How much of the campaign should I have prepared before pitching game to prospective players? I have vague idea for campaign, and I am not entirely sure how much do I need to start the game.
GM prep
How much of the campaign should I have prepared before pitching game to prospective players? I have vague idea for campaign, and I am not entirely sure how much do I need to start the game.
>How much of the campaign should I have prepared before pitching game to prospective players?
None of it. Kind of moronic question to be honest. As soon as you got the vaguest idea, ask your players if they are interested. If they say no, all the work you did was wasted.
And once the campaign starts, NEVER plan more than one session ahead. Not ever. Trust me on this.
>NEVER plan more than one session ahead.
I've GMed few times in past, and frankly, i think a lack of vision is my greatest problem. Sure, I can probably do some separate one offs, but I don't think serie of one shots would be satisfactory.
Olanning a session is not the same as planning a story. Ypu can have a vague idea of where you want your campaign to go, but be assured that whatever you come up with players will mess it up. Just have a theme and a couple of Bad Guys ready to act as antagonists and you will be good.
this is how we rolled in highschool. It was fun, and we pulled all-nighters of dice-rolling, but it got old and structurally predictable (and not all game styles really benefited from a few capital B bad guys of the week). Video games are good for procedurally generated gameplay loops, if we are going to have a brain to generate things it may as well use it for the good stuff
Most video games aren't procedurally generated, and you being at the helm means you can deviate from procedural generation and drive the story that emerges from the seeds you start with. It's also a handy backup when players go off the beaten path or you just don't have it in you to make every little thing bespoke before game time. To think that you're limited to either/or is just plain fricking stupid.
nobody's flying the banner of either/or, except maybe the position that you should 'just have a theme and a couple bad guys'
Improvisation will always be a necessary GM skill, but Improv of the Gaps is where you want to be and intentionality of content will elevate any session that's not just an excuse for a casual hangout made semiformal with some dice rolling and fun moments.
Listen to this man.
You just need a theme, genre, and setting.
You don't need maps of the setting or anything. You only need the starting tavern. Tell the players your theme and genre, e.g. "Grimdark theme, Horror, High Magic."
Come up with a plot hook, but also know that the players aren't necessarily going to take the hook.
Most other things can be improvised on the fly. Just improv until the end of session. Only ever prepare the next session.
I recommend the book "Extreme Dungeon Mastery" by Tracy and Curtis Hickman. Read the section entitled "Encounter Matrices." In fact, beginner DMs would do well to read the entire book.
You really only need a handful of encounters if you build an Encounter Matrix flexible enough to handle the different choices that the players can make.
What is an Encounter Matrix? It's just a web of encounters that describes different routes that the players can take. You really only need about five encounters.
After that, I prepare a couple NPCs. Nothing too extreme, just a voice and a name for each. I don't even know what I'll use them for, but at least I have them available on hand.
>Extreme Dungeon Mastery
Ok post it. I ain't paying 20 bucks for this matrix thing
NTA but it's too big to post. You can find it on IRC, though.
Ah, I see. Well, thanks. Is it the sharethread one?
Yup, that's the one.
I'll argue against this... but only sort-of.
I'll start by saying if you don't want to prepare at the start, if you have no appetite for the material or urge to jot down ideas and musings and references... Quit. It'll be a chore later on, so if it's bad now you might as well not begin.
You shouldn't plan ahead in a linear fashion, but you should certainly have a great pile of npc ideas, set ideas, encounter ideas, that sort of thing. If you like Fronts or the 5x5 method or the conspyramid, do one of those.
Have as much prepared ahead as you need to start one session... and as much as you have the burning desire to scribble down.
>NEVER plan more than one session ahead. Not ever
I won't trust you on this for two reasons:
- we need a definition of a session (do you mean the whole scenario? the single gaming night, no matter how little progress happens)
- this shit is the perfect way with end up with utterly aimless overall campaign that just goes from point A to B and from B to C and from there to N, where N is the point where it all falls apart due to having no real rhyme or reason other than just bumbling through the setting.
