I’ve been running role playing campaigns for many years now. I think the first one I did was for my school friends when I was around fourteen, or fifteen. It was a Warhammer Fantasy Role play campaign I think, or D&D, I can’t quite remember. What I do remember though, is that I barely did any preparation. I just went in there, rolled characters, and started setting a scene. It went okay for a few sessions as I just threw combat encounters at them, but we started to lose momentum around the fifth wave of goblins!
I realized that my campaign, whilst functional, had no deeper meaning. There was no story to be told here other than the murder of goblins. I realized quite quickly that my campaigns needed to be planned better if I was going to keep players interested in what I had to offer them. Far forward some fifteen years later, and my campaign planning starts months before.
I’m about to start a brand new campaign with a group of my colleagues, so I thought it would be fun to share some of the methods I use to prepare for running a role playing campaign.