Why I don't Run "World Shattering Event" Campaigns Anymore

#OSR #TTRPG #DnD #oldschool
A while ago I changed my games from epic high fantasy scenarios to smaller-scale pulpy adventures and the change in enjoyment has been noticeable. I wanted to talk about that this week.

[@workingstiffdiogenes2195]

I once ran an adventure where the heroes (all beginners) had been sent to a neighboring town to get barrels of hard cider for a festival. Goblins ambushed them and stole the cider. The time limit was the festival was two days away. The stakes were, they'd let everyone down if there wasn't cider at the festival. They staged guerrilla warfare on a goblin lair for two days to get those barrels back. It was epic. No demon lord arising from his ancient slumber to destroy all life, no blue sky beams.

[@AAllen-br8it]

Lol something similar here except it was a tribe of Orcs In a marsh where a particular fruit grew that made a banging wine. A prince who was traveling with his guild that worshipped basically our campaign world's equivalent to Dionysis was the one who hired the group to go get those fruit. The stakes were basically the same, he'd just be disappointed that he and his guild wouldn't be able to present this wine. A lot of Orcs lost their lives over this.

[@JeromeSteegmans]

That's brilliant! I love it

[@smmclaug75]

That reminds me of a DCC module called Came the Monsters of Midwinter. Great one.

[@stevenisonline]

That sounds amazing!

[@ryanmichael1298]

Smokey and the Bandit...

[@GrognardPiper]

I run Original D&D with the Greyhawk rules. Most of my villain bosses are evil clerics and evil magic users, just like old pulpy sword and sorcery stories.

[@TheBasicExpert]

Love it. I use that trope a lot more now too. I like it.

[@andrewlustfield6079]

@@TheBasicExpert I would argue, if you're wanting to put the work into it, you can have both styles of games. You have to orchestrate your plot in such a way that no matter where your players turn, they are interacting with your epic plot in some way. It's what I'm currently doing in my own game, and the players are a looonggggg way off from meeting the big bad--they are seeing just the edges of what is going on---which is a race by four different evil factions to bring a ultra powerful lich back from oblivion. So far at third level, they have brushed against the edges of two of those factions, and that's right where I want them. I ask at the end of each game session what plot hooks out there they want to follow up on, and that tells me what I need to plan next. It offers the sandbox style of AD&D, which is what we all grew up with, and allows continuity of different story threads. For those familiar with S4, Lost caverns of Tsojcanth, it's sort of the way I think when crafting my campaigns.

[@liwojenkins]

@@andrewlustfield6079 I do the same. The game only gets as epic as the players want it to be. It's a well established campaign world and you can grind to level 20 just doing mid level quests easily enough.

[@andrewlustfield6079]

@@liwojenkins Excellent--though I usually have characters retire at 9th-12th levels---the characters become pretty unstoppable at that point, and it doesn't make sense for them to be going off on adventures. The powers that be would take notice of them, and and create posts for them, whether it's occupying a border fortress, or creating a mage's school, or the temple puts the construction of a new shrine or temple under the supervision of a priest, or the thieves guild has an operation it wants the PC to take control of. For people who want to have an epic narrative in their D&D game must create a plot that is highly flexible and reactive to the players and their actions. If it's too detailed, the players will screw it up. So expect to go back to the drawing board---don't think in zero sum terms--okay, the party really screwed my bad guys plans up here---what is the consequence and how will they react to this new development. Maybe they hire assassins. Maybe they find a way to rob the PCs and take back the loot the party got from them. They might ambush trusted henchmen of NPCs and take them captive to hold for ransom. They might summon a demon to take revenge. This provides ready made, detailed lands that the players helped come up with which can be launch pads for future groups of low level adventurers. My players like seeing how their older characters have left deep foot prints in the game world, showing how their past actions truly matter.

[@reactionaryprinciplegaming]

You hit the nail on the head here, Jon. More personable stories are the way to go. Especially when you start a campaign. Later on, when you have played with those characters for a while, you can do the big epic, and it will feel earned. I wish more movies and video games would understand that as well. Enough with the "saving the world" stories. Can we just have something like 'taken' but in a fantasy setting?

[@TheBasicExpert]

Agreed. Building up from dealing with local bandits to saving a region from a lich and his army feels earned for the players.

[@PerfectTangent]

That's why the original Conan the Barbarian is so good. It's just Conan's own personal motivation and to hell with Crom, because he never listens anyway.

[@reactionaryprinciplegaming]

@@PerfectTangent Yes, and something they missed with the subsequent Conan films.

[@juddgoswick2024]

Taken in D&D: "I don't have gold, I don't have magic. What I do have is a load of XPs. XPs that make me a nightmare for an NPC like you."

[@aquamarinerose5405]

I described this in my own comment, but I'll repeat it in this thread... In a campaign in a different system, the DM started us off with a more local form of the 'world-shattering event'. The town we started in got completely flooded, and the party had to try to rescue a small child from getting swept up in the water and drowned. We all knew we'd come back to that eventually, and even basically all immediately knew who/what the cause was... But that wasn't for us to start handling when we literally just started exploring. We started off with smaller odd jobs, then moved onto conspiracies, and only when we were starting to really hit our stride were we fighting Legendaries and handling the possibility of the end of the world as we know it.

[@jamesg9840]

I like that smaller is better. The thing that the GM needs to show is that the deeds the players do resounds with the NPCs. Maybe the next time they go to the tavern in the village the drinks are on the house. Or a shopkeeper gives them a discount for saving the town. Sometimes you don’t need to save the world, just your portion of it.

[@cinderguard3156]

I said this allredy in another comment but this is why I like running "save MY world" where the rest of the world is completely fine all things considered but the small part we care about is in danger like our hometown or at the largest our kingdom, but regardless whether the heros win or lose the rest of the world will be fine. It makes the stakes more believable as I can end that place if the heros tpk and just move the campaign somewhere else meaning I don't have to save the players if the mess up.

[@AAllen-br8it]

I think world ending threats work best if you and your group have already been invested in a campaign world for a long time. If everyone put work into defining this world and leaving their mark on it, it gives more incentive to have a vested interest in actually defending it from a doomsday threat.

