What is your campaign assembly process?

[kdresser]

Hey all!

I've never GM'd anything, but I'm planning on writing up a One-Shot or two for interested friends (or a pre-written one) and potentially running longer campaigns in the future as an LM. These will likely be in-person. I anticipate my first run will probably be The Marsh Bell or something. I own printed copies of Rivendell and Lake-Town supplement as well as the hardcover and pdf of the Core Rulebook.

I want to know what your personal campaign assembly process looks like. Answers could include: Do you usually use pre-written adventures or original plots with seeds from the supplements...etc? Do you copy and paste things you like from PDF's or do you take notes using the printed books? Do any of you who LM in-person even bother getting the printed books? What benefit does that give you the PDF doesn't? How do you plan for variables from your main plot-line? How prepared are you for these variables? What's your best advice for a new LM?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

[Hermes Serpent]

I mostly GM using sections clipped from pdfs. That is to say I use the books to read the material, see an interesting area or hook and then clip that from the pdf into a document where I add in other bullet points and also the creature stat blocks. I then run from a print out of that document so I can check off damage and add odd notes.

That method is easier for me than balancing several volumes, say Heart of the Wild Darkening and the core rules on a side table when I run the game.

Although I have all the books except Tales they are for the flavour content and ideas rather than to run any of the pre-written scenarios.

[Rich H]

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

This really isn't a simple answer at all as depending on a person's experience at GMing they will give different answers and likely those answers will vary over time as their experience grows and also depends on the type and style of the campaign they are going to be running - eg, I'd give different advice in running a sandbox game than I would in running one that's more heavily plotted.

A lot of it is personal trial and error for GMs; be prepared to make mistakes, be honest with your players when you do muck things up (you will), take your time and don't feel rushed, if you're struggling with a rule then pick the option that is the most fun rather than spend ages looking stuff up in the book, ask for feedback from your players at the end of each session, but most of all - have fun. Those are the most important bits of advice I can give for any RPG and any GM.

Start small. Pick a pre-written adventure and build PCs that fit/work for the adventure in question - your friends won't mind it even if you go with pre-gens as they should be appreciative of all the work you're doing to entertain them. Read through the adventure. Then do so again. Now give it a third read but this time do so thinking about how the players and their PCs will respond to the events you're presenting to them. What do you think they will do in certain situations? This can help prepare you for certain routes they may take but remember that players can be unpredictable! When they do something like this, embrace it! That's what makes RPing such fun. If you're stuck for what to do (ie, they've suggested something that isn't covered by the adventure) then suggest a break for drinks or snacks in order to give yourself time to think - you'll come up with an idea, but if not, ask your players what they expect to happen and run with that if it feels right. As a starting GM you have a steep learning curve so your players will be supportive and don't be scared to ask for their advice and opinions on things.

Useful stuff to prepare in advance are things like maps of areas important to the adventure, pictures/art to show your players, a list of names that you can pick from should you need to give an NPC one, a scratch sheet of enemies/opponents the PCs could encounter (to record their abilities, Hate usage, and damage they'll take) are among the things that you'll always find useful no matter how experienced a GM you end up being.

Don't be scared to not be great. This sounds a little daft but you'll never do justice to this world Tolkien created. You aren't a literary and linguistic genius like he is, nor do you have the luxury of time to create wonderful prose or amazing descriptions on-the-fly. The best you can do is work on certain things in advance, which is why I recommend starting with pre-written adventures as they do that heavy lifting for you, or by preparing some descriptions of places or evocative one-word descriptors. With regard to representing Middle Earth; it's better to have fun than to be right. Don't ever forget that.

I'm sure others will have some great advice - this really is a subject that we could talk about until the stars dimmed! I've found some decent links below though which may also be a good reference for you:

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q= ... amesmaster
viewtopic.php?f=56&t=4738
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6411
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3936

Hope that all helps. And remember: have fun!

[zedturtle]

Hey all!

I've never GM'd anything, but I'm planning on writing up a One-Shot or two for interested friends (or a pre-written one) and potentially running longer campaigns in the future as an LM. These will likely be in-person. I anticipate my first run will probably be The Marsh Bell or something. I own printed copies of Rivendell and Lake-Town supplement as well as the hardcover and pdf of the Core Rulebook.

I want to know what your personal campaign assembly process looks like. Answers could include: Do you usually use pre-written adventures or original plots with seeds from the supplements...etc?

Alright, I run two ongoing Play-by-Post games, and play Face-to-Face on occasion (our group has two GMs... the other one is running a long-form campaign in D&D5e every other week and then I do something else on alternate weeks... could be TOR, could be Doctor Who, could be other stuff).

One PbP group is currently playing through Darkening of Mirkwood. The core of the group went through Tales from Wilderland as well, so we've been playing for a while (about three years real time and we've gone from 2946 - 2953 in game time). I call my version of Darkening the special extended edition, though I'm not really actually extending anything. I just work through the written material and try really hard to make connections between the NPCs. Sometimes these connections are explicitly in the material, sometimes they're something that I see reading between the lines, or something that just makes sense as the group plays through. Finding this ability to let things be in flux until they appear in the game is something that is very hard for new LMs to do... I'm not sure that I have any super special advice on it, other than to be super responsive to your players and don't be afraid to call a time out. Tell them "hey give me a minute, I want to think this through before I answer that question". Everyone will understand.

The other PbP group is playing through their own campaign... it started as a playtest of Theft of the Moon, continued into a playtest of Heart of Winter and then we followed some character threads (player generated, not mine) over (and into) the Misty Mountains, went to Rivendell, then Bree and the Old Forest (looking for Gandalf), then up to Fornost Erain, back to Rivendell and we're currently in Angmar. All of that has been pretty much character driven... I gave them some options, they've made choices along the way and each of those choices have led to other choices. I only stay about half-a-step ahead of them, which means that the campaign is very responsive to them. The downside is that it can sometimes seem like everything is static... since I don't have any over-arching goals for the big bads, they pretty much just react to the heroes, which is not ideal.

