6/11/2001
by Merric Blackman

Great D&D campaigns are simply made by following two basic principles; being creative, and allowing others to be creative as well.

It is a simple concept. As the Dungeon Master, you are the main architect of the campaign. The story, history, characters, geography and many other things are directly a result of your imagination. This leaves a large problem, however. A world is a big place, and you are going to leave things out.

The greatest trap you can fall into is to believe that everything relies on you. The truth is that it also relies on your players. The interaction between the players and the DM is what makes any role-playing game worthwhile. Without that interaction, you are just telling one-sided stories, which while a great occupation, is not the heart of D&D!

I have met and played with Dungeon Masters who like to control every little detail of their game. They usually have the entire campaign planned out. They know what your character will be doing ten years from now. This level of advance planning will make any player wonder why they showed up to your game. Free will is a good thing!

However, planning ahead is not generally a bad thing. It is when you overdo it that problems occur. In my own campaigns, I know in general terms what the future sequence of events will be. However, I understand the importance of allowing changes to my plan. No plan survives contact with the enemy. It is certainly true, for no adventure module survives contact with the player characters! Putting it bluntly, players do the darndest things! They do the best things, too. Let us take one of the best-known examples of a story designed and then altered by the role-playing experience, The Dragonlance Chronicles. In the first session of the play-test, Terry Williams, who is playing Raistlin, role-plays him with a whispering voice. Suddenly, the character has evolved, and Raistlin is depicted with a whispering voice from then on. Later in the adventure, Tasslehoff gets into a wickerwork dragon and scares off some draconians. That event makes it into the book as well! Neither of those events was planned beforehand - they were just great moments in the game.

It is the ability to adapt to the actions of the players, the creativity of the players, which makes a great Dungeon-Master.

When it comes down to it, creating an entire world is hard work for one person. For a book, it is easy, as the characters in the book are not always asking inconvenient questions. "What's over that hill?" "Why are goblins green?" "Where's the nearest dragon?" As inhabitants of that world, they already know the answers to those inconvenient questions, and so do not need to ask them of you. It is unfortunate that some players do not role-play the same way!

However, there is nothing to say that they cannot. Obviously, many aspects of the world-creation process are in your hands, for the discovery of the hidden aspects of your world provides much of the entertainment for the players. It does not need to be all on your shoulders, though. Empowering your players to create portions of the world themselves enriches the game immensely.

There are many aspects of the game-world that should be created by your players: NPCs, history, locations, and legends. You will have to make some limitations on what they can create, for you do not want too much in their hands. "Oh, and under that hill is an unguarded treasure hoard from an ancient dragon that died two weeks ago. I'll just go and pick up that +5 vorpal sword!" is obviously over the top and not good for the campaign! However, developing back-story and histories for their characters is well within their purview. Personal relationships and romances with NPCs are usually better left to the players. Unless you have an existing relationship with one of your players, trying to role-play such a relationship in the campaign is almost impossible. It is almost certain you will end up working at odds with each other. Within my campaigns, there are several romances going on, all run by the players themselves, with occasional input from the Dungeon Master or other players. Does not a true D&D romance have the loved one kidnapped at least once?

Mentors and family relations are great when created co-operatively. It is quite true that the role-played interaction between family-members and the character gives them much of their appeal, so you will have to help. Remember, they are not player-only creations. Nevertheless, just saying, "this is your parent or mentor", without giving any of the history between the character and the NPC does not give it that emotional charge that a player-created NPC can assume.

Eventually, you create the big things of the campaign - the major plot, the important NPCs, the villains, and the treasures. However, there is a wealth of smaller things in the campaign that can and should be created in co-operation between the players and yourself. If everyone is contributing, the campaign will be richer and more memorable.

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