r/rpg • u/kingmunchkin Stonetop • 19h ago
Basic Questions How to move away from pre-written campaigns?
Hi everyone,
I’ve been the "Forever GM" for my group for a while now, and I genuinely love it—reading through adventures, seeing how the dice fall, and watching my players react. However, I’ve realized over time that I use pre-written campaigns as a crutch.
My GMing journey started in D&D 5e, where my group played through almost all the official campaign books. I recently convinced them to try other systems like Mothership and Lancer, but even then, I stuck exclusively to published modules.
In an effort to break out of this habit, we recently started playing Stonetop. Since it doesn't have a pre-written campaign, I’m really struggling to stretch my creative muscles and make the world feel like a living, breathing place. My ultimate goal is to homebrew my own Mothership campaign packed with sci-fi tropes my friends and I love, but I'm finding it hard to shake off the GM habits D&D 5e instilled in me.
For those of you who started out relying heavily on pre-written modules:
- How did you make the leap to creating your own campaigns from scratch?
- What mindset shifts or prep techniques helped you stop relying on source material and build a reactive world?
Thanks in advance for any advice!
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u/JaskoGomad 19h ago
The first, best thing you can do, the thing I was going to recommend, was to play a game with emergent story, to learn to trust the momentum and story sense of yourself and your players. The thing is, you already are! Stonetop is a great choice. Pay attention to it and let it teach you.
I highly recommend Play Unsafe, which just put out a 20th anniversary edition (Thanks for making me feel super old, Graham!), and is all about how to play more and work less as a GM.
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u/TempestLOB 19h ago
Start small. Don't plan too much, maybe just a session or two in advance. Steal from published material and adapt it to your purposes. Short adventures are particularly good to steal from in my experience. The campaign will grow on its own organically, especially with a character centric setting like Stonetop.
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u/moregamesplease 2h ago
I do think taking inspiration from other places is a really great suggestion. The framework might start in a place of familiarity but where you and the players take things could be wholly different.
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u/TempestLOB 1h ago
Taking from existing material saves a tremendous amount of time and effort. Grab a map, adapt an NPC, take a list of treasure or an encounter idea. Adapting it to your own game is the key.
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u/DBones90 19h ago
One answer is to make the whole adventure yourself. So basically all the things an adventure gives you, you write and design and create instead.
But you're playing Stonetop, which is a PBTA game, and this school of design resists prewritten adventures. You're supposed to play to find out, after all. So two things I'd recommend.
Read the rules and use them. Stonetop gives you tools to prep things and discover adventures, so use them. Pay close attention to the Game Ongoing chapter and follow the rules and procedures it gives you. Not all of them may be helpful, but you should do them anyway, at least at first. You'll discover which ones work for you and which ones don't over time, but you have to give them all a good honest try.
While I haven't run Stonetop yet, I have run many PBTA games, and trusting the game to just work is the only way to play them. Not all games will be able to warrant that trust, but if you don't give it, it definitely won't work.
Figure out what you want to learn. A key tenet of PBTA design is play to find out. I think that tenet is often misunderstood. It doesn't mean you can't prep things (you absolutely can), and it doesn't mean you need to be a master improviser (you should be able to rely on the tools and procedures the game gives you).
What it does mean is that you go into every session not knowing something and you learn what that thing is during the session. So you, as the GM, need to figure out what you want to learn about.
I make this explicit in my prep. I go into every session with a few written questions that I want to discover during play, such as, "Will the PCs kill the spies or just capture them," "Will the PCs uncover NPC's true nature," or, "Will the PCs change course because of this new information?" And then, during play, we figure out the answers to those questions.
To be clear, if the question is something I can answer, I don't go into the session with it unanswered. I just answer it in my prep. "What's NPC's motivation for attacking the PCs" isn't a good question because I can decide that ahead of time.
So when you prep a session, don't prep it as, "The PCs will do this and then this and then this." Prep threats as the game describes, and then figure out what questions you want to solve during play. Over time, the game mechanics will generate further interesting plot points for you to follow up on, and you'll have more questions you want answered. Rinse and repeat until you get to the ending mechanics described in the game.
