The first time I DM'd, it was my first time playing D&D. There were things I didn't know - like that you had to divide XP between the players. I didn't know much about what made for a balanced combat encounter, and I did a fair bit of railroading (to be fair, I still do that a bit - sometimes it's best if the players have a strong sense of where to go.)
For this campaign, I've done a ton of prep work - figuring out not just my main villains, but also an entire cast of side-villains. I'm also having players work on their characters while the first session is still over a month away.
Now, there is the old expression: Man plans, God laughs. A lot could go wrong and change here. The adventure I wrote for my original campaign in 2017 is one we have only just started (and that campaign has seriously stalled - to be honest, I feel a lot of guilt about starting a new campaign while that one's still going, but I think this is the best way for me to actually get to run a long-term campaign in any consistent manner, which is what I want to do.)
At this point, I have six players who have given me at least a rough idea of their characters (race, class, and guild,) but the group is large, which means I still have plenty who have yet to tell me their ideas (my roommate has suggested potentially de-leveling his Rakdos Goblin Bard from a one-shot I ran last year, but he hasn't committed to that concept yet - in part because he's worried that it might be harder to maintain a character who's essentially a rock star serial killer long term if there are any good-aligned members of the party.)
Here's one challenge I've given myself for this campaign:
There are only three recurring NPCs that I'm going to use that aren't being created by the players. One is Jace Beleren (the campaign is called Jace's Irregulars, as it's a group of people sent by the ten guilds to work for the Office of the Guildpact,) another is Arrester Lavinia (who doesn't seem to have a last name?) and the last is Elder Filidon, a Selesnya Loxodon I've invented who also works for the Guildpact and is basically the group's primary administrator.
I'm leaning on the players to come up with their Contacts. In Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, you come up with, essentially, three NPCs associated with your character - an ally and a rival from your guild, and an acquaintance from another guild (if you're Dimir, you instead come up with an ally and rival from the guild you've infiltrated and then your Dimir handler, whom you might not even meet.)
The intention is that these contacts are going to make up, essentially, the entire extended cast of the campaign. There will, for sure, be some additional NPCs who pop up to prompt quests, and of course there are going to be recurring villains, but for the innocuous "supporting" characters, it's going to, ideally, be all player-created.
As an example, one player's Azorius Order Cleric has an ally who is a golem bartender that runs "Form 2B-Delta," a bar for members of the Azorius Senate that has a two-drink minimum as well as a two-drink limit (though those in the know can order their drinks "Polite" and get them just half-full) and has a little open-mic stage where people can come and give lectures and seminars on various matters of political philosophy and argue about legislation and regulations. (The name, Form 2B-Delta, is an inside joke that only Azorius Functionaries would get, or find funny. We're really playing up the Azorius as awkward nerds here.)
I don't know where I'm going to use this golem (imagining him as basically a Warforged, with speech and, like, a soul) but I know he'll put in an appearance.
Anyway, I'm profoundly excited to run this campaign, and but I'm also kind of excited about how much time I have for players to figure out their characters.
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