More seriously, there are two types of campaign. Both are perfectly reasonable:
(1) The episodic campaign: Each adventure stands alone. The party stays together because they like each other, or comradery, or they're employed by a common employer (mercenary company, etc...), or whatever.
(2) The epic campaign: Its all one story and the PCs are either fated to do it or are otherwise all bound into the story somehow.
These two types of campaign require remarkably different amounts of preparation to get going. The episodic campaign just requires an adventure and a premise for why the characters got together. You're ready to go. The epic campaign requires a plot, a motivation for the badguys/prime evil/dark god of death/whatever or some structure about the cause of the apocalypse that is imminent, or... etc... Its an epic, you need to know something.
The episodic campaign will be plannable into the forseeable future if you carefully track how much xp you're giving out. Party has simple goals each mission. It requires the same amount of prep before any given adventure - come up with an adventure - but you don't normally have to wait for previous adventures to be completed to do this. Some overarching structure can emerge, especially if there are recurring badguys.
The epic campaign isn't really specific plannable more than a week or two in advance. You have to respond to what the players do and alter your timeline based on the effect they have on the villains. This sort of campaign works best if you're an experienced story teller capable of improvising at a moment's notice. Occasionally serious prep work will need to be done for a session, but oftentimes prepwork will be impossible except for knowing what the possibilities are. However, there's a lot of upfront work including world design, NPC developement, etc... so you can improvise knowing what your world and the important agents in that world are. Caladania was much like this (there are records of it on the Wiki), and i had put a lot of work into it the summer before hashing out a world, but many weeks i showed up and reacted to the players with no preparations at all. (Admittedly i'm also very good at doing that).
So the amount of _campaign_ planning you do can range from planning out an adventure to planning out a world. It all depends on what you want.
Oh, if you're *looking* for a campaign, a bunch of us old-fogies have an IM campaign meeting Tuesday nights (ends around midnight your coast time). Campaign style is episodic, rotating DMs, the campaign world evolves freely as DMs add more details as necessary for their adventures, and is mostly set in a china-like region. DM experience varies a lot from basically first time DMs to rather experienced (Rob to me and Steve). Player style varies from hack 'n slash to flexible (i can do anything, though since most of the people are more comfortable currently DMing to a hack 'n slash standard, its hard to move past that - there have been a couple of neat character development moments though).
Current players are me, Curtis Vinson, Rob Adams, Evil Southie, and Steve Hass. Pomona Steve was playing till he went to med school. You're welcome to join us, i can get you the Wiki url if you're interested.
Rich Burlew (of OOTS comic fame) writes about his plan/attempt to build a compelling world here. It's broken into bits. Now a campaign is not a world, but a world can be a useful thing for a campaign to have.
As for the campaign writing part, I'm not terribly sure. To my mind, there are several important qualties for a good campaign:
1) Goal - it's important for the characters to have a goal, as it will keep them focused and provide a context for their choices, and keep them moving (no scumming or resting after each battle if the goal is timed).
2) Complications - this is where you add plot twists, and other modifications of goals. Add subgoals, plot twists, people changing sides, treachery, whatever here.
3) Obstacles - These are the things that stand in the way of the players achieving their goal. Maybe it's monster encounters, maybe it's distance, maybe it's a corrupt magistrate who gets them arrested or whatever.
If you plan out a goal or two, and a complication or seven, then the campaign runs itself except for the obstacles, which at least I find aren't too hard to figure out a session ahead of time.
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*duck*
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More seriously, there are two types of campaign. Both are perfectly reasonable:
(1) The episodic campaign: Each adventure stands alone. The party stays together because they like each other, or comradery, or they're employed by a common employer (mercenary company, etc...), or whatever.
(2) The epic campaign: Its all one story and the PCs are either fated to do it or are otherwise all bound into the story somehow.
These two types of campaign require remarkably different amounts of preparation to get going. The episodic campaign just requires an adventure and a premise for why the characters got together. You're ready to go. The epic campaign requires a plot, a motivation for the badguys/prime evil/dark god of death/whatever or some structure about the cause of the apocalypse that is imminent, or... etc... Its an epic, you need to know something.
The episodic campaign will be plannable into the forseeable future if you carefully track how much xp you're giving out. Party has simple goals each mission. It requires the same amount of prep before any given adventure - come up with an adventure - but you don't normally have to wait for previous adventures to be completed to do this. Some overarching structure can emerge, especially if there are recurring badguys.
The epic campaign isn't really specific plannable more than a week or two in advance. You have to respond to what the players do and alter your timeline based on the effect they have on the villains. This sort of campaign works best if you're an experienced story teller capable of improvising at a moment's notice. Occasionally serious prep work will need to be done for a session, but oftentimes prepwork will be impossible except for knowing what the possibilities are. However, there's a lot of upfront work including world design, NPC developement, etc... so you can improvise knowing what your world and the important agents in that world are. Caladania was much like this (there are records of it on the Wiki), and i had put a lot of work into it the summer before hashing out a world, but many weeks i showed up and reacted to the players with no preparations at all. (Admittedly i'm also very good at doing that).
So the amount of _campaign_ planning you do can range from planning out an adventure to planning out a world. It all depends on what you want.
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Current players are me, Curtis Vinson, Rob Adams, Evil Southie, and Steve Hass. Pomona Steve was playing till he went to med school. You're welcome to join us, i can get you the Wiki url if you're interested.
no subject
Rich Burlew (of OOTS comic fame) writes about his plan/attempt to build a compelling world here. It's broken into bits. Now a campaign is not a world, but a world can be a useful thing for a campaign to have.
http://www.giantitp.com/Form.html
As for the campaign writing part, I'm not terribly sure. To my mind, there are several important qualties for a good campaign:
1) Goal - it's important for the characters to have a goal, as it will keep them focused and provide a context for their choices, and keep them moving (no scumming or resting after each battle if the goal is timed).
2) Complications - this is where you add plot twists, and other modifications of goals. Add subgoals, plot twists, people changing sides, treachery, whatever here.
3) Obstacles - These are the things that stand in the way of the players achieving their goal. Maybe it's monster encounters, maybe it's distance, maybe it's a corrupt magistrate who gets them arrested or whatever.
If you plan out a goal or two, and a complication or seven, then the campaign runs itself except for the obstacles, which at least I find aren't too hard to figure out a session ahead of time.