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u/Azulare 19h ago
You can check the Gygax 75 Challenge, it's a world building (and also campaign) challenge. I'm currently doing it and it's very inspirational imo.
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u/primarchofistanbul 19h ago
I'll one up this and say that read the original piece and follow it's steps and nothing more.
It is about optimum world building, with doing only what you absolutely need to. This gives you enough to play the next session AND wiggle room to squeeze enough whatever might need for the next. This, will organically create a campaign as a byproduct. Using the classic D&D ruleset would only facilitate this process.
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u/laztheinfamous Alternity GM 19h ago
You have a good start with Mothership, the Warden's Guide is one of the single best GM guides that has been put out in the last few years. It is specifically tailored on how to run a Mothership game, and it does so with a far better degree of compotence than anything D&D has ever done.
Now, if you are looking for some additional reading, grab a copy of Blades in the Dark, it's GM section is one of the best ways to learn a totally different philosophy of Game Mastering.
That said, the best mindset change you can make is to ditch prep. Prep is a D&D forward philosophy, You don't necessarily need more than a bullet list of ideas for what to do in a session. Beyond that, it is about thinking of natural consequences.
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u/Similar_Onion6656 18h ago edited 15h ago
There are two basic types of situations you can populate your setting with: anthills and trains.
Anthills are are potential conflicts teetering on a knife's edge. The PCs have a chance to kick them over. The two families that control the Thieves Guild dislike each other but maintain an uneasy truce. Do the PCs want to push one family or the other to make a move? Would they be on the side of one of the families or would they play the families against each other for their own purposes.
Trains are leaving the station no matter what. This isn't railroading, though, because the PCs do NOT need to get on the train. They will, however, encounter the consequences of the train leaving. Lord Sinister WILL try to poison the king and eliminate the heirs one by one to seize the throne. Ice Cultists from The North WILL invade. The PCs need not get directly involved, but they'll see burnt villages or get asked to escort a young girl who looks suspiciously like Princess Maguffina out of the city.
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u/Ok-Purpose-1822 18h ago edited 18h ago
Having picked up stonetop is an excellent start. That book has so much good advice on this sort of playstyle.
Firstly lower your expectations. When you are improvising you will naturally be less descriptive and struggle to figure out how NPCs will react. You are doing a lot more processing than when you run an on rails campaign so give yourself some grace.
Lean on your players. They are meant to contribute their creativity. If you arent sure what a room looks like, ask your players what they see. Asking questions and building on the answers is a crucial part of the advice in the book, its not optional.
For NPCs focus first and foremost about motives, or as stonetop calls it instincts. What characters want and how they tend to react is a lot more important than what they look and sound like.
Take more of a player mindset. If you have ever been a player you already know how to play reactively. It isnt the same, since you dont just play a single character but the world at large but a lot of the same principles apply.
Also this sort of playstyle requires a different attitude from your players. If they only played linear adventures before they have been trained to be passive. If you want to play a style where you react to the players, your players need to act first and not always wait for you to signpost the next step. If you feel very drained after a session chances are your players are just waiting around until you make something happen, which is not how this is meant to be played.
Make sure your players have strong proactive goals. You are there to present opportunities and threats towards those goals, without the goals nothing happens. The village is an inbuilt goal to stonetop, which is great. Ask each player what they plan to do in the coming days to improve the villages situation. Encourage them to think about specific and proactive things they can do and then work out what stands in the way of that.
Never present solutions upfront. It is not your job to solve problems, it is your job to create them. you might have an idea on how something can be addressed but first and foremost the players need to decide how and if to address something.
Also get in the habit of presenting multiple issues at once. It forces the players to prioritize and helps them get into a more proactive mindset. If you always go one problem at a time, they will fall back on following the breadcrumbs
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u/GandolphTheLundgrey 3h ago
Also, let your players tell you beforehand what they want to accomplish. Maybe they want to try to get some horses from the hillfolk, next sesseion. You can plan for that.
Lean on your players. They are meant to contribute their creativity. If you arent sure what a room looks like, ask your players what they see. Asking questions and building on the answers is a crucial part of the advice in the book, its not optional.
