Your D&D Plots Suck Because... 

This is true. While the web conceit is great for making the world feel integrated, if the player characters lack internal conflict in their stories then the narrative will ultimately amount to nothing more than a bunch of heroes team up to fight evil. I guess that's up to the players, though.

Some good advice I got from another DM was that the players don’t know what the DM preps. We can add or remove whatever, we can change things on the fly. All the players want is something to invest in that pique their interest and that usually involves the players’ characters themselves.

He has an hour long video on here going into detail

For anyone thinking the same thing @thexasti gave great advice in one of the earlier comments on how to solve this. Though I do think the advice in the video is great too.

Sure! A simple example would be linking 2 PC backstories through the same NPC. Say an unnamed soldier trains the fighter and a named NPC eventually becomes the mentor for a paladin. You can connect those two ideas by the soldier being the paladin's mentor. Now there is a link that spiral off into other topics. As for working towards the end, that is also easy. Honestly this is the best response to @thexasti's comment. As you progress and gain plot nodes, you connect them together into larger and larger concepts. Ideally you use PC backstories as the tent poles for this method, always trying to plug things in when you can at the start. Then the further you go on, you continue to weave things together organically until they conclude at something. However by not having a central node in mind, you run the risk of bloating your campaign and not being able to bring it together at a satisfying conclusion (an example of this would be Critical Role's campaign 2 where they needed an entire mini campaign to wrap up SOME of the story because it had grown too large). The great thing about this method is you can easily add in new plot nodes to the structure and shift around the entire campaign. You might find that the central node at the start of your campaign changes along the way. I still recommend having something you can call the center at the start just so that you have a bit of focus. But all DMs should do what makes them most comfortable and allows them to run the best campaign they can!

@enterthedungeon If i were to do this in a modular fashion, it would be linking a players backstory, lineage/species, class, background or goal to a location, npc, item or event and then have an overlap with one of those factors for another player?

You've pretty much got it. Pick that first node, link it to another location, npc, etc. and have it overlap. The overlap is the most important part at least for me and my players.

I was hoping to find an answer for this myself. I know there are various mind-mapping tools out there, but I have no idea which (if any) are any good.

What I'm attempting to point out is. Players are not stupid. Eventually they will see the links and read into the connections into the central node. If they don't like that node they may specifically resist traveling towards it. So create a new one and repurpose the old central node. Possibly several minor ones depending on what the characters changes what is the event in that final node. Keep in mind the other pieces of the web your players haven't accessed yet and pull that into the central area as well or. Repurpose that into a new branching story pulling partly on its origin in the old one. Anyway ideas and extensions on the displayed concept.

While I disagree with this being railroading, but 100% agree that if your players aren't bought into the central concept of a campaign, then they won't enjoy it. Luckily, as you pointed out, if your original central node isn't working you can switch it to the thing your players are more interested in. I've done this in many of my campaigns. Thanks for commenting!

Apologies I feel this needed a better explanation the character was originally a Ranger he asked converted into a cleric using his previous domains I created a version of Sehanine Moonbow named after Deanna Troi's late sister (Kestra) because his then setting used Star Trek characters as Deities. Once the game started he shifted it to the Dawn War Pantheon which wasn't necessary since it wasn't set on Exandria, but after the first session where my character's only motivation was answering a call for aid from her son he proceeded to kill off said son off screen and refused to let her confirm his death or simply leave it as unconfirmed. The hamlet he set that opening game ended up at was a damn good place to start a low level game but he then shifted it back to the port city as he literally cannot run the game properly! I ran my game next so answered his stupidity by revealing my character was banished from an entirely different world of Exandria and was recovering from temporary amnesia after her son was killed in the opening events of the game I ran. Literally fulfilled that part in about 15-20 minutes then gave them the chance to go wherever they wanted and instead of actually exploring the setting they latched on to the missing prince and refused to be budged until they met determined resistance than hid and sneaked around avoiding open conflict where they could even when it involved talking to NPCs who knew something they should have been wanting to find out as in the case of the Fallen Aasimar Folk Hero and his late father's twin brother who left the royal guards along with others in protest at the cover up of his nephew's parents murder. He literally left him behind and ran rather than talk to him! The Sorceror player often had to run his wife's rogue character as she wasn't that interested in the game so he asked for her character to lose her four Bard sidekicks who comprised her own thieves guild. The Sorceror is wearing a vestige that caused the death of everyone in his village and he wants to strip his wife's character of her starting magical item because he found them boring! Then he pulled his stunt in his game and demonstrated he can't even keep that straight! Sorry the way I looked at that his stunt moved my game setting off of Exandria and destroyed his own with his port city replacing the shattered capital where my setting had been located but my character didn't come along as she was still banished. If he ever reads this let him know his character is presumed killed when a certain Falazure the Night Dragon from Izmer was released by his "mistake" only driven off by the returned Vall as Rothenel is now where Bottlequay had been before it was dumped where Gileam was. All of that happened before the opening of the last session I played in since it was only after that he decided to jump settings! Please note ALL of Rothenel was moved so none of the characters they played are still present so if they do jump settings to his game they aren't the same characters but I see no reason to deny them that option as its the only way they can continue running those characters in a setting set ONE HUNDRED YEARS before Vox Machina first appeared! I suspect they've overlooked that part! Given I cannot continue this game because of that act of stupidity the other characters are now NPCs in Wrenn where I will treat them decently since they had nothing to do with that idiocy! Many thanks if you do manage to let them know about this just tell Vince to change his sword into a Battle Axe +1 with the ability to turn into 2 Moon Touched Hand Axes and Paul's holy symbol is now +1 as he's lost the reliquary he was carrying. Vince always preferred axes as his characters weapon and Paul wasn't interested in the reliquary anyway.

