Given that my preference, generally, is to do my own stories in my own worlds in D&D, it's funny that at this stage, I've really run more D&D in an established setting - and not even a D&D-native one, at that. My Ravnica campaign is now over four-and-a-half-years running, the players are level 17 and about to enter the dungeon whose conclusion will get them to 18 (level 17 has been one of our longer chapters in the game, as I wanted to take some time off the main story to resolve a few character-specific threads).
But while I still have enough material to take us through, I'd guess, a year or more before we conclude the campaign after the party reaches level 20 (intending to have a decent chunk of the campaign taking place after hitting that max level so that people can actually enjoy all the power that comes with it - though given the plethora of powerful magic items the party has, I think they're near-god-like in power already,) I'm also feeling a strong urge to think about the next campaign I run.
For one thing, while some players have taken me up on my offer to let them convert to the 2024 version of their classes (our Barbarian is utterly devastating at this stage, in part because he's got an artifact weapon, but also because Brutal Strikes is downright nasty) it's been an opt-in choice that not everyone has taken. That's fine, but I do think moving forward, my assumed default is that you'll be playing the updated version of your class (I think I'll still allow the 2014 versions of classes and for sure subclasses, but in the former case I might need a bit of a justification - in the case of my ongoing campaign, I don't want to bait-and-switch anyone. Our Gruul Sorcerer has made ample use of various spells that summon creatures, and the new Conjure spells, while cool, don't give him the utility that he picked the spells for in the first place, so even if I really wish he were taking the new version of Counterspell, I'm ok with him sticking with the old-school stuff).
But while I've been pretty liberal in my rejiggering of Ravnica as a world to suit my tastes, I also think that this campaign's structure has been very rigid. I'd like to try something a bit more open-ended. Also, Ravnica's a setting that's 100% urban, and I'm eager to have some chance to do some adventure truly out in the wilderness (I have had the players travel to other planes from Magic the Gathering, and will, at level 20, actually have them journey to the D&D multiverse as well, but it's mostly been in Ravnica proper).
Again, given how far off the end of my Ravnica campaign is, I'm probably not going to be running another "full-fledged" D&D campaign until it's complete, though I've offered to run back-up side campaigns for when the DMs of the two I play in are unavailable or just need a break.
And here's my philosophy going forward:
The first is that I'm not going to come up with a major villain or overall arc for these campaigns until characters build a backstory. As much as I've dreamed of having the return of an ancient tyrannical dragon-emperor or a rival claimant to the throne within the empire that spans my setting's largest continent starting a civil war, these events - which will still probably be canonical in my overall timeline - are things I'll have to set aside unless they fit surprisingly well with the stories that my players come up with.
Instead, I'm going to present my setting, and likely focus in on one particular region of my setting (I've been working a lot on the kingdom of Wolfengard, which is the central part of that continent-spanning empire, and is probably the most "classic fantasy" part of the setting, being a kind of mix of British/German/French vibes,) telling the players about notable locations and giving them a map of the region, so that they can think about how their character fits into the place.
Now, I really like to write character backstories, even if they're a bit setting-agnostic. Sometimes I'll come up with my own towns and other locations. Often, I can just replace the names of such places with locations in the setting, like how I made my somewhat Western-themed Rogue in Wild Beyond the Witchlight a citizen of Red Larch in the Forgotten Realms.
But the thing is, this is my setting, made for me to run my game for my friends. And those friends are generally pretty creative people.
So, the hack that I'm really excited to try out is that I've built a map of Wolfengard in Inkarnate (the website that I use to make maps for my Ravnica game, which is played primarily online, as well as my friends' streaming show Legacy of Fools). The map has every location for the region I've come up with, including a number of major cities as well as some small towns that I've written adventures for (only some of which I've actually run). However, beyond these named locations, there are dozens of little town, village, and other symbols scattered across the map.
My intent, then, is that I will present the map to my players, and while they can easily just pick the established places, I'm going to encourage them to come up with their own locations on the map that are important to their characters, and we'll add those names to said map, making them canonical in any future campaigns or adventures I run in that setting.
But, for the purpose of that campaign, I figure this will give players a sense of buy-in and investment in the world, and allow them to really push some of their fantasy proclivities on the campaign. If a player really likes having stories involving fey whimsy, they can make a town that has a Fey Crossing in it. Perhaps someone really likes a kind of steampunk aesthetic, so they have a town that all works on clockwork and steam engines.
Essentially, fantasy is such a broad genre when you have an open mind about it, and think this is a way for the players to really be able to make it their kind of fantasy (though obviously, as DM, I'm going to inject a lot of myself into it as well).
