Come in. Sit down. Shut up. Class is in session. I’m Mr. Angry. And that ain’t just a clever nickname. It’s a warning. Don’t piss me off.

You’re here because you want to run an ongoing tabletop roleplaying game. What we call a campaign. You want to get your friends together week after week after week and run them through a series of fanatastical adventures. And you don’t want to rely on some corporation’s prepublished shlock. You want to create your own fantastical adventures. What we call homebrewing.

Sound right? If not, there’s the door. Use it.

Still here? Then I hope you read that overly long pile of introductory material. Get used to that, by the way. That’s how I teach. With big-a$& piles of words. This stuff ain’t easy to teach. Fortunately, though, it’s a lot easier to do than it is to teach.

Seriously. Starting a homebrew campaign’s not as hard as you think it is. Especially when you’ve got my help.

Thanks to all that introductory crap, you know what this series is about and you’ve read all the warnings and caveats. You know what a campaign is and what an adventure is. At least, you know how I’m using those words. And you know I don’t give a crap whether you think I’m using them wrong.

You also know there’s things called narrative structures and gameplay loops and that they’re big, important things that’ll totally ruin your game if you do them even a little wrong. You probably don’t know what they actually are. Because the only thing I’m worse at than being concise is being clear. But that’s okay. You don’t need to know what they are. Because you’ve got me to help. You just need to know they exist.

That’s it. You’re introduced. You’re reintroduced. You’re in the right lecture hall. And you’ve gone potty. I hope you’ve gone potty. Because I ain’t taking any breaks. So let’s see what it takes to actually get a campaign off the ground…

The Campaign Pre-Launch — and Post-Launch — Checklist

What’s it take to launch a homebrew campaign? Well, here’s how I’m breaking this down. Into steps and into articles.

1. Write a Premise
2. Make Some Characters
3. Write Your First Adventure
4. Build a Starter Town
5. Build a Region Around the Town
6. Write Your Second Adventure
7. Run the Campaign Until You’re Done

By the way, don’t worry that this is just a second, supplemental pile of introductory crap. We’re knocking out that first step today after we get through this outline. This is practical Angry here. Learn by doing. If I want to waste more time on a topic, I’ll do another one of those awful Supplement Bulls$&% articles. And you know I’m gonna.

That said, before we get to the actual premise stuff, there’s a few things to note about that outline.

Ready, Set,… Wait

If you’ve never built or run a campaign before, that outline’s probably daunting and confusing. But don’t worry. If you follow my instructions, you can get a homebrew campaign going in just two weeks. And I don’t mean two forty-hour marathon weeks where you eat, sleep, breathe, and poop your campaign. I mean two, normal adult weeks that also include you working for a living and having a life outside game prep.

But that’s not two weeks from today. Because even though I’m going to make this look like a nice, sequential process, it really isn’t. And you can’t start without knowing the whole process. And since I’m going to put out one or two articles a month and there’s six topics to cover after this, that means it’ll finish up in May.

Why can’t you start right away and work through this step-by-step? Because…

A Non Sequitur of a Sequence

Even though I’m going to present each step on my cute little numbered outline as a single, individual, isolated task, real life just ain’t that clean and clear cut. For instance, most GMs do both the character-building stuff and the adventure-building stuff at the same time. And after you build the first adventure, you’re gonna run it for your players. While you’re running it — because it’s going to take two or three sessions to get through — you’ll build the hometown and region. And then you’ll start planning the second adventure.

Point is, this ain’t a “do one thing, then do the next” kind of process. And you’re going to start running games before you’re finished building the campaign. I know that sounds crazy. But it can be done. In fact, it’s the best way to do it.

But how can you start running something before you finish creating it?

Just-in-Time Game Mastering

If you’re new to all this homebrewing and campaigning, writing and running a campaign probably seems like a huge undertaking. I mean, you’ve probably seen the big, honking hardbacks Wizards of the Coast publishes. Like Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd. Or maybe you’ve seen Paizo’s multipart softback series. Age of Ashes or Quest for the Frozen Flame. Do you really have to write hundreds of pages to run a campaign of your own?

Hell no you don’t. Partly because you’re not a corporation trying to bloat your page count so you can sell ridiculously expensive hardbacks. And partly because you don’t need to. Smart GMs know they don’t need hundreds of pages of text and maps to run a campaign. Not even a big, complicated, epic mystery quest spanning two years of play.

You’ve got a life. I assume. Though you are a gamer, so maybe you don’t. But let’s pretend you have a life and this is just a hobby for you. You’re not a corporation or an internet content creator that’s literally paid to crap out thousands of words a week about pretend elf games. So you’ve got to make this happen in your spare time. Without burning yourself out.

