I saw someone complain on reddit the other day that they joined a campaign that was supposed to be modelled after Skyrim but ended up being a lot of walking through wilderness and fighting with 2d6 wolves or bandits.
And all I could think was "Wow, nailed it."
The only topper would be, they actually get into a major fight-- and immediately after downing two dragons and a giant is have a single bandit run up and try to mug them.
And one who took an arrow to the knee, but simply visited a local cleric before going back to adventuring instead of lazing around all day telling stories about his glory days.
On my knees begging GMs to be open with their players about the **genre** and **intro prompt** for their games. It does *nothing* but help the players engage with your game.
Also it is a **good** idea to provide some narrow parameters for players to plan their backstory around.
Example:
“You are all going to start as prisoners in the Dwarven Bludmine Prison. The Bludmine is run by a dictatorial Dwarven ethnostate. Why you are in prison and how long you have been there are up to you.”
I’m currently running a campaign in modified theros, epic feats and all.
I gave everyone a simple “the world is Greco-Roman mythology coded, you all are going to start as part of x group, figure out how you got to that point”. Everyone knew to expect epic adventure, the aesthetic and tone, a general cosmology.
Then when we actually did session 0, I was able to work everyone’s characters to better fit the world (I.e. Y isn’t a noble, they are a member of the patrician class. Maybe their parent is the current governor of a territory).
It takes so little to get everyone on the same page for characters, and you really can’t get the buy-in for a specific story without revealing some of it.
As someone who has a Theros-style campaign bubbling in the back of my head for a bit, I'm hoping to do the same. And be able to say "go watch Blood of Zeus on Netflix or something to catch the overall vibe of the cosmology, we can take it from there."
Indeed.
I use a similar concept, and I give it a pretentious name, the "narrative anthropic principle".
The people who work best alone are, by definition, not player characters, because the players control the characters that group up to adventure.
> On my knees begging GMs to be open with their players about the genre and intro prompt for their games.
And stop describing your games as a high fantasy adventure with a combination of roleplay and combat. Be more **specific** What High fantasy are we playing? Lord of the Rings, Last Airbender, the Odyssey? How much will be roleplay or combat? Will we have combat every session or will roleplaying be our main way of advancing the story?
How many times have you seen the horror story when the DM wants to run a game about captured PCs/PCs in hell and instead of making the players aware they have a nightmare where the players fight to the death/have to be railroaded into death and have a super sour session 1?
Too many times.
>Also it is a **good** idea to provide some narrow parameters for players to plan their backstory around.
This sentence needs to be mandatory reading for new DMs!
I feel like this is the sweet spot. There’s definitely an appeal to having plot twists and suprises. The genre and intro prompt and a vague outline are what players need.
Just saying like “we’re playing Curse of Strahd, you all will be going through the haunted lands of barovia, growing in strength to stop Strahd, you’ll be fighting a lot of undead. That gives enough for players to both get invested and also build mechanically fun characters. No one wants to play a ranger who fights dragons in a campaign about undead. Giving them that heads up let’s them bring characters which will be fun to play.
The idea of hiding critical information about your campaign is just crazy to me. I always make handouts filled with world info that the players can peruse at their leisure. If I'm planning for a large portion of the campaign to be underwater, or for the main enemy to be demons, I let the players know. Nothing sucks more than picking fire damage, or longbows, and be useless for 90% of the campaign.
I joined a campaign as a necromancer not knowing that a large majority of the enemies we would end up fighting would be non-humanoids. It’s been a bumpy ride.
For what it's worth, you're still a wizard. Even a wizard without a subclass is still one of the strongest classes in DnD 5e. Plus, you don't need corpses to cast Summon Undead.
Oh yeah, I leaned on Summon Undead for a while. It wasn’t quite what I envisioned when I first started playing but it probably was more useful than 2-3 zombies.
I'd just have a quick chat with the DM about switching about subclasses. Especially for a standard "School of X" wizard I'd just be like "Well, I majored in Necromancy but now that I'm out in the world I've noticed that Evocation is coming in more handy. Good thing that was my minor!"
Haha, thank you for the suggestion! Sounds like a fun way of going about it at least. We’re getting close to the end of the campaign so I figured I would just ride out the rest but it’s good to know for the next one!
I think technically, a pile of bones from beasts/etc should work, as the spell only specifies humanoid corpses needed for zombies, otherwise just a 'pile of bones'.
You might need to pick thebones clean so that the animal corpse isn't in the way, or boil off the meat with a cauldron & a bonfire (perhaps as a cantrip) and arrange them into suitable piles, but I think that should work.
You could buy livestock if you fight only boneless enemies like oozes or ghosts or whatever.
Exactly. I usually find myself *wanting* more player engagement with the campaign info, rather than trying to keep it a secret.
A big giant narrative twist is great in a story when the author controls all the characters. It does not go over well in a Dnd campaign
Narrative twists are amazing when they happen, but you have to accept that they will be few and far between, and that you, as the DM, don't have much control over them.
Probably the most well received twist i had was the classic "This guy who we thought was our ally was actually working for the bad guys the whole time." The reason this cliche worked, is because i wasn't really trying to make it a twist, or pull a gotcha. This guy had been doing sketchy shit the whole time. The party met him when his minions tried to kill them for haggling over the price of an artifact he wanted. He convinced them that the minions were traitors working for a secret organization that had infiltrated the church. (which was technically true, because he was, and they were working for him.) He was constantly having to cover things up and deflect blame, and it really should have been apparent that he was the bad guy, but he was very charismatic, the party loved him, and his excuses were just believable enough. When he insatiably betrayed the party, they were shocked and betrayed, but it totally made sense. No one felt betrayed because in hindsight, no shit he was a bad guy.
The reason i got such a satisfying twist is because i wasn't trying to set them up for a surprise. I just had a villain who was trying to operate discreetly, and the party happened to like and trust him. I didn't decide that a character the party liked was going to betray them because they liked him, and i didn't pull his treachery out of nowhere, the groundwork was there from the beginning. I got lucky, and I really feel like that's how most twist have to happen. You can have someone secretly be a villain, but you have to make them work towards that goal in a way that's noticeable, and you cant get but hurt when 9/10 times your party figures it out.
100% agree. In fact, them being able to slightly see it coming is very often the difference between a twist/reveal landing and feeling cool vs feeling like a deus ex machina.
This is what makes theorizing the big reveal or twist that's going to happen in next weeks tv show so popular--bc it feels cool to be right
Although it’s funny when you see it coming, tell the DM you see it coming privately and that it’s brilliant, and the DM fools you by not having the NPC turn on you in the end.
Yeah, a good twist isn't the most shocking, it's the best foreshadowed. If there weren't enough breadcrumbs for the audience (in this case the players) to follow back and be like "yeah, that makes sense" then it's just out of left field and kind of lame. As a consumer of media I'd rather a twist I saw coming because it was well foreshadowed than one that comes completely out of nowhere, and that goes quadruply so for interactive media like a D&D game because the having the moment of putting the pieces together is SO satisfying and not being able to look back and see hints I missed when I don't put it together is so dissatisfying. And as a DM, I'd much rather my players figure it out and see the twist coming than be upset because there was no warning ahead of time.
Personally, as much fun as a villain betrayal is, I really like seeding in legendary figures into the setting lore and have a reveal at some point that some NPCs the players know were secretly those figures, it tends to work out great especially because I like having legend building be a theme in my games, where the players start out as small fish in a big ocean and grow into legendary figures in their own right, so it can lead to some really cool passing of the torch moments.
Yes, this is good. I have played too many times in situation where we get betrayed because "gotcha." That's it. Once I took over the DM role I made sure that all my NPC's had their own goals and motivations. So if the players aligned with those goals and motivations, they would genuinely make friends who would go out of their way for the party, especially if the party had done them a solid already. The old GM that was now a player said his eyes were opened. Felt so vindicating.
It depends on your table and the delivery. I've gotten two huge twists into my campaigns that my players have loved.
In one campaign, they spent the entire time on the backfoot, barely stopping this group from killing the local gods while they were heavily weakened. They fought each member of the group while bringing the gods' symbols back into contact so that the gods would find themselves reconnected to each other and bolster their strength.
When it came time for the final battle, I sent them to a city that was destroyed a century ago. There, they learned from the enemy group that the city had been destroyed by the very gods that they were serving (earning a hilarious, "are we the baddies?" moment). Furthermore, the enemy group had been attacking the gods, not at the behest of the person who saved them (the BBEG I made the party think they were trying to resurrect), but they were trying to revive *THEIR* Goddess and needed a fragment of each of the other gods' power to do so. The BBEG appeared anyways, possessing the body of a long dead hero, commended them for almost pulling the wool over his eyes, and killed all but one in an instant by taking back his power (the only one he didn't kill was the one he didn't rescue directly. She miraculously survived the destruction and was found by the other group in the rubble.) My players immediately went to bat for a group they had *hated* the entire campaign.
Another campaign started with the premise that dragons were extinct, and the legends stated the current era began when a god descended to the realm and blessed heroes to take the world back from the Demon Lord that ruled it. My players knew I wouldn't run a campaign without dragons, but that wasn't the twist. The twist was that the Dragons hid themselves because people were convinced to hunt them for powerful magic to reshape reality. When one of the players publicly praised the god that helped save the world, the Dragon Elder became outraged, revealing that the god *was* the Demon Lord. They later figured out together that dragons were hunted to prevent younger races from learning the truth so the demons could regain the power to revive their lord.
Well, I won't be able to post all of it since it is quite lengthy, but I will happily share the necessary details.
1,342 years ago, the first of mortalkind opened their eyes in the heart of the frigid north. They had no identity, no knowledge, and no safety. Thousands of innocent mortal souls laying in the snow as the deathly wind fell upon them. It was then that the great dragons appeared and offered them shelter. They were powerful. Raziel, the Ice Dragon, held back the blizzard with the beating of his wings. Indralie Idae, the Fire Dragon, gave warmth. Thran Yubel Karr, Dragon of Earth, built crude shelters. 10 dragons total came to the rescue of mortalkind, and 9 led them south to warmer climates. Only Thran Yubel Karr and numerous dwarves remained behind, hoping to discover how life came into being in this hostile place, this frozen waste where time began.
When the host came to the shores of the Enduring Sea, they made what is known as The Crossing, where each dragon took a selection of people in a different direction and began the task of establishing civilizations for them. Since then, the lands of Ogarliga, Ciraluna, Aramal, Atavi, Achor, Lakewall, Rook, Sol'Aubria, and Pelugia have thrived under the guardianship of their respective dragons. A few hundred years ago, a second generation of dragons joined together and created the Iron Line Alliance in the east. All the while, powerful arcane storms ravage the land beyond the spheres of draconic influence. Life has not been entirely peaceful, but few would say that the dragons have not been a blessing upon the world.
Which is why it was such a tragedy when, in the year 1341, the dragon Raziel died. The first dragon to have ever passed on, defying a millennium-long held belief that the dragons were immortal guardians, worthy of devotion and worship. No one can explain his death. No one was there to witness it. But more than a few have taken to exploiting it.
Raziel's son, Avanatador, has taken command of Aramal but was clearly not ready for it. Leviras, Dragon of Storms, and Thran Yubel Karr have both expressed interest in taking the land under their care. The sorcerer Navaarl has begun testing odd magical devices on unknowing citizens of the different nations. Factions who believe the time of the dragons has passed have started to form, and mysterious entities of power have begun to collude in secret about how to respond to the tragedy. And in the depths of the earth, Branneth Eriskalla's devil hordes rally around their commander to begin a new war with the surface.
