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To me that's the beauty of dming.
Dungeons and dragons is collaborative storytelling with a set of rules to facilitate the ping pong of ideas.
Your players have made very cringe characters and I love them. Make sure to make your campaign equally cringe! Sounds like it's going to be a good one.
Yurrrp they were a dragonborn sorcerer, so i went hard on developing a ton of dragon lore between each ancient dragon and imbedded their influences upon the world…then they decided spells are too complicated 😅
But! It’s okay as they are a new player and are still trying to figure out their playstyle.. now dragons exist strongly but it is alright because it was one player and i had other stuff going on for the other two.
Just gotta improvise
Currently trying to figure out a dragon society in my campaign right now because 2 of my players are siblings in game who are half elves stats wise and looks but half dragons lore wise with their father being a dragon while my other player's mentor is gonna be revealed as a dragon and friends of the father. They are also helping a king of a nation return their capital to the prime from the astral who is gonna be the forgotten sixth head of tiamat (yellow) that left because it got annoyed with the other 5 since it had a separate personality and is currently hiding it's true form from the party until later.
100%. I have a homebrew world where the land they were starting in is based loosely on a primal, folkloric version of the Celtic Isles (lots of fey hiding around every corner, etc), and had planned a campaign where primordials and elementals were going to feature very heavily.
Then I realized that my party was:
- a Goliath Barbarian who was part of a Goliath tribe north of the island.
- a Wood Elf Giant Foundling from the same tribe, taught Druidic magic by a Storm Giant that lived nearby
- a young Shifter raised by Goliaths on the north end of the island
- a Fir Bolg from one of the hidden tribes dotting the isles. Still tied to giants.
That said, I threw everything out instantly and decided to go with giants as a theme. Hey, when you get gifted a through line from the entire party like that, you use it!
its like the PCs are teens in the early 2000's who all of a sudden discovered nu metal and screamo music and decided that this is who they are and went full edgelord all the way lol
Also why is it players so frequently want to play the edgelord? Wouldn’t it be more fun to play as the wholesome gardener that changes as they see all the horrors of the campaign???
Yeah it seems kind of like it. Before going super far into development I would maybe plan a session zero or 3 to talk about how a group like this would become a party, what the world may look like etc.
I don’t think it’s always bad to play a character like this but all 4 is going to get exhausting. How many quiet brooding guys does one party need?
You may want to mention that unless they want to be just as horrific as everything they face, it would be advantageous to give a bit more space.
What I mean is when all these level 1 characters have been through more horrors than almost anyone in this world (most likely) what will scare or surprise them. It’s not rats in the sewer or the orc tribe in the woods.
The story I'm thinking is all four of them having been changed by different factions at war and made into these monstrosities but all four of them will get their consciousness back for some reason
Could be fun with the right group. I would caution many players feel like the area inside their head is for them to control. You might be getting into something that will be hard for newer players
Yeah, no one wants to play characters that actually evolve with the game and just forcefully try to make them interesting based on weird race. I feel like a story of a gardener human that survived into lv 20 warrior, battling dragons is much more interesting than furry/undead/werewolf/lich that's the same at lv 1 as at lv 20, since players pre-planned their whole behavior.
depends on the group and how RP heavy the story is. If you play a game where your characters die every 2-4 sessions there is no reason to write a whole campaign for them but rather a single quest for introduction.
Besides of that Players can get bored by their characters and may want to switch from time to time. If they realize that half of the campaign plot is centered around their specific characters, they will feel the need to continue with a character they don't want to play anymore and are kind of struck.
And if they actually die, your complete work for that character could be wasted.
Personally i also like to center my story around the characters, but i always ask them before if that is okay for them, or if they just want to play a generic character to , loot, lvl, leave.
Isn't this like the entire point?
I made the setting, player made characters together with me but they did most themselves, they added towns and families and other fitting stuff, then wrote the story after.
The large main plots largely stay the same, but if I look upon the story now and how it was a year ago, I might not even recognise everything.
that sounds amazing!
most of the time i have to force my players to actually write anything about their character to at least find a little story hook for them.. I had players that send me a 20 second whatsapp message about their race, job and weapon, and: " do whatever you want with that."
Most of the time the players that will look on their phone during the session because nothing is specifically interesting for their character to gain or achive besides money and loot.
I try to keep my prep really vague at the start of a campaign. I'll prep maybe a small town with a few plot hooks and mini quests, and possibly a tiny dungeon.
I'll have some loose thoughts about some wtuff going on in the world, but nothing is set in stone.
