What would you most like to see in a new campaign... or not see?

[Tarondor]

I've been running RPG's for many decades now and I've always told myself I would write the big one. Not for sale, but just for me and and my friends. A multi-chapter Adventure Path-style campaign (probably in five acts) that would take the PCs from 1st through 20th level and tell a significant story in my home game world.

I've been collecting bits and pieces, scenes and villains, situations and monster for awhile. I even have a multiple tentative plots to choose from.

What I'm wondering is, what are some things you always wished for in a campaign, but rarely saw? Could be a situation that you wished had come up, a location rarely used, a rule that could see more use, or just a well-loved trope you'd like to continue seeing.

For me, it's airships. I want a portion of that adventure to be on airships. And since my setting is firmly medieval, it'll have to be on another plane. That sounds like fun, too. I also love desperate must-win fights in precarious terrain.

Conversely, what is something you either see too much of?

[Albatoonoe]

I want more "slice of life" elements. Plant the characters firmly in one location where they can develop relationships and affect the course of things. Starfinder offers a lot of interesting downtime activities and I'd love to see rules for mingling, entertainment, etc. in Pathfinder and similar systems.

I guess, in general, I want some more stories where you aren't a "big" hero. Local, maybe something more episodic where the stakes are more personal than cataclysmic.

[dirtypool]

One thing I always wanted to do so I’m finally deploying in my own campaign, that you are completely welcome to borrow, is to weave the covers of iconic books throughout my campaign.

Why would my party pry a jeweled eye from a statue of Moloch like on the 1e PHB, who is the dark wizard with his arms outstretched to murder my players on the 2e PHB. Is the Barbarian fighting the Dragon on the red box one of my players or must they come to his aid?

Pick your favorite pieces of art from the history of the game and tell your version of that story.

[Tender Tendrils]

Honestly I think the best use of airships is in a setting where they are more or less necessary - somewhere where the landmasses are all floating islands and the like. I think the plane of air has that in pathfinder.

As for things I like to see in campaigns - it is hard to do with pre-written campaigns, but I like it when the player characters are very integrated into the world. Give the players the option for their characters to be someone famous or important, such as an exiled prince, or to do something important, such as invent a new technology or spell. At the very least, have the player characters at least have hometowns and families and friends that can be integrated into the campaign.

Adventurers tend to be rootless vagabonds for some reason, even though that actually reduces the immersion and the feeling of being invested in the game.

The other thing I love is giving the party as a whole something to invest in and have ownership of. This can be an organization that they end up running (look to stuff like the Gray Wardens and Inquisition in Dragon Age), a physical property (such as building a castle and having to protect and be in charge of the villages surrounding the castle) or even just having a place or group they don't own, but build an attachment to (such as setting a large part of the campaign around one town or city full of characters they get attached to). This helps to further ground the characters in the world and give them something to be invested in protecting.

Fighting to "save the entire world" is generally too big a thing for people to wrap their heads around - this is why movies often combine the "save the world" finale with a specific character needing to be saved - the emotional stakes of saving a character you know are much greater than saving millions of anonymous statistics.

The airship idea actually ties in well with this - the party can own and invest gold and time in upgrading the airship, and become invested in its crew and in the place where they dock it so that it can be upgraded. This gives them something to attach them to the setting and gives you a way of giving threats emotional stakes. (It also gives you a valve for the party to offload excess gold into, the excessive accumulation of which has always been a problem in D&D and Pathfinder)

[Lathiira]

I like the idea of the airship, not to mention investing and owning a part of the world. My character is the architect behind the fortress we're building in the Shackles and if we were to continue our S&S game long enough, she'd be modifying the Fearsome Tide to boot.

Another element: when characters start reaching the mid to high levels, seeing how the regular people really interact with them. This ties into the investing into the world idea. Do all their deeds wind up unknown, so they're just some really powerful ruffians so far as the rest of the world is concerned? Do people learn to recognize them on sight? Are they bugged for favors? Free drinks everywhere? Approached to give a lecture at the wizard's college on their findings while exploring the ancient necromancer's tomb they hit last level? And so on. Fame subsystems don't truly cover this well from what I've seen, so I'd like to see more of this.

[Wei Ji the Learner]

Do NOT hijack the airship every time it pulls into a new port, even if it is really fancy. If the players pour reasonable cash into the defence of it, don't punish them with that kind of arse-pull.

[Tarondor]

Lots of good ideas here, many of them already among my thinking. I like having PC's start with a patron, someone they can go to for resources or advice. That tends to "ground" them or give them a strong location, too.

Dirty Pool, I've done that with the 1e PHB! Great trope.

Wei Ji, I would never do that... More than once. ;-) Actually, if I decide to do that stuff, I make sure that the players buy into such shenanigans from the very start and promise them it'll lead to more fun. They usually go along with it, but you can't do it more than once in a campaign!

So the strong advice from nearly everyone is: Give the team a detailed localized setting they care about.

What about individual scenes you think would be fun? Forget the airships - that was only ever going to a scene in the campaign. For instance, I know I want to do a scene where the PCs realize that the good church hierarchy they've been working with has been replaced almost entirely with evil priests masquerading as the good guys. They have no idea why these guys seem to have the good goddess's favor.