[@SobiTheRobot]

So like...save the world ending threats for the finale?

[@PerfectTangent]

3.5e had a great tool in the DMG that was completely stated out classes for types of "commoners". I liked to make the players start the game with a "free" level in one of those and then let the player kind of figure out what they wanted to be when they actually got to their real level one. I felt that it encouraged a more personal game world because their character's backstory, or at least part of it, was immediately part of the game.

[@TheBasicExpert]

Sounds very funnel-like from DCC too. That's neat.

[@hakdov6496]

I now want to run a cleric based on Alex Jones. Paranoid rants about demons and lizard people, tearing off my shirt and charging around destroying everything.

[@chthonicmusings188]

Alchemists are dumping chemicals into the river and turning the bullywugs gay.

[@keithparker1346]

They're turning the Orcs gay!

[@ARKavli]

I prefer local adventures. I tend towards historical, low fantasy, or hard sci-fi, and those genre's don't always lend themselves well to world-shaking events. Small adventures make things more personal, IMO.

[@cinderguard3156]

I have a tendency towards what some people call "save my world" storys, these are the kind where the world as a whole isn't in danger but the place the heros cares about is like a hometown or the whole kingdom at the largest. The rest of the world is just fine its just the small section we live in about is in danger.

[@danielramsey6141]

@@cinderguard3156 Exactly! Make any Game Personal towards your characters and their Story Arcs, you will Succeed in making A campaign work for the DM and their players.

[@markd.9042]

Based.

[@claudiolentini5067]

@@cinderguard3156 Local danger campaign are great, and they can even go to high level, if the bad guys are strong enough

[@PerfectTangent]

I found more often than not, at least with the majority of people I played with, that the more I had prepared a narrative story for my campaigns, the more the players would get sidetracked. This is when I was in my early 20s. By the time I was in my late 30s I was running games that had the illusion of some important overarching narrative, but really my players were doing all the work and the campaigns were better as a result. Player engagement is what keeps people at the table, and if no body is buying what you're selling then there's no group. At the end of the day, players tend to engage more with stories that their characters can impact in a more...local, or personal way and those grand, world-spanning doomsdays just weren't very engaging. It could also have something to do with the fact I wasn't raised to think the world was ending or that my neighbors were some flavor of "evil" and had to be stopped. Who's to say, but I don't think it's really a generational problem so much as a problem as lack of exposure and perspective on the part of "modern players" playing a game made for a "modern audience".

[@elliotvernon7971]

Great video - Leiber’s Ill met in Lankhmar is one of the most suggestive for RPGs stories in existence - I have adapted it to a single session many times and it has always been liked every-time. Other great Leiber stories that can be adapted to an adventure are the trap laden tower story ‘The Jewel’s in the Forest’, the mountain treasure quest Stardock and the ‘single use magic item that goes wrong’ idea in The Lords of Quarmall -those three are almost textbook examples of how to write a pulp adventure for D&D.

[@TheBasicExpert]

Yeah reading Ill Met you immediately get ideas to steal from for your own games. It's great.

[@edwardromero3580]

I feel you, brother! I’ve been running a “world ending” campaign for about three years. It was supposed to be twelve sessions, one per month. But it’s been really difficult to get all six adult players to show up at the same time. So I started a second “campaign” with the same players, but new characters. In the first session, they were stranded on an island, fought pirates, took over their ship, and now we are free to play with whoever shows up on game day. Every session is a single adventure. This also opened up the space for one-shots, trying new systems. As for the main campaign, I still have the final boss battle to run. Maybe someday.

[@fractal_gate]

I JUST finished tower of the elephant and I couldn't agree more! What a masterpiece of a story and I want my adventures to be like that!

[@quiteunpleasant6473]

Hey mate, great points there. I had the same realization a few years back and started shifting more towards pulp games myself. Just wanted to add one thing. I don't think it was the LOTR movies that started that shift to more epic-adventure-based D&D (though they certainly influenced it), but actually the release of Dragonlance years before that. It was a setting very much focused on large epic campaigns and world-changing events (especially in the novels), and usually regarded as the tipping point when D&D started to shift more in that direction. By the way, not saying the shift was good or bad, just something that happened.

[@TheYuanti]

Pitch for you to check out ACKS (adventurer conqueror king system). The author started his game with B/X and modified it over a decade to make his game. It came out in 2012 and has the best support for sandbox play in the market. With ACKS II coming out, he has expanded the rules and DM support for this even more. It’s a game that truly pushes for “small stories led by players” in the true pulp fashion. He solved the HP complaints by introducing mortal wounds as well. It does mass battles, handles trades between nations and cities, strongholds, thieves guilds, etc.

[@MarkHyde]

Connected world events really started as local dungeon delves and local village wilderness adventures connected up loosely - the 'world shattering' stuff came later when the need to sell products as engaging IPs became the priority. The need for these simpler adventures is great. Local stories that impact small corners of kingdoms or regions. But it's lost in some modern TTRPGs rulesets. Basic D&D has this with its 'Known World/Mystara setting I feel. Villages needing assistance, caves needing exploring and clearing, kidnapped townfolk being rescued. Bandits being quashed. Those types of quests. LOTs of potential in those simple tales. Love your examples too.

[@Joshuazx]

I think this was a very affirming, insightful video. Thanks.

[@TheSoliloquyMan]

I feel the pulp genre makes it more personal and solves a big problem among players as a whole. They want to be a "hero" or "villain" and those ideas always clash. Making it personal makes it morally ambiguous and puts them all on a side of varying degrees of right and wrong.

[@mykediemart]

The world needs saving, hey lets send these 5th level nobodies... The epic save the world really breaks down if you play in a setting that includes super NPCs. Um Tiamat is coming into this world, crap its Drizt's day off.

[@blacklodgegames]

It seems almost random which NPCs the player latch on to as favorites. I've never been able to establish a pattern in advance who they'll want to engage with more than others. I really don't like world shattering events either unless the game world is fully centered on it (Exalted comes to mind), because I find the stakes are actually really low. No one cares about "the world is going to explode" because it doesn't have anything at stake for the actual people playing the games.