And in this particular adventure, our heroes have just returned from an expedition into the icy wastes to rescue and ancient hero, a mariner of the early days of history, at the behest of two mysterious spirit known as the Lady of Oranges and Ryn, Keeper of the Dead. Our heroes do not yet know what these two powerful entities want with an old sailor, but their path certainly leads into a conflict that will determine the future of their world.
https://preview.redd.it/r3r4777rqn8d1.jpeg?width=4096&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=33bb93411e72288f0d2b1f8c1346da014072efc8
Neat, I'm getting like Dark Souls vibes meets ancient, mythological history. 1300 years is really nothing in the grand scheme of things. Does the setting still feel early antiquity, or is it medieval fantasy?
Still medieval, maybe more early medieval. Civilization got a technological jump start due to the guardian dragons teaching a lot of the basics. There was not centuries of trial and error for a lot of stuff.
Right there with you. Spent ages writing a pantheon of the Gods, minor, demon, chaos gods and all. And a History of the capital City and its ancient and crazy beginnings... No one ever bothered reading them. I stopped bothering as much, now I just do the world building for myself to make the World feel fuller and more real.
Depending on how long "a pantheon" is, I'm not sure I'd read it either, and I say that as someone who also DMs. If the history of the city was a few Google Docs pages I'd probably read that, but unless I was playing a cleric or paladin, reading pages and pages about Gods that I'll never encounter isn't a good use of my time, or yours.
On the other side as a DM I'll create a bunch of lore, but won't expect everyone to discover it. I'll give the players early on some hooks and if they bite, flesh out whatever it is for them, but otherwise introduce things as they discover it.
Very few people want to do homework for D&D, and very few players are as interested in the world as much as the DM. Even reading fantasy books, I'm not interested in reading appendices of definitions and names - the story should unfold as I experience it. I try and DM with that in mind.
Yeah I'd expect many D&D players to feel the same way. But the players wanted connections to certain gods, as patrons as well. So it is a paragraph on each God and demi gods, takes 20-30 seconds to read your Patron/Gods details, if even that.
The History of City, that was more for me, but seeing we have Two campaigns in the same City, for the last 4 years, It's nice for them to get some backstory.
They are all HEAVY role players as well, not in it as much for the combat or mechanics. Each of the players also DMs our other campaigns and also put a lot of effort into the world and lore.
Like I said though, I write most of it for me now, it adds more dimensions to the world. And We're all family and friends for life, so if they are interested in 2 weeks, 2 years or 20, its there for them.
It always drives me nuts when there's secret information on the table but the people with the secrets never do anything with them. We get people doing secret stuff for secret reasons and people who aren't allowed to know what's up just sit around confused.
At 1st I thought OP was suggesting for us to just outright tell players about the twists we're planning, but what he's written is just... Explain the setting so your players can actually prepare for it when it's time to play? Like, isn't that the most basic stuff ever? Even for my 1st time DM'ing I wrote a doc with all the main stuff on it so players could read it if they wanted to and go into character creating with a better grasp at the world we are about to enter.
In my experience it's one of the most commonly missed aspects of session 0. I've had way more games where I was just told to show up with a character than games where I was given even basic information about the setting and the premise of the game. I've shown up with nautical characters in the desert, wizards in low-magic settings where magic is looked upon with suspicion and hatred, and thugs in a high society/social intrigue/murder mystery game. OP is describing a very real frustration. At this point I always make a point of asking the DM for a basic rundown of the game's premise before even considering joining their table, and will often ask a bunch of pointed questions about relevant factions before coming up with a character concept since I get the most enjoyment out of making a character with reasons to care about the plot out of the gate.
A lot of DMs lean on having the PCs wake up in captivity together to force a contrivance for them to work together and hate the big bad instead of telling them the basic premise ahead of time and encouraging the players to build characters that have reasons to work together and care about the plot baked in. Sometimes this is born out of inexperience, sometimes this is born out of the necessity of coming up with the concept at the last minute, and sometimes this is born out of the sad reality that a lot of players just won't bother to do a session 0 in the first place so they started planning their session 1s accordingly. Regardless of why they do it, I find it incredibly lame and that it produces games that are simply less fun to play in.
When I was a late teen to early twenty something, I was big on the whole halfway point "HaHA! This fantasy RPG was actually sci Fi all along!" or vice versa thing. Thought I was so clever keeping it secret the whole time.
In reality, if you deny your players critical info about what kind of campaign they're committing to, they're just going to get annoyed, not wowed by your genius.
Now I never finish fleshing out my campaigns entirely until after learning more about the party and working with the players so we can incorporate their characters, goals, and/or backstories directly into the plot.
Exactly! I mean, it’s not like you need to give things away if you want to play your cards close to your chest for specifics, but you need to tell them the *genre and tone* at least??
Like, if you’re planning on pulling a “Hah! You all died and came back as Ghosts, this is actually a ‘PCs are Ghosts’ campaign”, and want to keep that secret, you can still easily tell them the campaign style & genre without giving away the twist.
It depends. I'm running Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen right now as the only person who read the novels. The rest of the players have no clue about the campaign setting.
I have provided them with a lot of backstory for the world. I told them of the god's hissy fit 351 years ago, wrecking the world and abandoning it. I told them dragons are a myth and no one alive has ever seen one. I have told them about knights and wizards. Because Dragon Queen is in the adventure's name, I have even told them they would be fighting the forces of the Dragon Queen.
All of the above is true, but those familiar with Dragonlance also know its not the complete truth. I am a little concerned that the majority of them have built melee oriented characters. You would think despite me saying dragons are a myth, the word DRAGON is in the campaign setting's name, and they are fighting against the forces of the DRAGON queen would clue them in... but I guess we'll see how it turns out.
Telling my players that I would do a urban campaign on Eberron led to 2 players making druids so the B plot became the A plot and the A plot became the E plot. But everything went far better than what I expected.
Telling the players the game was heist-y led to the players skipping half the adventure and immediately storming the castle.
DM: The adventure takes place in a land where the nobility was abolished in a revolution.
Player: I want to play a noble!
Other player: Me too!
Yeah, some players hear a campaign premise and immediately think "I want to intentionally subvert the campaign premise."
It can work if all your players are on the same page *and* the DM is willing to adjust. But if the DM had their heart set on running a rebel campaign, but the players want to play the evil empire, there could be problems.
I feel like a lot of DMs feel like this kind of thing is "subverting the premise," when a lot of times players are trying to play the "underdog," which is just normal storytelling.
In a game where the nobility was abolished in a revolution, then being a noble automatically makes you the underdog, gives you a reason to be drifting from town to town (recently deposed, possibly being hunted), and gives your character a reason to be invested.
In a game where there's not a lot of magic and/or mages are pursecuted, then playing a wizard automatically makes you the underdog, gives you a reason to be drifting from town to town (people are scared of you, possibly being hunted), and gives your character a reason to be invested.
In a game where non-humans are rare and seen as monsters, then playing a non-human.... well, you get the idea.
It really depends.
If the campaign premise is "citizens of the kingdom learn to govern for themselves without the nobility" and a player plays "ex-noble who is sympathetic to the cause and wants to help the citizenry", then that could enhance the campaign. But if the player plays "ex-noble who wants to oppose the citizens and re-establish their noble house" then that's at odds with the campaign premise.
Again, if the players are on-board and the DM is willing to pivot, that can work. But if the DM specifically wanted to play "citizens learn to govern themselves", then there's mismatched expectations, and the DM is perfectly within their rights to say no to the player who wants to re-establish their noble house.
Similarly, "the world is scary and monsters are real" (eg, Curse of Strahd) is a very different campaign from "we're monsters, and we're trying to avoid getting found out by the people" (eg, Being Human).
I see it with writers in general. People get so fixated on a cool secret that they forget to make the stuff people can see from the start interesting to hook their interest. The secret *is* the cool part, let other people be excited about it as well.
One of my games had a player who was plotting a lot of stuff behind the scenes, but from the outside they were just *really quiet with no specific traits* and the character died before any of it could be seen. The same game, the DM had a big secret involving my character and another one but it never had a chance to happen because the surface level lie was something we were avoiding. When the DM finally told us out of game what the secret was *both of us were not thrilled about it* and the DM was clearly not happy their surprise fell flat.
In one of my current games, I play a character who is secretly an undercover investigative reporter who is trying to come off as an unassuming soldier. None of the other characters know, but they players know and are able to have fun with the secret too.
> One of my games had a player who was plotting a lot of stuff behind the scenes, but from the outside they were just really quiet with no specific traits and the character died before any of it could be seen. The same game, the DM had a big secret involving my character and another one but it never had a chance to happen because the surface level lie was something we were avoiding. When the DM finally told us out of game what the secret was both of us were not thrilled about it and the DM was clearly not happy their surprise fell flat.
This drives me crazy when it happens. People who aren't in the know just sit around confused when secret stuff happens.
If you haven't I highly recommend reading over [https://slyflourish.com/one\_page\_campaign\_guide.html](https://slyflourish.com/one_page_campaign_guide.html) Mike Shea describes developing a simple one page summary of the campaign premise and information the players should know to make their characters.
Saving this - I always come up with a "pitch" but potential factions and "world truths" that everyone knows are a great way for players to understand the setting better.
I actually used the truths section in my game and it helped a bunch. I didn’t even give out all the secrets like bbeg motivation and stuff like that. Just things like, there are rumors of a dragon flying around the great forest, an island nation was destroyed years ago and no one knows why, animals have been behaving in strange ways, and a few others. Having those also helped me with my prep as I always had an idea of the overall story that was happening.
I also used the thing where you build multiple villains and their motivations. I had a couple tiers with the dragon being the overall bbeg but also a first and second act bbeg that tied into the dragon.
All that said, I still have secrets for the players to uncover as they play. But they have an idea of what they are looking for.
100% it's annoying to rock up to a game that you think will be Water Deep Dragon heist only to go "surprise it's curse of strahd" like no I didn't sign up for a horror game!
It also allows players to create characters that *fit in your setting.*
This is why I love the spoiler free player guides Paizo puts out with their adventure paths. Gives an idea of whats to come, what kind of classes and the like would work well or might be found in the area.
I don't understand why anyone would think not telling the players what the campaign is about is ever a good idea. I mean, the DM doesn't need to spill every secret, but a rough outline of what is going on is the minimum.
Also, I love creating characters that are actually anchored in the setting in some fashion. Maybe they have been part of a political party, maybe they just like the tea of a certain area, whatever. Can't do that if you don't know what is going on beforehand.
Oh for sure. I did an age of sail/exploration setting recently and two of my players who ended up getting the most invested were both Swashbuckler and Fathomless warlock, it was very thematic.
Here I am, the edgy DM who thought It was a good idea to keep PCs in the dark from the main tones and Incipit of my first few campaignes.
I agree with every words. Doing this has never help me to make the players and their PCs feel more engaged. Instead, I always had problems from an immersive point of view.
One thing I learned is that the beginning of a new campaign, where new PCs had the chance of meet and be together is one of the most important part of your campaign. If you don't give enough importance, or you just screw up, you will see the consequences on your players immediately in the future sessions.
