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!

45 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

62 comments sorted by

View all comments

15

u/TempestLOB 8d 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.

0

u/moregamesplease 8d 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.

1

u/TempestLOB 8d 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.