[@SusCalvin]

WFRP had a lot of adventures like that. There's 50 orcs terrorizing a village and you mount a small partisan war against them along with any villagers you can train up. There's eight cultists who have occupied a tavern and pose as the staff and guests. And then there was Enemy Within where years of a campaign can lead up to the fight for the imperial throne.

[@LordSephleon]

I have been trying to veer away from "World Shattering Event" (WSE) campaigns since sometime around 2010, when it finally occurred to me how difficult it is for my longtime group to invest in them, especially if I use a "sandbox" style in terms of how the players can choose to approach things. They prefer short-term direction and have difficulty keeping track of information (even when I used to write up full session synopses for them, since only a couple of them would actually bother reading them, usually cramming right before the next session), yet they still expect the full-on WSE campaign that I've always run since I started DMing in '96 - especially involving a very specific group of BBEGs that they never got to defeat in past campaign attempts. It wasn't the main reason I burned out 3 years ago with DMing, but it was definitely one of them. Like you, I definitely had the Tolkien influence with how I wrote my campaigns, and it became a personal specialty in my DMing (along with horror-themed games, including Ravenloft, Call of Cthulhu, and World of Darkness). I know that part of the problem is the group I run these games for: my longtime group and I have been together for 25+ years, so we know each other too well, and unfortunately, while I had been on a journey to perfect my DMing these past decades, they sort of stagnated after 3E modified our playstyles (from pure Theatre of the Mind with battlemaps only for large-scale or overly-complex battles to always feeling like a battlemap for a simple bandit or goblin encounter was needed, among other differences). I've always been somewhat self-aware, so I realized how I - how WE - changed from 3E and tried to bring us back, but they only seemed to want to "move forward, not backward." The burnout simply cemented what I've been fearing for a decade: it's time to move on, hopefully find a fresh new group to run games for, and focus on smaller-scaled adventures instead of full campaigns UNLESS I have a good group that proves to be worthy of the WSE. However, that will have to wait until I can get a better work schedule....

[@brendantuthill6491]

I think you were spot on with suggesting a possible transition. The best games that I've been in and run as GM are games that start small, with stories centered on characters' backstories and connections, and switching over to larger scale missions when the players are suddenly capable of wrestling giants and banishing demons. The real challenge is in crafting meaningful small scale events, because when the stakes are high, the twists and turns matter less. At the small scale, it can feel much more pressuring to make sure defending this village feels important and meaningful to the characters.

[@Crazael]

Some of my favorite TTRPG campaigns I've been in have been small scale stuff. Stuff where the party isn't trying to save the world and is just trying to do their job. Or, in one case, get a new hyperdrive so they could get off the planet they crashed on. Sure, that one we were involved in some world shattering stuff, but that was all pretty incidental to our actual goals.

[@Sichuanbeef]

I used to run a D&D 3.5 game years ago which was more narrative. Fast forward to very recently. I picked up a copy of Mork Borg. These simplified rules, along with shorter more pulpy objectives just feel so much more enjoyable to run for me. I got a player that had been playing 5E to try it out after there level 17 character died, and they are enjoying it more as well, despite dying in their first session. I plan on running Basic Fantasy, White Box, DCC, and or Old School Essentials for them in the future. It will be similar pulpy story, though maybe not as doom and grim as Mork Borg.

[@TheBasicExpert]

BFRPG, OSE ,and Whitebox get big thumbs up from me.

[@XombieMitch]

Fuuny you mentioned that, the first adventure i ran in Shadowdark was Tower of the Elephant.

[@vincesnetterton2515]

Wise comments.

[@tonyb9290]

Very articulate, you got me to think a bit harder about what and how I’m doing things ttrpg wise, well done. My current group they’ve played a few campaigns now that are just fallout from their first two campaigns (second one stacked off the first one) that did go into some massively shattering (not quite world shattering, regional certainly, messed up a whole continent) and the rest of the campaigns have just been fallout from that so far with one exception. Usually focused on the local area or what’s going on with those characters they play, typhus they end up finding nobles they hate and a noble or two they like and serve that noble. Last campaign they founded villages, now I’ve a place where you might start from and start play with an owlbear companion/mount because you came from one of their villages, the games getting more and more of a legacy status and were all living it at our table. Wish more GM’s would take this kind of approach

[@VosperCDN]

Just saw this pop up on my home feed. Interesting, as I have recently'ish begun running a d20 campaign, and had the idea to keep things local instead of an overarching kind of plot setup. Plenty of mileage from "monster/villain" of the week ideas instead of searching out the next LoTR epic.

[@Gunthrek]

I've found myself moving in this direction in all my forms of entertainment. For example, I loved the first two seasons of the Mandalorian because the focus of the story was on Mando and his evolving relationship with Grogu. Season three felt like it shifted focus away from my favorite character and moved it to the Mandalorians in general, which really took away the charm of the show for me. Star Wars: The Old Republic had great individual class storylines for each of their first chapters, but after that I really lost interest because the scale just got so big it stopped being about my character's personal goals and more about "galactic scale" consequences. On the flip side, the Belgariad series of books was an epic adventure with truly world shattering stakes, but I never had the same problem with it because the focus of the story was always wholly focused on the main character: Garion. The story was always about him, and the world he lived in was simply the stage for telling the story. The big events were there to show us how truly special Garion was in the grand scheme of things, rather than the events themselves being the whole show. So I think the problem with big adventures isn't that they're big; it's that we tend to forget where the focus of the story is supposed to be. Stories can be "earth shattering" and still be impactful, but it's extremely difficult and likely requires a master storyteller and excellent players to make it work, which is probably why Critical Role does so well with the kind of epic stories they tell. It's much easer for the rest of us to keep things personal for the players in smaller stories where the stakes don't overshadow the characters themselves.

[@uriahedwards]

Having your main bad guy be an Alex Jones “lizard people are replacing people” type is actually incredible.