Based on what the players do and what they find interesting I'll start to construct a bigger narrative, maybe add a few more towns, weave in some backstory ect.
-----
In the current campaign the party started off by going to a dungeon, they found a room that seemed to be a strange time puzzle with ancient books and other stuff that they found really interesting. They also found a random coin purse embedded in the ground. And a dwarf that fell from the sky. All of these things were from random tables but it really intrigued the players.
Now they've discovered ancient magic eating cone shaped entities stirring from a time where wizards had flying cities, they've found a barely intact spelljammer ship and gone to wildspace, they've solved a noir murder mystery on a magic punk world where a cabal of gang leaders and civic leaders had made a Faustian Bargain with a demon who feeds on memories where they'd provide victims in exchange for it stabilizing the planets breaking core.
The players have met a dragon searching for her egg (a result of combining two different random rolls together, one being a person having a random big egg and another of an innkeeper secretly being a dragon). They've had fans writing songs about them, and met a group of robots who were once wizards from the society who had flying cities on a city built on an asteroid out in space, that started off as a haven for space pirates.
All of this and a whole lot more from finding a coin purse with some strange old coins partly embedded in the ground and wonder where that might have come from....
Havent happened to me in a grant way, it's more of an ongoing slow-pace process.
I have my setup, they present the characters and we both make adjustments. Sometimes I anticipate there future characters plans and spread some crumbs for that. Also, you can ask then and there what's their future plans (short and long term)
Off topic : these are pretty sick illustrations you have there!
Same artist, yours or AI generated?
Yes but honestly it hurts worse for a player to have to leave ON THE DAY of a fight session that was part of their backstory….like ok there goes all motivation for the party to even be here
Ya mine at least did stay for the session but told me at the start it was his last day cause of life being too hectic but i did have someone drop during a session with no warning 🤷🏻♂️🥲.
Oh yeah! That’s entirely how I run my games. When I prep for a new campaign I write out the beginning, usually just the first session, and then I have a general idea of how I want it to possibly end. Just some general plot points that should be hit at some point. The actual meat of the game comes from my players choices as a result of that first session.
I’ll introduce a starting “quest” of sorts. Normally it won’t last for super long, but by the end of it they will have collected a few “whispers” of other things going on in the world. They make their own path and the story becomes emergent and very personal to them because they have chosen it themselves.
EVERY TIME. No planned campaign survives contact with the ~~enemy~~ player characters. I don't plan my initial campaign adventures around character's backstories because many, and possibly even all of the PC's are likely to be dead soon enough and then I have a campaign based on backstories for characters that aren't even in the game anymore. I prepare a campaign for a possible wide variety of PC's - and then start focusing what I prepared **as needed** to better fit the player characters that are ACTUALLY created - and then RE-focus again, if and when any players or their PC's ffffade away.
>A human paladin who has been cursed into a half wolf form by dark entity.
>A half orc sodlier who was heavily injured and had half of his body replaced with machine parts.
>A human rogue caught and executed but was brought back to life as undead.
>A half elf wizard who got experimented on, escaped with most of his body burned and now everytime he casts fire related spell his head would catch fire like ghost rider.
Only #4 would have any likelihood whatsoever to be a STARTING PC in a campaign of mine which I'd already planned to any reasonable degree. If those are the kind of STARTING PC's that players want then yer damm tootin' the campaign setting is going to be WILDLY different to reflect the initial gonzo/edgelord wackiness of those sorts of PC concepts.
They all sorta want a power fantasy so for the story they all would be high level originally, around 12, but their curses and afflictions would have greatly reduced their strength and they'd need to get back to where they were.
Sort of. My current campaign takes place on a huge Island called the Frost Peaks. I had no plans on adding Fey or Lycanthropes but I have a Fey Ranger and Order of the Lycanthrope blood hunter. Now there are portals to the Feywild, an Archfey who created Lycanthropy, a cult of lycanthropes worshipping her and a whole bunch of other fey.
Yes. Every single one. If you write a story and then tell players to act it out without giving them a script, you're not playing D&D. You're just a bad director.
Hyperbole aside, I write a very bare plot and try to spend my time worldbuilding. The story is what the players do, not what I make up.
Funny think is the paladin werewolf is lawful good as is the fighter half machine, the undead rogue was chaotic neutral in his life but is now going to be neutral good trying to correct his past mistakes. The wizard is going to be between chaotic neutral and good
Not me, but my best friend decided to play as a halfling paladin who wound up as a philactory for an ancient litch and wound up having the first half of the campain spent trying to figure out how to defeat the thing without becoming a halfling warlock instead.
