So, how do you prepare a campaign? The question is that it depends on how you run a game, and there's no way to know that until you say. For that reason it is generally better to over prepare rather than underprepare. While some people I know can run a game with nothing more than a blank battlemap and the corerulebook, that requires a lot of skill and a very specific type of game.
Now, first you'll need to decide what kind of campaign you want to play. If you're going to be running a published adventure path, or even just published adventures at any point, read it over two or three times before running it, so you know it well enough to improvise descriptions and additional events during the game.
On the other hand, creating your own game requires a lot more work. While exact details will very on the exact system and setting you want to use, there are some things that remain constant. From here on I will use the words 'campaign' and 'game' interchangeably, as is common in the groups I play in.
One of the first things to do is to consider the world you will be using, whether a published one or one of your own design. Many companies provide detailed settings for their games, whether it's the fantastic world of Greyhawk or the hidden supernatural world of Urban Fantasy games like The Dresden Files. Consider what makes the world you are using unique, and how the PCs fit into it, because this will be important in later steps.
In addition some people like to name their campaigns, for me it's a matter of implanting focus to the story I'm developing. Do not feel like you're required to do this, either now or at all, many people don't while others like to design the story and then give it a title.
For the sake of example I will be using a game for the Fate system, specifically the Under the Table setting that blends Arthurian Mythology and gangster fiction. In general the world is the same as ours but with the occasional magical touches of the fair folk leaking in. Players take the roll of members of the King's Men, the biggest crime syndicate in town. I like to name my campaigns, and while this one began with the title 'All the King's Men' it quickly changed to 'The Last Laugh' due to a shift towards a more cynical storyline.
The next thing to do is to decide what the focus of the game is, and where the PCs should be aiming to end up. In ye olde days of yore before anybody had set foot in the Forgotten Realms most games worked on a standard focus and goal: there is dangerous monsters out in the wilderness and dungeons, and you are going to beat them to get treasure to buy land. If this sort of game appeals you that's fine, but these days the narrative game, fuelled by an ongoing mystery or conflict is popular, and I will be focusing on that in this article because it compromises the majority of my experience.
If you don't want a narrative game, if you want one focused on exploration, or a sandbox game, or whatever you want, that's fine. As long as everybody, including you, is having fun there is no wrong way to run a game. Feel free to focus on developing your setting or NPCs more than your plot.
If you want a game focused on the setting, what are the big points of your setting. I don't mean the world, I mean the region, the city or the piece of countryside where you plan to set your game. Make sure you have a couple of current or impending conflicts for the PCs to get involved in. If your campaign is going to move around a lot, pick some recurring elements, whether it's allies, villains, or issues.
For a story driven campaign, see if you can come up with a rely loose plot. If it takes more than three points to explain you should probably simplify it, so as not to encourage you to railroad down the line as no plot survives contact with the
For 'All the King's Men' all I knew is that I wanted the PCs to become major players in the King's Men, possibly members of Arthur's inner circle, by the end of the campaign, after starting as a low level but trusted crew. I wanted a plot focused game, and the plot here is that classic tragedy plot 'great man rises and them falls', just applied to an entire group.
The next thing is to determine what conflicts exist, as these will be your main plot drivers. It doesn't matter if it's really vague at this point, because in a minute we'll be digging down and fleshing out the conflict.
Under the table has a few conflicts I could have picked for 'All the King's Men', the one between the King's Men and the Knights Temperance, as well as that between Eliot Merlin and Mayor Morgan Lafayette, but I wanted something that the PCs could be involved in from the start. I decided upon a gang war, the small time arms dealers the Feral Hounds have somehow started branching out, getting a lot more money, and the PCs are called in when they start trying to steal the secrets of sangreal from the King's Men and take away their effective monopoly.
Now we start to determine the important parts of the conflict, who the major players are and what their goals are. Here you can add in a few twists if you want, major players who seem minor, players working for another side, and outside forces manipulating the conflict for their own ends.
So who were the major players in this war with the Feral Hounds? Obviously Arthur and Merlin were going to be important eventually, but as the conflict was going to begin while the players were low ranking I decided to start on their level. I began with two members of the Feral Hounds who would be recurring opponents, one for the early game and one all the way through it. For the early game I created Christian Kew, a big brute who used to work under the last leader, and is now heading the current version of Feral Hounds. Christian isn't complex, he just wants money and power, and is willing to pick a fight with the King's Men to gain that power, but at the end of the day he's a thug in a nice suit (and a magic knife or two up his sleeve). However, I needed an antagonist who could hound the PCs without ending up in jail or hospital, and so I created Emily Spur, a woman who while a good shot with a sniper rifle is more at home in the planning room than on a raid. I also decided that, as a twist, Emily was part of the Knights Temperance working undercover, able to pull some strings and escape the courts, as if either the Hounds or the King's men destroy themselves in this war it makes their jobs a little easier, and I decided that the whole gang war was just another front in their conflict with the King's Men. It was at this point that I changed the name, as it was obvious that the plot could not end until either organisation had taken a decent hit, and decided that that this couldn't happen until after the Feral Hounds had been dealt with and the PCs had risen to a higher rank in the King's Men.
After that you can keep digging down until you're happy with your cast of characters and everybody's motivations. The final step is to simply prepare the game statistics for the first session, which depends on your system and I recommend asking for advice on one of the forums you can find around the internet.
Next Thursday prepare for quick thinking, as I go over when you should roll the dice, and when you should apply a quick ruling and move on.
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