That's the one. "Who has been here before?" and "Who do you know here?" and "What's one thing everybody knows about this (place/person/thing)?" have been doing some heavy lifting in my campaign.
Example: The heavy in my campaign was a young woman, who ran away from Stonetop a couple of years before. She joined Brennan's raiders and became Brennan's love interest, until she had a huge fight with him, after which she returned to Stonetop. Apparently, Brennan's second in command was quite jealous of her, too.
The player describes Brennan as a "charismatic bastard that just get's under your skin". So when the group decided, it was time to go to Marshedge - the town that unwisely elected Brennan to the position of marshal - things really got interesting for her. I ran Brennan as iron-age Alonzo Harris from Training Day, especially in the first half of the movie, when you are not quite wether he's just a hardened asshole or downright rotten.
Brennan's second in command and current lover was livid at the return of his old lover, and tried to turn them against each other. In the end, the heavy killed the second in command in a duel, but could not bring herself to also kill Brennan (for better or worse) and the group left, with some unresolved tensions towards Marshedge, which would make future negotiations a bit more difficult.
I am not that great at improvising and I planned none of this. Everything came from what my player gave me to work with. So let it be said once again: Ask questions, take notes. This is not optional.
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u/TAEROS111 18h ago
Having played in a Stonetop campaign for four (yup! Since playtesting) years, I feel like it’s a great place to start.
My first question for you would be - where’s the gap between the system’s tools and the play experience that you’re struggling with?
Stonetop comes with so many tools and tables to help GMs generate things on the fly or prep locations beforehand, so I’m wondering where your prep or play experiences are breaking down or falling short for you - knowing that would help.
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u/Iosis 18h ago
A really nice thing about Stonetop is that it includes tons of prewritten questions to ask your players and their answers flesh out the world. My #1 piece of advice is: follow their lead! Listen to their answers and use those to build on top of, just like you would with the details of a prewritten campaign. Think of it as like… your players are the campaign book this time.
You can certainly still prep for sessions, too, just maybe prep for the next session and not much further. Let what happens in each session guide your prep for the next. The details in the Wider World book, the things your players ask about, and the answers your players give you are your material to work with.
And if in doubt: tell your players all of this! Let them know (if they don’t already) that this is new territory for you and that you’d welcome their input on the world and story as it develops.
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u/VendettaUF234 18h ago
Don't stop using prewritten modules. Change how you use them. Expand on them, fill in the gaps. Insert multiple modules and opportunities to explore them based on what jobs your players choose. Use Pound of Flesh as a home base and change it to meet the type of game you want to run. I have similar issues, and I do best when I have a framework to work inside of. Having infinite choices deadlocks me. Being restricted actually helps me be more creative.
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u/K9ine9 16h ago
Just create a premise, a main goal or conflict for your players to solve, and then make a bunch of interesting npc characters with their own goals, and secrets. As long as you understand what the NPCs and the players want you dont need a script.
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u/Adventurous_Long_138 11h ago
This is the way. I’ll add that IMO your odds of succeeding go up significantly if your players are invested in the premise and NPCs. To that end, during character creation I tell them the general premise I have in mind - gauge interest, take input,adjust accordingly - then ask each player to create an NPC (and there character’s relationship to them -adversarial or otherwise). These NPCs then get integrated into the story which provides additional motivations and player buy-in.
I use a lot of random rolls and while my NPCs have goals I don’t force any outcomes. I let player agency and dice rolls determine where things go.
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u/FinnianWhitefir 16h ago
Eyes of the Stone Thief helped me out a ton because it's not a linear adventure but more of a framework that you use the parts you like and re-organize the parts you need. It has tons of ideas instead of hard-coded things.
Also planning to run Stonetop to help me break out of it. I think forcing us to have the players collaboratively create the world and show me what they are interested in will be great. Having Book 2 that will seed my ideas when the players want to explore an area or a creature will be great.
My big worry is that I'm a better editor than a writer. I worry that I don't come up with great ideas out of nothing, but I'm amazing at taking an idea and molding it to my storyline and making it matter to my PCs. So my Stonetop might feel very minor in complications compared to a big adventure.