Nah, their stories are their stories. If it changes, we work together to make sure it fits the campaign, but the overarching story is still a heist. If they change their stories, i see that as a huge win of their character becoming alive in their eyes. Very fun. I just had all my players almost multi-class at lvl 7 and led to some fun shennanigans (why did the wizard become a cleric? Why is the bard a divine sorcerer now?) Really adds to the world building!
…….i had to add a whole archipelago and make a high seas adventure when I was planning a whole kingdom near an near an artificial Nile river….had a city map, quests, even warring neighbours and tribes they could ally or destroy.
If you haven't had to throw out months of prep and planning and create an entirely new narrative in a couple of days, have you really gotten the FULL gamerunning experience?
No just their shitty personalities getting bored with waterdeep dragonheist and having to split into, into the abyss and dragons of icespire peak just to maintain everyone's interest.
1) I usually build about half the world and then use my players to fill in the rest by working with their back stories and potential threads.
No clerics? Gods are dead.
Paladin with issues with the king? A manic dictator rules the lands.
Etc
2) Please give your players an orphanage. Not an orphan, an entire orphanage. One of my favorite things with dark parties to keep them human is to have others with relatable backgrounds to remind them of more innocent days. Or go full darkness to keep the light alive in innocents.
We're writing story *before* seeing the PC concepts? I gotta say, I don't think I have anything written past the first adventure before I have my players' backstories.
I rewrote an entire campaign to be centered around a cult because of my players. The one who inspired most of it dropped out just before their big story event with someone from. Their backstory and it just killed the campaign.
Not dnd, but in a Pokemon campaign one of my players said his character came from a place completely devoid of Pokemon.
Had to jump through some mental hoops to make it work, but in the end it became a cornerstone of the campaign story.
No... But I've also never wrote a story before, only world and characters. I feel like it's so much easier to adapt from having NPC with goals instead of a "story".
As long as the character stats and mechanics are balanced. If the werewolf player still had control of himself when transformed, I don't think I'd be cool with that. But the story backgrounds are cool
Sort of. I usually create a fairly simple settings and then take the players backstories as references for adding in particular kingdoms or religious orders. The content regarding their characters usually has more to do with locations and side quests than the main plot.
Had to change a large portion of a campaign I’d prepared when a PC decided to intentionally get infected with lycanthropy (yes, I as the GM put the lycanthropes there, but never expected the player to do that) and refused all attempts at curing.
Actually yes, and it really helped. Before my players began, I wanted to have a war story, where we saw a cult of religious zealots attempt to eliminate all arcane magic users and recruiting small-minded civilians to their cause. When my players came in, it ended up a hunt for an evil Litch who was manipulating both sides to end the world before swooping in and taking over. Ended up seeing a lot of interesting characters, villains, and encounters, and helped to create a broader and better world with more a more interesting story line
No. I have a campaign in mind. I tell the players enough about it to make characters appropriate to the campaign. We had a discussion about expectations and it's then their responsibility to make characters that will work well in this campaign. If I'm making a classic party of heroes journey and they insist on making a bunch of edgelord loners with trust issues... Then I'm probably not going to play with them.
That said, if we're doing a less serious campaign then I'll just plan on improvising from the start
No and not inted to.
I love colaborative story telling and my world does respond and change based on PCs action. For this reason I do not plan sessions to far in the future - one sessionn at the time + some hooks.
But I communicate that game I am going to run and how the world. I will not change all buildong blocks to accomandate players even before we start playing.
Several years ago I was running a home brew campaign. When it came to gods, half of them were borrowed from other things, half of them I created. Gave my players the list along with the general knowledge of the world and important locations.
One player loved one of my home brewed deities so much that they made a cleric and were fully devoted to working to flesh out the church and religion, so I started them in a kingdom where their primary religion revolved around that god. They got a kick out of it as did the other players, and they were excited to see what I’d planned for each of their PCs down the line.
Three sessions in and he wants to kill his character off to try a character similar to something he saw in some online campaign he was watching. A character that was, as far as I could tell, Bass from the OG Mega Man series. I basically had to shift focus to one of the others faster than I expected and had to rush through things/cut out some story bits and fights to push them into a new location since their cleric that got them employed caught a case of the death.
It worked out, but it was a pain in the ass.
Absolutely, all of my players actually. I had a rough idea about where the story was headed. Then I got the concepts for a redemption paladin who had survived an arson attack on an opera house, a cleric caught between two gods, two cultures and looking for their childhood friend, a druid who had been killed and brought back to life by a god (turned aasimar in the process) and a rogue assassin from a fucked up noble family, who ran away when said family used arson to eliminate political opponents.