[@Rich_H_1972]

The best D&D game I ever ran was when I was about 14. Dropped the PCs on the Isle of Dread, shipwrecked, and just had them explore and do there own thing. Ended up with dinosaur armour and leading the natives there. Think they were about 13th level by the end. Was a great game and pretty much player driven without me even realising.

[@hawaiinshirtguy]

One of my epiphanies was that you cannot expect players to behave like paragons of virtue because... they aren't irl. Similarly the realisation that morality in conflicts is factional. You'll do much better asking players to be "Secret Agents with a mission" or something than expecting them to be pure altruists. The problem for me with "save the world" campaigns is that they uhh... don't usually expect you to save the world... they REQUIRE it. That means that the players will by default know that they're probably being subject to plot armour etc.

[@juddgoswick2024]

I have played with a number of GMs whose games ended, quite fairly, with the big bad situation destroying the land, etc. Anticlimactic, but amusing stories in retrospect. In one I was not a PC in, the group was in the middle of a sideplot attacking some bad guy they got obsessed with. In the middle of the fight, there was a beam of light in the sky far away, a loud crack, and the world began to crumble apart and that was that.

[@claudiolentini5067]

@@juddgoswick2024 Yep, i feel that , for a GM, having the World Shattering Event coming true and modifying the land drastically is fair game. You just need to have the "courage" to destroy your creation, something that is not easy for Worldbuilder GMs. Also, you can set the next campaign in the aftermath of the event, and have the new PCs and NPCs live the consequences of it.

[@johnnygreenface4195]

Cool video! I am currently in a book club for these sorts of stories. Loads of fun and tons to steal. I run a game in Nehwon

[@Renkaru]

In my own setting, I have big events and the actual big bads always as the backdrop, or it's the aftermath of the events. The players are never the super heroes that newer editions of DnD want you to be when I run a game in any edition. If there's any "story" at all in my campaigns, its usually small and more personal/realistic hooks for the players or NPC. But usually I reserve these kinda campaigns for newer and younger players, I like it to have a nice middle ground between the more narrative and OSR style of game.

[@doccoke8782]

I can understand. I’ve been trying to do a big dnd world stuff with a lot of first campaign with failure but it’s helped me learn enough to where my current game is small where the players are trying to help a young lord retake a old kingdom that belonged to an ancestor that’s in the hands of a mummy lord right now. And that’s about it.

[@TheBasicExpert]

That sounds like a lot of fun though.

[@TheEricthefruitbat]

The secret is immediacy. The ultimate big baddie has no relationship with the pcs. The bully in the town they live in has more immediate relevance to the pcs. The small adventures provide more immediate satisfaction. I guess it is like "living in the moment", not worrying about what lies down the road.

[@tylerh2548]

In Pulp, the would-be Saurons are killed early and constantly crop up in droves, and the heroes are too preoccupied with in-the-moment problems to affect the cosmos. Stasis through chaos, rather than earth-shattering order.

[@Squirrel-Hermit]

Yup..pulp/low to mid fantasy is the way...

[@PerfectTangent]

Everything is easier to balance and continue suspension of disbelief. I think it's actually more rewarding, as well. Where do you go with a character you've just saved the world with?

[@donrosavelli8869]

Thanks. Great vid. I learned something new. Cheers

[@0ptikGhost]

I like to say that DMs provide the setting while players provide the plot. DMs react to player-driven plot by evolving the setting which encourages the players to evolve the plot.

[@stevenisonline]

I had a really similar experience with the dreamed up campaign and world, and my players weren't really interested in the villain and arc I had dreamt up. It's tough, I'm trying to salvage the campaign so we can have a satisfying conclusion and then I can start a real player-driven campaign!!! Great video! I gotta say it got me really excited for my game again, and reminded me that I think I have the right idea. :)

[@andrewspears8891]

The longest running game I ever ran had 0 world shattering events, mostly stayed in a sinhle local village, aside from one trip across the sea to have two of the characters married in one of their clan's home and do a little be of vengeance story that was basically all created from the other character's backstory. I also threw an impossible to defeat hydra at them much earlier in the game that made an abandoned fort into its lair. Never did really go along the story I had planned out, it largely just sat there as a prompt that they never followed through with.

[@epimetrius7348]

I think Ill Met in Lankhmar is a perfect example. We follow two thieves thieving, name them even, and then from the shadows, two more thieves beat them and take the spotlight. In Phoenix on the Sword there is this sense that Epemetrius, and by extension Mitra, care little for this Cimmerian, but instead help him because they care deeply for Aquilonia.

[@crapphone7744]

It's the Dungeon World premise, "You have to play to find out".

[@danielcrafter9349]

In LARP we call it "FOIP" Find Out In Play I like the way Dungeon World encourages GMs to ask "what do you do?" - making the players think about what comes next

[@pjcarrera2251]

Just got your aztec classes and they rock, keep up the good work!

[@TheBasicExpert]

Awesome! I'm glad you like them. That was some proto ideas for the larger project I'm working on.

[@heyfell4301]

The way I do it is: I start as a pulpy small-scale scenario, planning to run it like that, until something happens, usually a mix between me having a bunch of grandiose ideas and my players suggesting gigantic plot connections for themselves and then booom. Once again it's time for another massive high-fantasy game. I start suggesting a bunch of epic events and stuff like that, the table gets excited by that and in the matter of days the "small-scale pulp adventure" becomes just a prologue to what essentially boils down to "save the world". They like it that way, but it gets kinda weird to look at my games in hindsight from behind the DM Screen and see how they all suffered from the same fate. My current Pathfinder campaign started exactly like that, and I sure hope my Vampire the Masquerade game don't suffer from the same fate.🤣

[@cyntogia]

Man I wish movies would take this route too.

[@TheIoPC]

Good points. Making the stories personal to the PCs is a good way to keep that Pulp feel, even in the larger scale campaign. We discussed something like this on my channel's Around the Hearth series last year. The chats are titled "Epic Stories Without Epic Levels", and "Normal Characters In A Fantasy World". 👍 ~ Adam

[@BobIrving2]

Thanks for highlighting pulp! It's so true, and I think that OSR is much more in line with OSP (Old School Pulp). And I too love love love Tolkien.

