Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 237 - Short vs Long Campaigns

Episode Date: September 8, 2024

Running long campaigns requires a different focus than running short adventures or one shots.  Each has their own challenges but trying to run one the same way you run the other will lead to burnout or a disastrous disconnected adventure.  In this episode I discuss the difference between these two types of adventures and how GMs must change their tactics to maximize their chance to run a successful game.   #pf2e #Pathfinder #gmtips #dmtips #dnd #campaigns Resources: Roll 4 Initiative - Digital or Physical? Best Ways to Take Notes in D&D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bJepWSFoxg Roll 4 Initiative - GM Diary - Note Taking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZIMf4r_PM8 Roll 4 Initiative - Note-Taking Tips for TTRPG Players https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhocTIb58hM

This week on The Taking Twenty Podcast. Every new plot hook or side quest that you add means there's a chance that the PCs will bite on that and suddenly they're trying to figure out who's stealing Farmer Maggot's crop rather than trying to return the One Ring. Thank you for listening to The Taking Twenty Podcast, episode 237, talking about the differences between DMing one-shots and short campaigns versus long girl campaigns. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Nuts. I know, I know, there are a lot of puns about Nuts.

So I'll tell you what, I'll try to cash you up. If you're new to the podcast, welcome, and thank you so much for downloading. And if you're not new, well then welcome back. I'm so glad that you're here. If you wouldn't mind, please take a moment to like rate and subscribe wherever you happen to find the podcast. I'm going to start this episode with a thank you to everyone for being patient and forgiving of the new every other week schedule. I've received nothing but kind words from so many different people and I'll admit I was disappointed that I needed to move to an every other week schedule but it has been a godsend. These past two weeks were

absolutely bonkers at work and I needed every second of this extra time to get this episode put together so thank you so much for continuing to listen. By the way, if you do have feedback for me, I would love to hear it. Send it to me via direct message on Facebook or Instagram or via email feedback at taking20podcast.com. One thing that dawned on me moving to this new schedule though is that RPG news sometimes moves really fast. Wizards of the Coast tried to pull some more shenanigans when they announced a few weeks ago that D&D Beyond would support the 2024 ruleset and if you had purchased and owned the 2014 ruleset, you'd have to do some homebrew solutions to import that older data from the

archives into your current game. Thankfully, they have backtracked on that announcement and now both editions will be available on D&D Beyond if you own them both, so you can still make a character with the 2014 ruleset if you like and if that's what your DM recommends you use for their campaign. Wizards of the Coast just can't stop with the bad press. Their PR department must have drinking habits that have ruined their livers. With the OGL shenanigans, the Pinkerton mess, and accidentally releasing Magic the Gathering cards, and now saying that players will lose access to purchase products before walking that back, they've had a pretty rough I'm gonna say

18 months. But I'm disappointed to say that recently Paizo pulled its own fuckery by trying to replace the community use policy they've had in place for 15 years with a new fan content policy with no feedback and no warning. This fan content policy was more restrictive since it required creators to remove setting-specific characters and terms to comply with the Ork license and limited the publishing of work to approved platforms like Roll20 or Pathfinder Infinite. A number of free tools that are out there that a lot of our DMs and players use for Pathfinder 1e and 2e would have been crushed by this change and would have had to undergo some sort of massive edit to remove all the references to content that Paizo wanted to

protect. In other words, you had to remove a lot of Pathfinder lore and creatures and names from your published adventures, novels, character builders, or what-have-you, and you could only sell your work in a couple of places. However, Paizo also recanted by allowing fans to still monetize their creations through the fan content policy, just with the freedoms that they previously had under the community use policy, which they then reinstated. Paizo has confirmed they'll be refining these policies to clearly define what commercial uses of their products are allowed.

Okay, Paizo, I love you all so much. I really, really do. You are my favorite publisher out there, and I completely understand the need to make money from your product, but even more so than D&D, Paizo's success really rides on the support of the community. My sincere hope is that they publish any future proposed changes to the community for comment and genuinely listen to what the players, publishers, and GMs have to say about it. Goodwill takes years to build and can be lost in seconds.

Please, Paizo, look at Wizards of the Coast as a cautionary tale. Don't follow their missteps and please keep your community involved. Hopefully the next couple of weeks before the next episode will be quieter on the news front. Now, thank you for listening. On to the episode. There are adventures and then there are advent-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u that can last for years until this plucky group of former apprentices are challenging powerful casters, huge monsters, and maybe even creatures just the side of a demigod. There is a huge difference behind the screen running a 224 page Shadow of the Dragon Queen versus a 22 page module called Killer Kobolds from Outer Space. Don't get me wrong, both are fun in their own way, but there are different secrets to success for those two types of

adventures. Let's start with the shorter adventures, your brief 20 to 30 page modules available on Pathfinder Infinite, DriveThruRPG, DM's Guild, D&D Beyond, and a number of other places. It may seem contradictory, but shorter adventures I think require more structure to the campaign. To get this adventure done in three sessions, or four sessions, or even one session for the case of a one-shot as we like to call them, you always have to keep the end in mind for every decision that you make to keep the game moving. That might mean trimming some fat around the edges like detailed character backstories or extensive NPC reveals. You're only going to be using these

characters for like a month. Now is not the time for the characters to have a two pages written about the loss of their parents after the copper crisis five years ago. With shorter adventures especially one shots you really have to keep focus to complete on time. Shorter adventures will tend to have more rails, or I guess, I'm sorry, a better way to say that is that shorter adventures will stay closer to the rails than longer adventures will have to. And what do I mean by that? There will be fewer side quests and rabbit trails to chase.