And since discussing semantics is in this context mostly waste of time, let's focus on the problem that's far more severe: the aimless campaign.
What you are postulating is the endless stream of one-shots (as in - self-contained scenarios, not just single sitting) that in the same time still account for a character progression. This has a plethora of issues: disconnection, lack of any drive, lack of any tangible goals for anyone and also eventually wearing down all possible self-contained scenarios. Instead of solving any problem, this attitude creates one of the biggest issues there are when sticking to just a single system in one-shot format: ennui.
Don't get me wrong, one-shots are great, and they are always fun. There is however a physical limit how many of those you can run within a frame of a single system. If your group is there to check as many systems as feasible, this "crash and burn" approach is great, because you get the gist of the game and then can move on. If you plan to stick to a single system, and also to a single setting, you are facing a prospect of 5-20 meet-ups and then the group will autodissolve due to lack of any progression other than character stats
Your players will come up with the direction. Make them write a summary of what they did and a bullet point list of what they want to do next session.
>Your players will come up with the direction
This is beyond optimistic
>Make them write a summary of what they did and a bullet point list of what they want to do next session
Yeah, I can see people flaking off even faster, since now we have exactly N-k scenarios ahead for the group, where N is number of players in the group and k is the number of those that just want to play game together, no matter the content.
I've got to ask: you come from the FitD fandom or just PtbA "grog", trying to imagine his perfect game that will never happen? Because your naively simplistic solution to keep people engaged with the game points directly to marketing pitches of both of those engines.
This shit isn't as hard as you're making it out to be
I never said it's hard.
I'm just pointing out toward actual, on-hand experience with running games since '04, and large part of it as the guy organising Random Wednesdays for people to just play in the local community center. It will be 20 years I'm doing this shit by mid-March. And unless you get a group assembled SPECIFICALLY for sandbox, people are fully on-board with the idea and they are also experienced in this sort of stuff, your "solution" will cause the group to self-dissolve within less than 5 meetings.
It all sounds so great when you talk about players figuring it out, and how it's a corroborative experience and all those round phases, but the sad reality is that you need the exact group of people with the exact attitude for this to work off in any way. And those people coming together, even if you advertise for it, are rare. Very rare.
So like I've said, your "it's gonna be fine and sort itself out" attitude is beyond optimistic.
Phone poster? Just go to bed, Black person
Ask me how I know you never GMed anything in your life, and especially not a semi-improv game.
Have you tried not playing 5e?
The only time I ever played DnD, it was a one-shot of 3.5 back in 2006. And I guess the Shadow of the Poop Lord last year, if we squint.
Any other strawmen to defend your already strawman position?
Try B/X or a retroclone, it's an actual game and not just community improve.
>Have you tried not playing DnD?
>You should try playing DnD!
I did not say that.
Sure, it was your evil twin named Wesley
Schizos shouldn't DM tbqh
Then what are those?
>inb4 different anons
There's more to D&D than 5e.
And that changes the fact that all editions are shit and nobody but newbies and people brain-damaged by 3.x stick to it... how?
B/X and OSR clones having different set of issues than 5e doesn't mean it's better. It just means you are a moron who is offering a choice between malaria and cholera. And not only I don't want either, I am perfectly fine with other options.
While none of this has anything even to do with prep. In fact, good fricking luck improvising dungeon crawl without prep and with your players participating in this grand "coming up with the direction".
Provide alternative games we can play.
No doubt there are some fun retroclones out there but
L5R 4E
7th Sea 1E
Mage: The Awakening 2E
Dirty World
Riddle of Steel
Battlelords of the 23rd Century (have no earthly idea which of the 6 editions I played but it was old)
Psychosis: Ship of Fools
Shadowrun 5E
Dread
The Dark Eye
Star Wars: Edge of the Empire
MechWarrior/Battletech
Eclipse Phase
Pendragon 5(.2)E
>1990+33
>bUt WhAt GaMeS aRe ThErE oThEr ThAn DnD?
