How to Prepare a Prewritten Campaign

[Music] hello Misfits and welcome in today's episode we're talking all about how to prepare and run a pre-written or published campaign we're talking about these campaign books that you might be finding at your bookstore your local gaming store those small little ones shots you found online or through patreon and you've been told that there is a full adventure to be run but how exactly does that translate from a book format to a game that you're running at the table with your friends that's what we're going to talk about so let's get into it when I first started dming I ran a published campaign module I did cursive strad and in going into it I was a little bit confused my previous DM handed me this book and I just remember thinking okay but like how though and and I remember looking on the internet and reading various forums and posts and watching videos trying to figure out just exactly what I needed to do in order to be a good DM and run this campaign successfully even though I'd literally never done anything like that ever before and it is a little different than you know just reading a normal book so let's talk about these different steps that you need to take in order to be successful in running a published or pre-written campaign step number one read the entire thing okay you cannot just read chapter one and then run chapter one you can't do that because in these types of books um they're normally divided most commonly by like location so if your players you know start out somewhere and they decide to go to the location covered in chapter five instead of the location covered in Chapter 2 and you've only been reading in order and you've only read as far as maybe chapter 3 you're kind of screwed and you're in trouble so you've got to read the entire thing that's the only way you're going to have the fullest understanding of the entire campaign so that you're able to run it and best tackle these sort of things your players throw at you allaha running off to a location before you expected them to or talking to somebody that you weren't intending for them to talk to for quite a while another reason why you need to read the entire thing is there is information that is going to be scattered throughout the entire book that will give you a more cohesive understanding of the setting and the characters and the themes and just the story as a whole I remember when I Was preparing curse of strad there was a tidbit of information like one or two sentences throw away a bit of information in the very back in like one of the MPC descriptions that totally changed the entire like way I thought about that character it changed the way I was going to play them it changed the way that um I thought they would interact with other people and and what their mindset would be and what their goals were and if I hadn't read the entire book I never would have had that knowledge a lot of times these little tidbits that are snuck in there aren't even necessarily things that the players are meant to know or find out they're meant for you the game master the dungeon master so that you have a better understanding and a deeper knowledge of this setting um and and it will affect the way that you run the game also if you can read it more than once that is ideal like if you can get through the whole thing at least twice I think you'll be better off um I I read the entire campaign twice and then I went back and like would reread sections as they came up when we were running it and that really helped and on the subject of like needing to read the entire thing I I encountered a post um that somebody had made in this in this group that I'm a part of and somebody didn't know that they were supposed to read the whole thing they had only read like the first couple of chapters and the players had somehow just already skipped like all of the plot Hooks and all of like the like first locations and we're already way far away from where they should be at the start of the campaign and this person was freaking out and didn't know what to do and I think everybody in the comment section was like oh sweet child why did you not read the entire thing so don't let that be you okay make sure you have as much knowledge as you can before you run this game that's the way to set yourself up for the greatest amount of success number two this might be a no-brainer but take notes take a lot of notes and not just like taking notes on like the locations um I'm talking about jotting things down like um what are these NPC's you know motivations or notable characteristics um when I read through a campaign I will write like the voice I intend to use for each character off to the side of them um and that could be just to help me remember what kind of silly voice I'm going to use but also the voice type does sort of um inform me about what type of character that is if I write you know like Voldemort voice off next to uh an NPC's name I know immediately that they're a Voldemort type character and that's going to affect the way I play them you know whether I remember what I've read about them or not that little tidbit that little note for myself helps me so much and helps save on time and helps me you know recollect things a little bit better other important notes to take as you're reading through uh the campaign the oneshot whatever it is is take note of any sort of references to other books or other Pages or other things um in 5e books I hate it but they will often in their campaign books reference things listed in the dungeon Masters Guide the player handbook or the monster manual and they won't tell you the page number so when I'm taking my notes and I see that there's one of those references to another book I will go find that book figure out what the page number is and write it down so that I can very quickly reference that if you're running stuff online you know we fixed a lot of that stuff with like hyperlinks or just you know have your tabs prepared but uh if you're running things old school write down down those page numbers or write down those reference books um that is always super super useful um another important note that I like to um sort of keep track of is the relationships between NPCs again like when you're reading the whole thing you'll learn that there's a lot more interconnectedness to a lot of these stories and campaigns than um what you might first uh expect and so as you're reading through and you realize that there are characters that know each other or are related to each other make a little note of that off to the side again you're just sort of making sure