[@scrapperlock9437]

In D&D, we usually just rand modules... but in Champions, once I took over as perma-GM, I got into the universe-shaking events -- I adapted the Great Darkness Saga (from LSH), the Surtur Saga (from Thor, where he's trying to end the universe) and the Crisis on Infinite Earths. I used to run one every summer... probably I was affected by the stupid DC/Marvel comics tradition of having a giant summer mega-event crossover every freaking year, even in the 1990s (and they're still doing it!). This was a bad pattern to slip into, but I returned to it when I ran my last (and only) 5e game. I wish I had NOT done that now, and I won't do it again. It's so much easier and more satisfying to run "local" or "street level" campaigns.

[@Skye_Writer]

As an OG AD&D DM this is exactly the kind of games we used to play and that my players had so much fun with. I had a map of my continent (basically plagiarized from the Hyborian Age Conan map) and when starting with a new group of characters, I would pick a land, draw a general map of that, then create a city/town/village that I would draw a map of and I would randomly start players in different sections of towns. The first game was always exploring the town and usually there was only one shop where they could get their gear/rations. I had sat down with each of my players to help them decide on who their character was, where they came from, why they were out adventuring, and how much money they had to start with, and the first actual was game: "Day One of Your Life as an Adventurer. You've made it to .... (roll for a name) Willy-Nilly on the Wash. Player X is on this street, Player Y is on this street, and Player Z is on this street. What do you do next?" Well, the Thief had to try his luck picking pockets, usually, because he needed money. The fighter needed to head to the equipment store to get a better weapon. The ranger wanted to get somewhere to have a hot meal, and so on and so on. The first game often turned into the players just wanting to explore this town that was going to be their home base, getting to know the NPCs who run their favorite shops and the liveliest tavern (the tavern was basically the employment office, after all, where the characters picked up jobs) and learning which town officials they needed to get in good with and which ones they needed to avoid. I *tried* to get them off into an adventure right away, giving them the opportunities for work as soon as possible (The town crier is calling out for any and all adventurers who can take on a hive of Giant Ants razing the town's farmlands...it's good money, with half the pay up front so you can upgrade your equipment) but they far preferred seeing what this world was like that I had built for them and who I peopled it with, and whether or not they could stump me but taking a surprising turn. (I'm going to pop into this dress shop/bakery/cobbler here for a minute," or "Is there a toy shop nearby? [I always left unlabeled buildings on the town map for things like this, so that they helped to build their own environment] I'm heading there so I can buy a gift for my nephew/niece/godchild" "What godchild?" "My father's brother's cousin's nephew's former roommate...we're VERY close.") Once the characters got to be more powerful, had more money, better spells, better magic items, the campaigns started to be more epic, have bigger stakes, be more challenging. It forced the characters to think creatively. It was no world-changing event, but it changed *their* world and gave them lots of loot. They LOVED that campaign. They went back to their base town and donated to the appropriate churches, guilds, armorers, and weaponsmiths, offered to build the Tavern Keeper a new bigger better inn and tavern so long as they could add a 3rd story to the building to have permanent lodgings for themselves up there, ad generally became folk heroes of the town, gathering fans and hangers-on and admirers who added interest (sometimes trouble) to their character lives. The thing was, the game was always meant to be ROLE PLAY. Hack and slash campaigns, and campaigns of endless journeying to a far away land with random monster encounters along the way can get old very quickly. I discovered early that my players wanted a home base, or if on a long journey they wanted lots of towns to explore. One of the most fun we ever designed was basically making a Gotham City in D&D style, right down to having the street gangs from the "No Man's Land" comic book event, the Demonz and the Lo-Boys. The Demonz were vampires, the Lo-Boys were werewolves. The Thieves' Guild was run by Selina Kyle (Catwoman), who had a hoarde of intelligent monsters who looked like average cats (I forget what the Monster Manual called them) who basically acted as spies for her. I found D&D ways to make all the classic Bat Villains into threats in the city. It took the players about 20 minutes of playing in this town to realize what I had designed, and as soon as they did, they broke out in laughter and cheers and fist pumps and then were really excited to explore the place and see if they could bump into the town's Lord, Bruce "der Fleidermaus" Wayne, a knight who was known to wear black armor and so was dubbed the Dark Knight. (Clark Kent dropped by for a party; naturally he was a Paladin nicknamed the Man of Steel, and as a high-level Paladin he had the appropriate spells to give him Superman-like abilities. Hal Jordan, Jon J'onnz, and others all dropped by too, to greet the visiting Princess Diana...) Just, give your players fun things to do and ways to express/explore their characters. My players were just as happy taking on local bandit-kings and goblin camps, and exploring strange abandoned towers and dungeons, and then getting back "home" to the town they adopted so they didn't have to sleep on damp ground with one eye open all night.

[@EmperorSmith]

There's a great RPG system, Apocalypse World, used for games like Dungeon World, that taught me a lot about "how to be a good GM". I would encourage anyone interested in being a better GM to read a rule book or two for these games, because they do a fantastic job of codifying and gamefying the typical decision making that a GM has to do. Players make a move, and then the GM makes 'a move' - the 'move' could be something directly in front of the players, like a goblin swinging it's club to attack someone, or it could be something distant from the players - (eg; the noise the players are making has alerted some guards who are now on their way to investigate). It's just a really simple and effective way of organising your GM notes to allow a game to basically run itself - very little imagination or improvisation required, you can use logic - cause and effect - to make your decisions. I have had the most fun memorable play sessions using this system - all entirely driven by player desire - and all of them done with absolutely zero prep - the classic "party finds themselves in an inn" start.

[@danielcrafter9349]

Dungeon World is great for this Also, I think it fits nicely with the vid; one "rule" for the GM is "Be a fan of the players" - Dungeon World explicitly states the GMs focus should be the players, their characters and decisions, and should champion them in all their ways The way Fronts work in Dungeon World is also excellent for this - the GM in instructed to form the Fronts as antagonists for the players - not to make some Giant Demon Sea God (*cough *Cthulhu *cough) or World Shattering Event that's incidental to the players

[@juddgoswick2024]

Reading Jack Vance really changed how I approached sci-fi and fantasy - and how they often get mixed. He is highly recommended!

