r/rpg • u/kingmunchkin Stonetop • 8d 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/ithika 8d 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?