What's on your pre-campaign check list?

[arkansan]

What things do you consider must haves before starting a campaign? Detailed regional maps? X amount of prepared dungeon/dungeons? Random tables for a certain amount of subjects?

What does your campaign prep look like?

[makofan]

I now just use a starting dungeon in/near town, with two levels done. The rest gets extrapolated as I learn what interests the players.


They like this dungeon? OK< design level 3 once they hit level 2
They want a local inn/watering hole? OK, roll that one up and slowly expand it
They want to know the political situation? Make it up - ummm, there's a corrupt mayor funded by the assassin's guild, it is a river port on the frontier of a country with weak control.

etc

[Merias]

For my most recent campaign I started with a regional map on one sheet of graph paper, a town map with important places and NPCs noted (inn, temple, ruler's keep, market, etc), and a few nearby dungeons, with maps of the first level and some quick notes on the room contents. Everything else has been fleshed out in play. It's true that players are the best source of ideas.

[Finarvyn]

My "check list" usually starts with a basic concept. For example, one game might be "a happy town in the middle of evil lands," or "dwarves on a flying steamship" and that gets me underway.

Then comes a quick map with a few key places on it (usually swiped from some literature somewhere so I know basically what they are), and a quick downloaded dungeon map and I'm ready for action. If I want more detail I might flesh out a few NPCs and their plans. In general I figure it's best to drop the characters into the middle of some action and see where it goes, and I develop details as I need them. (Nothing worse than coming up with a bunch of details that I never use.)

[howandwhy99]

A good campaign starting adventure is essential. B2 is pretty much the ideal here. Then I place already balanced and playtested modules in an expanded campaign board. The campaign board's design also gets balanced and playtested.

Everything outside of running a game is collecting designs and complete stats for everything I track, which must at least be everything the players can interact with in the first session. The bare minimum is enough design content to accommodate the first few class levels in every class. That should be enough to cover twenty to thirty six-hour sessions depending on how good the players are at the game.
- This means not just monsters and treasure, but the design of the "dungeon" (game board) as well, at every scale accessible at those levels.

I see all of the above as what commercial works are for. Monster Manuals. Treasure Assortments. Game Modules and the like. These need to rebalanced and incorporated into the particular rules I run and any changes to unique campaign rules. (Not to mention a great deal of material even back in the day had suspect balance issues).

This is my basic philosophy: Choosing your own hidden game design rules, balancing and playtesting modules and additional game designs, and basic practice of dry running games without players are all skills a good DM practices when not running a game. It's not just preparation, but the maintenance and improvement at our own skill at refereeing this game.

So to start, I begin a campaign with a Session Zero. At this meeting the players discuss what characters they want to play, roll them up, share backgrounds, as usual. But more important to me is to learn what they want in their campaign. What kinds game elements do the players want in the game? This isn't just new monsters, magic, treasure, types of people and places, but it can be. It also means: high adventure, high fantasy, Medieval, historical, lost word, ancients, fairies, mythology, and so on. Also, I try and find what kinds of adventures would they rather focus on: urban, wilderness, dungeon? That way I can start them in these areas.
- I find Greyhawk's Flanaess map to be a good illustration to help stumped players. There's a war of good vs. evil in Furyondy, corrupt empires in the East, isolated human lands in the southwest, bandits and high adventure in the north, pirates and jungles in the south. Not to mention the traditional central areas of campaign starts: Wild Coast, Greyhawk City, Verbobonc, (and I think Duchy of Urnst). And I'm leaving out a whole lot of other inspiring options here.

I wouldn't limit a campaign world to only those elements the players chose. I mean, I am an anything goes DM (within certain ick limits) and D&D provides a plethora of what has become the bog standard set of everything already designed and playtested for the game. I always include these unless they are asked to be excluded. However, I flesh out undeveloped portions of these to keep those game elements fresh and interesting.

Once I have the elements the players like I add (or remove) them from the random design tables and start rolling up the campaign world. I want to balance the game board so that it is not going to overwhelm the players because of some design flaw during campaign set up. But I also what to develop that seemingly endless mesh of causalities which allow them to discover and master the game.

The Starting State is when I have the initial design in equilibrium. That means active, but with progressions unchanged due to player involvement. This is redetermined between sessions, but with player actions incorporated.

Then I generate design futures for the initial session scenario. Something modular like a part of B2, but ideally smaller and first level appropriate in order to get the players feet wet. It's not just discovering the game world and hidden design, but learning how to work with the other players, share notes, determine who wants to do what, even what they themselves wish to do. It's all very much a nascent beginning, but without script or expectation. Figuring out how to play your class, score points, go up in level, and really doing anything you want. You can walk away from the initial scenario and there is always more adventure over the next horizon (but it's difficult to get far in any one session with so little player experience).

That's about it. Keep randomly generating the world, developing new player desired elements, generating futures and carrying forward player consequences. I strongly suggest designing for every level in the game world (1st-10+) to incorporate the seeds of influence from every level of NPC/monster power player with influence over the starting area, but that takes more prep, and it's not essential just to start play.