Those Who Make Homebrew Campaigns: How Do You Structure Your Campaigns?

[KoolKobold]

I’ve been heavily considering making my own homebrew campaign (only running it after playtesting it and having the experience of a GM through running some APs), and I have the most basic idea for the campaign’s synopsis, but I’m not entirely sure if I’m doing it right.

Here’s the synopsis I got for my homebrew campaign:

Synopsis:

Adventurers called to help a small town in western Varisia deal with a mite infestation; discover other nearby towns were destroyed; find out members of the settlement they’re staying is complicite in recent raids conducted by giants, hobgoblins, ogres, orcs, etc; slowly defeat key members of this new army; discover a mad ogre priest of Haggakal is planning to take Varisia entirely as a new empire of ogres; players go to Belzken to defeat the leader of this army

I’ve been making stat blocks for various enemies and even a few allies, and once I get a new laptop will also start making maps and settlements. But I still feel like I’m missing an important part of this process. If any homebrew campaign creators have any advice that would be most appreciated.

[Mark Hoover 330]

The Angry GM has a series on the basics of creating a campaign. The link is the intro to that series. There are also lots of other blogs or advice columns out there on creating and running your own homebrew campaign.

Your synopsis is just that: a synopsis. The characters start here, do this stuff in the middle, and end up here. You're not really missing anything but details, but again, this is a synopsis.

I'd say the only thing you've gotta decide, before you start a homebrewed campaign is: how linear do you want it to be? You've got the bare bones, know who your villains are going to be and you understand their motivations. Do you want the players stuck on a single track from the first adventure to the last, do you want the PCs to have free rein to go wherever they want, or do you want some hybrid where most PCs' decisions still lead back to the main plot in some way.

The 2 extremes are easy to map out. The hybrid is a bit more challenging and will depend on the attitudes and playstyle of the group. If the players are vets of RPGs and PF1 specifically, let them lead; if they're novices you'll need to prep NPCs, foreshadowing and clues you can plant that reconnect disparate plot lines to the main one.

Last but not least, running a long term campaign that isn't being run like an AP can be very reactionary for the GM. You might plan for an obvious clue to take the PCs from one settlement in trouble to the next, but the players might decide instead to go elsewhere, pursue a different villain or whatever. No matter how well you've outlined your game, now you as the GM have decisions to make in response to your players.

[Greylurker]

For me I start by summarizing the main plot. Break it down into 3 to 6 acts. Jot down some of the "Cool Moment" scenes I want to include (EX: Dwarf Airship vs. Flying Kaiju in Act 4). Stat up the Main Villain, 2 or 3 lieutenants, a few different grunts.
Then A player's Guide

I kind of enjoy writing stuff up with InDesign, so I tend to go nuts at this point with backgrounds, font styles, images, layout. Try to come up with a nice PDF for my players to read over.

For my next one though I have kind of a different idea for more of a Sandbox sort of game.
Found a thing called Dawn of Worlds online. Neat little world creation game you can do with your group. Going to combine that with some ideas I am lifting from Fabula Ultima and pretty much run a group session to create the campaign together.
Going to start with Dawn of Worlds with each player being a God for the setting and we create the world as a group.
Then in Session Zero each player creates; 1 Kingdom, 1 Mystery, 1 Threat, as well as define lore for a Weak monster (like goblins) a strong monster (like Giants) and 1 Legendary Monster (Not necessarily a powerful one but something super rare).

Then I'm going to take it from there and see what happens

[Boomerang Nebula]

In my opinion there are two features you absolutely must have for a homebrew campaign to be successful.

1) the idea must be interesting to you (the GM). The last thing you want to do is get bored of running your own campaign and watch it turn from fun to a tedious chore. If you are not sure how long you can sustain your interest plan for a short campaign and then extend it later if it feels right. Running long campaigns can be surprisingly taxing, even if you have a really interesting idea, so take breaks and let other GMs run their game for a while if you can.

and

2) the idea must be interesting to your players. Before you do too much work pitch the idea to your players and ask for feedback. Be open to tweaking your idea based on the feedback you get. Do not drop a complete surprise on your players. If you want to have a cool twist, tell them there will be a twist and drop hints as to what that might be. Players who genuinely want to be surprised won’t try too hard to guess correctly. Those players who don’t like surprises so much, you know the ones, they plan out their entire build at the start of the campaign, well they should be able to guess at least some details. The idea is to, as much as possible, keep everyone happy.

[Boomerang Nebula]

One big plus of homebrew campaigns is flexibility. If you find something isn’t working as well as you hoped you can change it. If it is a major change make sure you get buy in from your players before you make the change.

Another is the world building. The process of creating a campaign world is ideally nearly as much fun as actually running the game. In a sandbox style homebrew campaign this is especially important because a huge amount of content you create might never be used.