DM Advice: More Than You Can Chew
Time and again I’ll have folks write in with a really solid idea for a big picture campaign concept or third act twist with a request to help bridge the gap between the low levels/start of the campaign and the thing they’re excited for. I love helping these folks, but as someone who looks for structural answers to problems it’s made me think there might be something lacking in how we’re teaching DMs to tell stories.
If I had to break it down into pure fundamentals: The constant guiding theme in any and all adventure or campaign writing is that whatever the party happen to be doing, whether it be hunting monsters, protecting an ally, exploring a ruin, or planning a heist, It’s only a piece of a far larger story. This larger story operates at a greater scale than the party currently has a means of dealing with, initially making them feel like small fish in a big pond and providing a great sense of achievement when they finally do manage to take on the larger threats.
When plotting a story arc you should start with a goal, something difficult but conceptually achievable that the party can throw themselves at with cleverness or daredevil bravery. Rescue the Heir, Save the Village, Avert the Disaster, Steal the Jewel. The task is not impossible, but the solution is not obvious requiring them to explore, be crafty, and get inventive. It’s best if they’re invested in accomplishing this goal in some way, so make the stakes personal and resonant with the characters and their desires.
In the background however you’ve got something else cooking, a larger story that the party are only pieces in, a conflict between individuals and forces far larger than they’ve previously dealt with that’s been going on unseen. Start with how the party achieving their initial goal will affect the world: who’s it going to piss off? what tenuous balance does it disrupt? What had to be done to keep that balance in place? Do any of the power players in this arrangement see the party as their opportunity to make a move and so throw their support behind this seemingly innocuous goal? What prices do they extract?
Villains are generally going to be your primary link between the small and large scale stories, but it’s important to set them up correctly; the villains are acting/reacting in relation to the larger story and their actions trod on the lives of the party/the people the party care about. In trying to correct this injustice (if only for selfish reasons) the party gain the villain’s attention/the attention of that villain’s enemies ( though whether they be allies or villains themselves depends on the story) and suddenly find themselves caught up in the events of the larger narrative.
While it’s a good idea to plan the goal based adventure as something the party can objectively “win”, I prefer setting up the background scenario as a delicate sort of jenga tower: things were inevitably going to fall apart but there’s no way to predict how. That’s because your players a) are chaos agents b) have agency, and it’s all about seeing how they choose to act/react in the face of an overwhelming scenario.
The small scale story is about the lives of the heroes/people, where as the larger scale story is about the outcome of ideas/the world. You do the small story first because getting your audience to care about themes and lore is best done through getting them to care about characters first, and then using their plights and passions as a lens to see the bigger picture.
Advice on using this technique on specific adventures under the cut:
titsay
romaincrisis
yousharknotpass
snowghoul
kaledo-art