Now, there are some challenges to running a campaign that's heavily player-directed. The simplest is just that players will often want some kind of prompt or breadcrumb to push them in the right direction. Simply saying "here's the world" and showing a bunch of locations will sometimes lead to players just wandering from place to place simply to fill out the map, as it were. Players also sometimes come up with more of a static portrait of what their character is like, and don't really think about the forward-moving plot that that character would pursue on their own.
The challenge, as a DM, as well, is to build a plot in which all the characters are equal stakeholders. I played in a campaign for years - a campaign I loved - that fell apart because the main plot of our campaign was very much focused on the quest of one player's character. And when that player moved to the East Coast and had a kid, our DM was somewhat at a loss for what, exactly, we were supposed to be doing. Meanwhile, and again, I don't want to throw this DM under the bus or anything, because I think she's really good at running D&D and is a good friend, some of us felt a little sad to find that we were sort of playing supporting roles rather than part of a co-equal ensemble (or, I should say, I felt that).
Two things can be done to ensure everyone's a crucial part of the narrative.
The first is to encourage your characters to build backstories together. While I enjoy a D&D campaign that starts with a group of strangers getting thrown together, I also think you can establish that cooperative spirit a little quicker if there's some shared history. It also makes combining characters' missions and goals easier. For example, Critical Role's first campaign has the twins Vex'halia and Vax'ildan, who were effectively orphaned (not counting their estranged elf father) by a dragon who wound up being one of the campaign's primary antagonists. While everyone in the party had plenty of reason to fight against Thordak the Cinder King, their story was tied into it personally.
Ideally, you want to take threads from all of your players' backstories and weave them together. Each character should have some goal, some question that needs answering, and hopefully, those answers can all play into the larger narrative.
Now, for sure some players are more comfortable writing backstories than others. I'm a writer by training and... calling, so it's actually one of the most enjoyable things in the world to write an RPG character backstory (in fact, it's especially fun because you get to set up a bunch of mysteries and questions but don't have to actually answer them!) So, I can rattle off a 6-8-page backstory with ease, and will usually try to edit that down a bit for the sake of my DM. But plenty of people will struggle to get more than a paragraph or two. And to be fair, some characters really like to discover their character in the playing.
So, what I like to (/would like to) do is just encourage players to keep some open-ended questions in their backstories. Have a friend or acquaintance who did something weird and unexpected, or have them witness some strange event. The point is, there should be something that happened that they don't totally understand. It should be impactful, but vague enough to let the DM push it into their larger campaign plot.
For example, I wrote a backstory for a 2024 Cloud Goliath Elements Monk. He's a sailor (and because I'm extra, he was a sailor on an airship and grew up in a floating town) whose commercial vessel, designed to collect elemental energy from storms, was shot out of the sky by a massive sky-dreadnought. He woke up on an island where he was found by the monks of a monastery, who trained him in their ways. A few days after he was rescued, the monastery was attacked by some other group of martial artists, whose motivations for the attack were unclear. However, there was a potential connection between the aggressors and the dreadnought, as one of the monks had a mask similar to the banner flown by the dreadnought: a golden bull on a crimson field.
And I, as a player, pointedly, have no idea what that could represent. Would my DM then determine that the party would, at some point, have to fight our way onto the dreadnought? Possibly. Is the golden bull actually a representation of Bael, the archdevil lieutenant of Zariel, meaning that the force behind all of this is the Nine Hells of Baator? Possibly. But furthermore, if some other player has a history of their village being raided by a horde of barbarians, what if there was a masked monk among them? Or perhaps they arrived from the sky, descending on ropes or some kind of magical parachutes from a massive ship in the sky?
Here, I think, the DM should pull different threads together from the backstories and figure out how to fit them together. First, the DM should talk with the players about what aspect of their backstory they really want to focus on (for example, that Monk also has a large number of brothers and sisters, but I'd be ok if they weren't particularly central to the plot) and then suggest an edit here or there, perhaps adding some element into that story (like the suggestion of making a masked monk or the dreadnought part of someone else's story).
Players can and probably should have some secrets, some things that only they and the DM know, and so a DM can suggest these elements for the players in an anonymous way.
Indeed, while this is more of an aspirational goal, I might even suggest creating a kind of flowchart and try to create at least one connection between each pair of player characters.
On ensemble-based TV shows, one of the ways they can come up with ideas for episodes is to pair up different members of the main cast. Your players in your D&D game are, essentially, the cast regulars of the TV show that is your campaign. Finding elements that each pair of characters will be invested in, and seeing their distinct approaches to that element, can be a great source of roleplaying and inspire you to create a lot of different kinds of adventure.
You will, at some point, need to come up with some major elements that the players don't fully anticipate. But by synthesizing the elements of all of their backstories, I think you will have a lot of material to work with.
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