Do you copy and paste things you like from PDF's or do you take notes using the printed books?

When running face-to-face, I try to have the main game there with me. I rarely use it (except for the Hazard table) but it's there.

Running PbP has spoiled me somewhat... I currently have all of the rulebooks within arm's reach (and the digital equivalent as well), as well as all of the primary source material, Noel's Languages, Tyler's Companion, and Fonstad's Atlas. Plus Google. This actually made a worse face-to-face LM (which I've made a concerted effort this last year to correct)... playing PbP you always have a chance to double-check yourself. Also, you have to hit the high points.... if you dwell on something, then days can go by and people can get bored.

When I'm writing, I usually have all that stuff available as well. I tend to iterate through an adventure, doing broad ideas first and eventually getting everything filled in.

Do any of you who LM in-person even bother getting the printed books? What benefit does that give you the PDF doesn't?

I do have all the books. I find that I'm often faster searching the physical books than the PDFs, since there's muscle memory, and the idea that you can flip through the book and get a sense of where something is. Load times for reality are also faster than PDFs (at least sometimes).

How do you plan for variables from your main plot-line? How prepared are you for these variables?

The best adventures are ones that create/define a situation and then place the heroes in a position to interact with that situation. In other words, there's something that has happened, the heroes become aware of it, and then you let them loose. Of course, prepared adventures have to give you ideas about what might happen when the heroes interact with the situation.

A starting adventure might be okay with being more linear... Theft of the Moon is this way, as is The Marsh-bell and Don't Leave the Path. When folks are just beginning to figure out how to roll the dice, read the results and manipulate the character sheet, a big branching storyline might not be the best. However, you do want to get them into a more open adventure relatively soon. Kinstrife and Dark Tidings is a good example of this (as is Heart of Winter, but my slackitude means that there's not a final version to point you at yet).

The players will surprise you. It is quite alright to call for a pause and take a few minutes to think things out. It is also okay to tell the players "hey, this adventure doesn't seem to really have anything about your idea. We can break for tonight and I can come up with something for next time, or you could do X or Y, both of which are in the adventure and we could keep going."

What's your best advice for a new LM?

Have fun! Be a fan of the players (you're not trying to beat them, you are just creating a challenging situation for them to interact with). And don't worry... you will make mistakes. Everyone does. Just call yourself out, and learn from that mistake. Doing so will make your players trust you more, and help them learn the game too.

But as Rich said, mostly just try to have fun. After all, that's why we do this.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.[/quote]

[Wbweather]

When I discovered TOR, I had never played any tabletop role playing game. Not as a player, certainly not as a GM. It was intimidating as heck. It took me a year of reading and rereading the rules before I had the courage to get a group together to try and play it. Of the 6 or so that came to that first session of The Marsh Bell, only one stuck with me. After that I went searching for a way to play online. Now a couple of years later, I would say that it still sometimes seems a daunting task to LM a game and make it enjoyable. Sometimes I'm really happy with what happens. Other times I feel like things just weren't clicking. The most important thing is that it has been a blast and I have learned so much.

My advice would be pretty much in line with what others have said.

Start with some of the prewritten adventures. Tales from Wilderland is a great place to start, but there are a lot of really good fan written adventures on this sight as well. See what adventures really work for your group. Tailor your campaign to include similar adventures until you get more comfortable branching out.

Share the responsibility. As the LM, you have the most preparation to do and it is your responsibility to present an engaging story, but it is ultimately your player's story. Get them to contribute. Encourage them to role play. When we get to a point in an adventure where everyone sort of stalls out, I try to stop and let them figure out what they want to do next. I have to resist the urge to tell them what to do. Instead, ask questions. "What do you think your character would say here?" "What is your dwarf thinking?" "How are you going to deal with this band of outlaws?" If your players are contributing, the story sort of takes on a life of its own. Run with it.

Don't stress about the rules. Know them, but don't let the rules bog the game down. I have a player that knows the rules far better than I do. He can usually tell me the page number from memory for a particular rule if we need to stop and look it up. It's okay to stop and look things up from time to time. It's also okay just to play through a scenario as best as you can and look up the rules afterward.

As far as writing actual adventures, think about what you would like to do if you were a player. Come up with an overarching storyline, but don't overdo the details. This gets easier with time. I really think James Brown's rules for Wild Adventures is a great way to get your creative juices rolling. It is a great tool to help you balance out encounters, travel and combat scenes. Sometimes I just read through a passage in one of the books that offers interesting plot hooks and ask myself how I could involve my players in that.

Playing in some play by post games has really been helpful. As Zed said above, play by post is helpful to the GM, but it is also a great tool to see how to GM. It gives you time to analyse what the GM is doing and how the players are responding. There is far more role playing going on in play by post. I would encourage you to try and get in one of those games, if you can.

I own all the books and also have all the PDFs. I agree with others that is is often faster for me to reference things in the actual books, but I love having the ability to pull up images in the PDFs. It certainly is easier to travel with my iPad than with a stack of books too.

Most importantly, have fun. Don't be afraid to ask your players what they think. There are times I was disappointed with my LMing and then found out that the players had a great time. I try to ask my players regularly if they have ideas that could help me improve.

I certainly do not consider myself a great LM. I constantly think of ways I could improve. I get intimidated by folks who have been doing this for 30 years, but I realized, with a little work, things usually go great and everyone has a good time.

[kdresser]

Thank you all for your thoughtful responses! Super excited to start LMing!