Campaign Advice

[Noru]

Hello everyone, I have recently started running my first pathfinder campaign which is also my first homebrew campaign in about five years. I am finding myself without an abundance of time for preparation between work and class, though when I do have the time to devote to creation I mostly just stare at the blank pages. So far we have only played one session where the pc's were investigating the disappearance of live stock from the local town, leading them to a goblin cave where there are signs of occult influence as well as a (yet undetailed) ruined structure attached to the caverns the goblins inhabit.

How do you plan a campaign week to week with minimal preparation and keep it from slipping into bland mediocrity?

[Adamantine Dragon]

Some tips... maybe some will apply:

Keep some graph paper at work and draw simple maps while on break or during lunch.

Use Google to find sites with DM helper applications. You can find sites with free maps, sites with free loot generators, random encounter generators (though this is a 3.5 one), etc.

There are tons of tools to help too. Mostly if you spend an afternoon doing some diligent googling, you'll find a ton of things that will make your game prep much, much easier.

Start small and simple. Don't try to create an entire world, start with a small keep or a ruined castle with only a few passageways and rooms. Don't try to put an epic quest for a beginning group, your goblin encounter approach is a good start. Just grow it naturally from there. Maybe the next encounter is on the road back to town against some bandits...

Frankly sometimes less is more for GMing. One of the big mistakes I see GMs make is to go all out in planning great sessions only to have the players go off in a totally different direction forcing the GM to improvise anyway.

So get good at improvising.

[Chobemaster]

Building on what A.D. said, only focus on staying a couple sessions ahead of the players, at first.

You've got your local town, the goblin lair, and a future story thread w/ the occult influence.

Presumably your PCs have either horses or good boots for moving around...what is within a 2-day ride/march in any direction of your town? You can drag out a 2 day ride across a whole session with some random encounters and 1-shot "lair" type encounters, so they can't really get further than that unless you let them.

As long as you know what they will find in the next session, then you have the following week to detail whatever it is they are about to do.

If in 2 days ride they find the ruined mausoleum of Falala, then you don't even need to know what's in the mausoleum of Falala until the following week. If they don't go to it, who cares what's in it?

That's the minimum preparation level that you need w/o possibly needing to railroad the PC's, IMO.

If I were in your shoes, I would:

1. do the 2 day thing above

2. have a plan for the occult thing and how that could tie to or kick-off the long-run arc of the campaign

3. Identify the PC's hanging plot threads and start to pick up a couple of them. For example, if the fighter has a Conan-type "orphan becomes warrior bent on revenge" thing going on, think about where the equivalent of the Temples of Set are and what the Thulsa Doom/James Earl Jones character is up to. Most good character generations/backgrounds/motivations identify some places that the player would like to take the game. Accommodate those as best you can while still maximizing fun for everyone.