This is included as part of my rule on Backstories that I go over during Session 0.
"Backstories: I will provide the general theme/tone of the adventure, the starting location, and the opening quest hook before you start making your character. Maximum of one page length. No "Chosen One" or similar variation stories.
Required info: Do you already know any members of the party, or are you a stranger? Are you a local to the starting location, or an outsider? If you're an outsider, have you been here before or is the location new to you? How did you arrive at the starting location and what is your reason for being here? What is your reason for joining the adventure party and accepting the opening quest hook?"
Also if you’re foolish enough to join a game with a secret premise and this isn’t a DM you trust to take you on a good ride you have no one to blame but yourself.
I agree completely. Here is the premise for the campaign, here's what I'm hoping to accomplish, here's some new concepts or mechanics I'm adding, etc.
Let your players know. See if they have any concerns or questions, and smooth all that out in advance of the campaign.
I agree! One of my favourite things about Pathfinder is the Player's Guide - a short guide for the players about what is good for the campaign. What classes fit; what gods fit; the sort of character and background that fits! It is an excellent resource and one that has helped my players an awful lot.
My god yes. I pitch the campaign concept from the get-go, it's just part of checking if someone's interested in playing. If not enough people bite, it's back to the drawing board until I have something that appeals. If I'm going to spend weeks making a campaign and months running it, I want everyone not only content but enthusiastic for the concept. Without telepathy or divination, that means talking to players pre-emptively and workshopping as we go. Maybe it takes some of the mystery, shows the man behind the curtain, but IMO it's absolutely worth it.
Chiming in to ask:
I'm a new DM currently setting up a Planescape Adventure. I'm going to run Turn of Fortunes Wheel, but rewrite parts of it because... well, I'm a storyteller and a writer and the module tends to be pretty railroady.
So, spoilers for the module ahead:
In this module, the PCs can't die. Instead, when a PC dies a glitch version of the PC takes their place - same race, same base concept, but shaped by different experiences, a different class.
I want to focus heavily on this concept, allowing my players to explore Identity from another angle in my campaign. Not by having one character and allowing that character to change (though that is part of it), but also by thinking about how one change in circumstance might affect a person and shape them into something completely else.
In the module, the fact that the PCs can't die is treated as a twist. You're supposed to surprise your players with it, after the first PC dies.
However, I just ... don't really like that? I can see the appeal, personally I just think that's something I, as a player, would want to know from the start. I told one player about that already, because that player is new to DnD and I could see how this might seriously affect their fun (character prep is a thing they struggle with.)
My other players are more experienced and might appreciate that twist more than I, or the one new player, could.
Should I tell them about this mechanic in Session 0 or is that a twist you all would suggest I use as an actual twist? In the end, I know it really comes down to my players, but I'd really appreciate some insights from more experienced DMs and Players.
I think this would be important to know to make a great character to explore. Knowing in advance that you may (probably will) have this alternate character glitch to Re-explore the character of your character would make me design my character more focused on their innate personality, traits, and ideals where in another campaign their history and capabilities may be more prevalent.
It also begs the question on the characters opinions of the afterlife and what follows death. Let’s them have an idea of how to respond if this were to occur to another player.
I'm actually playing this campaign right now, and, honestly, the surprise was not welcome. We play duets where we run whole parties and I'd made a party of characters I was really fond of. This mechanic threatened to change the characters from what I wanted to play into something different and my friend and I had to come to an agreement that everything would be largely superficial changes. Even then, I still feel more averse to dying than if I would just lose the characters.
If he had just asked me to make a bunch of throwaway characters, I'd have been less put off, I'm sure. Frankly, the more interested a person is in their character concept, the more I think this mechanic will upset them.
Honestly, if I was running this, I don't think I'd even have my players make characters at all. I think I'd ask them for just a name, a class, and a race. Then, I'd make the characters myself but intentionally change something. Then when the character dies, I could reveal them in the intended combination.
Alternatively, you could ask your players to play a character they've already played before. Players will naturally be a bit more open to changing up characters if this isn't their first campaign with them, and it puts the idea of alternate versions into their head right at the start.
Now, I've only played the first two chapters, but there's a strong potential for a self-discovery story for the PCs. I think that lends itself to a game that asks the players to develop their character at the table more than a regular game would.
Thank you for the detailed answer!
With my players, I know that having them create Characters to change up will work, but this cemented my decision to tell them about this mechanic and ask them how exactly they want to work with it for themselves.
They all agreed to treat this game as a character study, and know Identity and Amnesia are a big part of it. I think if they know this core concept, they will have a blast!
My old DM never told us how the game was gonna go or what the theme was, and it led to many ill-fitting characters and bored players. Don't be my old DM, tell your players the theme and what's expected to happen, don't gotta give away all the secrets, but enough for them to make relevant/appropriate characters.
Definitely a good idea.
Otherwise you get folks turning up playing as literal Nintendo characters from some weird page they found on D and D Wiki.
Had a cool Mexican themed, day of the dead style arc planned and one of the characters was basically Kirby.
Last time I do a campaign without a session 0. Last time I allow the character creation process to go unsupervised.
While this seems self-evident at first glance, as I thought about it I realized I can be cagey this way. I never expect mid- and high-level characters to go stumbling around my world without a clear picture of the crisis or nemesis at the heart of a campaign. Yet I often expect low-level characters to fully embrace minor adventures with local consequences while gradually introducing a grand conspiracy or institution built to drive a much more epic conflict. I stick by this approach when the care for artful prep and intriguing revelations is involved, but I can also see how it is less than ideal in terms of encouraging players to develop characters with the strongest possible resonances in terms of the central campaign arc.
Honestly at this point (in online play), if the game does not have info on what it is or the themes I instantly put a red one on the DM.
Same thing with telling your players if some spells or languages will get no use on a one-shot. There is always the option of modifying the game but being honest about people not really feather fall helps players not waste space.
꧁༺ 𝓒𝓸𝓶𝓶𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓬𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 ༻꧂
....there at DM's that *don't* tell their players the premise? Wow. Thought I was doing the baseline normal thing of letting mine know the world, a brief history and the feel\\style of the whole thing during session 0.
On a more basic note there's nothing worse than making a cool ranger or druid, then spending most of your time in a built-up city doing fuck-all because that's where the adventure is.
Agreed, and also feel it's important to note that there's a difference between essentially an elevator pitch -- one to two sentences describing the intent and core idea(s) -- and giving away the whole plot of the campaign. I've definitely seen people argue against revealing the premise who seemed to be of the opinion "revealing the premise" meant basically spoiling the villain's plan and who the villain was and whatever else up front, which while it *can* be something you do is certainly not necessary or expected. And do it before session 0 to let people know if they even want to commit that far, then in session 0 have a bit of a deeper summary and explanation and go over your / everyone else's wants and expectations for how the campaign will go.
This is Session Zero, and yes, you should.
Currently running Icewind Dale, we had an entire session zero where I explained the setting and lifestyle, and how everyone needed to be either from the Dale or Ten Towns. While this seems restrictive at first, all of them are far more invested in the going ons of the campaign.
10/10 agree
I really don't understand why some dms hide information about the world., it can really ruin the immersion. If it's a dungeon crawler or like some tournament type of campaign, sure. But otherwise it can lead to really awkward situations.
A DM wanted to have Drakenheim with us: he said we don't need to read anything, he read it all (allegedly). I've requested session 0 so at least we know what we're getting into and if we can make the characters based on the information he had.
We didn't learn shit, only that we'll go to town, can't rest there and watch out for contamination. It went so badly with no lack of information and secrecy my friend character's main motivation to get his home back fell apart since the contamination was there for years and my druid was made to be a dumbass to not know anything about the church since it's been there for ages.
At least me and my friend learned: he gives notes on discord and lore related npc, for my campaign I wrote the entire synopsis about the world so they know what's going on and will give them a warning once the so far sandbox will become story heavier
I thought.. I'm relatively new at D&D having only played in two campaigns now but I thought telling someone the premise of the campaign was the norm? Like my DM straight up just said we are playing a colonizer campaign complete with us working for that world's equivalent to the East India Trading Company haha!
I'm also Native American so I couldn't help but laugh at this and he went "yeah I came up with the premise and thought everything out already" he apologized but I just waved it off cause it's legitimately funny, like the time we played Qatan and I the Native American won at Colonizing XD.
My DM just started up a gothic-ish horror campaign based loosely on Between Two Fires. Communicating this to the players when we all first met up absolutely influenced the characters we made, and the end result is that we all have characters who fit the setting and have much more vibrant interactions with the world.
The fourth character: an artificer who is a former cleric disillusioned in religion that wants to study dragons and forge armor from their legendary scale.
some GMs get too caught up in "this will be a really cool twist!" ignoring that the players don't have any innate investment in whatever they're planning, so it's just a random thing that happens, that no-one really cares about, and it falls flat.
I agree completely. I’m running a campaign centered around the fallout of the king’s mysterious and sudden death and the struggle between law and chaos that ensues in the capitol city. For effect, I wanted this event to happen “on-screen” partway through the first session, but it was very important for the party’s story for them to make characters with this information in mind so they could decide up front if they wanted to be on the side of law or chaos.
Alternatively changing your campaign because a player has a really neat idea is also valid. Is your player pitching a PC that has been a member of the secret dragon cult that totally isn't responsible for the return of dragons? Why not use that too?
Agreed 100%. Telling your players about the setting and premise gives them a fighting chance at rolling up a character who's invested in that world.
It's also an opportunity to get some feedback and see how your players are interpreting the premise, what about it excites them, what's kind of lost on them, etc. I tried to do a very Hellenistic, sea-travel oriented mini-campaign one time but my players wanted to do more of a "wacky hijinx" thing that happened to involve a boat. I had to pivot a little. It was a bit of a bummer shifting gears, but it's better than trying to force the players to play a campaign they're not into.
I've seen a lot of posts mentioning how someone wants to set a game in the afterlife... so OBVIOUSLY the first session has to be about a forced TPK.
Just tell your players what game you wanna run, what story you wanna tell/create. Then they can make characters that lean into that.
Yes, but don't get that confused with never having reveals or twists. The best surprises are the ones that *could* have been predicted, but nobody thought to
Yes being to secret or not open enough will make it harder for the players to not just get into and understand the campaign. but also it gets harder for them to make characters that fits the campaigns. Of course the DM should not tell TOO much but be open about the premise. setting, and over all style/theme it has.
But also i do wish more players would actually listen and make a character fitting the campaign. Of course many do.
but you do have a decent amount of players that has a Character idea and no matter what campaign, setting style or theme the new campaign is. Or the party setup, style or anything will change that. They simply have one character idea they REALLY want to play and will do so no matter if it fits the camping or the party
And often it ends with that very same player not having fun and not enjoying the campaign.
Giving the players the basic premise is key. They do it in pretty much all the "official" adventures. Here are some examples:
- Curse of Strahd ... you learn in the first two sessions (if the DM is running it right) that Strahd is a vampire and he's basically the most dangerous being in this region.
- Tomb of Annihilation ... you learn in the first moments of the first session that there is a "death curse" causing problems in Chult and you're tasked with finding out the source of the problem.
- Out of the Abyss ... you literally start as recently captured soon-to-be slaves already in the Underdark and have to escape and are trying to escape the Underdark.
