I would also suggest if you would like to practice these techniques is run a short campaign. Something with a set limit of a few sessions which also works well for seasonal or single themes. I ran 5 back to back short campaigns that lasted 4-8 sessions that last 1 or 2 levels that all had their own theme. This gets you all used to a session zero and getting everyone on one theme.
All of you will feel less bad about killing, maiming and throwing the campain off the rails if you know it won’t last years. These are good training wheels if you want to practice a type of DMing or do a specific type of game.
I have found that I LOVE short campaigns. They are easy to create and you really don’t have to balance anything. Have game breaking magic items avaiable, throw monsters way above their CR just to see what happens. You can focus on one idea and really get it working.
I once did a siege campaign and had the players defending walls from an invading force. I had lots of ways for them to get out and engage with the enemies outside the walls. But they ended up shooting bows from behind the wall and dropping prone. Range really mattered on that one. It was fun and a little bit of a slog but worth doing
I think GMs in general need to get more comfortable with picking different campaign or story lengths. Some things are a movie, some things are a 6 episode prestige TV series, and some things are an old school 24 episode multi-season order. The benefit of the latter is that it gives you a lot more room for character development and world-building, but it can also drag and end up with a lot of filler. Some stories really benefit from a shorter, more focused runtime. Some stories are best told in just a handful of sessions. Some should just be a one shot; if you’ve never run a horror one shot I urge you to give it a go; there is an incredible power in being able to kill off the entire cast by the end of the session. I once opened a Shadowrun campaign by running a one shot with pre-made high level characters who went on a mission that turned very very bad, and resulted in them all being killed by the campaign big-bad. Then I had the players create their characters for the main game. They were all hooked, and wanted to find out what the fuck happened to the first team, who the big bad was, and what was going on on the spooky island research lab where they all died.
It helps to think about a longer campaign as a series of different story beats that are different lengths to tell their story. To keep a big campaign these stories are all happening at once and at overlaping togehter. There are hints of other parts within one story for a larger campaign. They are more fun to run and easier to manage since you only need to fill out the parts that your players are interested in interacting with.
I would also suggest if you would like to practice these techniques is run a short campaign. Something with a set limit of a few sessions which also works well for seasonal or single themes. I ran 5 back to back short campaigns that lasted 4-8 sessions that last 1 or 2 levels that all had their own theme. This gets you all used to a session zero and getting everyone on one theme.
All of you will feel less bad about killing, maiming and throwing the campain off the rails if you know it won’t last years. These are good training wheels if you want to practice a type of DMing or do a specific type of game.
Yes, this is superb advice. Give yourself room to play around with things and try stuff that might not work.
I have found that I LOVE short campaigns. They are easy to create and you really don’t have to balance anything. Have game breaking magic items avaiable, throw monsters way above their CR just to see what happens. You can focus on one idea and really get it working.
I once did a siege campaign and had the players defending walls from an invading force. I had lots of ways for them to get out and engage with the enemies outside the walls. But they ended up shooting bows from behind the wall and dropping prone. Range really mattered on that one. It was fun and a little bit of a slog but worth doing
I think GMs in general need to get more comfortable with picking different campaign or story lengths. Some things are a movie, some things are a 6 episode prestige TV series, and some things are an old school 24 episode multi-season order. The benefit of the latter is that it gives you a lot more room for character development and world-building, but it can also drag and end up with a lot of filler. Some stories really benefit from a shorter, more focused runtime. Some stories are best told in just a handful of sessions. Some should just be a one shot; if you’ve never run a horror one shot I urge you to give it a go; there is an incredible power in being able to kill off the entire cast by the end of the session. I once opened a Shadowrun campaign by running a one shot with pre-made high level characters who went on a mission that turned very very bad, and resulted in them all being killed by the campaign big-bad. Then I had the players create their characters for the main game. They were all hooked, and wanted to find out what the fuck happened to the first team, who the big bad was, and what was going on on the spooky island research lab where they all died.
It helps to think about a longer campaign as a series of different story beats that are different lengths to tell their story. To keep a big campaign these stories are all happening at once and at overlaping togehter. There are hints of other parts within one story for a larger campaign. They are more fun to run and easier to manage since you only need to fill out the parts that your players are interested in interacting with.