How to Make a D&D Campaign (the easy way) 

💥 James RPG Art: www.patreon.com/jamesrpgart *typo at 4:27, should say "does NOT" 😅

4:22 I agree that a complex villain can be hard to pull off but when it comes to the philosphical debate part I really think it depends on your players. There are plenty of groups out there who love to have their morals challenged, while there are plenty others who just want to fight. The lesson here should be to know your players.

Love these tables! Amazing campaign generator, the only thing that I wouldn't do is randomizing PCs, but that's just personally me. Thank you for the video!

Makes it sound a lot easier. Good presentation, and good one-take!

This is actually fantastic; usually, my approach has been to ask and answer 'What's going on?' and then leave it up to the players to decide 'And why do you care?' - but throwing all these elements together gets you about 90% of the way to the opening scene of a fantasy adventure novel. Which is just about the ideal habitat for an adventuring party. Brilliant!

I literally just did this and boy I feel like really got something great here.

Hoping to start running my own home brew campaigns for the first time with my two groups. Going to be in the same setting but set centuries apart. This is definitely going to help me answer some important questions

4:27 Your BBEG DOES need a morally grey backstory?? I KNEW it!!

Nailed it!

Perfectly Imperfect. :)

great stuff, Bob! You're like one punch man, except One Take Man

One take Bob is the best Bob.

“…add layers your players are never going to know exist.” 😂 So true. It’s a labor of love, because I love thinking about my world and what the backgrounds players are doing, how they react, how they interact… and the outcome is a real feeling world. But, it’s more work. Random is easy and quick… but when I roll I stick to the dice… that’s what makes randomness real. You just need to know what is in the realm of random. Rolling a swamp next to a desert and then having other unlikely encounters of incohesive dice creations. Real world building is a labor of love and only for the long-haul DMs.

Currently writing a Taylor Swift campaign for my daughter using Alef Vernon’s artwork as inspiration and I’m taking all the notes right now! Thank you! Do you have any videos or lists talking about story arc tropes/session tropes? Looking at different types of conflict for each kingdom/album. So far my list is: Standard dungeon crawl Political intrigue Underground spy network Haunted house A series of trials Fetch quest Rescue mission

Back to world builiding! nice!

nice video bob :) ty

Just means you have to try *another* one take video until you get it!

that's right kids, unlike the real world, science doesn't matter in a fantasy world where magic is real

Why are aliens automatically seen as colonists?

I saw 1 take. The "bloopers" were scripted

You definitely did a better job then if I were to do anything in one take lol

Wait a minute, the boss is an alien that needs food to obtain perfection? This is literally just Cell. 😆

It’s funny that 5e has the most thick books and in the same time the most useless random tables.

Psst Coville usually doesn't do it, he just has an amazing editor who makes it super smooth

Buddy, I AM a random character generator. And my bad guys typically have Doofenschmirtz backstories, but I rarely share them.

“Layers of detail that your players will never know exist.” Very accurate. Still fun for the GM tho. For a lot of us, a big part of “playing” DnD is the creation of players and places - even if they never get used in a game.

this campaign is basically lilo and stitch

This is so Wholesome I'm gonna try it for my next adventure. Thanks BOB!

I can't even put together 2 sentences without making at least 5 takes. Great job Bob

Regarding the idea of having a "philosophical debate" about the BBEG's points, in my campaign, I turned the script around a little. Instead of making the BBEG deep, I made the adventure the cause of a lot of trouble. A catastrophic evil that WILL turn the tide in the blood war claws itself towards the surface, at which point, all will be lost. The party has to go on a McGuffin quest, collecting magical stones to do the magical thing and 'nope' the catastrophic evil out of existence. As they do it, they learn that almost every time they get towards a major progression point, their actions have severe consequences against their intentions - to save the material plane, if not the entire cosmos. They will save everyone, for sure. But they will have caused so much trouble, that future generations may wonder if it was ever worth it at all. The campaign is about to end in a couple of sessions, and it started to dawn on them, that everything good they ever did was tainted with bad, and we all love it. (The general theme of this campaign is that nothing good is without bad, and nothing bad is without good, so as long as they keep their good intentions, they are reassured to walk the path which creates harm as little as possible).

You're an "oath of the one take" paladin! 😂 I love this format: it feels like you're actually there teaching me things. 😊

As someone whos only done homebrew, this is a great outline for structuring a campaign. Thanks bob ❤

Great video!!! Keep up the awesome work!!! I mainly play the FFG now EDGE Studio Star Wars RPG Edge of the Empire (Outer Rim Scum types) & Age of Rebellion (Rebels Fighting the Empire types). Your info helps out planning a new campaign that I am working on for the new year. I love the narrative play of this systems dice - the EDGE Studio Genesys RPG uses the same narrative dice.

