I'm wondering if anyone else has dealt with the problem I'm experiencing:
I'm in the imagination phase of designing a new campaign and I have this real problem with moving forward. The problem is not lack of ideas. On the contrary, there are too many out there. I have several hundred supplements, both official and unofficial, sitting on my shelf at home, some of which I've never even touched on in a game. Not to mention all of the Dungeon adventures. How do you sort through it all?
Or, asked another way, if you wanted to "theme" your campaign (i.e. fighting undead, saving the city, becoming rulers of the land) how many themes are appropriate and not too much?
I'd love some feedback from other DMs who've had this issue.
I start with the players. I ask them to work together to build a party that will be capable of functioning together. Once they have that worked out, I'll find out if they want to know each other, or if they want me to draw them together. In my current campaign, the idea was that everybody would have some sort of link to Olidammara, but whether or not anybody knew anybody else was up to me.
So at this point, I have the basic structure of a party that can work together, and I have some idea if there's a common link among some or all of the party members. I'll take that common link (if it exists), and work up a very general idea. In my current campaign, everybody got sucked into working for the temple of Olidammara for one reason or another. The temple has a secret organization called the Laughing Hands of Olidammara that works the political scene in the city to improve things. So I worked on finding ways to tie PCs to the organization.
While I'm doing that, the players are working on stats and backgrounds. I consult with them throughout the process. I take note of what their early goals are, and I also take note of the stuff that's part of their history. All PC related information is due to me about one week before the game starts. I then use this information to weave more of the tale - though I always leave things a bit open-ended. I always strive to get something new into the game - maybe one prestige class from a book makes an enemy, or the players need to find a powerful magic item, or whatever. This ensures I get something new and different into game play. In this game, I latched onto the idea that all the PCs were associated with Olidammara, and I worked to build a recurring enemy - a cult of Scahrossar. For those who don't know, she can be found in the Book of Vile Darkness - but basically, she's Oli's evil sister. This gave me motivation for the characters, as well as something I could use as an over-arching theme for a lot of adventures.
So now I have a group of characters, and I have a major plot-line; now I pull them together. In the current game, they were sent to investigate a judge who is, um, "on the payroll" of the guild, but hasn't been doing his "job" lately. They find the judge has been replaced by a doppelganger, get ambushed, save the real judge, and so on. Plot hooks to future elements get laid in notes, clues, etc. At this point, I really still don't know details of where things are going, other than a vague idea.
I find keeping things as open-ended as possible has a few benefits. First, it allows my players to drive the game. I always prefer the majority of the plot to come directly from the players and their characters. Second, when something new comes out that's really cool, it isn't that hard for me to work it in. A perfect example is Richard Pett's "The Styes" adventure from Dungeon Mag. It was awesome, in my opinion, and with a few minor tweaks it dropped easily into my game. For example, I replaced Tharizdun with Scahrossar, and in place of the kick-ass kraken at the end of the adventure (which I don't think my PCs could survive), I'm allowing them to score their first major blow against the cult of Scahrossar.
Another advantage I find to keeping things open-ended on my part is the flexibility it grants. If a characte dies or leaves, I'm not beholden to some plot point that focuses only on that player/character. It's easier to adjust for that sort of thing. It's also easier to adjust for when a character's goals change mid-campaign. For example, one of my PCs has developed a love interest in an NPC. Originally, she was designed to just be a bit of comic relief (she has a quirky personality) and to feed the PCs some info about the cult of Scahrossar. Instead, one of the PCs managed to "convert" her (through roleplaying and some rules in the Book of Exalted Deeds) from evil and worshipping Scahrossar, to being good (barely) and venerating Olidammara. I was able to get all sorts of plot elements from that - including a botched assassination attempt on the NPC.
I don't know if that helps. I sort of went into rambling mode there.
Interestingly I had something similier to your dilemma of having 'to much' material to work with when I went to set up my current campaign.
Still that provides soem interesting opportunities. My bet is - among all this material - you have some stuff that really strikes a cord. Its your favourite material for whatever reason. So go through the material and start picking out your favorite stuff and then design a campaign around that. Lets face it - those of us that have been at this for years probably have more material then we could possibly ever use - so you might as well use the stuff you think is the very best right?
What I did was essentially pick out a few dozen adventures and settings and then I made my campaigns current plot work out so that this material - or some of it anyway - would be where the adventures take place. I worked out a plot line and then had each of the adventures have bits in them that would advance that plot line.
Next I had my players make their characters and started them at a location that offered them a couple of choices for adventure. They can could choose to go on either adventure but whichever one they choose they where both chalk full of clues and hooks that lead to other adventures that moved the plotline forward.
Some clues are more like forshadowing then actual opportunities since the party is too weak to take on some of the adversaries but others are viable options. Many of the hooks are not simply to other Dungeons but send the players on political missions or mysteries related to the grand plotline - this gives you an opportunity to introduce favoured cultures or settings to you players.
Now in order to keep your players choices as the centre of such a campaign you should not work out the fine details of every adventure. You need the initial options worked out in detail and you need too know most of the varous connections that can be found in all the adventure locales but you don't need to know the exact details of every adventure before hand. That can be worked out if your players show soem inclination to take up some specific adventure hook. To do that bit I have found that its a good idea to make your players tell you what they are going to do for the next session at the end of the current session.
The most difficult aspect of that last bit is it means you can't save the final encounter for next week unless your players can indicate to you where they will be moving on to after that encounter - otherwise you'll not be ready with a new adventure after the final encounter is completed at the begining of the new session.
My campaign set up pretty much has just a few choices initially and each of these choices has a bunch of other optional places the players could go too - all of which are connected to the plotline. From here more options are available. Some are simply links to adventures that they already know about but others offer new adventure opportunities. Pretty soon the players have a ton of options - but whichever road they take as they get further forward the options begin to narrow down again and ultimatly they end up in the last few adventures where the final elements of the plotline are revealed, evil is vanquished etc. Any adventure that the players skip can always be used next campaign.
Anyway my bottom line suggestion is to go through your stuff, pick out your favourite material and figure out how you can make a campaign that makes use of your favourite stuff.
Read some non gaming related material. Whenever I got DM's block I turned to history books, history magazines (Military History is a good one and was mentioned as a resource in an earlier thread), Time Life history books (believe it or not, they're really good for light reading and often have 3-D maps and other illustrations that are excellent for game flavor)
Find some illustrated history atlases....head to the library and snoop around. Osprey Books also publishes an excellent series focusing on various battles, specific time periods, etc. They're quick to read and have lots of illustrations.
Not that a serious history read can't be inspirational, but I find that an overview of a period of history, combined with many illustrations, tends to stimulate the imagination better than a tedious read.
The theme of my current game is "tying people to the back of wagons". Interrogation, intimidation, diplomacy, capturing enemies and and the forging of alliances are all done by tying them to the back of an ox-drawn cart. Much of the game has involved getting the cart repaired, getting the cart replaced (they have a wagon now), changing who pulls the wagon (used to be a chocobo, it's now two zombie oxen) or hiding in the wagon.
The wagon contains one of every standard item of the Equipment section of the Player's Handbook.
While, I usually don't get DM "block", but most of my good ideas just come to me when I don't rush it. For my current Eberron campaign, the major plot event that would tie the whole thing together came when I was in the shower (yes, I know it's very strange). But, just read novels, and take a break from actively thinking about your campaign for a while, and a really good idea will come to you. Or, you can just start off with a published adventure (I started with the Forgotten Forge), and work from there. Good luck!
WaterdhavianFlapjack