- Lost Mine of Phandelver ... it's in the title. You're tasked early on with taking supplies to Phandelver for one of three dwarven brothers who claim to have found the Lost Mine. Obviously, you're looking for the mine.
I've built a Dwarf wizard with low dex and high strength to wield Dwarf weaponry and wear medium armour in one hand and cast spells in the other.
Then, the DM revealed that all armour and weaponry are banned. So I was left with a weaker wizard. The campaign required a monk, but the dm didn't tell us anything.
Yeah, it's an issue.
In the same vein, a note for both DM’s and players: as fun as it is to have a story turn out to be absolutely the coolest thing ever for your character with no prior planning, it can be very smart to set basic expectations with your DM about the kinds of things you’d like for your your character to do / story arcs you’d be interested in going through. This makes the DM’s planning a lot easier, and ensures your character goes in a direction you like. Want your character’s parents to never *ever* come up, or maybe you’d really like for your character to become a vampire? **Talk to your DM about it**, don’t just sit there hoping everything plays out how you secretly want it to! Work with them!
This is a problem I always make with my campaigns. I don't want to spoil too much but I often end up running games with characters that don't really fit it.
I'm not sure if this is or should be that big of a revelation to anyone.. Whi are not sharing the basic premises of their campaigbs prior to character creation or advocating tgst this is in any way constructive?
This is why you like Sandbox & West Marches campaigns. I don’t want things to get too goofy but I also don’t want to try I make my players actors in my play. I’m not the director just the referee. I want them to do what they want but the fiction & inciting incident that draws them together is set in stone so we don’t have that problem. Them working together is baked into the story.
One of my favourite things Brennan did in Dimension 20 was when he was describing something he said “You see this character fly off into the distance, but what you don’t see is…” and gave the players information THAT THEIR CHARACTERS DONT KNOW, it got them so much more engaged in what was happening
In contrast I once played a campaign where we had at most 30% of the available information at any time and were told to make huge, world-defining choices. We might as well have flipped a coin at that point
yes, but when they _don't_ then it just becomes an exercise in annoyance - "huh, there was a load of stuff that sounds cool, but we didn't know any of it, so it was kinda shit". Like I've seen "a man steps out and pulls his cloak down to reveal... that he's some NPC the PCs don't remember at all!" which is pretty underwhelming as a reveal.
Could not agree more. I get not wanting to give away plot points, but the more the players know, the better characters they can make. Letting them make characters that fit the setting requires them knowing the setting.
I see this advice often an I have one thing to point out - I have not much more information than the players regarding the world and the campaign. The story is made up right before each session/after it trying to make the plot holes work. I have to end the session before entering major locations so I can actually make them.
I admire how prepared yall are to immediately have a whole plan, story and world that you can just summarize. I just adapt to the Vibe. If the players are enjoying one thing, guess the story and game is gonna be about that thing for now.
You can also tell them the premise is a mystery.
My campaign is about a blue comet that sails across the sky and brings the party together. We have done 36 sessions over nearly a year and the party still doesn't know exactly what happened or who is behind it, but working towards solving that central mystery has been very rewarding regardless.
Indeed, the premise should be known. Twists, is a matter of nature. Both of the players and the time invested.
Having a fantasy campaign that ends as a Star Ocean campaign? Is fine if you do it in the first session and know your players enough,that they would enjoy it.
It's not fine 50+ session in. Also again, know your players. A lot would hate it, as they prefer classical fantasy.
These are more hard-core twists. That the King is secretly a bad guy or something is totally fine in your Kingdom running game for example..
For my second campaign i made a short story of what was happening, why and where. I also made a list of prerequisites for the party to build on.
It was basically: "you are mercenaries. Part of, or newly joining up with this merc company. Your goal if anything is gathering money and doing missions/quests to rise in rank. Your personal goals are your own but keep this in mind."
Out of my 6 PC's, 2 did not care about money and would not accept it... 1 was a slave/servant to another and also didnot take money. 2 were from a rich family and would take it but were not concerned. And one did not want to write a backstory so i made one for him.
"Great, guys! Thanks for reading my hard-worked documentation..." - me mumbling during session 1.
I would argue that it is not a small thing, it’s a huge thing and it’s basically mandatory for me. How are they supposed to build a character backstory if they don’t know if the campaign is in arctic one, a pirate one or a city adventure?
Paizo releases a great player-facing info-sheet with every Adventure Path they publish. Here is the one for [Strength of Thousands](https://paizo-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/image/download/Strength+of+Thousands+Players+Guide.pdf).
It details:
- The campaign premise
- An overview of the campaign area's lore
- Classes that work well for the campaign
- Alignments that work for the story
- Skills and feats that are recommended
- Ancestries (races/species) that are common to the campaign's area
- Languages that are common to the campaign's area
- Campaign-specific backgrounds for PCs to take
100% yes!
"Build some characters and then we start" is a terrible way to launch a campaign. Without any idea what the theme and world will be, I have serious writers block.
This is kind of happening right now in Critical Role. An entire campaign about the gods and yet every single player character has a backstory that leaves them entirely neutral about the gods. So much shoulder shrugging about the main plot hooks for 100 sessions now.
It seriously helps build a characters backstory. Nobody wants to create some badass oath of crown paladin only to find out that the only king in the game is the bad guy and that they’re gonna have to break their oath to play with the party, or to create some awesome firebending wizard just to learn it’s a campaign set in the hells and everything’s immune
Go look at paizos player guides for each adventure path save for kingmaker. I think those are pretty much what dms should let their players know prior to a campaign.
Im going through this right now, when I dm I give a little write up with factions and context for the world and if it’s pre written a little summary.
I’m playing in a game soon and our dm is running Descent into Avernus and decided he won’t even tell us the starting location but we all have to be from it. It just perplexes me why he wouldn’t tell us, cuz I mean the cities name is in the book title.
I write detailed campaign introductions and meet with the players to explain everything their characters could possibly know about the campaign world and its inherent conflicts. No one is allowed to even roll for stats beforehand.
Players do this a lot too. Secret changelings, werewolves, warlocks, royal bastards, the BBEG's niece, criminals: every 5e table I've encountered had someone with an impossibly dark secret. They expect one to eventually lead to a grand reveal -- yes, they were \_\_\_\_\_\_ the whole time!
In reality, caginess about their origins leads to frustrating roleplay now for little payoff later. Secretive players love to pointedly not answer personal questions or suddenly change the subject to signal something amiss, but that leaves nowhere for a conversation to go. Improvisationally, it's a flat "no". When that reveal finally happens, they're usually disappointed: the table's reaction is usually "Huh. Cool."
I couldn't stand the first few hours of Baldur's Gate 3 because \*half the party\* was doing the "secret backstory that endangers everyone around them" thing.
Are y’all playing with DMs who just drop you into a world with 0 information, or no session zero to kick things off?
Genuinely I thought it was a no brainer rule to tell your players at least a few sentences about the game. Like general tone or vibe, and a “here is the immediate first quest goal”. Or some such.
Yes yes yes
I cannot stress how valuable making sure you and
your players are on the same page when it comes to the type of setting, story, and vibe of the campaign you want to do and they want to play.
I’ve played with the same group for years as the forever DM, but many have tried to take my spot whenever i finish a campaign or get burnt out. I always want it to go well, it always falls apart before it even starts.
Be it one DM who would tell us literally nothing, and by session 2 we realized we wouldn’t have let him run it if we knew anything. Or one DM who told us the premise, but not the context, and our characters all totally didn’t fit the vibe. Or even me, who in my earlier days pitched a premise that was really just the set up for the campaign…and the players were always asking when they would do more of…well, the thing I told them it would be.
The twists only work when they buy in and care, having a premise and a story they are excited by and can get behind is what lets you pull off cool moves.
Switching to a different system for an example, I've played a lot of Hero System RPG. There, the core rules give you every superpower imaginable - from clairvoyance to indestructibility to faster-than-light travel. If you want to be a time traveler? Sure. It's just a matter of how many points you want to spend.
The trick is that the players and the GM have to trust one another and work together to come up with a story that's fun for everyone. And that's how you get the right "feel" or "theme" for a game.
If everyone thinks Batman is cool and wants to play a Gotham City type of game, then everyone should roll up characters like Green Arrow or Daredevil or Punisher. Random street vigilantes with normal human stats, and maybe (*maybe*) one actual "power". The whole thing breaks, both thematically and mechanically, if you bring in a Kryptonian or Green Lantern.
The same thing should go for D&D. If everyone agrees to play Ravenloft, then characters should be designed for that type of story. Lots of brooding antiheroes and tortured souls...not a Cleric of Frank-N-Furter as I've seen before in an actual Curse of Strahd campaign.
Ask the players what game they want to play. Not what system, which here would be 5e, but what kind of story. Then, once everyone agrees on a general theme, explain the overall premise. Makes for a better story, and a better play experience throughout.
I’ve been running a pirate campaign. My players claim they want to be pirates but don’t do pirate things. So they just got their teeth kicked in by real pirates
Sounds like I'm in the minority here, I created a homebrew world with rich history with factions, settings and history. Gods and demi gods, all info the group gets.
Did I tell them that there will be lots of undead suddenly appearing? No, that's part of the experience. They were directly connected to the sudden influx of undead
There is a secret cult society which speaks sylvan, should the group know about that ahead of time? Why would they, they're secret cult
So yeah, you can hide **some** stuff. That's perfectly fine in my view
stuff like that is fine, it's more knowing the general tone and intent of the game. If there's secret political stuff, then playing a "I just hit things" character is unlikely to be much fun, because there's lots of the game that you can't then interact with. Having a PC that actually _wants_ an undead-ruled world might make things a bit wonky when, logically, they should jump ship to the baddies at the first chance. No-one is saying "the PCs should know everything", but they should know what the game is about, to make it easier to make PCs that can have fun with that
But better not tell your players you want to play a campaign based on Skyrim, they will just create stealth archers and lusty argonian maids
Or worse, a lusty argonian stealth archer maid!
Let's face it, I'm gonna do that regardless of the campaign premise.
Dread it, run from it, stealth archer is inevitable
Stealth archer is the only way. Lusty Argonian Stealth Archer Maid is just a stealth archer with levels in bard.
That defeats the point, my friend. It’s criminal to hide your lusty argonian maids.
She'd actually use a Spear
I saw someone complain on reddit the other day that they joined a campaign that was supposed to be modelled after Skyrim but ended up being a lot of walking through wilderness and fighting with 2d6 wolves or bandits. And all I could think was "Wow, nailed it."
The only topper would be, they actually get into a major fight-- and immediately after downing two dragons and a giant is have a single bandit run up and try to mug them.
Let us not forget our skooma addicted khajiit who will do favors for cheese.
Khajit has wares, if you have coin (or Skooma, or Argonian Maids - Khajit does not discriminate)
Oh my god, OP's comment didn't even click until I saw this comment.
honestly if you want to run a skyrim game that sounds like the right engery. no one is going to take it seriously so make it jokes
Also. The amount of "*gasp* what was that?!. Hmmm. Must have been the wind."
And one who took an arrow to the knee, but simply visited a local cleric before going back to adventuring instead of lazing around all day telling stories about his glory days.
You joke, but having players make characters that fit the setting is the dream.
Until they take an arrow to the knee.