And the way to do that is by only ever working on the next thing you actually need.

You don’t need to know the whole history of your pretend world to run your first adventure, do you?

You don’t need to map every continent to handle a trek from the heroes’ hometown to a dungeon three miles away, do you?

Shut up. The answer is no. Not even if the heroes are going to learn about a bigger threat to confront in that first dungeon. Not even if that threat’s an ancient abomination imprisoned in the heart of the Jade Continent a thousand miles away and it’s been trapped there since the Age of Creation. All you need is some stats for some cultists, a map of their hideout, and an excuse to send the characters cult-thumping. And maybe a name for an ancient evil abomination the heroes can investigate later.

That’s why every step in the process above is about getting to the next step. And nothing else. The premise helps you build the first adventure. And helps the players make characters. The town’s a place to go after the first adventure’s over. The region surrounds the town. And provides a place to plant the second adventure. Which is what the heroes do when they’re done in town.

After that, the campaign’s self-sustaining. Well, it’s yourself-sustaining. You keep it going yourself just by designing whatever you need for the next session. This ain’t just a manageable way to run a campaign, it’s efficient and smart. Smart GMs plan even their most deeply complex campaigns just-in-time. Don’t be one of those other GMs.

Whither Session Zero

Now, if you do have some experience with this whole campaign thing, you probably think I screwed up my outline. But I haven’t. I just explained why building the setting comes after the first adventure and why writing sixty pages of worldlore and history comes never. But you might still be wondering about Session Zero.

I know people make a big deal out of Session Zero. Hell, I’ve made a big deal out of Session Zero. And I do think it’s a useful tool for building a game with your players. But there’s absolutely nothing with just building a game for your players either. Hell, that’s what most GMs do. And it’s what most players expect.

It’s what most players actually want. Trust me.

Point is, it’s totally okay to start without a Session Zero. And if you don’t have the experience to know what a Session Zero is, don’t sweat it. You don’t need it. Besides, it’s kind of gotten ruined with all sorts of useless, ridiculous crap to do with social contracts and establishing boundaries and getting buy-in and preventing offense. Which is totally unnecessary for actual adult human beings who know how to talk to other adult human beings.

That aside, I start many of my campaigns without a Session Zero. For strangers and for friends alike. You can Session Zero and you can Not Session Zero. You can build a game together or invite your friends to play the game you built. Either’s fine. And the second one’s way easier and works out just as well almost every time.

Hell, it often works better.

Making Premises

Enough explaining and outlining. Let’s write a premise already.

A campaign’s premise is a short, prose description of the game you want to run. It’s partly a roadmap, partly a gameplan, partly a promise, partly an advertisement, and partly an instruction. And, as such, it’s the first thing a campaign needs.

This first step’s gonna be really easy for you. This time, anyway. Because I’m going to write your premise for you. Most of it anyway. That’s just to help you get started. And, more importantly, to help you keep it simple. GMs love to complicate this stuff. And there’s no reason to. Great, memorable, engaging, fun campaigns arise from simple premises just as easily as from complex ones. Trust me.

I said a premise is a gameplan, roadmap, instruction manual, and advertisement. Which implies it’s something you share with your players. It is. See, the premise doesn’t just tell you everything you need to know to build your first adventure, it also tells the players what they need to know to make characters who can undertake that first adventure. And, by extension, what they need to know to decide whether they even want to play that first adventure.

Some GMs differentiate between a campaign’s premise and its pitch. The premise being the secret document they write for their own eyes only and the pitch being a pared-down version of the premise made especially for the players. But that’s just an extra step. And you don’t need any extra steps.

A good premise provides three important pieces of information. It answers three important questions. But before I tell you what they are, I want to tell you what a good premise absolutely isn’t.

Don’t Give Everything Away on the First Date

A good premise is not a campaign outline. It’s not a summary of the entire campaign’s story. It’s not a detailed history of the world. It’s not a sixty-page document filled with house rules and character generation instructions and absolutely vital world lore. Why not? Because the premise only exists to get you to the first adventure. And you don’t need any of that crap to get to the first adventure.

Some GMs can’t handle that. They’ve got fancy plans and pants to match. They’ve got grand ideas and want to get them all down on paper before they fire up the campaign’s rockets and blast off. That’s a lot of work. And it’s frankly impossible if you know anything about how roleplaying games work and what players do to campaigns.

So keep it simple and short. No matter how complicated the plan, you just need to write down the broad strokes now. Everything else can come out in play. As you need it. Your premise needs to cover just three things. What things?

What is the Campaign About?