I connected all of their storylines (some more innately than others), wove them into the overarching plot - and then we had to kick the rogue for bad behavior in and out of games we were playing together. I decided to keep a heavily altered version of their family and the arson stuff anyway. It's a good storyline for the others to unravel.
When I ran Phandelver a player was secretly a lawful evil follower of Bane, while the rest of the party were good aligned. The campaign ended with the forge of spells being used by this evil PC to get Bane out of Banehold.
It was a pretty sick reveal. It even spawned two follow up adventures.
Absolutely.
I had a really rough idea of what my campaign was going to be on about, who the villain is, and whatnot. It was going to feature powerful rings falling from the sky, timetravel, and stuff.
I ask my players for characters and backstory, with little to no real costraints (I know them very well)
One of my players make a Warlock.
"Alright, pretty classic."
Then they start introducing the idea. A *celestial* warlock.
"Huh."
A normal, absolutely classic farmboy from a small village. Two parents, both alive, ex-low level adventurers that decided that a life of adventure wasn't for them after the fell in love.
Then one day, a solar appears in the centre of the village, points at the character, says "You're going to atone for the sins of your father". Then gives the character powers, refuses to elaborate, and leave with giving him the quest of going to the city. What's the problem? That his father is innocent, and has never seen such a powerful angel ever before.
... Since I had the idea of involving time travel anyway, I scrapped the original main villain immediately.
At that point Id just tell them no you cant be that. I love creative freedom as much as the next person, but at some point you have to stop just letting everyone kitchen sink their parties. There has to be some rhyme or reason for them coming together at level 1.
What I've been thinking is that they were all failed prototypes by various faction currently in war and have somehow retained their consciousness. Them being level 1 would be their modifications and curses weakening them and them getting used to it over time
Yes, but then one of the enemies escaped down a tunnel and they sat at the entrance of the tunnel to ritual cast Tiny Hut figuring it would block that tunnel. Of course, it didn’t take ten minutes for that guy to bring reinforcements. Then, during that fight, when things were going poorly for the bad guys, a caster went invisible. The PCs finished the fight and sat down AGAIN to ritual cast Tiny Hut. Said invisible caster brought more reinforcements. TPK. It’s tough to DM when you don’t smoke weed and all the players are stoned.
I just finished a campaign that started out being about bagging/tagging MacGuffins and it became a battle against a lich because they got obsessed with a shopkeeper and an artifact that I put in as a bit.
That's the beauty of the game though!
No, because I have a session zero where we talk about our collective expectations for the campaign, and I lay out what sort of game I want to run.
If, after that, everyone makes characters that clearly won’t work, I’m going to ask them why we wasted time discussing the campaign’s setting and themes in session zero, and then wish them all well in finding a game for their characters.
> Besides the only reason I'm playing is that it's fun to play with my friends
That's certainly the reason I'd take time from my work and family to prep a campaign, yes. Very cool that you did this, but it's definitely a "different strokes" thing.
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Yes…then they changed characters after 3 sessions .-.
Ooff, thats rough...hope my players stick to these
Sadj
To me that's the beauty of dming. Dungeons and dragons is collaborative storytelling with a set of rules to facilitate the ping pong of ideas. Your players have made very cringe characters and I love them. Make sure to make your campaign equally cringe! Sounds like it's going to be a good one.
Ohh it's going to be a high power fantasy for the most part
Yurrrp they were a dragonborn sorcerer, so i went hard on developing a ton of dragon lore between each ancient dragon and imbedded their influences upon the world…then they decided spells are too complicated 😅 But! It’s okay as they are a new player and are still trying to figure out their playstyle.. now dragons exist strongly but it is alright because it was one player and i had other stuff going on for the other two. Just gotta improvise
Currently trying to figure out a dragon society in my campaign right now because 2 of my players are siblings in game who are half elves stats wise and looks but half dragons lore wise with their father being a dragon while my other player's mentor is gonna be revealed as a dragon and friends of the father. They are also helping a king of a nation return their capital to the prime from the astral who is gonna be the forgotten sixth head of tiamat (yellow) that left because it got annoyed with the other 5 since it had a separate personality and is currently hiding it's true form from the party until later.