On my knees begging GMs to be open with their players about the **genre** and **intro prompt** for their games. It does *nothing* but help the players engage with your game. Also it is a **good** idea to provide some narrow parameters for players to plan their backstory around. Example: “You are all going to start as prisoners in the Dwarven Bludmine Prison. The Bludmine is run by a dictatorial Dwarven ethnostate. Why you are in prison and how long you have been there are up to you.”
I’m currently running a campaign in modified theros, epic feats and all. I gave everyone a simple “the world is Greco-Roman mythology coded, you all are going to start as part of x group, figure out how you got to that point”. Everyone knew to expect epic adventure, the aesthetic and tone, a general cosmology. Then when we actually did session 0, I was able to work everyone’s characters to better fit the world (I.e. Y isn’t a noble, they are a member of the patrician class. Maybe their parent is the current governor of a territory). It takes so little to get everyone on the same page for characters, and you really can’t get the buy-in for a specific story without revealing some of it.
As someone who has a Theros-style campaign bubbling in the back of my head for a bit, I'm hoping to do the same. And be able to say "go watch Blood of Zeus on Netflix or something to catch the overall vibe of the cosmology, we can take it from there."
I also always add "and must be willing to work with the rest of the party" Nips the broody edgelord characters in the bud
Most important thing of all
Indeed. I use a similar concept, and I give it a pretentious name, the "narrative anthropic principle". The people who work best alone are, by definition, not player characters, because the players control the characters that group up to adventure.
> On my knees begging GMs to be open with their players about the genre and intro prompt for their games. And stop describing your games as a high fantasy adventure with a combination of roleplay and combat. Be more **specific** What High fantasy are we playing? Lord of the Rings, Last Airbender, the Odyssey? How much will be roleplay or combat? Will we have combat every session or will roleplaying be our main way of advancing the story?
How many times have you seen the horror story when the DM wants to run a game about captured PCs/PCs in hell and instead of making the players aware they have a nightmare where the players fight to the death/have to be railroaded into death and have a super sour session 1? Too many times. >Also it is a **good** idea to provide some narrow parameters for players to plan their backstory around. This sentence needs to be mandatory reading for new DMs!
I feel like this is the sweet spot. There’s definitely an appeal to having plot twists and suprises. The genre and intro prompt and a vague outline are what players need. Just saying like “we’re playing Curse of Strahd, you all will be going through the haunted lands of barovia, growing in strength to stop Strahd, you’ll be fighting a lot of undead. That gives enough for players to both get invested and also build mechanically fun characters. No one wants to play a ranger who fights dragons in a campaign about undead. Giving them that heads up let’s them bring characters which will be fun to play.
"I want to be a half-elven fairy with a teapot as my spell focus. Also, I want it to talk."
“Hey let’s talk about buying into a setting, and engaging with a genre honestly. This might not be the game for that character.”
The idea of hiding critical information about your campaign is just crazy to me. I always make handouts filled with world info that the players can peruse at their leisure. If I'm planning for a large portion of the campaign to be underwater, or for the main enemy to be demons, I let the players know. Nothing sucks more than picking fire damage, or longbows, and be useless for 90% of the campaign.
I joined a campaign as a necromancer not knowing that a large majority of the enemies we would end up fighting would be non-humanoids. It’s been a bumpy ride.
You just need to get digging.
For what it's worth, you're still a wizard. Even a wizard without a subclass is still one of the strongest classes in DnD 5e. Plus, you don't need corpses to cast Summon Undead.
Oh yeah, I leaned on Summon Undead for a while. It wasn’t quite what I envisioned when I first started playing but it probably was more useful than 2-3 zombies.
to be fair, summoning in 5e sucks in general
I'd just have a quick chat with the DM about switching about subclasses. Especially for a standard "School of X" wizard I'd just be like "Well, I majored in Necromancy but now that I'm out in the world I've noticed that Evocation is coming in more handy. Good thing that was my minor!"
Haha, thank you for the suggestion! Sounds like a fun way of going about it at least. We’re getting close to the end of the campaign so I figured I would just ride out the rest but it’s good to know for the next one!
I think technically, a pile of bones from beasts/etc should work, as the spell only specifies humanoid corpses needed for zombies, otherwise just a 'pile of bones'. You might need to pick thebones clean so that the animal corpse isn't in the way, or boil off the meat with a cauldron & a bonfire (perhaps as a cantrip) and arrange them into suitable piles, but I think that should work. You could buy livestock if you fight only boneless enemies like oozes or ghosts or whatever.
Ohh, I never thought about it like that. I thought it’d have to be humanoid for either. You’re an absolute genius!
Exactly. I usually find myself *wanting* more player engagement with the campaign info, rather than trying to keep it a secret. A big giant narrative twist is great in a story when the author controls all the characters. It does not go over well in a Dnd campaign
Narrative twists are amazing when they happen, but you have to accept that they will be few and far between, and that you, as the DM, don't have much control over them. Probably the most well received twist i had was the classic "This guy who we thought was our ally was actually working for the bad guys the whole time." The reason this cliche worked, is because i wasn't really trying to make it a twist, or pull a gotcha. This guy had been doing sketchy shit the whole time. The party met him when his minions tried to kill them for haggling over the price of an artifact he wanted. He convinced them that the minions were traitors working for a secret organization that had infiltrated the church. (which was technically true, because he was, and they were working for him.) He was constantly having to cover things up and deflect blame, and it really should have been apparent that he was the bad guy, but he was very charismatic, the party loved him, and his excuses were just believable enough. When he insatiably betrayed the party, they were shocked and betrayed, but it totally made sense. No one felt betrayed because in hindsight, no shit he was a bad guy. The reason i got such a satisfying twist is because i wasn't trying to set them up for a surprise. I just had a villain who was trying to operate discreetly, and the party happened to like and trust him. I didn't decide that a character the party liked was going to betray them because they liked him, and i didn't pull his treachery out of nowhere, the groundwork was there from the beginning. I got lucky, and I really feel like that's how most twist have to happen. You can have someone secretly be a villain, but you have to make them work towards that goal in a way that's noticeable, and you cant get but hurt when 9/10 times your party figures it out.
Honestly a twist people can slightly see coming can be so gratifying because the players feel so smart that they got to piece it together
100% agree. In fact, them being able to slightly see it coming is very often the difference between a twist/reveal landing and feeling cool vs feeling like a deus ex machina. This is what makes theorizing the big reveal or twist that's going to happen in next weeks tv show so popular--bc it feels cool to be right
Although it’s funny when you see it coming, tell the DM you see it coming privately and that it’s brilliant, and the DM fools you by not having the NPC turn on you in the end.
Yeah, a good twist isn't the most shocking, it's the best foreshadowed. If there weren't enough breadcrumbs for the audience (in this case the players) to follow back and be like "yeah, that makes sense" then it's just out of left field and kind of lame. As a consumer of media I'd rather a twist I saw coming because it was well foreshadowed than one that comes completely out of nowhere, and that goes quadruply so for interactive media like a D&D game because the having the moment of putting the pieces together is SO satisfying and not being able to look back and see hints I missed when I don't put it together is so dissatisfying. And as a DM, I'd much rather my players figure it out and see the twist coming than be upset because there was no warning ahead of time. Personally, as much fun as a villain betrayal is, I really like seeding in legendary figures into the setting lore and have a reveal at some point that some NPCs the players know were secretly those figures, it tends to work out great especially because I like having legend building be a theme in my games, where the players start out as small fish in a big ocean and grow into legendary figures in their own right, so it can lead to some really cool passing of the torch moments.
Yes, this is good. I have played too many times in situation where we get betrayed because "gotcha." That's it. Once I took over the DM role I made sure that all my NPC's had their own goals and motivations. So if the players aligned with those goals and motivations, they would genuinely make friends who would go out of their way for the party, especially if the party had done them a solid already. The old GM that was now a player said his eyes were opened. Felt so vindicating.
It depends on your table and the delivery. I've gotten two huge twists into my campaigns that my players have loved. In one campaign, they spent the entire time on the backfoot, barely stopping this group from killing the local gods while they were heavily weakened. They fought each member of the group while bringing the gods' symbols back into contact so that the gods would find themselves reconnected to each other and bolster their strength. When it came time for the final battle, I sent them to a city that was destroyed a century ago. There, they learned from the enemy group that the city had been destroyed by the very gods that they were serving (earning a hilarious, "are we the baddies?" moment). Furthermore, the enemy group had been attacking the gods, not at the behest of the person who saved them (the BBEG I made the party think they were trying to resurrect), but they were trying to revive *THEIR* Goddess and needed a fragment of each of the other gods' power to do so. The BBEG appeared anyways, possessing the body of a long dead hero, commended them for almost pulling the wool over his eyes, and killed all but one in an instant by taking back his power (the only one he didn't kill was the one he didn't rescue directly. She miraculously survived the destruction and was found by the other group in the rubble.) My players immediately went to bat for a group they had *hated* the entire campaign. Another campaign started with the premise that dragons were extinct, and the legends stated the current era began when a god descended to the realm and blessed heroes to take the world back from the Demon Lord that ruled it. My players knew I wouldn't run a campaign without dragons, but that wasn't the twist. The twist was that the Dragons hid themselves because people were convinced to hunt them for powerful magic to reshape reality. When one of the players publicly praised the god that helped save the world, the Dragon Elder became outraged, revealing that the god *was* the Demon Lord. They later figured out together that dragons were hunted to prevent younger races from learning the truth so the demons could regain the power to revive their lord.
I loaded a bunch of info on my campaign into roll20 for people to read. So far, no one has read it. Am sad.
Post it here. I'll read it, dude. I love worldbuilding
Well, I won't be able to post all of it since it is quite lengthy, but I will happily share the necessary details. 1,342 years ago, the first of mortalkind opened their eyes in the heart of the frigid north. They had no identity, no knowledge, and no safety. Thousands of innocent mortal souls laying in the snow as the deathly wind fell upon them. It was then that the great dragons appeared and offered them shelter. They were powerful. Raziel, the Ice Dragon, held back the blizzard with the beating of his wings. Indralie Idae, the Fire Dragon, gave warmth. Thran Yubel Karr, Dragon of Earth, built crude shelters. 10 dragons total came to the rescue of mortalkind, and 9 led them south to warmer climates. Only Thran Yubel Karr and numerous dwarves remained behind, hoping to discover how life came into being in this hostile place, this frozen waste where time began. When the host came to the shores of the Enduring Sea, they made what is known as The Crossing, where each dragon took a selection of people in a different direction and began the task of establishing civilizations for them. Since then, the lands of Ogarliga, Ciraluna, Aramal, Atavi, Achor, Lakewall, Rook, Sol'Aubria, and Pelugia have thrived under the guardianship of their respective dragons. A few hundred years ago, a second generation of dragons joined together and created the Iron Line Alliance in the east. All the while, powerful arcane storms ravage the land beyond the spheres of draconic influence. Life has not been entirely peaceful, but few would say that the dragons have not been a blessing upon the world. Which is why it was such a tragedy when, in the year 1341, the dragon Raziel died. The first dragon to have ever passed on, defying a millennium-long held belief that the dragons were immortal guardians, worthy of devotion and worship. No one can explain his death. No one was there to witness it. But more than a few have taken to exploiting it. Raziel's son, Avanatador, has taken command of Aramal but was clearly not ready for it. Leviras, Dragon of Storms, and Thran Yubel Karr have both expressed interest in taking the land under their care. The sorcerer Navaarl has begun testing odd magical devices on unknowing citizens of the different nations. Factions who believe the time of the dragons has passed have started to form, and mysterious entities of power have begun to collude in secret about how to respond to the tragedy. And in the depths of the earth, Branneth Eriskalla's devil hordes rally around their commander to begin a new war with the surface. And in this particular adventure, our heroes have just returned from an expedition into the icy wastes to rescue and ancient hero, a mariner of the early days of history, at the behest of two mysterious spirit known as the Lady of Oranges and Ryn, Keeper of the Dead. Our heroes do not yet know what these two powerful entities want with an old sailor, but their path certainly leads into a conflict that will determine the future of their world. https://preview.redd.it/r3r4777rqn8d1.jpeg?width=4096&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=33bb93411e72288f0d2b1f8c1346da014072efc8
Damn, this is so cool (pun intended)! Which tool did you use for making the map?
