Do you want to Ask the Angry GM a question? It’s easy to do. Just e-mail your BRIEF question to TheAngryGameMaster@gmail.com and put ASK ANGRY in the subject. And include your name so I know I can make fun of you, your name, your question, your inability to proofread, or your poor understanding of the concept of a BRIEF question using your proper appellation. And yes. Consider that a warning. If you want politeness, go ask the Hippie-Dippie-Sunshine-and-Rainbows-and-Bunny-Farts-GM.

Leo G., Who Talks About Books a Lot, Asks:

When you’re starting a new campaign, what information do you send to your players? Do you make a player’s guide of information they/their characters should know, do you include the hook (“Your character must have some reason to work for the Church of the Golden Octopus”), restrictions, etc.? Basically, what information do you hand your players so they can start creating their characters?

First of all, Leo, let me compliment you for two things. First, you told me how to credit you EXACTLY F$&%ING RIGHT! I don’t know why so many people struggle with “Call me Leo G., and here’s a link to my blog thing.” But, there’s plenty of Care Bear and Porn Name generators out there for all those other yutzes who can’t handle such a simple thing. Secondly, your brief little book reviews are well done. They are just short little snippets that say exactly why someone should read (or shouldn’t read a book). Keep it the f$&% up.

On to your question. I’ve talked about this a few times in bits and pieces, but I don’t think I’ve ever put it all in one place. And it’s also a question I get a lot. So, I’m going to spell it out.

It depends on the campaign.

Anyway, thanks for writing. Have a great day.

Okay, okay, you deserve a better answer than that. I’m just f$&%ing with you.

I actually follow a really simple rule when starting off a new campaign and deciding what to give the players. And it’s a rule that I recommend that absolutely everyone follow. Because, of course, I’m a f$&%ing genius. I do it right. So why wouldn’t you follow my rule?

Here it is: the players need to know to be able to create legal characters that will get together, do the thing that the campaign is about, and will continue to work together to do the thing the campaign is about despite minor to moderate disagreements. AND NOTHING ELSE.

First of all, the truth of the matter is that players won’t read or absorb more than a very small amount of information. They want to play the f$&%ing game. Not read an encyclopedia. I know lots of GMs write these long, complex histories for their worlds. And then they give them to their players. That is a f$&%ing mistake. Players won’t read it, except in some very rare cases. I’ve done it once or twice for some very complex campaigns with some very serious players. I do actually have one campaign player book I wrote that is about 60 pages long. But, generally, you can’t do that. Sorry.

Once you understand that rule, you understand that absolutely everything you give your players must be totally necessary. You can’t include empty narrative calories. You can only give them the absolutely minimum. And the absolute minimum is “whatever they need to know to create characters, start the game, and play the game.”

If your game has any restrictions, list them. Put them on a f$&%ing piece of paper and hand them out. Can’t play evil? Can’t play half-elves? Can’t play sorcerers? Write that s$&% down and hand it to the players. And, while you’re at it, if you’re doing any optional rules, list those too. If you’re not allowing variant 5E humans to start with feats, write that down to.

Basically, I actually like to give a step-by-step guide to character generation. And for each step, I list the things that I’m doing differently from the book or listing the options you can use.

Step 1: Generate Ability Scores – Use the standard array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8). You may not roll for ability scores or use point buy.

Simple as that. That way, it guides people through character generation. Even if you’re going to do a character generation session, still spell it all out so people can read it BEFORE the session and start thinking about their character.

Next, you want to explain the premise of the campaign. Whatever it is, explain it. Even if it’s totally simple.

Here’s two examples of premises from some of my more recent campaigns.

Your character is murdered before the start of the game. You are then resurrected in a catacomb by a mysterious artifact under a city state ruled by wizard guilds whose founder has vanished. Each time you die, you are resurrected in the same place by the mysterious artifact. You don’t know why and you will have to discover it during the course of the campaign. You will also have to protect the secret of the artifact and the secret magic that keeps you alive. There are many factions vying for control of the city and they will be seeking to use or destroy you or the artifact. Thus the party will be forced to work together and trust each other. So, create a character who can function in that sort of forced pact of secrecy. At some point, there will also be a major threat to the city and the characters. You will have get involved with the city’s various factions to help confront the threat or else it will win. In so doing, you will also have to solve the mystery of your own identity.

As the campaign begins, your character has come to the free city of Daggerport on the Sundered Coast. Your reasons are your own. It is a city of refugees, fugitives, privateers, and adventurers and it lies on the gateway of an unexplored frontier filled with ancient ruins and exciting adventures. At the start of the campaign, you will be approached by a mercenary and adventuring guild and they will provide you the first few adventures so that you can get to know your fellow adventurers and build friendships. Over time, you might decide to stay with the guild or to go your own way and pursue your own goals. But you’ll continue to work together. So, build a character at a loose end or with a vague future goal, but who is willing to join an adventuring guild to start a new life and then who will work well with a group of allies to help everyone accomplish their own goals.