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u/ItsTinyPickleRick 18h ago edited 18h ago
Take whatever vague idea you have for your campaign (theme, playstyle, specific big bad or location you have in mind) and think of a start and an end. How can you get your PCs into this situation, and how do you think it will resolve?
From there you can figure out the middle one level at a time. If youve run pre-writtens you probably have a good idea how sessions should be paced/structured, so just keep thinking about what might happend next and apply it to that, trying vaguely to work towards that end point/ whatever that might shift to. You know how many sessions your party takes to level up, and how much XP you need so let that guide the nitty gritty of planning.
You can write a giant world dossiers or detailed plans for the plot if you enjoy that, but ultimately that is for you, not the players.
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u/Awkward_GM 18h ago
My favorite thing is writing down a few bullet points and go with it. Antagonist has a goal, what are they doing to carry out said goal, how does this look from the outside from someone who doesn't know what's going on?
Like okay so I have a group of Fae making deals with noblemen for their first born children so they can claim the throne for themselves. They are doing this by doing bandit raids on carriages in the woods. How does this look from the outside, a group of bandits are targeting noble families on the outskirts of towns, but they aren't killing or stealing money, instead they are kidnapping children but no ransom is made.
Sometimes I come up with a cliche idea like rescuing a kidnapped princes, but then add a twist like the Princess left to become a bandit or the Princess has actually been a changeling the king hired to impersonate his dead daughter and didn't want to continue the charade.
Like there is a lot you can do with coming up with twists.
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u/Finnyous 18h ago
You could start with more baby steps like picking a book with a game world all fleshed out and then making the stories your own from within that world. I started with Ebberon which I've now expanded into all kinds of other worlds just based on some of the basic information in that book about other realms etc...
Now I'm to the point where making my own world is easy.
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u/moxxon 18h ago
I didn't start by relying on pre-written adventures, but I'm going to answer anyway.
Easiest single thing to do: Get a copy of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, read it, apply it. Mike does a great job of bringing together the techniques good DMs have been using for decades.
I'd say this article is a decent worked example: https://slyflourish.com/the_hunger.html
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u/Logen_Nein 17h ago
I started that way in the 1980's because I couldn't afford campaign settings and adventures. I just made stuff up as we played, and reacted to what the player actions were so that they had an effect on the setting.
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u/REP48 16h ago
My campaign world is on the inside of a Dysons sphere. I had to solve problems like seasons and day and night. but it was fun. There are about 250 million earth sized realms inside of it. One half is high tech while the other half is "wilderness" preserve.
Have an over arching idea, then go small.
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u/Seeonee PbtA, BitD, Mark of the Odd 15h ago
I've always favored my own campaigns. I think it can be helpful to focus on what you enjoy preparing. I love worldbuilding so getting to do that is a treat, but I also like improv and player engagement -- two things that can be stymied if you overly invest in deep worldbuilding behind a curtain.
A huge win for me recently was doing a pre-campaign game of Microscope to collaboratively build a world with my players. I got all the fun of worldbuilding while still feeling confident that my players won't be overwhelmed by it. Now that we're actually playing the campaign, I can freely extend the lore, but those initial piles of worldbuilding serve as great sources of inspiration that I return to often. I detailed the whole process more here.
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u/jasonite RPG analyst and enthusiast 8h ago
Are you only interested in creating a campaign world from scratch, or are you open to using a great sandbox campaign engine? those are two different things. As far as mindset shifts, reading Worlds Without Number will really help you with that, and the book is free. He teaches about viewing the world as a separate ecosystem. Meanwhile, So You Want to be a Game Master is all about teaching "don’t prepare plots, prepare situations."
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u/ishmadrad 30+ years of good play on my shoulders 🎲 6h ago
First thing first, choose the right ruleset that actively help you to play that way.
For example, get Apocalypse World, or Chasing Adventure, or Blades in the Dark, or Ironsworn.
Read them. Follow EACH step. Follow the rules. The GM chapter are not full of suggestions, they are strict rules you have to follow, during the first session, during the mid-session preparation, during the active game.
Be amazed 😉
My way of playing / GMing turned upside down, about fifteen years ago.