First off, a premise describes what the campaign’s about. Who are the characters and what are they doing and why are they doing it? And it describes that briefly.

Briefly.

Remember that a premise isn’t a campaign’s story. It’s the elevator pitch. That’s a Hollywood term. And a good one for GMs to remember. An elevator pitch is what happens when you — a screenwriter or director or producer — end up, by chance, sharing an elevator with someone who’s got the money and resources to make your movie happen. You’ve got the length of an elevator ride to convince them your project’s the right one for them. Catch their interest and they can ask for more details later. Confuse them? Bore them? Or talk for so long they get off the elevator before you get to the first scene? You’re project’s dead.

A campaign’s premise starts with an elevator pitch. One sentence. Maybe two. Three tops. And that elevator pitch describes what the campaign’s gonna be about.

• A group of perfectly normal people must safeguard and ultimately destroy a magical artifact to prevent an ancient evil from rising to power and conquering the world.
• After discovering he is a wizard, a child must study magic and become powerful enough to destroy the evil wizard that murdered his parents and intends to conquer the wizarding world.
• A group of rebels must prevent a general from resurrecting an ancient, tyrannical empire.
• A stranded astronaut teams up with a group of alien exiles and prisoners. Together the group must find a way to get back to their homes and loved ones while evading capture by imperial forces.
• Leaving their provincial lives behind, would-be adventurers team up to seek their fates and fortunes in a fantastic world.

How Does the Campaign Play Out?

After making it clear what the campaign’s about, a good premise provides some detail about how the campaign’s actually going to play out. From week to week and session to session, what are the players actually going to be doing? What kinds of situations will they have to deal with?

The point here’s to imagine what it will be like to actually play — and run — the campaign. At least the way you see it now. Things are going to change along the way. That’s inevitable. But when you imagine the campaign you’re going to run, what does the gameplay look like?

The heroes travel through the trackless wild, staying one step ahead of the enemies dogging their trail. Along the way, they encounter obstacles, threats, and people in need. Occasionally, they’ll face hardships or supply shortages or else the enemy will draw close. Those will all serve as the basis for the party’s individual adventures. Between those moments of tension and stress, the party spends long stretches traveling and living off the land. Though they are forced to avoid civilization — where the enemy’s eyes may be watching — small outposts, camps, and isolated settlements provide an occasional respite and chance to interact with the people of the world and to get news of the enemy’s activities.

How Does the Campaign Start?

Once it’s clear how the campaign’s intended to play out, the final thing is to establish how the campaign starts. When the players sit down to play the first adventure, where are the characters and what are they doing? Or what are they about to do?

See how that whole plan for the next step underpins this whole premise thing. First, decide what the campaign’s about. Then, decide how to actually make the campaign about that. Finally, decide where it starts being about that. Then you can make your first adventure.

The campaign begins when an astronaut is pulled through a rift in space-time during a failed experiment while, simultaneously, the alien prisoners enact their escape plan. Winding up on the same ship, the astronaut and the aliens must escape into an uncharted region of space beyond Imperial borders. Unfortunately, a mole in the group attempts to sabotage their escape.

That’s it. Three paragraphs and you’ve got yourself a premise. And that first paragraph’s really just a sentence or two. And because you’ve got me helping, you’re only going to have to write one paragraph for yourself. But if you insist on writing your own premise for your own campaign, let me give you one little piece of advice. Even though you’re basically giving me the finger while I’m trying to help you.

Protip: How to Actually Write a Premise

I’m not going to tell you how to come up with a premise of your own. If you don’t want to use mine, you’re on your own. Sorry. But I will help you turn that vague, half-formed chaos of ideas you’ve got in your head into an actual, presentable premise.

Start by free-writing a crappy, terrible version of the premise. Open a blank document or grab a sheet of paper and just start writing. Answer the three questions I posed. In order. Don’t censor. Don’t backspace. Don’t correct. Just keep your hand moving and get the words out. And don’t stop until you’ve answered the questions.

Now, go away. I don’t mean leave me alone. I mean walk away from the crap you wrote. Go away for at least a day. And try not to think about it.

After you’ve ignored it for a day, come back and reread the crap you wrote. Then, put it aside and write it again. From scratch. Without looking at the first version. This time, try your damndest to write a good first draft. Try to keep it under a page. Don’t worry too much about correcting errors or clarifying. But write something you can correct and clarify.

Now, go away again for at least a day and then come back. Reread your draft. Now, rewrite it. The good sentences? Copy them out. Don’t copy-paste. Write them fresh. But copy them. The crappy, garbage sentences. Rewrite them into good sentences or just leave them out. Ultimately, you want to leave 10% of the words on the floor. Doesn’t matter how long the draft was. Doesn’t matter how good you think it is. Cut out 10% of the words.