Fewer plot hooks to dangle. Fewer chances for the party to wander and discover something new. Every new plot hook or side quest that you add means there's a chance that the PCs will bite on that and suddenly they're trying to figure out who's stealing farmer maggots crop rather than trying to return the one ring. Painting with a broad brush, shorter campaigns have to be more pared down. To keep the adventure short, plots must be reduced to almost the bare minimum. Person A stole object B and the players have to go find it. The museum is haunted and the PCs have to figure out

the source and defeat it. The molar munch goblin tribe has taken over the kids playground outside of the local school and the PCs have to chase them off and convince them not to come back. Simple plots for smaller shorter adventures. Go to place A, do thing B, the end. Shorter adventures generally don't have you going to 17 different places to find the six keys of time to plug it in and stop the world from spinning backwards. That sure would be a fun campaign but it also sounds like a lot of work by both the PCs and the DM for that matter. Solving all of those problems can't be done in just a few short adventure sessions that would be satisfying in any way.

Shorter campaigns also tend to have a smaller cast of NPCs. Now is not the time to have the cast of thousands and have the PCs spend half a session interacting with Josie the blacksmith's apprentice, learning all about why she's working there, her family troubles like her younger brother who has struggled in school and her mother who caught a mild case of leprosy and scabies. Sure, adding those details makes that NPC richer and more three-dimensional, but in short adventures, you may want to keep these types of lengthy interactions to a minimum. Shorter adventures also generally won't have many, if any, tie-ins to character backstories.

There's just not enough time to add in these interesting and fun, but potentially game-slowing moments like that. You don't have time to have two separate side quests to solve the reason why the barbarians parents were in the Red Mantis Assassins. Further, smaller adventures tend to have fewer locations for the PCs to travel to. More than likely they'll be maybe one source where they go get the quest and a destination that they have to go to to solve the quest. Throw in another location or two, maybe something transitioning from one to the other, but that's about it. Not

many locations at all. Encounters that you do have in shorter adventures probably should be a little simpler. This doesn't mean that every combat has to happen in a featureless plane with nothing interesting going on, but combat objectives really should be fairly plain. Now isn't the time to break out the combat that you've always wanted to run that requires the PCs to decide whom to side with in a six different warring clans all show up to the same volcanic lake at the same time. There's lava spewing traps and heat damage and groups fighting each other and the PCs, well okay, one group switches sides and...

Hang on a minute. I gotta write this down. This is actually a neat idea I'll never have time to use, but I'm gonna write it down anyway. I keep saying it, but it means you need to keep the adventure tight and the pace moving so that you can get everything accomplished in the short duration of your adventure. Most groups can only do about one encounter per hour. And if you're intending this entire campaign to be 5 sessions and each session is 3 hours, then you have 5 sessions

times 3 hours per session, 15 encounters for the entire campaign. And that assumes no time for exploration or exposition. Which, now that I put that down and got it recorded, it's not really practical. I can't imagine a good adventure that would be encounter, encounter, encounter, encounter, encounter, end. So you need to leave some room for explanations and fart jokes and opportunities for roleplay. So realistically, those 15 encounters probably just dropped to 10 or maybe even fewer. And for clarification, what do I mean by an encounter? Just about anything where the players have to roll dice. Could be combat, could be social interaction, could be rolls not to get lost in the forest, 15 at most, probably closer to 10, so you can

plan those encounters out from the beginning to ensure you get finished on time. As you're preparing these shorter adventures, you can probably guess the direction the adventure is going to go, at least the next few sessions. While you're preparing these shorter adventures, you can probably guess the direction the adventure is going to go, at least the next few sessions. While you're preparing the adventure, you should start thinking about what the cliffhangers for each session will be. Where those cliffhangers are, by the way, are entirely up to you and your preference. Do you like to have a cliffhanger where the monsters reveal but combat hasn't started yet? Or do you prefer to end your session in the middle of combat after dramatic moment or after a big plot reveal? Look at the adventure as a whole and start looking for those natural breakpoints that you and your party enjoy that can

serve as cliffhangers from one session to the next. Shorter adventures also generally don't have the weight or the stakes that longer adventures do. I'm sure there are some very short adventures where in three to five sessions you save an entire plane of existence or planet from a galactus type threat but by their nature of being shorter adventures usually the scale of the adventure is smaller as well. Think in terms of saving a town, a region, or a country if you're having a smaller shorter adventure. On the other hand, longer adventures, harder to pin down. Yes, they have more pages, more encounters,

more, more, more of just about everything. However, the challenges will vary depending on the type of adventure you're running. Plus, I don't know how else to say it, but shorter adventures can be nuttier and zanier and more disconnected from the lore of the world. Everybody remembers Elminster and the Avatar Crisis, which in-world would probably be a tale passed down from aspiring mage to aspiring mage, but what about that time that Bob and