Run it, Bob, run it! Finally, a reason to use the optional equipment rules in the DMG!

THAT WAS AN AWESOME ONE TAKE I AM SO PROUD

Great campaign! Where do I sign up to play it?

8:48 "How does Matt Colville do this?", He doesn't. The videos are heavily edited - just skilfully so!

I really like being specific about a neutral party who may help or hinder outside of the big bad and minions. Great video Bob, the bloopers make it better!

Thanks Bob! Entertaining and informative as always!!

Still shilling Cairn. Nice. Its my go to 5e like system. So much more fun to just jump straight in.

Colville doesn't get it in one take. Except that one time.

Fantastic ideas as always! Side note - the random campaign you generated for this is bringing back fond 2e memories of the StarCraft campaign a friend ran way back in highschool 😁

re one take : always awesome to see, regardless of "goofs" haha. I think for me, it stems from great cinematic experiences and is something I try to do in the majority of my videos as well.

Totally counts

Hey, the campaign table link isn't there

This is cool. I use Mythic but am definitely gonna check this out

Nice tool. Might have to use this for my one shots if players cant show to our normal sessions. Side note: Just got done watching your part with Jorphdan at the summit, great insights.

Good tips

I swear to God. You, Tasting History and the Why Files are the only three channels that make me wait for videos.

If it takes only 10 minutes i will eat my hat... and the real campaign is still nowhere....😂

I'm making a campaign to release on Kickstarter in the future, I wonder if you could lend me advice on where to look for more content like this. Also keep up the good work!

Great vid Bob. I'm sure you get flooded with questions often but I'm a new player and my DM asked if I could try to put together a one shot. I feel like I've hit a lot of the things you've mentioned here. My major concern now is building out combat encounters. I'd like to make one easy "warm up" encounter for the party then have a more difficult final encounter. I've heard of kobold fight club as a good site to pick level appropriate monsters but I don't really see any guides on things like how big should an combat encounter map be, tips for extra environmental mechanics, how many rounds of combat is a good amount. I feel like I've got the story part on lock down, now I just need to really get a good handle on the nuts and bolts of mini map making and encounter building. Any suggestions bud? PS. I really appreciate your kind inclusive attitude. There is no shortage of gatekeeping jerks online and you, Ginny Di and Dungeon dudes have been great ambassadors to this game for newbs like myself.

4:33 best advice ever. Plus: great simple tables! On my first attempt to GM, after a 30 years pause, I tried to add intrigue, trauma, politics, etc. Result: A total and utterly failure that resulted in an ongoing 5-year pause. 😞

That's one take in my book. I see nothing wrong here. Great video for sparking ideas, nice job.

You’re right my villains don’t need to be morally grey… Because the first thing my party did was attack a band of paraplegics, you see I had planned Atlantis, a city sunken in the sea to be at odds with my player party but now they’re at odds with the “Paraplegion”

I've been looking forward to this

Adding endless layers of detail is my happy place. Yes, most of it will never be known-but it’s fun so…

Thanks man.

Sooooooo close to perfection lol 😆

That was awesome. Great job, and I say close enough for one take. ☺️

Last year I was potentially going to be a GM for D&D at my local library. But no one signed up to play:( I planned a campaign that would start with Dragons of Icespire Peak with some added twists & sidequests & NPCs I created. Then it would move on to Dragons of Stormwreck Isle with yet more added "Homebrew" things. After that it would move on to an Ancient Tomb Questline with my own twists and things. Additionally, with all this I had my own "Homebrew/House Rules" that would be incorporated with everything. 1 of those things is: Every Plane of Existence is connected to each other, so any & all Races & Backgrounds are allowed as long as they are officially created and/or are from Unearthed Arcana. As well as my own improved Vampire Race & improved Lycanthrope Race.

Great video as usual Bob. Informative and endearing.

Matt definitely practices, and is still edited.

This video really is a bunch of BS to carry a sponsored ad

I count it as one take still, great content! Thanks!

Living up to your channel name! The neutral party idea in particular is a pretty good tip. You did forget one thing, however. The LONGEST part of campaign creation as we all know is coming up with a cool name or title for it.

Thank you! Excellent simple explanation that's made me feel more ready to DM!