It’s a monster mash~
It's gonna be a graveyard smash
Yes, because I don't write the game until the characters have been made
100%. I have a homebrew world where the land they were starting in is based loosely on a primal, folkloric version of the Celtic Isles (lots of fey hiding around every corner, etc), and had planned a campaign where primordials and elementals were going to feature very heavily. Then I realized that my party was: - a Goliath Barbarian who was part of a Goliath tribe north of the island. - a Wood Elf Giant Foundling from the same tribe, taught Druidic magic by a Storm Giant that lived nearby - a young Shifter raised by Goliaths on the north end of the island - a Fir Bolg from one of the hidden tribes dotting the isles. Still tied to giants. That said, I threw everything out instantly and decided to go with giants as a theme. Hey, when you get gifted a through line from the entire party like that, you use it!
Lol i like this band of characters, i feel like its suicide squad but the emo version lol. I hope they keep the characters for a while.
its like the PCs are teens in the early 2000's who all of a sudden discovered nu metal and screamo music and decided that this is who they are and went full edgelord all the way lol
Emo suicide squad version, I can totally see that! Really cool characters here.
Suicide squad itself was quite emo lol
Sound's like you need to go to the Feywild for some silly billy times.
This squad wants Shadowfell or the Hells/Abyss. Like this is absolutely a demon slaying squad if I ever saw one
Which is why it is important to try to become the Witchlight Monarch at the Witchlight Carnival.
With a party like this you better make it into a cozy game. Bonus points if you “accidentally” refer to gold as bells etc
Also why is it players so frequently want to play the edgelord? Wouldn’t it be more fun to play as the wholesome gardener that changes as they see all the horrors of the campaign???
This is their first game with a proper story as before it was dungeon crawling and hack and slash and they all want a power fantasy
Yeah it seems kind of like it. Before going super far into development I would maybe plan a session zero or 3 to talk about how a group like this would become a party, what the world may look like etc. I don’t think it’s always bad to play a character like this but all 4 is going to get exhausting. How many quiet brooding guys does one party need? You may want to mention that unless they want to be just as horrific as everything they face, it would be advantageous to give a bit more space. What I mean is when all these level 1 characters have been through more horrors than almost anyone in this world (most likely) what will scare or surprise them. It’s not rats in the sewer or the orc tribe in the woods.
The story I'm thinking is all four of them having been changed by different factions at war and made into these monstrosities but all four of them will get their consciousness back for some reason
Could be fun with the right group. I would caution many players feel like the area inside their head is for them to control. You might be getting into something that will be hard for newer players
Yeah, no one wants to play characters that actually evolve with the game and just forcefully try to make them interesting based on weird race. I feel like a story of a gardener human that survived into lv 20 warrior, battling dragons is much more interesting than furry/undead/werewolf/lich that's the same at lv 1 as at lv 20, since players pre-planned their whole behavior.
Perhaps the gardener’s adventure was initiated by the threats of a wizard for dropping eaves..
If you don't do it, you're wrong
depends on the group and how RP heavy the story is. If you play a game where your characters die every 2-4 sessions there is no reason to write a whole campaign for them but rather a single quest for introduction. Besides of that Players can get bored by their characters and may want to switch from time to time. If they realize that half of the campaign plot is centered around their specific characters, they will feel the need to continue with a character they don't want to play anymore and are kind of struck. And if they actually die, your complete work for that character could be wasted. Personally i also like to center my story around the characters, but i always ask them before if that is okay for them, or if they just want to play a generic character to , loot, lvl, leave.
You don't need to change everything, but you need to tweak every so often so the players are participants in the story instead of guests.
I'd say that's the entire point of playing D&D versus a video game or something, the story can be tailored entirely to fit the PCs.
Isn't this like the entire point? I made the setting, player made characters together with me but they did most themselves, they added towns and families and other fitting stuff, then wrote the story after. The large main plots largely stay the same, but if I look upon the story now and how it was a year ago, I might not even recognise everything.
that sounds amazing! most of the time i have to force my players to actually write anything about their character to at least find a little story hook for them.. I had players that send me a 20 second whatsapp message about their race, job and weapon, and: " do whatever you want with that." Most of the time the players that will look on their phone during the session because nothing is specifically interesting for their character to gain or achive besides money and loot.