[@mattjackson]

White Box (through not FMAG, I have two copies of Finch and Breig’s 1st edition) was the first clone I played too. Since then, it has always held a special place in my heart.

[@Astartes36]

I have switched over to a much more character driven style, but I have noticed that this has led to sessions where nothing much happens. There are sessions where the characters are basically doing day to to day things, often splitting up in town and running errands. This may and often does lead to them encountering newer NPCs and maybe hearing about some new opportunities or problems here and there, but again these "plots" are NOT things they must do. I am not sure if I am doing something wrong with this though? Sessions that feel like they go nowhere sometimes feel like a waste to me. How do you all deal with this? Do you have this happen to you as well?

[@thegrandwombat8797]

As long as the players have a good time, you're doing great. If they don't enjoy it you may want to intervene, though in my experience if players are making a lot of decisions about what to do, it's a good sign they're enjoying it, even if on paper it's not as exciting. My party still occasionally talks about the time they just randomly joined a pie eating contest which had nothing to do with the plot, for example.

[@playdd1793]

In 5e, characters are supposed to level up to hometown adventures to more regional explorations to battles for the realm. Conan has a similar rise in power. Sly Flourish and other 5e aficionados also advocate for designing in a spiral outward rather than starting with a grand design.

[@onealflynn2414]

I like episodic sessions. Plus if you want a villain to pop back in later you can. Your right it doesn’t have to be the grand quest to save the universe

[@wychfate495]

Thank you for the share of your experience with your campaigns and what you feel is a better fit for your games. I personally think that no matter what type of campaign one runs, it is important to develop "in-game player character interest." A GM/DM's setting and character backgrounds will not suffice. The Players have to experience the world/setting with their PCs. Personal interest must be established in order to continue a campaign/adventure that immerses everyone within the world and boost the overall fun of each session. (As you described in your own experiences.) I don't think a GM/DM is limited to running one style or another, because it's not the fact that the game is epic or pulp, for instance, that makes a game/campaign. It is getting personally involved within the setting itself. Side note: I loved your inference about 1st level characters likely being used as fodder. I also agree with the sentiment.

[@BlackDouglas1000]

Great points. You may like Barbarians of Lemuria. It is made for pulp fantasy gaming. My gaming life is has been non-existent since I work nights but that will soon change and I hope to run BoL, AD&D and some other rules to see what my friends like best.

[@bizikimiz6003]

I tried to adapt from less known adventure books my modules, and what I found is that the more simplistic and shitty the book was the better I could adapt them. We had a lot of fun in high magic settings with stories coming from crappy westerns.

[@MOTARACTUAL]

I'm with you. We played several world altering games and got tired of them.

[@Blargaha]

Yeah, I mean, it's the tiers of play. Early adventures *have* to be small and local, otherwise later ones won't feel as satisfying Speaking of, I'm pitching Dark Sun to my group for the summer, and I'm excited, it's the most pulp you can come.

[@Nekron999]

I would live to hear more about your lizard people campaign. I ran Rise of the Rune Lord's and inserted a "They Live" chapter in Magnimar after the FoxGlove murders, it was on the spot and fun and a theme I would love to expound upon

[@flibbernodgets7018]

16:28 that really clicked for me, thank you. I think that's a good way to look at it. I'm consciously trying not to lean towards the "my character has done all these amazing feats by level 1" attitude but I still get bent out of shape when my character that I think is really cool is shown by dice and other circumstance not to be. That tends not to be as much of an issue at higher levels, but I need to keep this advice in mind for the lower levels.

[@webwarrior1.038]

Tower of the Elephant is such an amazing intro to Conan. It's also such a great setting for an adventure and a good mood-setter for a sandbox, OSR-esque, game!

[@bengrunzel5393]

I'm itching to run a real sandbox-style game. There's so much assumptions in the D&D community that a campaign is the DM's story, or that long campaigns need to be epic, that its easy for games to turn into world-saving events over time. I really want a more player-driven game like you're talking about.

[@mjnior]

I have my own tweak of Vampire the masquerade 1st edition i have ran off and on since 90s. I made a city filled with characters and factions. Players constantly stir the pot, gaining and losing influence over parts of the city. There is an over achering evil. But players just sense it on outskirts. It is a sandbox of sandboxes.

[@bigeye6606]

Sounds to me like you found the beauty of playing the game as a GM with the premise of "Play to find out what happens".

[@markd.9042]

I really like those kinds of pulpy, episodic, raw, rugged, small-scale adventures, where the party just happens to show up in a situation and they have to deal with it because if they don't they die, and like the thing you mentioned about the players being on the periphery of world-changing events, with the consequences of their actions having subtle but far-reaching impacts, I think like you said you know, the players may have the opportunity occasionally to participate directly in world-shattering events. From my experience people play DnD to immerse themselves in fantasy worlds through the filter of a character and see how they'd react to a variety of situations. That's why I play DnD. The worst way to play DnD is like an Elder Scrolls game where you are the focus of the game and it's all about being like a power fantasy for the players to just be the guy (or what have you, that's very immersion breaking and it starts to feel contrived. I think players sometimes just want to be a part of the world and go through challenges and form a character. I also think these pulp adventures can be somewhat democratized. At the end of every session, the players hit the DM with plot hooks and scenarios that they like and they all vote on what to play next and the DM tries their best to set it up. It starts to get players thinking about who they want to be and what they want to face. Also pulp has a more durable nature to it than like a long, serial kind of campaign because if you aren't having fun in a serial campaign you either scrap the campaign and the DM can lose their investment or get discouraged, and now all that time they spent is wasted and they have to readjust the story or scrap it entirely, plus like you said players can go off and derail everything the DM worked for. On the players' end, if you're not having fun depending on how much of an asshole your DM is you either have to keep slogging through a boring story or you just restart, possibly from level one. With a pulpy, episodic style if any party doesn't have fun, well there's always the next adventure.