you have as much information as you can UPF front and you're making sure that it's like something you can very quickly recall so that you can use that to your benefit when you're running this session number three this is sort of a weird one but find the flaws as you're going through the campaign um a lot of pre-written stuff will intentionally leave plot holes or loose ends that are intended for the GM or DM to fill themselves uh it's not necessarily the case in one shots cuz those are you know very compact stories meant to be told over the course of a single session but in like a campaign there will be you know intentional loose threads and intentional um gaps that you are meant to fill uh in cursive strad there um without spoil iling anything there are three things that the party can collect the book only tells you the location of two of them so it's up to the DM to sort of figure out where that third thing is where they want it to be um there will also be things like um magic items or curses or like weird um things that happen in certain locations and they don't necessarily explain those in these pre written campaigns so it's sort of up to you to use your imagination and kind of test your skills at home brewing to figure out how you want to sort of um explain these things and sort of Flesh that out so that's a a key part of running these pre-written campaigns cuz this is what makes it your game not just a game you pull off the shelf this makes it personalized to you and your table and this is what makes these pre-written campaigns so special it's almost never the stuff written in the campaign it's almost always the things that you and your players add to it that make it so memorable number four you need to sit down and talk with your players about this campaign that you want to run uh I think this should be like two different discussions I think before you've even read any of the stuff um like the only thing you've done has read the little synopsis in the back or inside the front cover sit down with your players talk to them about it and be like hey I found this this is like the summary does this seem interesting does it seem like something we want to do check with them first then read all the stuff take your notes find the flaws Etc and then sit down with your players again and help them sort of create their characters that they're going to be playing as help them sort of find ways to connect those characters to the story as a whole and make it a little bit more um interconnected and this can be tough cuz you don't want to give away anything but you as the DM need to listen to your players figure out what kind of characters they want to play as um figure out what kind of sort of story they want to be telling with their characters with what they've imagined and they've come up with and find ways to connect that to what you know uh is in the book what you have read about if you see um you know sort of loose ends or little moments in those backstories that they're telling you that sound familiar or sound similar to some of the stuff in the book maybe be like hey you talked about wanting your parents to have been kidnapped by an evil person um do you mind if uh I find a way to connect that to what's written in the book you know double check with him you don't have to give away any deeper you know specific information you can find ways to still keep that to yourself but um but still honor the ideas that your players are having and I think finding ways to connect your players characters to the story in the book is going to help you out a lot that was something that I really failed at when I ran my first pre-written campaign um there really was no connection that the characters had to the story they didn't really have any personal connection to barovia or the people in barovia and so exploring backstories didn't really happen it was just these people that had just been dropped into this other place and and trying to get out of it and you know I think that's a common way that curse of strad gets run but I think if I could go back I would do that slightly differently and find a way to add just an even further um lay of depth to that so you need to up front sit down go over sort of the themes and idea of the campaign check with your players see if that's something they want to play and then after you've got all this knowledge about the content and the game find ways to sit down and just sort of once again go over expectations and ideas again and and find ways to connect that to the campaign as a whole without without revealing too much step number number five and and this is the one that you're going to repeat from here on out to the End of Time review uh some of the material that uh is written in the book and prepare what you need for your first session now this is what's tricky if you've never run a game before you're going to have no idea how long it takes to uh get through a session you're you're not going to have any idea of what's going to end up getting covered in that session and it's going to vary from take table to table um this is going to depend on how long you and your players want to play it's going to depend on how long it takes for your your players to accomplish tasks and um complete encounters and it's also going to depend on how much role play your players want to do um and it's going to take time to figure out how much uh can get accomplished in a session if I were you I would try to pick for the first session like um a goal that you want accomplished um or a location you want them to reach and prepare everything up to that point and maybe a little bit after and just have in your mind this is our hard cut off once they accomplish this we will stop um and at my table we normally uh we only play for like 3 hours so I normally prepare two encounters and um you know be ready to run like an hour of role play but my my table will role play for a long time and it's a big table so it takes a while for everybody to you know get through what they want to accomplish for some people that's not going to happen so um try to set some sort of goal have a couple encounters prepared have you know some some NPCs and R RP moments prepared and just try to figure out what that ending goal is going to be and that will give you an idea of how much to prepare for um later sessions something really important to note though as you're going through this campaign and looking at upcoming sessions and trying to figure out what to prepare a good rule of thumb is if you know the party is going to a particular location you need to prepare everything for that location