[avr]

Something like an airship with a substantial crew or an organisation which underpins the campaign gives people the PCs have a reason to meet more than once, without pinning them down to one demon-plagued village. You lose the players if they start asking why they were dumb enough to move to this arse-end of nowhere, or making comments about going somewhere so bad even the Romans didn't want it (both of which have happened in games I ran).

Visual scenes which the PCs can imagine easily - whether small stuff like a bird watching them from a pine tree at night having a glowing green glint in its eye, or big stuff like a castle made of glass - these work to keep players interested IME. Using these a lot helps.

[Tender Tendrils]

Some stuff for individualized scenes that I want to see more of in adventures;

1. Fights set in more varied terrain that actually has an effect on the fight - stuff like vertical terrain, different levels, terrain that changes, hazards, etc.

Some more specific ideas for that is stuff like
- A forest fire that forces both sides of the fight to keep moving in a certain direction to keep ahead of the fire
- A giant tree, with branches supporting various platforms at different heights
- A yellowstone type area with pools of acid and steam geysers that erupt periodically dealing area damage
- As bad as the star wars prequels are, a lot of their action set-pieces are actually pretty great for an rpg where you don't have to take things as seriously. The stupid mustafar platforms from the Anakin/Obi-Wan duel and the factory that Padme had to parkour through in particular are good examples.
- Modern astronomy is actually full of environments way more fantastical and interesting than anything I have seen in any rpg. There are exoplanets where it rains molten metal and glass, where the gravity creates ice by compressing water even though it is superheated, and that have ice volcanoes, and there are asteroids that are made of rock but have the consistency of styrofoam (you could walk through them because they are so fluffy). Stuff like this would really fit in in other planes

2. Adventures set during a war. The party can either be directly involved (acting as sort of hired special forces for one of the sides - an adventuring party can do a looooot of damage behind enemy lines, or to turn the tide of battle), or the war can be going on around them, and the party has to deal with avoiding being drafted or imprisoned by soldiers from either side, save innocents from looters and so on. A note here is that you can actually have a party get involved in pitched battles and sieges - you just need to avoid trying to simulate the overall battle. Just give the party one objective that will help to win the battle and have them have to navigate the battlefield to get there - you only need to do encounters for whoever specifically attacks the party, with the battle happening around them in the background. The main masses of troops will mostly be focused on grinding against each other and can be treated as hazards or obstacles rather than encounters.

3. More use of potions and other consumables by npcs. A lot of players don't think much about using consumables other than health potions - giving them to npcs and having the npcs use them can be a good way to train players to consider using them - the players can then loot whatever consumables aren't used after seeing what they can do. Something as simple as a smokestick can actually do a lot in an encounter, and caltrops can be downright nasty at low levels.

4. I have always wanted to see more use of mounts and vehicles. Usually the only time you see anyone mounted is if a player character decides to be a cavalier - theres a lot of fluff about goblins riding wolves and orcs riding wargs and manticores letting evil leaders ride them, so why not make use of it? There are weird things you have to figure out with how the action economy works, but I think it is worth the effort.

[Tarondor]

Good ideas. I like watching the idea-faucet flow!

And yes, not trying to simulate the whole battle is a great idea. I think that the old 3e module Red Hand of Doom did this well in its climax, where the battle around the PC's helped to determine the outcome of the larger battle.

[Mark Hoover 330]

Tender Tendrils wrote:

Adventurers tend to be rootless vagabonds for some reason, even though that actually reduces the immersion and the feeling of being invested in the game.

I've run games for 2 groups in particular and after all this time, this is a good start at what I'm missing in my games. The players being invested.

First off, both games are PF1. That being said, I don't think either group would be any MORE invested if they were playing in a different setting. Secondly, I don't know if I have any concrete advice here, this is just something I've been missing and it's starting to get to me more lately.

For my players the characters are a means to an end, that end being defeating foes in combat for XP and loot. Those characters barely have names. In past campaigns, between adventures the PCs would "chill at the inn" until the next plot hook fell in their lap. I had to start using the optional Downtime rules in order for my players to feel motivated to DO anything during that time.

I mean, when I was a kid me and my friends had a Marvel Super Heroes game and all these decades later I still have a framed copy of a "team photo" my buddy drew of us. At level 1 in a 1e game we were already planning out what our "stronghold" would look like. We made up unique magic items, and elaborate backstories and we DROVE the story forward as much as players as we did as GM's, regardless of the system.

My players nowadays want to show up, roll some dice, beat the monsters, take the treasure and go home. They don't take any actions unless they're guaranteed success. They never make unique items or invent new spells; no one has any character art or stories; they don't mingle in town or talk to NPCs or take ANY actions between adventures unless there's some kind of reward in it for them.

So in my perfect campaign, regardless of the system or style, my players would be there as much for the setting and narrative as the action. They'd be engaged... "invested." That's what I miss and that's what I want.

[Goth Guru]

I like to see items with more flavor. Like they actually have some backstory.

I don't want to see Kender or anything like them. Someone stealing from another party member makes them a villain and an enemy. Saying the dice told you too is a symptom of a greater problem, not an excuse.

[Wei Ji the Learner]

Story-based levelling when practical has been far better for character advancement.

A caution, however -- ensure that the party levels up at the same time. A couple of campaigns I was a part of didn't do this. Interest waned significantly due to a lack of attention.