Now, read the thing over. Is it less than a page? Is it three paragraphs? Is it readable? Is it understandable? Good. You’re done. Is it not those things? Rewrite it, cutting it down by 10%, then check it again.

That’s how you write a premise. Hell, that’s you write anything. That’s how I write these articles.

Yes, this rambly, sweary crap is what I considered the good stuff. And every one of these articles lost at least six hundred — and usually more than a thousand — words before you saw it. If this is the good stuff, imagine how bad those thousand words must be.

Anyway…

Ulterior Premises

If you’re an attentive student, you probably noticed that I did not once mention anything about narrative structures or gameplay loops. None of the crap I made you read 5000 words about. Despite my saying how super, ultra, mega important that stuff was. How those were the only things standing between you and the crappiest campaign a GM ever crapped out.

What the hell, Angry?

Thing is, when you write a campaign premise, you’re also secretly writing another, different premise. One so secret that you don’t even know you’re writing it. And that secret premise can make or break your game. That’s why it’s important to prime your brain to write a good one. Even if you don’t consciously know what you’re doing, the unconscious parts of your brain will nudge the parts writing the premise. They’ll whisper secret little hints. They’ll insert the secret premise.

A campaign’s secret premise encompasses three things.

The Setting

Every game’s got a setting. Which is more than just a world. More than just a map. A game’s setting includes the world’s history, its cultures, the laws of reality, how magic works — if magic even exists — and so on. Settings are incredibly complicated. They’re basically entire, imaginary, simulated universes you keep in your head.

Seriously. Good GMing is less about following rules and knowing what to do and more about inserting the players and their actions and their die rolls into some world-sim in your imagination, watching what happens, and then describing it. Never thought of it like that, did you?

Anyway, when you write a premise, there’s already a little proto-world in your head. A seed from which the game’s simulated reality is going to grow. Whether you can see it clearly or not. And that proto-world sneaks into your writing. And your writing sneaks back into the proto-world and nudges.

The game’s setting shows itself in big decisions — like whether to run D&D or Starfinder or Call of Cthlhu — and also in the teeniest, tiniest writing choices you make. That premise about the astronaut and the alien prisoners? By referring to the character as an astronaut — a contemporary Earth term — I established that he’s from modern Earth and probably really out of his depth. It’d have been a lot different if I called him a starship pilot or a spacefarer.

Point is, there’s a setting hiding in every premise. Maybe you put it there on purpose. Maybe you didn’t. Doesn’t matter. It’s there. And your players are gonna be looking for it. Maybe on purpose. Maybe not. But they’ll be looking for it. So before you share your premise — if you ever decide to write one of your own — reread it and look for the setting. If it’s there, make sure it’s what you want. If it’s not there, add a few words and tropes to put it there.

You can always just start the premise with the movie trailer in a world…

In a world of swords and sorcery…

Structures

So, I talked a lot about narrative structures and gameplay loops. A lot. I said they were super important. Especially those gameplay loops. “Without them,” I said, “you might as well just write all your campaign notes on the toilet because your game’s going to be crap.”

Okay, I didn’t say precisely that. But I meant it.

And then I told you not to worry about any of that because it’s not like you were going to design your game around narrative structures and gameplay loops deliberately. No one does. They just happen.

The premise is when they start happening.

When you describe what you’re campaign’s about and how it’s going to play out, you’re saying some things about how the story and the game are going to fit together. The structures. You’re saying whether there’s a big, overarching plot tying your whole campaign together. Or whether you’re campaign’s a spaghetti monster of interwoven personal narratives. Stuff like that. That’s narrative structure. At least, that’s the start of narrative structure.

And by spelling out how the game’s going to play out, you’re also designing the gameplay structure. Specifically, you’re calling out some of the broad, basic modes of play you intend to include. And you’re separating the adventures from each other.

First, modes of play. Broadly speaking, those are the different kinds of things the players will find themselves doing as they play through the campaign. The different kinds of gameplay. The different games they can play. Dungeon delving, traveling, downtime, interaction, exploration, that kind of crap. Your premise should call out at least a couple different modes of play. If not explicitly, then by implication at least.

Second, adventure separation. To keep your campaign from being a bland, soupy morass of Never-Ending Adventure, you’ve got to break it down into individual chunks of story and gameplay. Chunks with beginnings, middles, ends, major conflicts, climaxes, and resolutions. We call those adventures. If you think of your campaign as one long adventure, you’ll run it like that. And it’ll suck. If you think of the campaign as a string of adventures, you’ll run it as a series of stories. Even if the stories all link together into one epic super-story of a quest.