[@gopro_audio]

good stuff, thank you

[@Xhelah207]

Amazing video. With my DM we just make characters and each one has a series of random personal objectives to complete. It is truly very organic when the party doesnt have an imposed global objective (specially if its world shattering proportions) because almost nothing feels secondary, any oddjob is to either improve relationships, gain money or get new contacts, hell even helping the npcs you like feels more rewarding. It also makes so much room to make the characters more characterized.

[@jan0195]

Once I read the appendix N I never looked back.

[@briansmaller7443]

So agree. I have also returned to episodic games. They jump around all over the place just like picking up a Conan story book and reading a REH short story.

[@turner42]

Great take. It took me a while to realize this too. Smaller stakes can also often be more relateable for the players. It also pushes them to try new things and to build upon the world rather than constantly trying to save it. Also, adventures where you have to save the world in my opinion leads to characters not dying because failure means they lose.

[@DouglasF23]

It even applies to Superhero games. You make the stakes the population of a high school, showing that if the players fail, a thousand teenagers die....that actually are far more interested and determined than "save the world"

[@VinceTenia]

Yea i've almost exclusivley run player driven sandbox adventures for my players, tho they are often based off a module for a starting point they point me in the direction of the narative. I've had grand plot ideas for games too but what i've noticed from other DMs talking about how the players are always ignoring their grand overarching plot threads is, most players just wanna kill shit and get loot and if you put a wiley npc infront of them that takes their stuff and thumbs their nose before running away the players will HATE that giy and RELISH killing him when they catch him. Most players are in it foe the moment to moment emotions and will forgive or ignore plot contrivences if they're still having fun. Very few players are actually doqn for the game of throbes style politicing and secret pod people cults taking over the world. Some are but you have to know when you have a group who will engage with a campaign of such subtlety or youre in for a bad time as DM.

[@MrMrjaymz]

Okay I just love that you used Alex Jones was the inspiration for a villain in your campaign. That's very funny and fitting.

[@VengerSatanis]

Inspirational video, hoss!

[@TheBasicExpert]

Thanks venger!

[@mikeb.1705]

Exactly! Small-scale adventures that are more personal / personable are what I prefer as well. That being said, you can always escalate those small adventures into something more grand / give them a larger scope depending on the details that arise from that adventure and the interest of the players. Sure, they stole a grand gemstone from an altar and sold it for big bucks. But will the cultists seek to recover the gem? Will the look for revenge on the PCs? Will there be other people who come after the PCs thinking they still have the gem, or to try and steal their gold from them? So many possibilities that can arise from just a few small-scale adventures!

[@AndrewGarofalo]

My OSE group started with the big high fantasy campaign and it's puttering out partly because my players aren't available to play more than a couple of hours every two weeks. To run a big campaign you need to play weekly for 3-4 hours each otherwise the game just crawls. So I devised a way to move my group into a mega dungeon, one of the popular ones that I purchased. I'm going to run that which will essentially be a string of one shots. All the problems you mentioned are true. And also DM burnout and simple boredom are real when you're trying to run a big campaign while playing only 4 hours per month. I find myself constantly preparing and re-preparing for things that never happen or will happen so far off I'm just doing the same work 2-3x.

[@davidmc8478]

The way I like to put it is “follow your player’s attention”. Focus on what things they pay attention to and choose as significant. But it’s actually really hard!!! Sometime they just follow the first thing you put in front of them and you are left thinking did i railroad them? Sometimes you throw out sone cool hooks and they just go meh. Which is possibly them telling you how to grab their attention. It seems funny to describe this as old school, the 1980s was the first heyday of D&D and that was all about epic high fantasy such as Dragonlance. The current “old style” pulp gaming seems to come from more modern narrative games.

[@ollep0lle]

I hope more people realize the beauty of pulp, nice video

[@Apexx27]

Well, that’s why you build the world ending event slowly. The world ending event doesn’t have to start the campaign. They can be a gradual build like their leveling is. So by the time the world and event is presented, they aren’t just that soldier that takes the arrow to the face anymore.

[@TheRusty]

Saving the World is basically the D&D equivalent of "winning the game." Which is bad, in a game explicitly designed to have no "win condition." Basically... You run this scenario for your players. This grans sweeping 1-20 epic of saving their reality from an interloping band of cannibal-gods or whatever. That sounds cool, and playing it is probably fun as hell! But... then what? What's left? Not just for those characters, but for the players and the campaign world? Everything else will look like small tacos... unless the next band of PCs also have to save the world from something, Which... well the problem there should be obvious, at that point you're just reading a Warcraft plotline.

[@Apexx27]

@@TheRusty I mean, I think you’re very wrong. It depends on the group. For sure, depends on the group. My players love, playing world ending campaign style. I’m sure they would love playing a goofy ass campaign where you just take out a local hooha ghostygoo but we prefer this style instead. For you to just blanket statement say that about the DnD and the groups that play it, is just wrong. I understand that not everybody is like you.

[@aquamarinerose5405]

I think there's a potential midpoint between low-fantasy pulp and world-shatteringly high stakes. Like... Admittedly not D&D at all, but I'll always remember my first session playing my first game in a system called Pokerole. The players were a young group of Explorers, hadn't even put together a team name yet... And the VERY FIRST thing that happened was that the town we started in got hit with a massive flood, and the entire party had to work together to keep a small caterpie child from getting swept up and drowned by the storm, involving a skill challenge where it was possible that one of US could get swept under if we failed. Yet, we didn't get any explicit introduction to the "BBEG", or even the idea that there WAS an overarching villain aside from some vague implications in the dreams of one of the party members (funnily enough, that player in particular was a problem child that got kicked out later). But we knew there was something significant going on, and we all knew it would turn into a world-shattering event eventually (I mean... it wasn't subtle that it was Kyogre's doing, but we only actually got the deets on how any why way later). At first, we just did regular Exploration Team things, going into dungeons, fighting wildlife, getting materials for a local carpenter so they could repair our home base. However, that single event at the start of the story was what brought us together, IMMEDIATELY got the entire team interested in what was going to happen next, and ensured that we knew we would probably be doing far greater things in the future. And a D&D 5e campaign with the same DM had something a bit similar going on, though a bit more explicit on BBEG stuff. A supposed demon lord of thieves stole some magical staff, and we all knew that was going to be a big part of the plot eventually... but currently we're mostly doing odd jobs for the local Queen since the town was in shambles and they needed more hands on deck (and we needed a skyship).