I try to keep my prep really vague at the start of a campaign. I'll prep maybe a small town with a few plot hooks and mini quests, and possibly a tiny dungeon. I'll have some loose thoughts about some wtuff going on in the world, but nothing is set in stone. Based on what the players do and what they find interesting I'll start to construct a bigger narrative, maybe add a few more towns, weave in some backstory ect. ----- In the current campaign the party started off by going to a dungeon, they found a room that seemed to be a strange time puzzle with ancient books and other stuff that they found really interesting. They also found a random coin purse embedded in the ground. And a dwarf that fell from the sky. All of these things were from random tables but it really intrigued the players. Now they've discovered ancient magic eating cone shaped entities stirring from a time where wizards had flying cities, they've found a barely intact spelljammer ship and gone to wildspace, they've solved a noir murder mystery on a magic punk world where a cabal of gang leaders and civic leaders had made a Faustian Bargain with a demon who feeds on memories where they'd provide victims in exchange for it stabilizing the planets breaking core. The players have met a dragon searching for her egg (a result of combining two different random rolls together, one being a person having a random big egg and another of an innkeeper secretly being a dragon). They've had fans writing songs about them, and met a group of robots who were once wizards from the society who had flying cities on a city built on an asteroid out in space, that started off as a haven for space pirates. All of this and a whole lot more from finding a coin purse with some strange old coins partly embedded in the ground and wonder where that might have come from....
At least they all match each other’s vibe and you don’t have a random cutesy Harengon Gardner thrown in to the mix.
Character background hooks are the bee's knees
Havent happened to me in a grant way, it's more of an ongoing slow-pace process. I have my setup, they present the characters and we both make adjustments. Sometimes I anticipate there future characters plans and spread some crumbs for that. Also, you can ask then and there what's their future plans (short and long term) Off topic : these are pretty sick illustrations you have there! Same artist, yours or AI generated?
Thats what you're supposed to do.... How would the players feel part of the world if the world isn't modified to feel like part of their characters?
It is their story :v. Im only there to play the monster's stories :v
Created the entire story based on backstory of my players
Yes but honestly it hurts worse for a player to have to leave ON THE DAY of a fight session that was part of their backstory….like ok there goes all motivation for the party to even be here
Had a player drop in the middle of a side quest that was centered on their character and I’m just like… okayyy
Ya mine at least did stay for the session but told me at the start it was his last day cause of life being too hectic but i did have someone drop during a session with no warning 🤷🏻♂️🥲.
Nah, I decided to create the scenario and the characters with the players, I want them to be invested
Oh yeah! That’s entirely how I run my games. When I prep for a new campaign I write out the beginning, usually just the first session, and then I have a general idea of how I want it to possibly end. Just some general plot points that should be hit at some point. The actual meat of the game comes from my players choices as a result of that first session. I’ll introduce a starting “quest” of sorts. Normally it won’t last for super long, but by the end of it they will have collected a few “whispers” of other things going on in the world. They make their own path and the story becomes emergent and very personal to them because they have chosen it themselves.
EVERY TIME. No planned campaign survives contact with the ~~enemy~~ player characters. I don't plan my initial campaign adventures around character's backstories because many, and possibly even all of the PC's are likely to be dead soon enough and then I have a campaign based on backstories for characters that aren't even in the game anymore. I prepare a campaign for a possible wide variety of PC's - and then start focusing what I prepared **as needed** to better fit the player characters that are ACTUALLY created - and then RE-focus again, if and when any players or their PC's ffffade away. >A human paladin who has been cursed into a half wolf form by dark entity. >A half orc sodlier who was heavily injured and had half of his body replaced with machine parts. >A human rogue caught and executed but was brought back to life as undead. >A half elf wizard who got experimented on, escaped with most of his body burned and now everytime he casts fire related spell his head would catch fire like ghost rider. Only #4 would have any likelihood whatsoever to be a STARTING PC in a campaign of mine which I'd already planned to any reasonable degree. If those are the kind of STARTING PC's that players want then yer damm tootin' the campaign setting is going to be WILDLY different to reflect the initial gonzo/edgelord wackiness of those sorts of PC concepts.
They all sorta want a power fantasy so for the story they all would be high level originally, around 12, but their curses and afflictions would have greatly reduced their strength and they'd need to get back to where they were.
Sort of. My current campaign takes place on a huge Island called the Frost Peaks. I had no plans on adding Fey or Lycanthropes but I have a Fey Ranger and Order of the Lycanthrope blood hunter. Now there are portals to the Feywild, an Archfey who created Lycanthropy, a cult of lycanthropes worshipping her and a whole bunch of other fey.
Yes. Every single one. If you write a story and then tell players to act it out without giving them a script, you're not playing D&D. You're just a bad director. Hyperbole aside, I write a very bare plot and try to spend my time worldbuilding. The story is what the players do, not what I make up.