okay so if you know that they're going to visit the big fancy mansion at the top of the hill prepare the entire Mansion whatever maps that includes whatever stat blocks come up um read up on the lore of that location and have that entire thing prepared cuz once they enter that front door or back door or window you have no idea where they're going to go and you need to be ready for anything um this is what can be the most timec consuming for for a dungeon master cuz like I don't think people understand that we have to prepare an entire location in order to be ready to handle whatever decisions they make um and it's got its pros and cons like if you if you know they're about to enter a giant dungeon and it's the type of dungeon where you know you go down a tunnel and you could end up literally anywhere uh you have to prepare the entire dungeon uh it's just how that's going to go but but once you've prepared the entire dungeon your session prep is pretty much done until they've completed that dungeon or left it um which is nice if it's a big place that's going to take them like weeks or months to get through then you don't have to really do any session prep for weeks or months but the negative side of that is it's a lot to prepare for me if I know they're going to a specific town it's a small town There's a couple different things there I'll prepare the whole town cuz I don't know where they're going to go um yeah it's it's things like that it it's it's not always the most fun but it is something that kind of needs to be done as you get more comfortable with dming you can probably get away with less preparation beforehand but when you're running a pre-written campaign where there's you know lore and information and secrets and stuff tied to these different places and locations you're going to want to read up on that before you run it and you're also going to want to prepare all of those Maps ahead of time cuz you know it can take time to stop and draw out the map and stuff you want to have that done before the session starts all right and these were my tips on how to prepare and run a pre-written campaign I really hope that this was helpful for you guys um yeah I just remember being a little stumped or or at the very least like I had to look in a bunch of different locations to find the information I needed to prepare me to DM a published campaign so this is my I'm trying to like help the next me that comes along that I'm going to put all this information in one place uh as just sort of a nice broad guide to come back to so that they're not you know reading a random Forum on the internet watching a small video here and reading something on a website there it's all just in one place and and hopefully this will be helpful to you guys cuz really I mean the best way to get into ttrpgs is to run these pre-written campaigns instead of just diving head first into you know a home brew world so you know a lot of people this is their introduction to uh dming and gming so so hopefully this is helpful hopefully um this makes you feel a little bit more confident in your skills and gives you the information you need in order to be confident and move forward uh and yeah if you found any of this useful to you please feel free to like And subscribe uh that always helps me out but more importantly leave a comment down below I really want to hear from you guys I want to hear if you're planning on running your first ever game tell me uh what you're planning on running if you've run a pre-written campaign before tell me which ones you ran if you have other ideas for topics you want me to cover in future videos let me know I'd really love to hear um all about that but with all of that said and done I hope you guys have a great rest of your week and I will see you again next [Music] time it has been a very long time since I have sat down and filmed a video the last like few things I put out I I filmed ahead of time so it's legitimately been like 2 months since I've sat down and filmed a video um but it feels nice to do that uh I am testing out sort of some new stuff I my mic is on a uh arm now I've got some new lights and I do I do want y'all's opinions on the light is it is it too much I feel like it's it's very different um than my previous sort of lighting setup but I don't know I'm just trying to get the the image to be a little bit clearer and good light does help with that but I I would love y'all's opinions yeah I hope you guys had a great um holiday um whatever you guys celebrate or observe I had a pretty nice one a little atypical but it was good overall and it's a brand new year I hope you guys had a great New Year's I'm very glad that 2023 is over I'm not going to lie the past year was really really difficult it started out really rough kind of mellowed out a little bit in the middle and then got really really busy there at the end uh there were definitely some things that normally I do uh that I just didn't get to do cuz I was just too busy uh you know we didn't really do our holiday one shot like we normally do um I took a lot more time off uh than I than I normally do but I I think it was needed I'm one of those people that really likes to burn the candle at both ends and and um yeah I I was doing that and uh I I think I learned a lot about um you know what I think my limits are are probably not super healthy and need to be adjusted so I I had a nice break where I could sort of mentally recuperate which was very very nice um but yeah I hope you guys had a good break too uh and I hope this next year uh is good for us I hope it it's a a good time I mean 2023 was a very interesting year for like dming and TTR RPGs and Wizards of the Coast and stuff a lot of things happened there were some you know good things that happened some recognition and um you know it's a more mainstream type of game and then there were also several bad things that happened so I'm very interested to see what 2024 has in store for um tabletop role playing games and the community as a whole but uh I guess only time will tell yeah anyway if you haven't been uh checking out our Homebrew campaign uh I I encourage you to our 50th episode will be coming out um Friday so keep your eyes open for that but that's all I've got for you today I I hope you guys um you know have a great week and uh yeah till next time guys

Channel: Misfit Adventurers

Views: 776

Keywords: dnd, dungeons and dragons, ttrpg, misfit adventurers, DMing, dnd 5e, pathfinder, tips, advice, campaign module, prewritten campaign

Id: C87xdrAfBiI

Length: 23min 4sec (1384 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 09 2024