Campaign Phase Shift

On the theme of 'how I prep' - sometimes you hit inflection points or changes to the campaign that require some unusual prep. My home campaign has been running a while, I have talked about 'shifting gears' before but there is an unusual prep condition that crops up when you *shift back* in trying to recapture an old campaign mode. This could also apply where you are trying to spin up a lore-true campaign in a setting with a lot of books; say a Baldurs Gate campaign with players who are Ed Greenwood fans and Forgotten Realms lore fiends - though that would be even worse for a DM. I touched on this in Ducal House Year 6 - DM Challenges - where the player-side solution is 'delegate' and 'domain manage' - but what is the DM to do?

The specific instance for me is that after a 'quest phase' which looks a lot like old school trad style landscape bashing, the party are back at base and once more in their urban familiar terrain of Thenya and its palace.

I was having a little trouble getting the 'urban campaign' gear back, after a whole section of the campaign that had been deliberately broader strokes, coarser grained days with faster time passing and fewer, shallower encounters with NPCs all those needed to be inverted (or consciously adapted where we decide to retain faster time passing in an urban setup).

I had been tracking the 'ongoing activities' - the actions their minions were taking care of and the few major NPCs that they would take the time to scry on a regular basis. It felt a little sparse; the palace, their base of activities, lived but the city did not.

Prep Notes

As the party bounced around the countryside, focused on their main mission, I had been doing a light touch view of actions within the city/realm, mostly the PCs own to-do list.

Each session I was doing a sweep up of
- actions they left on the boil
- factions and their agendas
- timeline evolution / consequences

The results of this can be seen in the 'timeline/consequences' section (box 7) for session 136.

Session 136 itself was an extended fight sequence as the party attempted to escape an ancient temple with while rescuing an ally, retrieving an artifact and holding off a swarm of undead pteradons and a pair of vrock. The session ended with them teleporting back to their home-base so the 'post-session consequences/next session set-up' needed to be focussed on their being back in their home city.

Episode 136 session sheet

Here I pulled forward the elements last left lying around - activities of their minions/hirelings, continuation of the threads set in motion last time they were in town - all this was fine, good information but it left the question of 'what is the rest of the city up to' unclear because the players focus prior to leaving had been on prep for the quest they just did and absolute emergencies. The faction politics and actions of other NPCs they were likely to check in on had fallen out of focus - if they had set off to visit old NPC pals I would have struggled. The gears of the city were no longer spinning in my head.

To overcome that trouble getting that mode back I had a look back 100 sessions to a previous 'full swing urban session set' for inspiration - going a few sessions forward and back to recall how the pacing had worked and what happened session on session.

Looking back to my old urban format and recalling while 'wilderness' adventures use space and distance, urban adventures use time so the days schedule (box 3) becomes important again.

In those couple of sessions there were activities happening at the palace, slower RP-heavy interactions with various NPCs, planning sessions, some palace dungeoneering and various social outings. I had rumours, notes on major NPCs opinions, rosters of who was present at the palace and social occasions for evenings.

Episode 33 session sheet

I decided no harm to re-activate or echo some of those elements that were seen in those sessions; pruning away ones that got resolved and expanding or escalating things that had been left to fester and run wild.

All this got folded into my single session prep format as a very extended 'post session notes / session consequences' work up.
- the long list of ideas
- till back over old soil
- make the NPCs spring back to life

These were collected into the 'consequences' part of the last sessions sheet (box 7) - this could have been done at any point but best if it is done relatively close to time of use so they are as fresh in mind as possible.

I was given the boon of session 137 was taken by the players for R&R, a stand-alone beach episode which bought me the time to do this prep.

Episode 137 session sheet

This set me up well for a 'report in and take stock' session 138 - this included resolving a plotline running since the start of the campaign by executing the last priest of a wicked god using their freshly-retrieved artefact. There was a run to an outlying fortress to stash said dangerous artefact, teleporting out to an outlying monastery to have dinner with a seer, teleporting back and then using the few hours before bed for some impromptu dungeoneering in the basement.

And of course - after all that set up for urban play - the players decide to visit the moon, to see if they could - but at least the base city breathes once more.