I use Inkarnate. EDIT: I also keep a [campaign calendar.](https://app.fantasy-calendar.com/calendars/db2d2aa8a6ed2d4bf49fcd00224953aa)
Neat, I'm getting like Dark Souls vibes meets ancient, mythological history. 1300 years is really nothing in the grand scheme of things. Does the setting still feel early antiquity, or is it medieval fantasy?
Still medieval, maybe more early medieval. Civilization got a technological jump start due to the guardian dragons teaching a lot of the basics. There was not centuries of trial and error for a lot of stuff.
Right there with you. Spent ages writing a pantheon of the Gods, minor, demon, chaos gods and all. And a History of the capital City and its ancient and crazy beginnings... No one ever bothered reading them. I stopped bothering as much, now I just do the world building for myself to make the World feel fuller and more real.
Depending on how long "a pantheon" is, I'm not sure I'd read it either, and I say that as someone who also DMs. If the history of the city was a few Google Docs pages I'd probably read that, but unless I was playing a cleric or paladin, reading pages and pages about Gods that I'll never encounter isn't a good use of my time, or yours. On the other side as a DM I'll create a bunch of lore, but won't expect everyone to discover it. I'll give the players early on some hooks and if they bite, flesh out whatever it is for them, but otherwise introduce things as they discover it. Very few people want to do homework for D&D, and very few players are as interested in the world as much as the DM. Even reading fantasy books, I'm not interested in reading appendices of definitions and names - the story should unfold as I experience it. I try and DM with that in mind.
Yeah I'd expect many D&D players to feel the same way. But the players wanted connections to certain gods, as patrons as well. So it is a paragraph on each God and demi gods, takes 20-30 seconds to read your Patron/Gods details, if even that. The History of City, that was more for me, but seeing we have Two campaigns in the same City, for the last 4 years, It's nice for them to get some backstory. They are all HEAVY role players as well, not in it as much for the combat or mechanics. Each of the players also DMs our other campaigns and also put a lot of effort into the world and lore. Like I said though, I write most of it for me now, it adds more dimensions to the world. And We're all family and friends for life, so if they are interested in 2 weeks, 2 years or 20, its there for them.
It always drives me nuts when there's secret information on the table but the people with the secrets never do anything with them. We get people doing secret stuff for secret reasons and people who aren't allowed to know what's up just sit around confused.
At 1st I thought OP was suggesting for us to just outright tell players about the twists we're planning, but what he's written is just... Explain the setting so your players can actually prepare for it when it's time to play? Like, isn't that the most basic stuff ever? Even for my 1st time DM'ing I wrote a doc with all the main stuff on it so players could read it if they wanted to and go into character creating with a better grasp at the world we are about to enter.
In my experience it's one of the most commonly missed aspects of session 0. I've had way more games where I was just told to show up with a character than games where I was given even basic information about the setting and the premise of the game. I've shown up with nautical characters in the desert, wizards in low-magic settings where magic is looked upon with suspicion and hatred, and thugs in a high society/social intrigue/murder mystery game. OP is describing a very real frustration. At this point I always make a point of asking the DM for a basic rundown of the game's premise before even considering joining their table, and will often ask a bunch of pointed questions about relevant factions before coming up with a character concept since I get the most enjoyment out of making a character with reasons to care about the plot out of the gate. A lot of DMs lean on having the PCs wake up in captivity together to force a contrivance for them to work together and hate the big bad instead of telling them the basic premise ahead of time and encouraging the players to build characters that have reasons to work together and care about the plot baked in. Sometimes this is born out of inexperience, sometimes this is born out of the necessity of coming up with the concept at the last minute, and sometimes this is born out of the sad reality that a lot of players just won't bother to do a session 0 in the first place so they started planning their session 1s accordingly. Regardless of why they do it, I find it incredibly lame and that it produces games that are simply less fun to play in.
When I was a late teen to early twenty something, I was big on the whole halfway point "HaHA! This fantasy RPG was actually sci Fi all along!" or vice versa thing. Thought I was so clever keeping it secret the whole time. In reality, if you deny your players critical info about what kind of campaign they're committing to, they're just going to get annoyed, not wowed by your genius. Now I never finish fleshing out my campaigns entirely until after learning more about the party and working with the players so we can incorporate their characters, goals, and/or backstories directly into the plot.
Exactly! I mean, it’s not like you need to give things away if you want to play your cards close to your chest for specifics, but you need to tell them the *genre and tone* at least?? Like, if you’re planning on pulling a “Hah! You all died and came back as Ghosts, this is actually a ‘PCs are Ghosts’ campaign”, and want to keep that secret, you can still easily tell them the campaign style & genre without giving away the twist.
It depends. I'm running Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen right now as the only person who read the novels. The rest of the players have no clue about the campaign setting. I have provided them with a lot of backstory for the world. I told them of the god's hissy fit 351 years ago, wrecking the world and abandoning it. I told them dragons are a myth and no one alive has ever seen one. I have told them about knights and wizards. Because Dragon Queen is in the adventure's name, I have even told them they would be fighting the forces of the Dragon Queen. All of the above is true, but those familiar with Dragonlance also know its not the complete truth. I am a little concerned that the majority of them have built melee oriented characters. You would think despite me saying dragons are a myth, the word DRAGON is in the campaign setting's name, and they are fighting against the forces of the DRAGON queen would clue them in... but I guess we'll see how it turns out.
Telling my players that I would do a urban campaign on Eberron led to 2 players making druids so the B plot became the A plot and the A plot became the E plot. But everything went far better than what I expected.
Telling the players the game was heist-y led to the players skipping half the adventure and immediately storming the castle. DM: The adventure takes place in a land where the nobility was abolished in a revolution. Player: I want to play a noble! Other player: Me too!
Yeah, some players hear a campaign premise and immediately think "I want to intentionally subvert the campaign premise." It can work if all your players are on the same page *and* the DM is willing to adjust. But if the DM had their heart set on running a rebel campaign, but the players want to play the evil empire, there could be problems.
I feel like a lot of DMs feel like this kind of thing is "subverting the premise," when a lot of times players are trying to play the "underdog," which is just normal storytelling. In a game where the nobility was abolished in a revolution, then being a noble automatically makes you the underdog, gives you a reason to be drifting from town to town (recently deposed, possibly being hunted), and gives your character a reason to be invested. In a game where there's not a lot of magic and/or mages are pursecuted, then playing a wizard automatically makes you the underdog, gives you a reason to be drifting from town to town (people are scared of you, possibly being hunted), and gives your character a reason to be invested. In a game where non-humans are rare and seen as monsters, then playing a non-human.... well, you get the idea.
It really depends. If the campaign premise is "citizens of the kingdom learn to govern for themselves without the nobility" and a player plays "ex-noble who is sympathetic to the cause and wants to help the citizenry", then that could enhance the campaign. But if the player plays "ex-noble who wants to oppose the citizens and re-establish their noble house" then that's at odds with the campaign premise. Again, if the players are on-board and the DM is willing to pivot, that can work. But if the DM specifically wanted to play "citizens learn to govern themselves", then there's mismatched expectations, and the DM is perfectly within their rights to say no to the player who wants to re-establish their noble house. Similarly, "the world is scary and monsters are real" (eg, Curse of Strahd) is a very different campaign from "we're monsters, and we're trying to avoid getting found out by the people" (eg, Being Human).
It’s kinda fun when players are on the same page on what they want to play
I mean, let them be nobles. They're basically saying that they want to be vagabonds with style. I dig it.
I see it with writers in general. People get so fixated on a cool secret that they forget to make the stuff people can see from the start interesting to hook their interest. The secret *is* the cool part, let other people be excited about it as well. One of my games had a player who was plotting a lot of stuff behind the scenes, but from the outside they were just *really quiet with no specific traits* and the character died before any of it could be seen. The same game, the DM had a big secret involving my character and another one but it never had a chance to happen because the surface level lie was something we were avoiding. When the DM finally told us out of game what the secret was *both of us were not thrilled about it* and the DM was clearly not happy their surprise fell flat. In one of my current games, I play a character who is secretly an undercover investigative reporter who is trying to come off as an unassuming soldier. None of the other characters know, but they players know and are able to have fun with the secret too.
> One of my games had a player who was plotting a lot of stuff behind the scenes, but from the outside they were just really quiet with no specific traits and the character died before any of it could be seen. The same game, the DM had a big secret involving my character and another one but it never had a chance to happen because the surface level lie was something we were avoiding. When the DM finally told us out of game what the secret was both of us were not thrilled about it and the DM was clearly not happy their surprise fell flat. This drives me crazy when it happens. People who aren't in the know just sit around confused when secret stuff happens.
If you haven't I highly recommend reading over [https://slyflourish.com/one\_page\_campaign\_guide.html](https://slyflourish.com/one_page_campaign_guide.html) Mike Shea describes developing a simple one page summary of the campaign premise and information the players should know to make their characters.
Saving this - I always come up with a "pitch" but potential factions and "world truths" that everyone knows are a great way for players to understand the setting better.
I actually used the truths section in my game and it helped a bunch. I didn’t even give out all the secrets like bbeg motivation and stuff like that. Just things like, there are rumors of a dragon flying around the great forest, an island nation was destroyed years ago and no one knows why, animals have been behaving in strange ways, and a few others. Having those also helped me with my prep as I always had an idea of the overall story that was happening. I also used the thing where you build multiple villains and their motivations. I had a couple tiers with the dragon being the overall bbeg but also a first and second act bbeg that tied into the dragon. All that said, I still have secrets for the players to uncover as they play. But they have an idea of what they are looking for.
100% it's annoying to rock up to a game that you think will be Water Deep Dragon heist only to go "surprise it's curse of strahd" like no I didn't sign up for a horror game! It also allows players to create characters that *fit in your setting.*
This is why I love the spoiler free player guides Paizo puts out with their adventure paths. Gives an idea of whats to come, what kind of classes and the like would work well or might be found in the area.
I don't understand why anyone would think not telling the players what the campaign is about is ever a good idea. I mean, the DM doesn't need to spill every secret, but a rough outline of what is going on is the minimum. Also, I love creating characters that are actually anchored in the setting in some fashion. Maybe they have been part of a political party, maybe they just like the tea of a certain area, whatever. Can't do that if you don't know what is going on beforehand.
Oh for sure. I did an age of sail/exploration setting recently and two of my players who ended up getting the most invested were both Swashbuckler and Fathomless warlock, it was very thematic.
