives with his tainted magics?

There are lots of ways to connect these 10 plot elements together to form a coherent view of the current situation. For example, 5 might be in the service of the master of 10, who is also the Dark Power mentioned in 3; 5 may have hired 2, killing the present officeholder of a position that he covets (5 again); this has produced 1, which has stripped the guards of 3. One of the three heirs (1 again) has sought alliance with a Kingdom who are not as adept at security as thought, telling the Dwarves about 3, which is the same thing as 6. But ambition is not the only reason for 5, because 3 and 6 are also 2, and the artifact is also central to 7. This produces a three-way race for the artifact, each fronted by one of the heirs (3). As for 9, this might be the result of 10, or it may be an act of the Master of 10, or it might be a side-effect of 3 itself. 8 might be a desperate attempt by a learned man to produce warriors capable of opposing 7, on the basis that the long-term gains outweigh the short-term pain that they may inflict. 4 doesn’t link directly to any of them, but serves as an obstacle to several of them that will need to be overcome or corrupted.

This linkage – the initial situation – describes both the the primary inputs and the various factions with a direct interest in the plotline, i.e. the modules. What actions will each faction make in order to achieve their goals – i.e., what are the outputs? What are their plans? Will any of those actions be anticipated by other factions, and if so what will they be doing about them? What will each faction do when they learn of the actions of the other factions in advancing their agenda? Action and reaction ripple through the situation until there is a hellacious confrontation to resolve the plotline, or one emerges the winner.

Further questions add to the stockpile of factions and interested parties who are only involved indirectly. Is the initial situation the result of any prior actions that should be revealed in-game? Who’s missing from this lineup? (Elves are an obvious one).

Put two or more of these plotlines together and you have yourself a campaign (some of the Modules can overlap – just because it was incorporated into plot #1 doesn’t mean that it isn’t there for plots #2, 3 or 4) . One alone is a major adventure – one that mandates, and begins providing specifications for a new world to function as the stage for game events.

It’s worth noting that these “modules” have been defined only in terms of their involvement in the plot. Each of them will need a lot more definition before anything is ready to run.

Secondary Inputs: What does each “module” need?

The process of so defining the Modules is started by considering what resources each Module requires to be available. Taking just one as an example, #7 states “Drow seek to fulfill a prophecy”. For that, we need a Drow Society, and a prophecy, and someone to make the prophecy. Each of these “secondary inputs” are what is needed to create, or emplace in a position to function, one of the primary Modules.

More ideas will occur to you as you populate the world with Modules. By all means, include them – these are tertiary inputs, that can be discarded if they don’t work out.

Nothing not explicitly mentioned is set in stone.

To illustrate both the preceding points, while writing the above paragraphs, I thought of the following: “Drow Society requires Lolth. What if Lolth, as the rest of the game universe understands her, is a Myth? Lolth was a pretender/zealot who was killed long ago and replaced by a succession of Dopplegangers. The primary influence over Drow Society has been a succession of measures to make the Drow too afraid to get close enough to discover this secret.” This puts an entirely new spin on established Drow society, while not changing that society very much.

While mentioning Elves as an obvious omission – and they are clearly something else that is required for a Drow Society to exist – I also thought, “What if the prophecy was Draconic in origin, and the real difference between colored and metallic Dragons is a philosophic one on how to deal with the threat posed by the prophecy?” I didn’t mention this at the time, because it wasn’t relevant to the point being made – but I made careful note to mention it now, when it is relevant.

Another example of the point in bold is this: While it might be assumed that the heirs were human, and so is the “evil, ambitious man” – and I freely admit that was what I was thinking at the time – it doesn’t have to be so. Maybe they were Orcs, or maybe they were Bugbears, or Halflings.

The Fundamental Need: Inspiration

All these primary Modules were created by free association around the idea of three different factions competing for the same prize for completely different reasons, an idea inherent in the first module. They all orbit that central premise, directly or indirectly.

And that’s the key principle behind this modular approach. Any of the modules can be ripped out and replaced with something else, always in the service of the overall plotline concept.

Instead of human guard posts, perhaps Storm Giants are the ultimate rulers of the world, maintaining the peace whether lesser races like it or not. Perhaps, instead of Druids dying, its Mages, or Paladins.

Perhaps your plot is more linear than the above example: A does B, which brings it into conflict with C. A defeats C, creating an opportunity for D to do E. F, alarmed over E, attempts to undo B. To defeat F, A allies with G. The alliance defeats F, but in the process, A is forced to tolerate actions by G that would normally be anathema, dividing A into two factions: A and H.