That was still really impressive, n I like that you just kept it in, keeps it honest and down to earth. Thanks again for the ideas!

I disagree. Having moral choices permeate the entire campaign is what makes the best campaigns. These games are about making decisions and therefore, interesting decisions are more desirable than simple ones. The problem is if you arrive at the villain and at that final confrontation is when players learn the bad guy has a legitimate reason for doing what he is doing. Ideally, this villain should be making arguments to them the entire time and the climax of the story shouldn't be killing the villain. It should be the debate on whether to kill the villain or to join them and help them accomplish their worthy ends. Ethical dilemmas are the corner stone to so many stories and games do this better than any other media because games let us have a conversation with the medium. They force the players to look at the moral arguments and decide who is right and why, to which the GM gets to react to and add consequences to keep this conversation about right and wrong going. Make both sides both right and wrong and let your players weigh the evidence and decide which side they find persuasive. It makes for way better gameplay than whether your skill checks succeeded or not.

Nice...and...in one take!

I've always wanted to do a fully random generated session.

Сool video! How many takes did it take, if it's not a secret? :) by the way, for those who didn’t watch it to the end - watch it ;)

Thank you for the great ideas. And Thank you for the great laugh at the end!

So on a wild hair I rolled up stuff as he went and I am curious what other people think how they'd run it. Here are the results Players Packed Tundra/Desert Camp - Smithy 3rd party - Spiders? Bad guys - Spell Caster and summons Bad guys Needs Status, wants Control, they do not have it because Opposition Bad guys are in a Needle-like forest, in a cave in a city?

pretty sure you mean 'flushing out' npcs... :D

ah so close lol. still great video!

Great video! I love how you utilized random tables to give you an entry point! Thank you for sharing!

Nailed it

I won’t lie, this is helping me considerably with my campaign. I have the idea but writing it down and actually making sessions has been the most difficult thing for me. And with my players anxiously waiting for me to give the go ahead, this will help me summarise what I need to so we can finally kick some undead ass! Thank you bob!

It's 1.29am and I was going to sleep but hey now I'm making a campaig instead. Great video Bob. Also "The bad man punted Baxter!!" 😂😂

If you don't like the random rolls you can also just pick one of the options that suits the campaign you want to build. Or you can reroll options that turn out to be too chaotic or seem out of place. Also I would totally have made the villain being a vampyric star fleet officer who feeds on mermaids or something similarly stupid.

Loves you showing some Spongebob images because of the aquatic city rolled location! 😂😂😂😂 Plus, thanks for leaving in the slight dialogue flubs at the end! 👍👍👍👍😂😂😉😉

My PDF copy of The Fantasy Campaign Quick Builder has a text formatting issue (upload dated Feb 19, 2024). Specifically, the text for the graph paper is shifted over the other text making it hard to read.

My first attempt: Where are the main characters? 1 4 - Ocean 4 - Camp 2 - Smithy Who are the NPC factions? Boss & minions: 12 - Ghost and apparitions Contenders: 3 - Colonists What does the boss need/want? Needs: 2 - Knowledge Wants: 3 - Transcendence Why don't they have it? 3 2 - Opposition from a political faction Wilderness site: 2 Tomb A "ghost"... I'm going to allow this to correspond to a lich-like entity, an evil sorcerer who is trying to attain godhood through illicit means. He disdains all that is fleshly and physical. His first attempt at attaining godhood merely resulted in him becoming a ghost. Not nearly the payoff he was looking for. So now he is hunting for new knowledge, that will give him the ability to transcend his ectoplasmic existence and bestow upon him true godhood. The only way he can do any work on this plane is by possessing physical creatures. Recently it has come to his attention that the secrets of divinity might be found in the land's Tomb of Kings. After all, legend has it that the first ruler of this land became a god after his death. He has heard a rumor indicating that the details of how the ruler managed this are spelled out on the walls of the Tomb. However, the Tomb is a sacred space, well-warded against undead (like himself). The only way ANYONE accesses the Tomb of Kings is when a king dies (naturally enough). So he needs to find a way to (1) kill the current king, and (2) infiltrate the group that is responsible for burying the king, and possess one of its members (basically a pallbearer) before they enter the Tomb, since the wards would not prevent him from entering if he was possessing a living body (or at least, so he thinks.) Then he will be free to enter the Tomb and study its secrets, in the mad hopes of attaining godhood. This land is already politically unstable, as it is being reached by colonists who are here to find a new home. Perhaps some of the colonists are comfortable living alongside the natives; however, others desire to expand their territory - and may be happy with the idea of deposing the extant reigning authority, if it would facilitate that. Our heroes begin in the smithy of a camp on the ocean shore. Perhaps they were/are part of a delegation sent by the king to the settlers' colony, to negotiate some sort of treaty. Little do they know how endangered the good king's life really is! (Perhaps the king himself is coming with them? And we'd make him a good and likable person, whom the PC's develop a personal connection to and desire to protect at all costs. Or maybe he sends a close member of his family; the queen, or the prince/princess, who is similarly likable.) Methinks it's not bad for a first attempt; posting it here for anyone who might need inspiration!

