This past weekend in our current weekly D&D 5e game that I am a player in we killed Strahd! This means the next campaign that I am DMing is upon us. So what the heck are we going to play?
I genuinely struggle pre-campaign as a DM. I have this problem with all forms of entertainment in my life where I have a very completionist view. I won't buy a game if I know it takes 60 hours to beat if I know I won't have the time to dedicate to it, even if the act of just playing it is fun. I do this with books, TV shows, and even my RPGs. I always look at "howlongtobeat.com" before buying a game to know if its "worth my time". But if its fun, and it takes a while, isn't it worth my time?
This becomes a problem with RPGs for me because I know I am about to commit to a game for the next 6 months-ish, and then my mind starts running the numbers.
6 months of gaming = 24 weekly sessions, but if we assume some cancelations = 18-20 3 hour sessions = about 60 hours of gaming. So then I start deep diving on Reddit about how long certain adventures take. From the jump, I am picking things for the entirely wrong reason. When I started DMing almost a decade ago I used to just google "Cool powerful fantasy monster", grab something from google images, make up a stat block (since I didn't have the Monster Manual yet) and just go play, and we had a blast!
I have also had this problem where I get into something and I get really into it, then when I am mentally done with it, I completely jump ship. There are a few media properties where this hasn't happened (i.e. Lord of the Rings, The First Law Series, Dark Souls, Naruto and a few others). But largely I get super inspired and deep dive for 2-3 months then jump onto something else. This is not advantageous for a future DM deciding on campaign ideas. As you've seen on the blog, I rapidly went through three (and I didn't even settle on one of those to run... lol).
Don't even get me started on picking a system. I know I want to run an OSR game. But here is a brief list of every game I have read through and considered; Swords and Wizardry, Old School Essentials Classic, Old School Essentials Advanced, Chromatic Dungeons, Bugbears and Borderlands, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Shadowdark, and Worlds Without Number.
The problem is all of these games do essentially the same thing. They will largely feel the same. So why am I spending weeks and weeks pouring over them and picking? Because thats just how my brain works. I am currently between Chromatic Dungeons and Swords and Wizardry. I like Chromatic Dungeons because its AD&D with only 10 levels and pretty regular class progression and a cool roll under skill system.
Decision paralysis to the max. If I am to commit to a game system, a setting and an adventure for the next 6 months it needs to be the best! What an enormous amount of unneeded pressure. Realistically, over the next 6-12 months my friends and I are going to hang out, roll dice, and have a good time. NONE of that actually matters. So, I went with the only thing that took the stress off of me. I found a handful of adventures and a little sandbox to throw them in and have forced myself to just prep week to week and let the adventure adventure.
I found this cool book by Brad Kerr called Wyvern Songs. It is a collection of four adventures with a mini-setting in the back complete with a starting town, a hexmap and a list of adventures he likes and where to put them if you want! Perfect. This is my only pre-campaign set up now:
Map Key
0610: Sinister Secret of Peacock Point - Level 1
0808: Black Wyrm of Brandonsford - Levels 1-3
0306: Hideous Daylight - Low level characters
0306: Fabien's Atelier - Levels 2-4
0801: Slumbering Ursine Dunes - Levels 2-4
0608: Temple of 1000 Swords - Level 3
0704: Singing Stones - Levels 3-5
North of the Map: Isle of the Plangent Mage - Levels 3-5
Anywhere: Halls of the Blood King - Levels 3-5
1103: Dreaming Caldera - Levels 5-6
From here, we will just see where the dice and players take us!
Three cheers for self-reflection!