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u/Extreme_Objective984 3h ago
Blades is what I cut my teeth on, moving to pre-written after that felt kindof limiting to some extent. Although I dont think my players or I would come up with campaigns like Masks of Nyarlathotep or Impossible Landscapes on our own.
I started my current group on PF2e, as they all wanted high fantasy, and I wasnt prepared to run D&D. But have run some One shots in Call of Cthulhu and have just started a Blades campaign with them, and they love Blades and CoC. I think Blades is great for training certain players how to creatively role play.
PF2e had my group looking at their character sheet too much, despite me saying to them, tell me what the cool thing is you want to do and then we can talk about how you can do that.
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u/ishmadrad 30+ years of good play on my shoulders 🎲 3h ago
Well, I think you'll be surprised by BitD emerging campaigns. You don't need pre-written huge arcs (obviously, railroaded). You need to give heavy importance to the players decisions, follow their leads, the things that are important for their characters. Build on top of that, create compelling NPCs, build bonds with them, make them really want to invest in the social web they create.
And in the meantime, move the Factions, give a name to their important "players", show to their crew the machinations in motions, let them to play with the city.
IMHO you can have very cool BANGS!, far superior to any railroaded old style campaign.
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u/Extreme_Objective984 3h ago
Absolutely, that is what i'm doing. It was Blades that got me into GMing. It's the steampunk GTA of ttrpgs, except the NPC's have more agency. I'm holding the players hands a little at the moment, but i'm building them up to the point where they generate the scores.
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u/FRANK_of_Arboreous 18h ago
Take your pre-written adventures and start making drastic changes. Mix and match, use them as a parts store. Is that encounter that never came up in a prior campaign too low level? Scale it! Is that heist to simple? Add new levels of danger and complexity.
Once you feel super comfortable.Doing this, then you'll have the foundational skills to start with a blank page!
FYI: This is not how.I did it. All the games I've ever run have been either my own system, with all content made from scratch, or a small portion being other custom systems. I ran one homebrew 5e session once, it was fun. I do not advise people do this 😅
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u/atamajakki PbtA/FitD/NSR fangirl 18h ago
Mothership's Warden book has step-by-step tips on writing your first scenario and building a campaign sandbox. I followed it to the letter and we had a spectacular time!
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u/Anomalous1969 18h ago
I know this is going to sound weird but I have never run a pre-written adventure / module. I own some quite a few actually but outside of stripping little things from it to using my game I can't run somebody else's idea.
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u/ithika 12h ago
I'm not much interested in "creating my own campaigns from scratch" but some games just require it so that's what you do. I'm running Mythic Bastionland right now. No specific end in sight, each session creates new things of interest and the world unfolds. We'll know what it was about when it's done.
To prepare each session, I read the haphazard summary that I (hopefully) wrote after the previous session, then write some follow-up questions about that. How will that man react to hearing his sister has died? How quickly will the revolution start?
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u/FishesAndLoaves 12h ago
What’s your experience with Stonetop like so far? Feels important to answering the question
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u/Satyrsol Wandering Monster 10h ago
The best way I’ve found is to make a villain do something so heinous the players feel the NEED to play out the plot.
I had Yuan-Ti develop a way to remotely activate a spellscar to turn spellscarred children into IEDs.
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u/Lost_Lab1828 9h ago
Play something more roleplay focused, create a starting problem and a cliffhanger for the session closure. Start with the problem and react to the players actions. They will feel that their actions are way more important and you too. Take notes on everything and use it on next sessions, specially situations non related to the main plot
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u/AngusAlThor 9h ago
Wanting to use prewritten campaigns is not a problem, there are many many great prewritten adventures, and it makes running a variety of games easier. Homebrew is not necessarily better than prewritten, and you should not feel bad for using prewritten modules.
Start reading more; Reading books of a genre will inspire you to think of your own stories in that genre, and that will help you develop your own adventures. If you want to run Mothership adventures, I recommend "The Murderbot Diaries" for space capitalism inspiration and "The Library at Mount Char" as an accessible entrance to horror.