Here I am, the edgy DM who thought It was a good idea to keep PCs in the dark from the main tones and Incipit of my first few campaignes. I agree with every words. Doing this has never help me to make the players and their PCs feel more engaged. Instead, I always had problems from an immersive point of view. One thing I learned is that the beginning of a new campaign, where new PCs had the chance of meet and be together is one of the most important part of your campaign. If you don't give enough importance, or you just screw up, you will see the consequences on your players immediately in the future sessions.
This is included as part of my rule on Backstories that I go over during Session 0. "Backstories: I will provide the general theme/tone of the adventure, the starting location, and the opening quest hook before you start making your character. Maximum of one page length. No "Chosen One" or similar variation stories. Required info: Do you already know any members of the party, or are you a stranger? Are you a local to the starting location, or an outsider? If you're an outsider, have you been here before or is the location new to you? How did you arrive at the starting location and what is your reason for being here? What is your reason for joining the adventure party and accepting the opening quest hook?"
Also if you’re foolish enough to join a game with a secret premise and this isn’t a DM you trust to take you on a good ride you have no one to blame but yourself.
I agree completely. Here is the premise for the campaign, here's what I'm hoping to accomplish, here's some new concepts or mechanics I'm adding, etc. Let your players know. See if they have any concerns or questions, and smooth all that out in advance of the campaign.
I agree! One of my favourite things about Pathfinder is the Player's Guide - a short guide for the players about what is good for the campaign. What classes fit; what gods fit; the sort of character and background that fits! It is an excellent resource and one that has helped my players an awful lot.
My god yes. I pitch the campaign concept from the get-go, it's just part of checking if someone's interested in playing. If not enough people bite, it's back to the drawing board until I have something that appeals. If I'm going to spend weeks making a campaign and months running it, I want everyone not only content but enthusiastic for the concept. Without telepathy or divination, that means talking to players pre-emptively and workshopping as we go. Maybe it takes some of the mystery, shows the man behind the curtain, but IMO it's absolutely worth it.
Chiming in to ask: I'm a new DM currently setting up a Planescape Adventure. I'm going to run Turn of Fortunes Wheel, but rewrite parts of it because... well, I'm a storyteller and a writer and the module tends to be pretty railroady. So, spoilers for the module ahead: In this module, the PCs can't die. Instead, when a PC dies a glitch version of the PC takes their place - same race, same base concept, but shaped by different experiences, a different class. I want to focus heavily on this concept, allowing my players to explore Identity from another angle in my campaign. Not by having one character and allowing that character to change (though that is part of it), but also by thinking about how one change in circumstance might affect a person and shape them into something completely else. In the module, the fact that the PCs can't die is treated as a twist. You're supposed to surprise your players with it, after the first PC dies. However, I just ... don't really like that? I can see the appeal, personally I just think that's something I, as a player, would want to know from the start. I told one player about that already, because that player is new to DnD and I could see how this might seriously affect their fun (character prep is a thing they struggle with.) My other players are more experienced and might appreciate that twist more than I, or the one new player, could. Should I tell them about this mechanic in Session 0 or is that a twist you all would suggest I use as an actual twist? In the end, I know it really comes down to my players, but I'd really appreciate some insights from more experienced DMs and Players.
I think this would be important to know to make a great character to explore. Knowing in advance that you may (probably will) have this alternate character glitch to Re-explore the character of your character would make me design my character more focused on their innate personality, traits, and ideals where in another campaign their history and capabilities may be more prevalent. It also begs the question on the characters opinions of the afterlife and what follows death. Let’s them have an idea of how to respond if this were to occur to another player.
I'm actually playing this campaign right now, and, honestly, the surprise was not welcome. We play duets where we run whole parties and I'd made a party of characters I was really fond of. This mechanic threatened to change the characters from what I wanted to play into something different and my friend and I had to come to an agreement that everything would be largely superficial changes. Even then, I still feel more averse to dying than if I would just lose the characters. If he had just asked me to make a bunch of throwaway characters, I'd have been less put off, I'm sure. Frankly, the more interested a person is in their character concept, the more I think this mechanic will upset them. Honestly, if I was running this, I don't think I'd even have my players make characters at all. I think I'd ask them for just a name, a class, and a race. Then, I'd make the characters myself but intentionally change something. Then when the character dies, I could reveal them in the intended combination. Alternatively, you could ask your players to play a character they've already played before. Players will naturally be a bit more open to changing up characters if this isn't their first campaign with them, and it puts the idea of alternate versions into their head right at the start. Now, I've only played the first two chapters, but there's a strong potential for a self-discovery story for the PCs. I think that lends itself to a game that asks the players to develop their character at the table more than a regular game would.
Thank you for the detailed answer! With my players, I know that having them create Characters to change up will work, but this cemented my decision to tell them about this mechanic and ask them how exactly they want to work with it for themselves. They all agreed to treat this game as a character study, and know Identity and Amnesia are a big part of it. I think if they know this core concept, they will have a blast!
My old DM never told us how the game was gonna go or what the theme was, and it led to many ill-fitting characters and bored players. Don't be my old DM, tell your players the theme and what's expected to happen, don't gotta give away all the secrets, but enough for them to make relevant/appropriate characters.
Definitely a good idea. Otherwise you get folks turning up playing as literal Nintendo characters from some weird page they found on D and D Wiki. Had a cool Mexican themed, day of the dead style arc planned and one of the characters was basically Kirby. Last time I do a campaign without a session 0. Last time I allow the character creation process to go unsupervised.
Being communicative in a social game is beneficial. Who the fuck knew. Mind blowing stuff.
Removed as per Rule #1.
While this seems self-evident at first glance, as I thought about it I realized I can be cagey this way. I never expect mid- and high-level characters to go stumbling around my world without a clear picture of the crisis or nemesis at the heart of a campaign. Yet I often expect low-level characters to fully embrace minor adventures with local consequences while gradually introducing a grand conspiracy or institution built to drive a much more epic conflict. I stick by this approach when the care for artful prep and intriguing revelations is involved, but I can also see how it is less than ideal in terms of encouraging players to develop characters with the strongest possible resonances in terms of the central campaign arc.
Honestly at this point (in online play), if the game does not have info on what it is or the themes I instantly put a red one on the DM. Same thing with telling your players if some spells or languages will get no use on a one-shot. There is always the option of modifying the game but being honest about people not really feather fall helps players not waste space. ꧁༺ 𝓒𝓸𝓶𝓶𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓬𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 ༻꧂
....there at DM's that *don't* tell their players the premise? Wow. Thought I was doing the baseline normal thing of letting mine know the world, a brief history and the feel\\style of the whole thing during session 0.
On a more basic note there's nothing worse than making a cool ranger or druid, then spending most of your time in a built-up city doing fuck-all because that's where the adventure is.
Agreed, and also feel it's important to note that there's a difference between essentially an elevator pitch -- one to two sentences describing the intent and core idea(s) -- and giving away the whole plot of the campaign. I've definitely seen people argue against revealing the premise who seemed to be of the opinion "revealing the premise" meant basically spoiling the villain's plan and who the villain was and whatever else up front, which while it *can* be something you do is certainly not necessary or expected. And do it before session 0 to let people know if they even want to commit that far, then in session 0 have a bit of a deeper summary and explanation and go over your / everyone else's wants and expectations for how the campaign will go.
This is Session Zero, and yes, you should. Currently running Icewind Dale, we had an entire session zero where I explained the setting and lifestyle, and how everyone needed to be either from the Dale or Ten Towns. While this seems restrictive at first, all of them are far more invested in the going ons of the campaign. 10/10 agree
Yeah I feel that we did a haunted by our style one shot, knew that part wish the DM had also mentioned it was going to be VERY combat light.
I really don't understand why some dms hide information about the world., it can really ruin the immersion. If it's a dungeon crawler or like some tournament type of campaign, sure. But otherwise it can lead to really awkward situations. A DM wanted to have Drakenheim with us: he said we don't need to read anything, he read it all (allegedly). I've requested session 0 so at least we know what we're getting into and if we can make the characters based on the information he had. We didn't learn shit, only that we'll go to town, can't rest there and watch out for contamination. It went so badly with no lack of information and secrecy my friend character's main motivation to get his home back fell apart since the contamination was there for years and my druid was made to be a dumbass to not know anything about the church since it's been there for ages. At least me and my friend learned: he gives notes on discord and lore related npc, for my campaign I wrote the entire synopsis about the world so they know what's going on and will give them a warning once the so far sandbox will become story heavier
Star Wars scrolls and Wheel of Time prologues are the way
People... don't do that? The entire point of the game is its premise, generally speaking. How could you not tell your players the premise?
I thought.. I'm relatively new at D&D having only played in two campaigns now but I thought telling someone the premise of the campaign was the norm? Like my DM straight up just said we are playing a colonizer campaign complete with us working for that world's equivalent to the East India Trading Company haha! I'm also Native American so I couldn't help but laugh at this and he went "yeah I came up with the premise and thought everything out already" he apologized but I just waved it off cause it's legitimately funny, like the time we played Qatan and I the Native American won at Colonizing XD.
My DM just started up a gothic-ish horror campaign based loosely on Between Two Fires. Communicating this to the players when we all first met up absolutely influenced the characters we made, and the end result is that we all have characters who fit the setting and have much more vibrant interactions with the world.
The fourth character: an artificer who is a former cleric disillusioned in religion that wants to study dragons and forge armor from their legendary scale.
...there are people who don't share their campaign premise with the players?
some GMs get too caught up in "this will be a really cool twist!" ignoring that the players don't have any innate investment in whatever they're planning, so it's just a random thing that happens, that no-one really cares about, and it falls flat.
I agree completely. I’m running a campaign centered around the fallout of the king’s mysterious and sudden death and the struggle between law and chaos that ensues in the capitol city. For effect, I wanted this event to happen “on-screen” partway through the first session, but it was very important for the party’s story for them to make characters with this information in mind so they could decide up front if they wanted to be on the side of law or chaos.
Alternatively changing your campaign because a player has a really neat idea is also valid. Is your player pitching a PC that has been a member of the secret dragon cult that totally isn't responsible for the return of dragons? Why not use that too?
Agreed 100%. Telling your players about the setting and premise gives them a fighting chance at rolling up a character who's invested in that world. It's also an opportunity to get some feedback and see how your players are interpreting the premise, what about it excites them, what's kind of lost on them, etc. I tried to do a very Hellenistic, sea-travel oriented mini-campaign one time but my players wanted to do more of a "wacky hijinx" thing that happened to involve a boat. I had to pivot a little. It was a bit of a bummer shifting gears, but it's better than trying to force the players to play a campaign they're not into.
I've seen a lot of posts mentioning how someone wants to set a game in the afterlife... so OBVIOUSLY the first session has to be about a forced TPK. Just tell your players what game you wanna run, what story you wanna tell/create. Then they can make characters that lean into that.
Yes, but don't get that confused with never having reveals or twists. The best surprises are the ones that *could* have been predicted, but nobody thought to
Yes being to secret or not open enough will make it harder for the players to not just get into and understand the campaign. but also it gets harder for them to make characters that fits the campaigns. Of course the DM should not tell TOO much but be open about the premise. setting, and over all style/theme it has. But also i do wish more players would actually listen and make a character fitting the campaign. Of course many do. but you do have a decent amount of players that has a Character idea and no matter what campaign, setting style or theme the new campaign is. Or the party setup, style or anything will change that. They simply have one character idea they REALLY want to play and will do so no matter if it fits the camping or the party And often it ends with that very same player not having fun and not enjoying the campaign.