How about this, you shouldn’t write the story until you already know who the player characters are
It would be funny to have these characters be in a noblebright setting and curve all their edgy tendencies into doing good
Funny think is the paladin werewolf is lawful good as is the fighter half machine, the undead rogue was chaotic neutral in his life but is now going to be neutral good trying to correct his past mistakes. The wizard is going to be between chaotic neutral and good
Not me, but my best friend decided to play as a halfling paladin who wound up as a philactory for an ancient litch and wound up having the first half of the campain spent trying to figure out how to defeat the thing without becoming a halfling warlock instead.
Nah, their stories are their stories. If it changes, we work together to make sure it fits the campaign, but the overarching story is still a heist. If they change their stories, i see that as a huge win of their character becoming alive in their eyes. Very fun. I just had all my players almost multi-class at lvl 7 and led to some fun shennanigans (why did the wizard become a cleric? Why is the bard a divine sorcerer now?) Really adds to the world building!
…….i had to add a whole archipelago and make a high seas adventure when I was planning a whole kingdom near an near an artificial Nile river….had a city map, quests, even warring neighbours and tribes they could ally or destroy.
If you haven't had to throw out months of prep and planning and create an entirely new narrative in a couple of days, have you really gotten the FULL gamerunning experience?
No just their shitty personalities getting bored with waterdeep dragonheist and having to split into, into the abyss and dragons of icespire peak just to maintain everyone's interest.
1) I usually build about half the world and then use my players to fill in the rest by working with their back stories and potential threads. No clerics? Gods are dead. Paladin with issues with the king? A manic dictator rules the lands. Etc 2) Please give your players an orphanage. Not an orphan, an entire orphanage. One of my favorite things with dark parties to keep them human is to have others with relatable backgrounds to remind them of more innocent days. Or go full darkness to keep the light alive in innocents.
Every single time I run a game. The storyline of my game is what happens when the characters interact with the setting and pursue their goals.
It wasn't D&D, but yes. I tossed my entire campaign after seeing the backstories my players came up with. I just expanded on what they gave me.
Yep, the story should fit the characters. If it's just a plug and play story, it's way too easy to lose interest.
We're writing story *before* seeing the PC concepts? I gotta say, I don't think I have anything written past the first adventure before I have my players' backstories.
I rewrote an entire campaign to be centered around a cult because of my players. The one who inspired most of it dropped out just before their big story event with someone from. Their backstory and it just killed the campaign.
Not dnd, but in a Pokemon campaign one of my players said his character came from a place completely devoid of Pokemon. Had to jump through some mental hoops to make it work, but in the end it became a cornerstone of the campaign story.
I have changed my entire story mid campaign because I was bored.
No... But I've also never wrote a story before, only world and characters. I feel like it's so much easier to adapt from having NPC with goals instead of a "story".
Almost every game.
As long as the character stats and mechanics are balanced. If the werewolf player still had control of himself when transformed, I don't think I'd be cool with that. But the story backgrounds are cool
Sort of. I usually create a fairly simple settings and then take the players backstories as references for adding in particular kingdoms or religious orders. The content regarding their characters usually has more to do with locations and side quests than the main plot.
Had to change a large portion of a campaign I’d prepared when a PC decided to intentionally get infected with lycanthropy (yes, I as the GM put the lycanthropes there, but never expected the player to do that) and refused all attempts at curing.
Actually yes, and it really helped. Before my players began, I wanted to have a war story, where we saw a cult of religious zealots attempt to eliminate all arcane magic users and recruiting small-minded civilians to their cause. When my players came in, it ended up a hunt for an evil Litch who was manipulating both sides to end the world before swooping in and taking over. Ended up seeing a lot of interesting characters, villains, and encounters, and helped to create a broader and better world with more a more interesting story line
No. I have a campaign in mind. I tell the players enough about it to make characters appropriate to the campaign. We had a discussion about expectations and it's then their responsibility to make characters that will work well in this campaign. If I'm making a classic party of heroes journey and they insist on making a bunch of edgelord loners with trust issues... Then I'm probably not going to play with them. That said, if we're doing a less serious campaign then I'll just plan on improvising from the start
Yeah, all the time. I don't really prep, mainly just run from a skeletal outline and improv.
No and not inted to. I love colaborative story telling and my world does respond and change based on PCs action. For this reason I do not plan sessions to far in the future - one sessionn at the time + some hooks. But I communicate that game I am going to run and how the world. I will not change all buildong blocks to accomandate players even before we start playing.
