#<- was her line of thought but somewhere down in the underdark lolth is like girl are you fucking stupid

[swordmaid]

act 1 shri’iia/astarion dynamic where she just walks away every time he tries to hit on her makes me cackle. love pressing the leave option anytime it’s available with her bc I imagine the moment she senses someone is abt to beg for her help (for free????) or someone is gonna clown on her she just straight up leaves 😭😭

[dmsden]

How Much Prep? - Tips on campaign and encounter prep

Hullo, Gentle Readers. This week's Question from a Denizen comes from my good friend Rourkie, a veteran player of my games and DM in their own right. They ask, “Any hot tips or tricks for long-term campaign planning? There's a couple of games I'd like to run in the future but I'm absolutely rubbish at planning and pacing my adventure out ahead of time, even if I know it'll be better for being pre-planned. Lol”

Campaign prep for me is a delicate balancing act. If you prep too much, you risk your players taking things in a direction you didn't plan for, and you end up having to shelve a lot of work that you've done. If you prep too little, then you run the risk of running out of things to throw at your players during a game session. It's a challenge.

I'll start by saying that, while I don't recommend it to everyone, having a solid idea of the world I'm running the game in works well for me. I started working on the world of the Shattered Pact as soon as 4th edition D&D was announced, and I didn't start running my game for several years after 4e had been released. That gave me lots of time to create a setting I liked...one that felt to me like an old-school setting, but also one that had room for all the things I was hearing about 4e. With a solid world like that, I'm never concerned about running out of things for my players to do. I can always pull something out of my lore or the culture of the area, even if it's just to delay the PCs for the rest of the session so that I can plan for the next one.

Quite often, when I start a campaign, I have a strong opening set piece I want to run, a strong idea of how I want the campaign to conclude, and a number of ideas for things that would be fun to explore during the campaign. I then leave a lot up to player agency. For example, when I started my Swords of the Amanar campaign, I had the idea for a giant showdown at the end in a dreamworld ruled by an Elder Brain Lich. I also had an image of the players being essentially deserted by their mentors in the same town, and then a kobold attack with a mysterious force behind it that would present a mystery. Exploring that mystery would eventually lead to discovering the existence of the Elder Brain Lich, but I had a wide swath of empty space. I dangled various plot threads in front of the players, and I followed the ones they seemed interested in. If they hadn't shown any interest in the mystery behind the kobold attack, I would've put that aside for a time, and, eventually, would've dangled something else related to the Underdark, the Mind Flayers, and the Lich that was ruling them. Ultimately, if they'd shown no interest in that plot at all, I might've developed something else, but, fortunately for me, they were keen to find out why the town had been attacked, and things proceeded from there.

I find it's very helpful to check in with the players, as opposed to their characters, and see if there's any kind of plot lines they're particularly interested in. For example, in my current campaign, a number of people mentioned being interested in exploring a War storyline, so a war against the orcs popped up a number of times as a strong plot element. The PCs even spent some time as voluntary soldiers in that war, and then returned, years of game time later, to assist in its conclusion.

I also like to ask players if there are monsters they'd like to see in the campaign, particular magic-items they'd love their characters to find, NPC cultures they'd like to visit, and so on. That gives me things to build on. If someone wants to fight an owlbear, I would make sure to work an owlbear hunt into one of my stories, or have one lurking in a cave somewhere along the PCs' path. If they want a monster with some strong story elements, such as Drow, Mind Flayers, Dragons, etc, then that gives me a whole storyline to work with. If someone has always wanted to play a character that assembles the Rod of Seven Parts, that gives me a potential element to thread through the whole campaign!

I find it helps to have your over-arching goals, but not to plan more than a level's worth of material at a time, beyond rough ideas. That leaves the flexibility for the players to take things in a direction you weren't expecting. If you're running a campaign where they're fighting ettercaps in a swamp, and they get it in their heads that the ettercaps are serving the will of a Swamp Hag, you can then have the flexibility to create a Swamp Hag and insert her, as if you'd planned it all along. Maybe you intended them to meet an exiled priestess of Lolth instead, but this plot will still be satisfying, and, if the priestess of Lolth is important to your overall plans, maybe the Hag has a letter from the priestess that can steer the PCs back where you need them to go. And if they don't, then follow the PCs' interests. It's their story, too, and they deserve agency.

Once I have a vague idea of what a level's worth of material is likely to be about, I like to create some very sketchy encounters. I look over level-appropriate monsters, using the Challenge Ratings as a guideline, and I pick ones that I think will fit the themes of what I want to run. I rely heavily on the advice in the Dungeon Master's Guide and Xanathar's Guide to Everything on XP budgets and such. I might jot these down in my notes with a few thoughts on the setting of the encounter. For example, I recently created an encounter for a group of 6 2nd level characters that were heading into a sea cave that was likely to have undead in it. I chose ghouls, because I think ghouls are pretty nifty and a scary fight, and I chose to make them “lacedons”, the aquatic version of ghouls I remembered from 1st edition D&D, by giving them a swim speed of 30 feet (which, it turns out, had already been done in the adventure Dead in Thay.) I jotted some notes about them attacking from underwater in flooded tunnels. Later, I picked a cool battlemat I had that showed flooded tunnels and noted to myself about where the lacedons would be. Ta dah! Cool and creepy fight, especially in the darkened tunnels.

Rourkie, I don't know if that helps, but I hope so! Roll them bones, my friend, and give your players a great story!