The same principles apply. These, too, are Modules; they are just arranged in a string instead of a tapestry.

The Game World exists purely as a stage for the (potential) story. Anything more is a bonus.

And that’s the premise of this system of world creation – that you come up with a single, central idea or two, flesh them out a little, then build the world around them.

Work backwards to the top

So the starting point is always an idea, and you need to backtrack into history to provide everything that the idea needs to come into existence. If the idea is a war over water, you might need an arid environment, and a reason why it’s so arid, and what it used to be like, and at least two societies to go to war (or perhaps two factions within the one society, giving a civil war. If the idea is the mining of a superconductor, you need a planet or moon at cryogenic temperatures, you need a mining industry to do the mining, you will need some unique technologies to make the mining possible, you need a society that has need of superconductors and knows what to do with them, and so on. And, since these are secondary module elements, you need to know where they came from, as well.

All this will eventually go into your adventure or campaign background. The objective in this stage is to ensure that all the seeds of the plotline are planted in that background; you need to go backwards until everything that is to occur in the course of the adventure has its antecedents mapped out, because those antecedents shape the character, needs, and resources of the “module” that is the cause of the role the module is playing in the adventure.

If the idea was of a world that has unexpectedly become very wealthy overnight, and the plotline is all about how they are using (or misusing) that wealth, and the attempts of various groups to separate them from it, you need to know where the wealth came from, and how it was discovered, and what the society in question has to do in order to extract it.

More than one Star Trek adventure (especially in the Novels) is based around the idea of a World discovering that it has a resource that somebody wants, but that has to do something morally undesirable by the standards of those who want it in order to extract the resource. Dilithium that is mined by slave labor. Rare alloys that can only be refined using extremely toxic pollutants. A rare stellar phenomenon that carries the promise of a new generation of Warp Drive once understood, but the monitoring of which requires tolerance of barbaric religious practices on the part of the locals.

In all such cases, the briefing that the players receive when the adventure or campaign begins will be shallow and completely implausible if it does not cast its roots back to what was there before to produce the current situation.

Work forwards from the beginning

All these precursors are also “Modules”, as explained earlier. Their “output” is the situation at the start of play. Some may have been terminated as a result of the action, or as a result of some other module’s effect on that initial situation; others persist.

It follows that once you have gone back in time far enough, you have to reverse course and go forwards, because the modules don’t exist in isolation; they have to take into account all the circumstances and events that take place from the point of their origins forward. Just because you need Klingons, or The Shadows, or a Dark Lord Of The Sith at point X in order to complicate situation Y does not mean that they are ignoring everything else that happens. If there’s an opportunity, they will attempt to seize it. If there’s the possibility of an opportunity, they will investigate it. If there is a threat, they will attack it, or undermine it, or seek to isolate it (usually in that order of preference). And since you never know today what it will be useful to know tomorrow, if there is a mystery, they will study it.

Some of these actions may well change the nature of the Module from the expected and desired to something else. There are several possible solutions to this problem: One, you can rip out the module in question and replace it with something that won’t be changed; two, you can modify the original module so that the change that occurs transforms it from something that wouldn’t fulfill the role you desire into something that will; or three, you can block or interfere with the module in question’s ability to perform the logical action by inserting another module with that express purpose.

All three solutions then require a return to the beginning of this step to keep your plausibility intact. You might not have to do much work to get back to this point, but you need to verify that every connection that you made thus far is unaffected by the solution, and – if you have added a new Module to the plot – have to backtrack and plot-fill around it as well.

Enough Is Never Enough

There will come a point at which you feel that you have done enough, that the world is ready to receive the PCs. The initial situation is defined, it is justified and explained, the intersections of all the actions represented by the modules have been mapped out and the plot has an overall shape in terms of how it will proceed without PC intervention. You know the script, and you know the cast.

Without fail, whenever I have thought that, I have been tripped up by someone asking the simplest of questions – about something I hadn’t thought of. If you tell your players that the sun rises in the morning because the planet rotates, they will want to know how fast, or what makes it rotate.

I’ve learned the hard way that it’s better to have at least a vague idea of what came before whatever I think I need than not to. It doesn’t have to be as developed or fleshed out as the earliest material you definitely need, but some notion is infinitely better than none.

So, as soon as you think you’ve done enough, at least think for a minute or two about what created the situation previous to that point.

It works the other way, too – you might be intending to sandbox your players and only develop those parts of the world in more detail that become necessary, but it’s a lot easier to do that development if you aren’t completely in the dark.

