Advice and Tips for Creating a Campaign

[Gizmogidget]

This thread is for players and DM/GM's alike. Offer your advice and anecdotes on the perfect game world. Recall both failures and successes whether they are your own, or others. Describe how you would amend your failures, and describe how your own successes. Good luck to all of you with your campaign worlds. Note- Non-genre specific so try and make sure your advice is good across several genres and mediums.

[DontEatRawHagis]

I stole the Chris Perkin's campaign bible example when he posted it when D&D Next was announced:

Campaign World Name

<Overall Summary>
<Setting>
<Leadership>
<Major points>

Brief Timeline

Special Campaign Event(Usually the Overall Plot of the Game)

Calendar Cycle

People And Factions
Factions
Important People
Special Groups

Map
Important Landmarks and Facts

Character Origin Examples
Race Origins
Class Origins

Special Campaign Quality
Equipment/Abilities PCs and NPCs might have access to

Campaign Start Point

Sample Character Hooks

[Yora]

Don't write in advance how the story will end. The decisions and actions of the players should decide that.

Failure is always an option. Unless the universe explodes there is always a way to send a new group of heroes to try where the previous one failed or to fix the disaster that followed their defeat.

Don't prepare NPCs who will do really cool stuff and the player characters are meant to be his guards. The players play the heroes and the NPCs are their assistants.

Don't prepare a series of big events that happen where the PCs aren't present. The greatest plot is irrelevantn if the players don't know what's going on.

Plan the campaign in a way that does not require the players to play specific character classes or reach a specific level to be able to win. Let it take however long it takes and set the power and numbers of the enemies they encounter based on how strong the characters are when they meet them.

Try to avoid making NPCs that absolutely have to survive or who the players must defeat and kill. There's always situations where the players really want to kill someone whatever it takes, and situations where they just don't want to fight an enemy. Let them have that and give the task an unexpectedly dead NPC had to some other enemy.