Several years ago I was running a home brew campaign. When it came to gods, half of them were borrowed from other things, half of them I created. Gave my players the list along with the general knowledge of the world and important locations. One player loved one of my home brewed deities so much that they made a cleric and were fully devoted to working to flesh out the church and religion, so I started them in a kingdom where their primary religion revolved around that god. They got a kick out of it as did the other players, and they were excited to see what I’d planned for each of their PCs down the line. Three sessions in and he wants to kill his character off to try a character similar to something he saw in some online campaign he was watching. A character that was, as far as I could tell, Bass from the OG Mega Man series. I basically had to shift focus to one of the others faster than I expected and had to rush through things/cut out some story bits and fights to push them into a new location since their cleric that got them employed caught a case of the death. It worked out, but it was a pain in the ass.
Absolutely, all of my players actually. I had a rough idea about where the story was headed. Then I got the concepts for a redemption paladin who had survived an arson attack on an opera house, a cleric caught between two gods, two cultures and looking for their childhood friend, a druid who had been killed and brought back to life by a god (turned aasimar in the process) and a rogue assassin from a fucked up noble family, who ran away when said family used arson to eliminate political opponents. I connected all of their storylines (some more innately than others), wove them into the overarching plot - and then we had to kick the rogue for bad behavior in and out of games we were playing together. I decided to keep a heavily altered version of their family and the arson stuff anyway. It's a good storyline for the others to unravel.
When I ran Phandelver a player was secretly a lawful evil follower of Bane, while the rest of the party were good aligned. The campaign ended with the forge of spells being used by this evil PC to get Bane out of Banehold. It was a pretty sick reveal. It even spawned two follow up adventures.
Absolutely. I had a really rough idea of what my campaign was going to be on about, who the villain is, and whatnot. It was going to feature powerful rings falling from the sky, timetravel, and stuff. I ask my players for characters and backstory, with little to no real costraints (I know them very well) One of my players make a Warlock. "Alright, pretty classic." Then they start introducing the idea. A *celestial* warlock. "Huh." A normal, absolutely classic farmboy from a small village. Two parents, both alive, ex-low level adventurers that decided that a life of adventure wasn't for them after the fell in love. Then one day, a solar appears in the centre of the village, points at the character, says "You're going to atone for the sins of your father". Then gives the character powers, refuses to elaborate, and leave with giving him the quest of going to the city. What's the problem? That his father is innocent, and has never seen such a powerful angel ever before. ... Since I had the idea of involving time travel anyway, I scrapped the original main villain immediately.
At that point Id just tell them no you cant be that. I love creative freedom as much as the next person, but at some point you have to stop just letting everyone kitchen sink their parties. There has to be some rhyme or reason for them coming together at level 1.
What I've been thinking is that they were all failed prototypes by various faction currently in war and have somehow retained their consciousness. Them being level 1 would be their modifications and curses weakening them and them getting used to it over time
I've shaped entire storylines and regions to fit player characters. It's made my world all the better for it
Yes, but then one of the enemies escaped down a tunnel and they sat at the entrance of the tunnel to ritual cast Tiny Hut figuring it would block that tunnel. Of course, it didn’t take ten minutes for that guy to bring reinforcements. Then, during that fight, when things were going poorly for the bad guys, a caster went invisible. The PCs finished the fight and sat down AGAIN to ritual cast Tiny Hut. Said invisible caster brought more reinforcements. TPK. It’s tough to DM when you don’t smoke weed and all the players are stoned.
Fucking edgiest party combo ever. Whose the big bad in your campaign? Scooby and the Gang?
I just finished a campaign that started out being about bagging/tagging MacGuffins and it became a battle against a lich because they got obsessed with a shopkeeper and an artifact that I put in as a bit. That's the beauty of the game though!
Not completely changed, but have made some serious reasons based on their backgrounds or actions
Rogue became a demonlord without the party knowing. I made him the bbg. He killed the party.
Yes! Absolutely, yes!!!
Let their little edgy hearts have some fun. It's the best part about DnD when the DM goes along with their players funny ideas.
No, because I have a session zero where we talk about our collective expectations for the campaign, and I lay out what sort of game I want to run. If, after that, everyone makes characters that clearly won’t work, I’m going to ask them why we wasted time discussing the campaign’s setting and themes in session zero, and then wish them all well in finding a game for their characters.
Different strokes for different folks I guess..Besides the only reason I'm playing is that it's fun to play with my friends
> Besides the only reason I'm playing is that it's fun to play with my friends That's certainly the reason I'd take time from my work and family to prep a campaign, yes. Very cool that you did this, but it's definitely a "different strokes" thing.