Not going to lie. I straight up just copied all those tables and will be using them. New DM here. So this will be gold for when I create my first campaign. THANKS!!!

BBEG: The BBEG in my campaign started a cult dedicated to raising Titans to destroy (and renew) the face of the realm. Mid-campaign, the PCs found the BBEG rotting away in a prison! Already defeated, captured. He doesn't care, however, because orders have already been given to other cult members and the plans go on with or without the leader. Now what?

I'd say - even if you _are_ a professional writer, it's difficult to write a morally complex villain. Even in books. I can think of a stack of morally complex villains that get interpreted as non-villain victims-of-circumstance when they're not intended to be, just off the top of my head, and those are in novels where the person writing that villain has complete authorial control over what gets said and done by and in proximity to that villain. There are also, on the flip side of this, characters which are intended to be morally complex, whose intended complexities get totally ignored by their audience because they say or do something that makes them completely [edit: correct prefixes] irredeemable in the eyes of the audience. And you'd think this would be big, awful stuff - but just as often it's something to do with mistreatment of a pet or insulting someone's dress sense; people are weird like that. Morally complex characters are tricky. People's morals might tend to be complex things IRL, but their day-to-day interactions with those morals are not necessarily as complex, so - yes, it's not something you can just _ask_ people to engage with and expect good results. They've got to be interested in it to begin with, especially in the context of a game that you are presumably playing for fun. Otherwise you risk that engagement with moral complexities turning into an argument over the fine details of actual people's actual moral values IRL, and thatis rarely if ever a fun time.

This was so helpful. I have never played DND and I just bought a starter set and I already made a campaign thanks to your video

Awesome video and great and useful tables. I just think storywise, what they want and they need are inverted. Usually, characters don't know what they need, and they think that what they want is what they need , when in reality is something else. 😅

planning on doing my first campaign soon for a bit of fun, and was just so stuck on a good plot-point, this really helped me to start getting things into perspective, and hopefully make a really fun campaign!

Gathering what the player enjoys and their character's motivations helps with the adventure hook and central conflict. If they player or character are less inclined, or do not have a stake in the adventure outcome/fallout, that can make the game play a bit poorly. At least that has been my experience. When everything aligns well, then the conflict matters. The stakes are high. And the adventure has consequence.

The NPC want and how they plan to get it are very familiar. The 'why don't they have it yet' though... Is this to flesh out background / history of the situation? I can see it being useful but wondering about others ideas.

Im making a Roguelike campaign where an arch wizard foresees a prophecy where Zariel God of the underworld is planning an invasion of the material plane. The arch wizard alerts the city and soon 4 great adventurers are willing to come to the challenge. The wizard is able to open a portal to the lowest layer of hell and send you all in! but.. you die trying.. Thankfully! The wizard was able to resurrect you all, unfortunately after all of that he is drained for the day. Tomorrow.. we try again.. XP will work great for this adventure as you slowly chip away at the layers through hell getting awesome magic items and loot along the way and as the city learns what you all are trying to do and some adventurers from other times roll into town to help you out in this long grind through hell. Hows that? any feedback?

I don't understand @ 1:10 how there are so many options and you only rolled 2d4. did I miss something? nvm. i figured it out.

me with a prequel one shot who turned the bad guy back to good again: 'im getting mixed feelings here.... nah its fine.'

Force them to go places. 'You get struck by a blinding light that transports you to ..........'

thank you for this, i've been trying to write a cool small campaign and all the videos i watched didn't appeal to me but this really got me thinking, Love lists and a pattern of doing things so it looks random. and the fact i can number stuff and roll dice to decide stuff gives me ideas.

Well this provides about half of super glue. I need to hold my first module together. Thanks!

the way he said "they can't do the blood ritual until the blood moon rises!" reminded me of brian david gilbert somehow sdnkndskgd

Your channel is God-tier, Bob. Keep up the great work!!