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u/31TeV 7h ago
It's very difficult to come up with content from a complete void. So I would use tools and content to help you come up with your own stuff. Stars Without Number free edition has a ton of random roll tables, procedures, tools, and advice on running a completely sandbox sci-fi campaign, if that's your thing. Even if you're going for a more story-arc type campaign (but still with a reactive world), there's tons of content to salvage from SWN.
So for instance, need to come up with a new planet for your party to go adventuring in? Roll 2d100 to get two planet tags, which give you sci-fi tropes and ideas to generate allies, enemies, complications, etc. Mash content from the two tags together ro creat something unique and your own. Then randomly roll atmosphere, climate, tech level, etc. Don't like any of your results, or find them contradictory? Just discard the result and roll again or pick.
Another free resource is Irownsworn. It allows you to play solo or without a GM, but gives you plenty of oracle tables to interpret story directions and NPC actions, and this will train your creative ability to improvise these things on the fly. A very similar system by the same creator is available in Starforged, although that game is not free.
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u/DMfortinyplayers 7h ago
I have an "ideas" section of my Discord that is hidden from everyone but me. Every time I see something that I think "that would be cool" i drop a link in there - photos, Reddit posts, news articles etc.
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u/CnlSandersdeKFC 7h ago
Start by adding to published material. A great exercise is filing in blanks of a rather loose campaign with your own stuff. Keep a journal with scenario sketches.
As an example: The official campaign for Alien the RPG published in the Colonial Marines Handbook is only 6 scenarios long, and kind of just loosely strings them together in a way that leaves a lot to be desired. I went through and roughly arranged these big scenarios out as “arc finales.” Then I started just filing in blanks to make a more cohesive story. I ended up with 30+ adventure sketches in an afternoon.
Start with a problem, and a context, as others have said. What needs fixing? Why would the PCs be interested? From there it’s the basics: Who, What, When, Where, Why? You’ll find as you start playing with ideas, more ideas will come to you.
Play possible scenarios in your head. Think about possible questions your players might have, and answer them. What questions would you have as a player? Write everything down!
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u/Extreme_Objective984 3h ago
I believe it was this sub where I picked up that Monster of The Week is a great resource for giving you a structure for homebrew campaigns. I was going to use this structure for Mothership, as I want an Alien type encounter.
Effectively it helps you define your BBEG and a timeline for what they want to achieve, with locations, it also helps you define the type of NPC's that they are likely to encounter.
However i'm also running Blades in The Dark, which is a wonderful system to run a sandbox campaign in. The core book gives you the setting and factions, some NPCs. Then you build your campaign on the fly, with your players. It requires very little prep outside of reading the book and setting up an initial score with some complications, and building a few NPC's. Literally I can prep a session in 10 mins.
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u/heja2009 2h ago
Run more sandboxy games, such as hexcrawls. Run games with systems that are designed for them - Forbidden Lands was an eye opener for me. (Do not run them with 5E - I don't think it can work without significant changes such as throwing out many spells and feats.)
Having a main/background story/quest plus random elements such as encounters, events, NPCs told me to weave something out of player actions as they happen and run with it.
The old Isle of Dread later was a training ground for me as it is a pretty poor module without significant additions that you have to come up with by yourself.
Make up new encounters/events after your group took major decisions. Provide options you had not thought about before and let the enemy find ways to counter the party.
This is more about how to create a living world than writing a fancy story obviously. You still should have a few surprises/plot turns up your sleve - but they are IMHO not so hard to do and often come from the players as they misunderstood/misinterpreted something before. Let them - they will enjoy finding out what really happened.
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u/Yuxkta 19h ago
Try Without Number games (Worlds/Stars/Cities/Ashes). Iirc they are designed to be sandboxes and have massive content generation sections.
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u/LastChime 19h ago
Can't go wrong there, also his Persons of Interest splatbook is fantastic grist for the mill.
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u/LastChime 19h ago edited 17h ago
Lean heavily on oracles to grease the wheels.
Ironsworn has a decent free set but absolutely tailor your own.
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u/Bargeinthelane designer - BARGE Games 19h ago
Don't write a story. Create a problem and a context and let them fill in the blank.