The Homework Never Ends Even if tomorrow turns pale, I shall get it and show you

How to Start an RPG Campaign Step 4 – Building Your Story

(Note: This is one of several posts that can be read in any order, depending on how you like to build your campaigns. Don't worry; there'll be a summary post once they're posted.)

Once you have a genre, a few tiny ideas are probably going to pop into your head. Inspiration can come from sources like TVTropes, the Big List of RPG Plots, and the random generators at ChaoticShiny.

To speed things up, try what Mike Bourke suggested in Baby Steps In Campaign Setting Design and figure it out one detail at a time:

• The Home Base: Where the characters start their adventures, and where they will return to.
• The Adventures: Are they hack and slash? Political intrigue?
• The First Adventure: Where is it, and what happens?
• The Path(s): Between the adventures, and anything the PCs find along the way.
• The Context: How and why things are the way they are.
• The PCs: How much do they know? How do they fit in?
• The Players: What they'll need to make characters.

Cheesy as it sounds, it's important to make up a title for your adventure so that you have something to refer to when scheduling new sessions with the players. Try to keep it short and avoid corniness while still describing the adventure in some way.

Now, start fleshing out plot points you'd like to meet each session. If playing a finite game, decide how many sessions you'll play; if infinite, plan for the next few sessions and write down ideas for more. Don't get too specific or your players will accuse you of railroading (forcing them to behave a certain way in order to reach the goals that you've set). Flexibility is important, so create a flexible timeline.

If you're not sure how to do this, look at pre-written adventures on sites like RPG Archive. There'll be more information about required information in a later post.

To explain the story in brief to new players, write a pitch. Make sure that it explains the setting, the atmosphere, and the supposed object of the first adventure. Try Journalistic's How to Write a Pitch.