Room For Growth

Another key principle is to leave a little room for growth. None of the ideas that you have set in iron are permanently welded in place until they actually appear before the PCs, and sometimes (given the realities of rumor, propaganda, ignorance, and misinformation) not even then. Know what really is “locked in” and what can be changed or amplified if a new idea presents itself.

In addition, most of the emphasis so far has been rather coldly logical – A does B because C has created the opportunity for D – and few societies are that rational. There are prejudices, and blind spots, and myths, and ideologies, and philosophies, and emotions, and overreactions, and plain old ordinary mistakes – all on top of rumor, propaganda, ignorance, and misinformation. It’s all well and good to forecast that A will do B and this is how C will react – but when the time comes, that reaction may not be exactly what you expected, especially with PCs sticking their 2 cents worth here and there. It’s like trying to predict the exact shape of the branches when you plant a seed – you’ll be lucky if you even get the count somewhere in the ballpark.

Leave room for your plotline to grow and evolve. One solution is, for every critical plot step, to have a secondary agency who will act if the group that you were expecting to act can’t or won’t, when the time comes.

Assemble The Adventure

Nothing that you’ve created so far is from the PC’s perspective – not even the “adventure”. All you have is a list of ingredients. From those ingredients, it’s time to assemble the adventure.

What does the current situation appear to be? How are the PCs going to get involved, initially? What’s the first thread of this tangled narrative that you are going to let them pull on? Are they being manipulated or deceived? Are they doing someone’s dirty work?

If I were planning to run the example offered earlier, I might start by thinking: the Assassin knows too much. The evil, ambitious man will want to get rid of him. He can’t spare the time to do it personally, and he’s far too high-profile as a result of his elevation to do it secretly anyway. And if he doesn’t investigate the assassination of his predecessor, it will look suspicious. So send the PCs to capture or kill the Assassin, and arrange some circumstances that ensure they can’t afford to let him live, or even to bargain for his life. The assassin is disguised as a guard at one of the border keeps. From there, maybe the PCs will make contact with Elves, or Dwarves, or one of the siblings. Let the plot unfold as it will, once the first stone has been thrown.

Who does the assassin think hired him, anyway? Might not the ambitious man have posed as an agent for one of the fractious siblings? That would kill several birds with one stone.

Who Needs To Know What?

The final step is to ensure that the players get whatever briefing materials they need before they need them, or at the time they need them, or – if it’s desirable and plausible – that they won’t find out about a situation until it’s too late for them to interfere.

I never like plots which rely on the PCs figuring something out in time. They are often dull to roleplay and even anticlimactic, especially if it comes down to a die roll that the GM can’t afford a player to fail.

If necessary, prepare a trail of breadcrumbs that lead the PCs from adventure to adventure without them figuring anything out – at least until you get to the climax. Better yet, since you know what is supposed to happen if the PCs don’t intervene, let it happen – right up until the final point at which it is possible to prevent it. Give the players time, and let them figure things out for themselves.

Another useful technique is to have a series of standby plot elements that will force the Module that is supposed to act next into a delay to give the players more time. But there’s only so far you can go with that line of thinking, so it’s not a total solution to the problem.

Every little bit helps.

And finally, be prepared if necessary to scrap your entire plotline from whatever point it has reached and build a new one, salvaging whatever you can. The goal is not to demonstrate your brilliance as a planner or writer, it’s to entertain everyone. Do whatever you have to do to achieve that.

The Fractal Microscope

When you zoom in on a fractal image, you find exactly the same details being repeated. So it is with this series and the preceding discussion of new worlds: the process of creating a campaign is exactly the same as the process of creating a new world, it’s just bigger. However, the smaller we zoom, the less consequential to the bigger picture any detail becomes; we can throw away mountains of detail, compromising the integrity of the true image, to create a compromise that appears indistinguishable from the original. The top image above is not a true fractal image – not any more. It’s been saved in a lossy format and compressed, throwing away detail that will never be missed – unless you zoom in and look for it – as has been done in the lower image.

This prelude is nothing more than a fuzzy, small-scale zoom into the content of this series. Of necessity, a lot of explanation, a lot of procedure, a wealth of detail have been left out in order to arrive at something manageable within the scope of a single article. The real story, and the real adventure into creativity, is still to come.

That’s just the start of what’s going to be a very big series here at Campaign Mastery – 12 parts, according to current plans. Having thought about it for some time, I’ve decided that every few weeks I’ll take a break before resuming the series, just to inject a little variety into the schedule. But, until the first such break, I’ll be forging onward. The next part will focus on Inspiration, the first phase of the process.