I run an “open-world” campaign. I have quotation marks on open-world because, yes, I control the information my players get and the problems they encounter. And yes, if they go in a direction I don’t want them to, I have the power to put something large and scary in their way to push them back. I spent the first tier of play encouraging them to meet and invest in the lives and relationships of the people in a very small farming town. I gave them allies and authorities who listened, acted based on their experience, and I gave them local notoriety as the “people who get things done.” All the while, I built intrigue into two of my three planned campaign plot hooks. Then, at level five, I gave them a tavern run by gnomes that acts as portals to major locations all over their world, as well as other planes. My players at any point could decide to go to the elemental plane of fire and then ask what they see.
Does it make sense for them to do that? Not at this point, but maybe one day the two fire genasi will go to seek powerful allies to help them. Maybe my artificer want to go explore Mechanus to help him solve a crafting problem. I have given them the tools to do this and, as a DM, I will be proud when they use the tools they have to solve a problem. But also exasperated because how was I supposed to prep for this?
I am one of the lucky ones, my group plays often (mostly twice a week)! We usually have two on-going campaigns so I only run one session a week but when the other DM gets too busy, I run both. I consider myself to be a novice DM still. This is my second fully homebrewed campaign and my first where the group is fully invested. It means that I have a LOT of prep work to do.
So how do you plan for 8-10 hours of play a week when your players could go anywhere? This is the blessing and the curse of cooperative storytelling. I have found that the most useful places to spend prep time are:
- Key things they find: structures, random or story encounters, locations of important loot
- People they meet: groups of people they can call allies, persistent villains who are following them, people to flesh the world out who have their own individual problems that the players can solve or ignore
- Villain and NPC actions: What is everyone else up to? What does that look like to the players? What’s a reasonable timeline for these things to happen at? When should this NPC write a letter to the players with an important clue and when should it be delivered?
Because I’m spending so much time on those things, things I don’t prep and therefore must improvise like random loot, night encounters, books in the library, etc. I also do not pre-plan DCs. I might get some judgement for this, but if my players are having fun that’s what matters to me. I don’t have the time to plan out if that random locked door is a DC 12 or 15 to pick the lock. If they fail the DC by one point does that still mean they utterly fail? Am I willing to halt play while they hmm and haw about trying to find a way into a door?
This is where I have stolen an idea from the game design system “Powered by the Apocalypse.” In this system the keeper makes no rolls. Instead, they respond to the roll the player has made with a “move.” If the players have utterly failed, the keeper makes a “hard move.” If the players have slightly failed, the keeper makes a “soft move.” A hard move would involve a major inconvenience or damage being applied to the character. It might cost them time in a rushed scenario, it might give the BBEG information they previously didn’t have, or it might mean they alert an entire dungeon to their presence. A soft move would be a minor inconvenience but something that could be overcome. The lock pick breaks, the chest they saw behind the door through the keyhole was a mimic, the person they were interrogating tells them an easily discernible lie. Importantly, the failure does not halt player progress, it just introduces a new factor.
Let’s put this in context with our locked door. My players find a locked door. Normal DC rules say that an easy challenge is overcome at DC 5-10, a moderate challenge is between DC 10-15, a hard challenge is between DC 15-20, and so on. Assuming we aren’t in the villain’s hideout and all their plans are behind that locked door, it won’t be a formidable challenge. So my player approached the door with their thieves tools and rolls a 5. Using DnD rules, the door is still locked and the players look around the table, shrug, and say “I’ll help you by pouring acid on the hinges” and the player rolls again. It halts play while they think of ways to pry open this door and beg me for the opportunity to roll again. Using the Apocalypse rules, play continues but the DM takes a hard move. “You fiddle with the lock, finally popping it open to find the door had been trapped with a poison cloud, make a constitution saving throw.”
On the other hand, if my players come across that locked door and roll extremely well they might not only find what I had planned to be behind the door. There might be extra loot, a clue to something relevant, or something that will help them survive the next upcoming challenge. I’ve made the moves a two-way street. It’s no longer pass or fail it’s degrees of success.
One caveat is that I don’t use moves to punish my players for poor rolls in battle. I use the monster stat block DCs for battle and they pass or fail as regular rules. I use the moves to respond to their rolls and flavour the world around them. The player with the lowest nightly perception check doesn’t see the old woman walking up to their camp, the person with the worst athletics check takes the longest to swim across the river. I have too many things to prep and plan that planning specific challenges with specific DCs gets lost—especially if they go somewhere unexpected.
What things have you taken from other system to improve your play? How did you incorporate it?