the Cork siblings took care of that Displacer Beast threat? That would barely be in the history books of the town right next to where it happened. You don't have to worry about all the lore and history and connections that you would in a longer campaign. So to sum up, if you're running shorter adventures you should be worried about getting everything in in the little gaming time that you have. Keep the adventure close to the rails and the cast and stakes fairly minimalistic and you've set yourself up for success. Now let's move on to longer adventures like your Storm King's Thunder or full Paizo adventure paths like Blood Lords or Kingmaker which require a different mindset behind the screen. Longer adventures that are homebrewed or aren't following a pre-printed adventure can be more

improv when it comes to preparation, story direction, etc. Because even if you misstate something, even if you take things the exact wrong direction, there's plenty of time to steer it back on track if it goes too far in the woods. However, longer pre-printed adventures require a lot of preparation and note-taking. Needless to say, that means longer adventures require a lot more reading by the DM. The Wizards adventures they publish in hardback, like Descent into Avernus or Curse of Strahd often have intricate plots with a large number of NPCs and locations for the DM to keep track of. It makes it difficult to be ready for session one because there's considerable prep

work required. DMs have to read like 150 to 250 pages to truly understand the adventure and be ready to foreshadow events and properly introduce elements like plot hooks, politics, factions, and so forth. It's hard enough to remember all the rules of a game, much less keep the adventure straight when you're trying to juggle 100 pages of adventure knowledge and lore in your head at a time. Plus, longer adventures are harder to end on the right note because they are, by their very nature, higher level adventures. Long adventures like full Paizo adventure paths or D&D hardcovers may start you off at level 5 and might finish at level 15 or maybe

even higher. One adventure that is just about to wrap up that I'm in started us at level 1 and we're finishing at level 20. Higher level combats and adventures are just so much more complex, and it makes these adventures harder to manage and harder to find a satisfying end. I mean, if your character is 17th level, chances are they're not going to get a big thrill out of cleaning out a kobold warren, no matter how big that warren is. So the DM has to find a level appropriate threat that would challenge the PCs and allow them to feel like it wasn't just handed to them. At level 5, easy to do. Level 15, a lot harder. Those higher levels have a less variety of creatures. There's only so many times you can pull out the Tarasque or a Lich or an Ancient

Dragon or the Kraken before the players feel like they've been there, done that, and got the t-shirt. But level 6 boss fight? Oh, you got tons of options, more than you can shake a stick at. Longer adventures also require attention to detail than much better note-taking skills by both the party and the GM. As the GM, you should be taking notes about who the PCs have interacted with, what they've learned about various locations and NPCs, how much lore you've revealed, what secrets still exist, side quests they can still find, where they're at on the main quest, and the list goes on and on and on.

Players also should be taking notes to keep track of similar information, and hopefully between the two or more sets of notes that you have, everyone can agree on where the party is and where everyone left off. While we're on this topic, I want wanna give some love to a great trio of videos created by content creator Roll4initiative on YouTube. If you're watching on YouTube, I'll put a link to the resources to all three videos up in the corner.

If you're listening, then please check the resources of the episode. I've exchanged a few emails with Dawn, and she's an amazing person, and she and Ryan have a great channel full of information. Personally, as with a player and a GM, I prefer digital note taking. It's easy to paste data from the adventure directly into your notes and I type much faster than I can write.

Plus in critical times I can even turn on my speech to text and it captures everything I'm telling the players without my having to write it all down. One last note about longer adventures, they give you the flexibility to include what I mentioned before, side quests, backstory quests, additional objectives, and basically room to fill out the game. You can give your players that customized experience because of the sheer length of the adventure that gives you the flexibility to do so. Having 50 sessions to work with makes it a lot easier to bring in the halflings who rescue people from slave trade compared to a quick five session adventure. Longer adventures are harder to run successfully because they tend to be higher level, require attention to detail, and good note-taking skills.

They require extra time to prepare to the amount of reading and or note-taking that you'll have to do. However, if not following a particular published adventure, they're easy to morph into exactly what the players want, focusing on their actions and backstory to more easily make them feel like the big damn heroes for a country, a region, a world, or maybe even an entire plane of existence. Meanwhile, shorter adventures tend to be smaller in scope

for both the problem being solved and the cast of NPCs that make an appearance. Keep those adventures closer to the rails with fewer side quests and simpler plots, and I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it. Hey, do you like this podcast? If so, please consider linking to an episode on social media or publishing and telling a friend about it or just helping me spread the word in general. Tune in in two weeks when I'm going to talk about a term that you'll likely see online all the time, the West Marches style campaign. What is it? How does it work? How is

it different? And do you have to go west? Tune in and find out. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Nuts. I'm trying to create a nut that tastes like chocolate, and when I get it right, I'm going to call it the Coco...nut. Wait a minute. This has been episode 237, giving you tips for long and short campaigns. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking20 Podcast is a publishing cube media production. Copyright 2024. I'm Jeremy Shelley and I hope that your next game is your best game.