Your premise should at least suggest that your game’s broken into episodic, adventurey chunks. And, for bonus points, it might even match up the adventure bits with some modes of play and the between-adventure bits with others. So traveling and town interactions usually happen between adventures and dungeon delving and exploring usually happens during adventures. That kind of thing.

The premise I’m going to hand you at the end of this article has all that crap already built in. I’m only explaining it because after you’ve got your campaign going, you’re going to have to keep it going without me. Which means you’ve got to stick with the structures established by the premise. Or, if you want to change them up — or if you insist on writing your own premise — don’t just dump the structural bits as useless constraints. Replace them with other, different structures you like better.

Party Dynamic

The final piece of the secret premise puzzle is something called the party dynamic. That’s a big, important part of keeping a campaign running that lots of GMs totally overlook. And the ones that don’t overlook it always overthink it. A light touch is key.

The party dynamic describes how and why the characters come together and form a party in the first place. And what keeps them together. And if the premise doesn’t describe the party dynamic, it should.

The party dynamic doesn’t have to be anything big. And, honestly, there’s really good reasons to keep it small and simple. And, moreover, there’s good reasons not to rely on pre-existing relationships between the characters to establish the party dynamic.

Your party dynamic also doesn’t have to be original or brilliant. It doesn’t have to be art. It just has to exist. Any dynamic’s okay. Why? First, the premise tells the players what kinds of characters to make. If it suggests a party dynamic, most players will — intuitively — make characters that suit that dynamic. And you can slap the ones that don’t and make them start over. Second, roleplaying games are so steeped in the party dynamic that most players will actually avoid making choices that break up the party without even realizing they’re doing so. Third, remember the game’s continuity derives not from the individual characters but the party as a concept. If a character leaves the party, that character’s player can make a new character. Just like if the character died. The game can survive party shakeups. You just want to prevent party breakups.

Most of my games start with strangers who come together by chance. All of them start in inns or taverns. I actually made that a rule. Every fantasy campaign of mine has its first scene in an inn or tavern. Or, at least, very near an inn or tavern. And my games are great. So don’t sweat the party dynamic. Just give the players an excuse to come together, an excuse to stay together, and trust them — and the metagame — to do the rest.

My Gift to You: A Simple Homebrew Campaign Premise

Now that you know what a campaign premise is all about, I’m going to hand you one. One you can build your simple, homebrew campaign around. This premise is just about the purest D&D premise there is. Really, it’s the premise hidden in the subtext of the Player’s Handbook. The oldest premise there is in RPG gaming. And the one most GMs cut their teeth on. Even if they don’t do it deliberately. Because it’s basically the premise that will accidentally happen if you just try to start a campaign based on reading the rulebooks.

It’s also my favorite campaign premise for fantasy play. Sneer at it if you want. Call it inartful, unoriginal, cliched garbage. I don’t care. I’ve gotten so many deep, memorable, engaging games over the years out of this inartful, unoriginal, default premise. And I am passing it on to you. Use it in good stead…

The Adventuring Adventurers Who Have Adventures

In a fantasy world littered with the ruins of ancient empires and fallen kingdoms, in a dark age of history, a group of humble individuals leave the simple work-a-day lives of their kin to make their way as traveling adventurers. Though they start as strangers to each other, they soon learn to work together and eventually trust each other as each seeks their own fate and fortune in the world.

After a chance event gives the would-be heroes their first taste of adventure, the party discovers further opportunities for adventure in the world’s scattered villages, towns, and cities. After choosing to pursue a particular opportunity, the party generally prepares in town for their adventure. They buy supplies, gather resources, and seek out useful information. Then, they must usually leave town and travel to the adventure’s site, dealing with the challenges of crossing the untamed wilds. Once at the adventure site, they must overcome numerous obstacles and challenges before resolving the adventure’s major conflict. Victorious or not, the party usually returns to town to claim their rewards, to recover from their tribulations, to sell their treasure, to restock their supplies, to upgrade their equipment, and to study and train and thereby enhance their abilities. While in town, the adventurers often interact with the people of the world. They build relationships and gain a reputation. Those interactions inevitably lead to new adventure opportunities. Eventually, the adventurers will feel they’ve outgrown the particular town they’re in. Or wanderlust will take hold. They’ll move on to some new locale to start the cycle all over again.

As the campaign opens…

You know what? Why don’t you finish it? I know I told you to wait until I finished this whole series before you did anything on your own. But let’s have some fun. See what you can come up with for that last paragraph.

And I’ll tell you what I came up with next time…