[@hjalmarthehelmetman]

Even in Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring the big bad was an orc captain, it does follow the system of starting small and building up, even if sauron and saruman are world shattering bad guys, they only face them in the last book.

[@yogapantsyogurtpants3365]

I started playing Blades in the Dark, and that is the game that unlocked the little to no planning GM style. I'm not sure I can go back to the overprepping style I was accustomed to

[@albertcapley6894]

I'm trying to get a 3.5 game going set in my adaptation of the classic Thief games(Dark Project and Metal Age) location: "The City". I love how it's huge, semi-modern, despite being in a largely medieval style setting, and it's only name is just The City makes it perfect for sandboxing, and there is a meta-plot from the games, but my players will never interact directly with it because that's literally what Garret the master Thief is up to, even the Keepers have a hard time keeping up with him, so even if my players try to interfere with the larger events right out the gate they will find a lot of dead ends and factions of The City getting in their way in turn. My only plans for the campaign at large is keeping the aesthetic consistent and evocative of the deco-punk/steam-punk vibe the original games had, past that if my players become thieves or part of the town guard, makes no difference to me really, The City has endless opurtunity regardless. This is a cool video, and it reminded me of my outlook going into the setting notes for my game, which is why I left such a long comment, sry bout that😅

[@sesimie]

I am going back to Hyborian Age and Dark Sun. Grimdark survival. Where torches mean something and magic is rare or forbidden. Low Fantasy!! All the Subclasses in the world can never replace Basic fear of the Dark.

[@Stuugie.]

I've definitely heard of lots of DM's having a disconnect in their play style and the expectation of a cinematic experience. Many, including myself, really stress out about not providing an experience that feels epic and impactful. I found something interesting recently. One of my players told me that he felt pressure to make an impactful and epic character. I was shocked, but it also makes sense that these expectations weighs heavy on players as well, not just the DM. For me and my group a pulp OSR game is the solution, and I wouldn't be surprised if it works better for a lot of groups

[@Goshin65]

Since I started with B/X in 1980, this was pretty much the standard then. The PCs are adventurers, soldiers-of-fortune, and are mostly out for loot and excitement. They may do some good stuff too, but almost as an afterthought. Saving the world stuff is for when you're very high level, which used to take several years of real-time play. You gotta pay your dues, and be Young Fafhrd or L1 Arya Stark before you get to be Aragorn-the-once-and-maybe king. Most of our games were more like Conan than Tolkien. Now, I will say mixing in a bit of a plot, some interesting recurring characters and such made the game a LOT better, but it got railroady after Dragonlance to a very annoying degree.

[@philhelm1318]

Somewhat related, I've always thought that the first Baldur's Gate was the best. While the son of Bhaal storyline loomed in the background, the game was so much more chill with lower level gameplay than Baldur's Gate 2.

[@hadeseye2297]

PCs make a difference at the local level. Which is realistic. And that's how it should be. This way players will always feel that they've achieved something.

[@owa1985]

With any luck, the campaign would turn out to have been based entirely off some small (at the time) remark some random cousin or friend of the group made on session 2. A skill I picked up from my old rpg circle was to simply let the party generate all the red herrings it wants to and then turn as many as you want or need into non-red piscine (or not) articles based on the ambient ribbing and joking around the table. There was never a need for the gms (we took turns) to come up with the majority of the drive behind our games. Heck, all we did was just make sure the memes didn't run away too fast and hard that even the systems bled into each other (too much).

[@charlottegoldman3580]

I'm currently running a combo. My players are new and all agreed that they need some direction but as they get more comfortable, I'm allowing he to do their own thing. The story I planned is still happening regardless and the next homebrew adventure I run will revolve around the consequences of the first campaign. So a true sandbox but also "fuck around and find out...eventually"

[@GrognardNightmares]

A world shattering event is ultimately a railroad. The characters can't explore a new city, when the moon is crashing into the planet. The players can't explore their character's wants and fears when a nuke is going to blow up the spaceship. Thus there is only the problem, only the railroad. When the players get freedom to explore and roleplay outside the end of the world is when all the real fun of the game will happen.

[@minnion2871]

Though that would be funny if the "Moon crashing into the planet" was less "Planet breaking KABOOM!" and more moving at a glacial pace, with the inhabitants of the doomed part of the world having plenty of time to pack their belongings and move before their home was crushed.... and by the time it's all over there is basically a dome shaped mountain formed of the half of the moon not embedded in the ground..... Possibly inhabited by moon people.....

[@tw7086]

OSR!

[@jayteepodcast]

It seems to me that you came to the revelation of the flaw of having the heroes journey in D&D. Playing other Games like VTM or Cyberpunk I seen that the players are not heroes until they do something heroic it's just all situations and how to handle those situations

[@Frederic_S]

I am still waiting for the commercial to end, but I feel how you feel. I am done with world shattering campaigns too 🤭

[@bassforhire555]

One of my most meorable characters, and in turn, campaigns, was my Hill Dwarf Wizard Necromancer in 5E. Campaign was hombrewed, and rhe DM had this whole thing loosly planned about us eventuall taking the place of sitting gods of his dragon pantheon. Hamli didnt give a good goddam about dragon gods or what they wanted. His inciting incident was his daughter going missing, and being too poor to hire a party of adventurers, he joined one instead. The rest of the party being do gooders, jumped on the chance to rescue a missing child, and the only character that had a wit to give about the dragon gods was a dragon born cleric who worshiped a bronze god of good will and rightious fury, so her god was all on board anyway

[@MikeWhiskyTango]

Ive seen in numerous magazines and interviews of the 70's and 80's that Gygax stated he did not like LOTR. In fact he said something along the lines that gandalf was nothing more than a low level wizard in dnd. I can understand why dnd was therefore more pulp than LOTR as a consequence.