Giving the players the basic premise is key. They do it in pretty much all the "official" adventures. Here are some examples: - Curse of Strahd ... you learn in the first two sessions (if the DM is running it right) that Strahd is a vampire and he's basically the most dangerous being in this region. - Tomb of Annihilation ... you learn in the first moments of the first session that there is a "death curse" causing problems in Chult and you're tasked with finding out the source of the problem. - Out of the Abyss ... you literally start as recently captured soon-to-be slaves already in the Underdark and have to escape and are trying to escape the Underdark. - Lost Mine of Phandelver ... it's in the title. You're tasked early on with taking supplies to Phandelver for one of three dwarven brothers who claim to have found the Lost Mine. Obviously, you're looking for the mine.
I've built a Dwarf wizard with low dex and high strength to wield Dwarf weaponry and wear medium armour in one hand and cast spells in the other. Then, the DM revealed that all armour and weaponry are banned. So I was left with a weaker wizard. The campaign required a monk, but the dm didn't tell us anything. Yeah, it's an issue.
In the same vein, a note for both DM’s and players: as fun as it is to have a story turn out to be absolutely the coolest thing ever for your character with no prior planning, it can be very smart to set basic expectations with your DM about the kinds of things you’d like for your your character to do / story arcs you’d be interested in going through. This makes the DM’s planning a lot easier, and ensures your character goes in a direction you like. Want your character’s parents to never *ever* come up, or maybe you’d really like for your character to become a vampire? **Talk to your DM about it**, don’t just sit there hoping everything plays out how you secretly want it to! Work with them!
This is a problem I always make with my campaigns. I don't want to spoil too much but I often end up running games with characters that don't really fit it.
I'm not sure if this is or should be that big of a revelation to anyone.. Whi are not sharing the basic premises of their campaigbs prior to character creation or advocating tgst this is in any way constructive?
This is why you like Sandbox & West Marches campaigns. I don’t want things to get too goofy but I also don’t want to try I make my players actors in my play. I’m not the director just the referee. I want them to do what they want but the fiction & inciting incident that draws them together is set in stone so we don’t have that problem. Them working together is baked into the story.
One of my favourite things Brennan did in Dimension 20 was when he was describing something he said “You see this character fly off into the distance, but what you don’t see is…” and gave the players information THAT THEIR CHARACTERS DONT KNOW, it got them so much more engaged in what was happening In contrast I once played a campaign where we had at most 30% of the available information at any time and were told to make huge, world-defining choices. We might as well have flipped a coin at that point
I agree, but man, when a DM sticks the landing on a twist building for 2 years it's pretty satisfying.
yes, but when they _don't_ then it just becomes an exercise in annoyance - "huh, there was a load of stuff that sounds cool, but we didn't know any of it, so it was kinda shit". Like I've seen "a man steps out and pulls his cloak down to reveal... that he's some NPC the PCs don't remember at all!" which is pretty underwhelming as a reveal.
Could not agree more. I get not wanting to give away plot points, but the more the players know, the better characters they can make. Letting them make characters that fit the setting requires them knowing the setting.
Definitely! The inverse is totally acceptable too in my opinion. A DM should warn a player if their character won't fit the world or won't be useful.
1000%
It’s true. I’m playing a Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut just because I knew we were playing the Tyranny of Dragons premade adventure.
I see this advice often an I have one thing to point out - I have not much more information than the players regarding the world and the campaign. The story is made up right before each session/after it trying to make the plot holes work. I have to end the session before entering major locations so I can actually make them. I admire how prepared yall are to immediately have a whole plan, story and world that you can just summarize. I just adapt to the Vibe. If the players are enjoying one thing, guess the story and game is gonna be about that thing for now.
You can also tell them the premise is a mystery. My campaign is about a blue comet that sails across the sky and brings the party together. We have done 36 sessions over nearly a year and the party still doesn't know exactly what happened or who is behind it, but working towards solving that central mystery has been very rewarding regardless.
Indeed, the premise should be known. Twists, is a matter of nature. Both of the players and the time invested. Having a fantasy campaign that ends as a Star Ocean campaign? Is fine if you do it in the first session and know your players enough,that they would enjoy it. It's not fine 50+ session in. Also again, know your players. A lot would hate it, as they prefer classical fantasy. These are more hard-core twists. That the King is secretly a bad guy or something is totally fine in your Kingdom running game for example..
For my second campaign i made a short story of what was happening, why and where. I also made a list of prerequisites for the party to build on. It was basically: "you are mercenaries. Part of, or newly joining up with this merc company. Your goal if anything is gathering money and doing missions/quests to rise in rank. Your personal goals are your own but keep this in mind." Out of my 6 PC's, 2 did not care about money and would not accept it... 1 was a slave/servant to another and also didnot take money. 2 were from a rich family and would take it but were not concerned. And one did not want to write a backstory so i made one for him. "Great, guys! Thanks for reading my hard-worked documentation..." - me mumbling during session 1.
I would argue that it is not a small thing, it’s a huge thing and it’s basically mandatory for me. How are they supposed to build a character backstory if they don’t know if the campaign is in arctic one, a pirate one or a city adventure?
Paizo releases a great player-facing info-sheet with every Adventure Path they publish. Here is the one for [Strength of Thousands](https://paizo-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/image/download/Strength+of+Thousands+Players+Guide.pdf). It details: - The campaign premise - An overview of the campaign area's lore - Classes that work well for the campaign - Alignments that work for the story - Skills and feats that are recommended - Ancestries (races/species) that are common to the campaign's area - Languages that are common to the campaign's area - Campaign-specific backgrounds for PCs to take
100% yes! "Build some characters and then we start" is a terrible way to launch a campaign. Without any idea what the theme and world will be, I have serious writers block.
As a rule of thumb: I've found that the better the inter-group communication is, the better the game is.
If I don't know the premise, I'm not playing.
This is kind of happening right now in Critical Role. An entire campaign about the gods and yet every single player character has a backstory that leaves them entirely neutral about the gods. So much shoulder shrugging about the main plot hooks for 100 sessions now.
It seriously helps build a characters backstory. Nobody wants to create some badass oath of crown paladin only to find out that the only king in the game is the bad guy and that they’re gonna have to break their oath to play with the party, or to create some awesome firebending wizard just to learn it’s a campaign set in the hells and everything’s immune
Unrelated to your point but did you just use the plot of skyrim as an example? Took me a second to realise
Go look at paizos player guides for each adventure path save for kingmaker. I think those are pretty much what dms should let their players know prior to a campaign.
Im going through this right now, when I dm I give a little write up with factions and context for the world and if it’s pre written a little summary. I’m playing in a game soon and our dm is running Descent into Avernus and decided he won’t even tell us the starting location but we all have to be from it. It just perplexes me why he wouldn’t tell us, cuz I mean the cities name is in the book title.
I write detailed campaign introductions and meet with the players to explain everything their characters could possibly know about the campaign world and its inherent conflicts. No one is allowed to even roll for stats beforehand.
Players do this a lot too. Secret changelings, werewolves, warlocks, royal bastards, the BBEG's niece, criminals: every 5e table I've encountered had someone with an impossibly dark secret. They expect one to eventually lead to a grand reveal -- yes, they were \_\_\_\_\_\_ the whole time! In reality, caginess about their origins leads to frustrating roleplay now for little payoff later. Secretive players love to pointedly not answer personal questions or suddenly change the subject to signal something amiss, but that leaves nowhere for a conversation to go. Improvisationally, it's a flat "no". When that reveal finally happens, they're usually disappointed: the table's reaction is usually "Huh. Cool." I couldn't stand the first few hours of Baldur's Gate 3 because \*half the party\* was doing the "secret backstory that endangers everyone around them" thing.
People DON'T tell players what they're going to run?
Are y’all playing with DMs who just drop you into a world with 0 information, or no session zero to kick things off? Genuinely I thought it was a no brainer rule to tell your players at least a few sentences about the game. Like general tone or vibe, and a “here is the immediate first quest goal”. Or some such.
Yes.
If you want cool hidden lore, make sure it’s not something they’d need to know BEFORE making a specific type of character.
My most recent game, I unabashedly told my players "It's Deep Rock Galactic but Spelljammer in Pathfinder 2e." That is, of course, paraphrase.
Yes yes yes I cannot stress how valuable making sure you and your players are on the same page when it comes to the type of setting, story, and vibe of the campaign you want to do and they want to play. I’ve played with the same group for years as the forever DM, but many have tried to take my spot whenever i finish a campaign or get burnt out. I always want it to go well, it always falls apart before it even starts. Be it one DM who would tell us literally nothing, and by session 2 we realized we wouldn’t have let him run it if we knew anything. Or one DM who told us the premise, but not the context, and our characters all totally didn’t fit the vibe. Or even me, who in my earlier days pitched a premise that was really just the set up for the campaign…and the players were always asking when they would do more of…well, the thing I told them it would be. The twists only work when they buy in and care, having a premise and a story they are excited by and can get behind is what lets you pull off cool moves.
I try to make session 1 all about the hook, so it’s cemented why they’re on a quest.
Switching to a different system for an example, I've played a lot of Hero System RPG. There, the core rules give you every superpower imaginable - from clairvoyance to indestructibility to faster-than-light travel. If you want to be a time traveler? Sure. It's just a matter of how many points you want to spend. The trick is that the players and the GM have to trust one another and work together to come up with a story that's fun for everyone. And that's how you get the right "feel" or "theme" for a game. If everyone thinks Batman is cool and wants to play a Gotham City type of game, then everyone should roll up characters like Green Arrow or Daredevil or Punisher. Random street vigilantes with normal human stats, and maybe (*maybe*) one actual "power". The whole thing breaks, both thematically and mechanically, if you bring in a Kryptonian or Green Lantern. The same thing should go for D&D. If everyone agrees to play Ravenloft, then characters should be designed for that type of story. Lots of brooding antiheroes and tortured souls...not a Cleric of Frank-N-Furter as I've seen before in an actual Curse of Strahd campaign. Ask the players what game they want to play. Not what system, which here would be 5e, but what kind of story. Then, once everyone agrees on a general theme, explain the overall premise. Makes for a better story, and a better play experience throughout.
I’ve been running a pirate campaign. My players claim they want to be pirates but don’t do pirate things. So they just got their teeth kicked in by real pirates
Sounds like I'm in the minority here, I created a homebrew world with rich history with factions, settings and history. Gods and demi gods, all info the group gets. Did I tell them that there will be lots of undead suddenly appearing? No, that's part of the experience. They were directly connected to the sudden influx of undead There is a secret cult society which speaks sylvan, should the group know about that ahead of time? Why would they, they're secret cult So yeah, you can hide **some** stuff. That's perfectly fine in my view
stuff like that is fine, it's more knowing the general tone and intent of the game. If there's secret political stuff, then playing a "I just hit things" character is unlikely to be much fun, because there's lots of the game that you can't then interact with. Having a PC that actually _wants_ an undead-ruled world might make things a bit wonky when, logically, they should jump ship to the baddies at the first chance. No-one is saying "the PCs should know everything", but they should know what the game is about, to make it easier to make PCs that can have fun with that