Notice that I spell out the major themes of the campaign. I want people to know what they are in for so they can make a character who will play that game. In the first scenario, if you made a selfish person who has no interest in confronting a major threat and who will instantly run away from the city and won’t care about the mystery and the factions and stuff, you would ruin the game. You deserve to know that.

After that, you can add some setting details that allow the players to create story hooks for themselves. For example, in the Daggerport campaign, I described the Sundered Coast and the mysterious ruins and some of the theories about the lost civilization and the strange treasures. And I also described how the city was a pirate and smuggler city that had grown to “respectability” but was still basically semi-lawless, like the old West.

And THAT is usually enough. But, the more detail you add that affects character generation, the more you need to spell out. And because you want to give as little information as possible, you want to be really careful how much you change. That said, you CAN give out rules and mechanics for things like races, classes, and new spells. People will only read that s$&% if they need it.

For example, in the city resurrection campaign (a Pathfinder campaign), I rewrote ALL of the races. The campaign had custom dwarves, two different custom elves, city goblins, urogs (civilized orcs), halflings, and custom humans. All with their own racial traits. I also modified the way magic worked, favored class rules, multiclassing, and a few other odds and ends. And THAT is why that campaign book was 60 pages. But it did also have a highly detailed mythology and world history.

I’m going to say this: EVERY campaign should have a premise. Every campaign should START with a reason for the characters to be together and a basic idea of how they meet and why they stay together. You CAN’T rely on the idiot players to just work that s$&% out. I’ve seen too many GMs start their campaigns with “just go make characters and then you all meet when the village is attacked while you’re in the tavern.” The players make all sorts of random crap, fights start, the group falls apart, and nothing good comes of it.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the idea of Session 0 and The Pitch. See, it’s all well and good to just hand players a thing and say “this is the game we’re playing guys, so follow this.” And you CAN do that. There’s nothing wrong with inviting people into a game with a specific premise and saying “this is the game, if you want to play it, go make a character.” But, if I’m sitting down with a group I want to stay together for the long term, I tend to go with a Session 0 and then give The Pitch.

The process begins with the group sitting down and having a guided discussion (guided by me) about the sorts of things everyone likes to play. I ask people about what gaming experiences they’ve enjoyed in the past, favorite books and video games, I talk about some of the games I’ve run, and I generally let people babble while I try to tease out what types of game experiences people are looking for. I try to fit them into the eight basic kinds of gaming engagements. I also pay attention to any specific race and class ideas and backgrounds or hooks people discuss.

Meanwhile, I’m also thinking about the things I like and I usually have a few themes or ideas in mind I want to play with when I start. For the resurrection campaign, that started with the question of whether I could remove death from the game and still make a compelling, challenging, and tense game. For the Daggerport campaign, that came from playing Uncharted and wanting to run something with jungles and ruins.

So, I’ve got my ideas in mind and I listen to what the players say. I let them babble, for the most part, but if they get too distracted, I guide them back onto the subject of things they like (and don’t like). And then, I send them away. And I think about a basic idea. A pitch. A short couple of sentences that came from what they said.

“What if you guys couldn’t die because a weird artifact brought you back to life and tied you to a city of magical guilds?”

If all of the players approve the pitch, I write up the campaign document (all that s$&% I told you to write down and give to the players) and then let everyone build characters and send them to me for final approval. I also encourage the players to talk amongst themselves about what general things they want to play, but I also encourage them to keep background and story details to themselves. That way, the players discuss the roles they want to fill in the game.

Some GMs run character generation sessions. I don’t, unless the players are new and need help. Because character generation sessions are boring as f$&% and one of the reasons I became a GM is so that I don’t have to get involved in character generation crap. There’s nothing for me to do at character generation and I don’t want to spend any extra time with the players if I don’t have to. In this day and age of e-mail and text messages, the players can talk amongst themselves without having to be at the same table.

Anyway, that’s it. That’s how I start a campaign. And it’s the right f$&%ing way. It ensures the players have the barest bones of the information they need to start playing without a bunch of extraneous crap they won’t read (remember, a good storyteller works backstory into the exposition anyway so the players don’t need to know the history of the Bloodaxe tribe until they encounter them). It ensures the players will make characters that will play the game you’re running. And it emphasizes the fact that D&D is a GROUP GAME and the players have to make characters that can FUNCTION AS A TEAM!

Good luck, Leo. Keep writing about books!