So You Want to Write a D&D Campaign – Where Do You Start?

In a World… -Don LaFontaine, way too many trailers to count

The process for running a pre-written campaign is pretty simple: crack open the book, read the material, give your players the premise, have them make characters, and hop right in.

Art by Olie Boldador

A unique campaign is another story entirely (pun absolutely intended). There is no set material to draw from, no characters provided to you, no colorful descriptions for you to deliver to your players. It’s your job to create those, to flesh them out and make your game world interesting and inviting to your players. The tradeoff is that you can create an exciting, unique, and deeply personal experience for you and your players, and explore the ideas and themes that are in your head. But since that can be quite overwhelming, it helps to have a process.

In order to help you get started, I’m sharing my own process, one that I’ve played with and refined over years of writing my custom campaigns. It covers the key things that you should do, planning-wise, before you sit down to write that first adventure.

With that, let’s dive right in! Here are Seven Things To Do When Planning Your Unique Campaign:

1. Decide the Type of Game You Want to Run

Comedic Romp or Political Drama? Survival Story, or Urban Adventure? Before you begin creating anything, you have to decide what kind of game you want to run. This decision will provide you with focus throughout the planning and playing process, inform your choice of locations, plot points, and NPCs, and give your players an idea of what kind of characters they should be building. It’s alright to mix genres or use different themes throughout the course of a game — nothing wrong with having a political adventure in the middle of your urban story — but it helps quite a bit to have a consistent theme to return to. If you have a theme or genre that you particularly enjoy or that you have ideas for, run with it! That said, if you already have a group of players that you know you’ll be playing with, it would be a good idea to ask them what they might be — or might not be — interested in playing.

2. Pick Your System/Edition

If you’re running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, then you know that you’re playing Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. But when you’re making your unique campaign, you’re free to pick whatever you want. Since this choice will affect how you build your game and how your players play your game, you want to make sure that the system and edition that you pick fits both the type of game you chose and the preferences of your players. For instance, if your players are new to the game, you’ll probably want to use the more beginner-friendly D&D 5th edition, but if they’re more experienced or like having a lot of customizability, consider using something like D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder. There are plenty of systems, D&D or otherwise, that might provide what you’re looking for, so it pays to learn more about them.

3. Learn the Rules!

It’s hard to run a game when you don’t know the rules! This may seem like common sense, but it’s surprisingly easy to forget some rules or attribute rules of one system to another, especially if you’re switching to a system that you don’t use often. Regardless of your experience as a player or DM, it always pays to give yourself a refresher course so you know how to build your game mechanically.

4. Figure out the Campaign Length

You have to consider how long you want — or need — your game to run. If you have a group that wants to, and is able to, play for a long span of time (months to years), you don’t want to make a campaign that’s wrapped up in five sessions. Likewise, if you’re running a campaign at a party that’s only a few hours long, you won’t be planning out a sprawling epic. Player input is important here, as always, but you also have to consider your ability to commit to the game in the short and long term. There’s nothing wrong with planning a game to last for years if you can manage it or if you plan on reusing the campaign in the future. But if you’re just starting out or don’t want to reuse material, start with something smaller. One-shot campaigns (campaigns designed to only last for one session) are a great way to get your feet wet and earn some EXP without committing yourself to the workload of a longer game.

5. Draft a Plot

With campaign length decided, you’ll want to figure out the core plot of your story. Keep in mind that this is just a shell: you needn’t get into the details just yet about NPCs, your specific player characters, or any worldbuilding just yet. For now, you want to take the type of game that you chose in Step 1 and make a general plot that you can work with. Ask yourself: What situation are the players in? How did they get there? What’s the main conflict? How can the player’s resolve that conflict? What other major forces are involved? And perhaps most importantly, how is it supposed to end? If you plan to have a single overarching villain or impeding force harrying the players throughout the campaign, this is where you should start to figure them out, too. Don’t skimp on your villain — they’re an important part of what ties the plot, and the party, together.

6. Create a Setting

Time for some worldbuilding! You need a place for your plot to take place, after all. While it does make things somewhat easier if you use already-established worlds and characters for your game, there’s nothing wrong with building it all from scratch. Make your decision based on the time that you have to work on the game and your personal preferences. I personally love to build my worlds from scratch, but there are plenty of DMs who make fantastic use of existing settings to tell new and engaging stories.

Picture from MediaLAB Amsterdam

Regardless of how you decide to build your setting, you’ll want to make a rough map. Include major habitations, landmarks, and a few details that make each location unique and interesting. You’ll be adding to and otherwise modifying this map as you come up with ideas, solidify your plot, and write your adventures.

Once your map is done, come up with a little description and history for your world (you’ll probably have this already if you’re using an established setting). It doesn’t need to be exceptionally in-depth, but it should be enough to give your players an idea of where they’ll be playing and how to build their characters.

7. Rewrite and Refine

Are you ready to make an adventure now? Nnnnnope! You have to start filling in the blanks or altering the material to refine the world you’ve made/are using. How heavily you refine and detail your world at this point is entirely up to you. You have to evaluate the game that you’re playing, your players’ preferences, and how you write best to come to a decision on how detailed you’re going to be at the onset. Find the flow that allows you to be most productive and most comfortable when running. It may take some trial and error to find that flow, but that’s okay! You aren’t failing as long as you’re learning from the experience.

But maybe you already have your own process. Maybe you’ve got some steps in here that I don’t use. Maybe you do them in a different order. Maybe you even have a fun story of your own that relates to how you do your planning. Whatever it is that you might have to share, please feel free to leave it in a comment! I’d love to hear your input and I’m always open to questions or critiques! After all, we’re here to learn together!

See you next session!

-Joseph