I think having an idea of who or what the main threat of your campaign is and connecting it in the same way is common. It's even advice given in the DMG when making a campaign. Though i really do like the advice you gave in the bottom paragraph and it iust answered the question I left in a different comment. Thank you for the advice, but remember we all build and play differently and though the advice may not apply for you it may be helpful for somebody else. Personally the video was helpful for me because I've recently tried building with the main threat of an arc in mind, but I usually don't and have still had the problem of making the story feel cohesive which again your advice has definitely helped give me a plan of action to rectify. Thanks, hope all your sessions are great.

I want to try and answer this comment bit by bit because I think there are some misunderstandings. "It is implying that the best campaigns are fully written before the first session and the bbeg is someone you are constantly building towards." Like I said in the video, it's important to add to the plot web. New things are going to pop up and be added. As for something you're building towards, while BBEG is an example it doesn't have to be. Largely my campaigns are centered around a concept. However, every prewritten D&D campaign ever written was built around a villain, a final dungeon, an item, or a core concept. Every D&D campaign I've ever been a player in has done the same no matter what style it was. "What you should do is start your campaign and wrap threads together." My assumption is that this sandbox style of a campaign is the type you enjoy most. These are fun campaigns. But other players and DMs might sit down at the table wanting a story. They want a grand narrative or a game that doesn't meander from session to session. In that case, they would be unhappy with this type of campaign. However, even with a sandbox campaign, there still is a central concept (sometimes a BBEG). It can be as simple as "exploring the world" or "helping the kingdom" or "becoming great adventurers." The campaign will naturally balance around something (whether the DM intends it too or not). "you let it happen as the players direct." In any TTRPG campaign, players are directing the action. However since the Game Master creates the world, that underlying structure is our responsibility. How, what, and to some extent when things interact flow through the GM in this medium. Just because you construct these background connections doesn't mean that players are not directing the game. They act as a structure which makes the game feel more fluid and real. With all that being said, this might be terrible advice for DMs! I don't know. However, dozens of other DMs and me have used this method for years with great success. But just because a piece of advice works for some people doesn't mean it'll work for all.

@@enterthedungeon Thank you for the reply. My point about wrapping threads together is to tell a grand narrative when you don't have any clue where it's going. Critical Role, Campaign 2 had a massive plot arc about the Drow. But the first dozen sessions had no direct threads to it. They resolved two minor arcs that did not touch the central narrative. The bbeg, the main one in my campaign is TBD. There are several contenders but how they interact with and survive the players determines if they are going to be the final and ultimate bbeg or not. I'm not going to warp a story to insist a singular entity is the bbeg because the campaign I've plotted out demands it. That is both unsatisfying to a player and to me as the DM. I don't know where the story is going, and I'm happy with that. The players determine the trajectory and I build along it as they go. Was the npc in session 3 the final bbeg? Or the King of the kingdom? The players' actions determine that and that will tell a much more player driven story. I have an artifact the players need to recover. If they fail, the entity it imprisons will be their bbeg. But I'm not going to force that outcome. If they players succeed, that threat is gone. It won't be easy for them to do so but it will be up to them and their actions to decide how it plays out. My concern is that new DM's will watch this and think they must have a singular bbeg and tie everything together ahead of time instead of after the fact. And when the players effectively kill or cripple or prevent the bbeg from being able to be the bbeg, they panic and railroad the campaign to get "back on track". You are correct, a lot of campaigns have a central narrative and thread. Concept, person, place. But they don't always have to and the most compelling story is one that bears the mark of your passing.

He isn't pre-writing the campaign. He's creating connection that already exist in the world that can be levied as the campaign goes on, creating an overaching connective structure that guides and shapes the sessions in a meaningful non-bullshit-random way.