2007-02-14 DM Advice – Organic Campaigns

(In a recent EN World thread ¹, I offered some advice for running an “organic” campaign – a campaign where players can go in any direction, finding adventure wherever they go. Here’s what I wrote.)

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Some ideas for this kind of organic campaign: You need to present foes that come from other places (a hook), are looking for a certain item (another hook), are too strong for the party so they need to look for an ally (another hook), villains that manage to escape and return to fight another day (makes them feel at home), a safe place to return to and defend (home sweet home), etc.

Basically I think it is very important that you don’t waste your energy early in the game. Have two or three small things ready that you can spontaneously place anywhere when the party goes in unexpected directions. Reuse people and places. Hometowns, returning villains, old ruins reoccupied, that kind of stuff.

Some examples from my current campaign to illustrate these ideas:

• As first level adventurers, the party was faced with a CR 3.5 bird demon (tengu) having kidnapped a child, and two level 7 sorcerer fox demon brothers (kitsune) in a stalemate fighting for a magic composite longbow +3. Getting the child required the help of one of the brothers. Getting the bow required making a powerful enemy. Difficult choices for players, and no matter what happens, two of the three will probably survive as allies or enemies.
• Next, traveling to the next town, they were ambushed by thieves. A famous bandit trying to set up a camp in an abandoned ruin. The party barely manages to kill his seven henchmen and the bandit chief manages to flee.
• Two or three sessions later, on their way back, the party is attacked again. As they return to the ruin, they find that the bandit chief as returned with reinforcements and is finishing his reconstruction of the castle.
• In the other town, they fought an medium evil necromancer who had sumonned a mighty devil. It turns out that the temple was built on the grounds of a cursed family whose last surviving heir left town 50 years ago, and it seems that he was the necromancer’s boss who had supplied the powerful scroll. And he seems to be raising an undead army in another valley.
• A monk they had met after their first adventure when they had killed a handful of religious soldiers was interested in helping them, being himself busy organizing a revolt. This same monk went on to further his cause in the very same valley the undead army is being raised.

The important part is that I haven’t prepared anything about this valley, yet. But I’ve planted powerful cues that adventure is to be had there, and should the party turn there, I’ll start working on it. For now I’ve spend time detailing the bandit castle, adding turtle demons (kappa), a long lost magic weapon by a powerful demonhunter, an evil cleric helping the bandits, trying to ursup the position as band leader and founding an evil cult. (Haven’t decided on his masters, yet.)

And so on. Plant hooks, and don’t be afraid to reuse people and places. Don’t work too far ahead.

(And, as I found out later, this is old advice: “Never force yourself to create more than you must.” – Dungeoncraft, from Dragon Magazine 256, by Ray Winninger ²)

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