Nta, but must be tough being moronic
edition wars bot comment or didn't read what you were replying to
until they do something else and you have to improvise anyway, so why plan anything at all, ever?
Players get compelling directions that they click with from rich environments, and a well-planned one will always be richer than an improvised one
I don't think you should trust your players that much, unless it's a proven group, but whenever possible let THEM define the game and use what you like,
>NEVER plan more than one session ahead. Not ever. Trust me on this.
Don't plan out your playgroups shopping trip. Do plan out the city bazaar, if that's the kind of thing you want. You can use the bazaar for all kinds of stuff, but a preplanned shopping trip is too specific to survive free will.
>And once the campaign starts, NEVER plan more than one session ahead. Not ever. Trust me on this.
I would largely agree with this, with the added addendum that if your game is story-heavy, keep whatever plans/plot you have in mind in the background and update it to keep up with what's happening in sessions.
All of it. That way you can reject players accordingly
future /srpgg/ poster in the making
I spend 15 mins rolling on random tables and just shit it out
I'll be real with you. 90% of my prepwork goes into intricate dungeons, the remainder is pseudo-random from generators or pulled out of my ass.
Just a little bit. Have an opening dungeon or quest and drop them directly into it. nothing wrong with starting at the gates of some dangerous place and then having your players decide why they all are working together. Have a ready villain to menace your players. After the first dungeon/quest allow their interests to direct the next quest. After two quests, if you've been randomly adding NPCs with no specific intentions for them and allowing players to contribute to the worldbuiling you will have an idea of what to do next.
You should at least have a list of generic names for NPCs.
My current campaigns tarted with the pitch "You've been hired by a dude to clear some goblins and shit out of a ruined old city. So make characters that'd do that for money."
I had prepped a shitty vague map of the city, and the stats for goblins.
I will give examples for everything to make it clear. We will use a theoretical campaign that has players as church sanctioned monster hunters who itinerantly move from place to place. I separate a campaign into the following sections, each with a different level of planning:
>Immediate Future
Next session
>Near Future
The current arc of the story
>Far Future
The campaign as a whole
Let us say that the church hunters in the campaign above are going to a remote village to help them deal with a werewolf problem, only to realize that the werewolves infected a local clan of trolls making them incredibly dangerous compared to normal werewolves.
This is the level of planning you should have for each:
>Immediate future
Notes on which NPCs are likely going to show up. Maps & stats for any combat that is going to occur. Information on any loot likely to be found. Basically this is where everything should be given actual numbers.
For the above game you'll have the maps ready for them fighting one of the werewolf-trolls, details on the mayor they will talk to afterwards, and stats on the rifle the mayor will gift them for coming to their aid.
>Near Future
An outline of what is going to occur and what you have planned. These sorts of plans can always change, but you should have a general idea.
For the above game this is details on patient zero for the werewolves, the trolls who might show up, and that there will be major attacks on the town along with likely scenarios there in.
>Far Future
This should be nice and vague, just an idea of where you want the campaign to eventually end up.
For the above game it'd just be notes of how the current arc, the werewolf-troll hunt fits into the overall campaign. In this case saving the town ups the team's reputation and gets them promoted, which will feed into the campaign's overall structure about corruption within the monster hunters.
Smaller scope is always better. Things will likely take longer than you think so you will likely not get that epic world spanning adventure with all plot points resolved. Stay regional with plenty of reasonable end points and if you are lucky you can manage to have a successful long term campaign by taking it step by step. It's good to have some vague sense of how you could expand the scope though but no specifics.
Enough to answer character creation questions and run the first session.
You should be able to tell them what sorts of options are available, what sort of place they'll be in, and have an idea for how things are getting started.
>First time with a new group
A short and simple scenario that shouldn't take more than 3 hours. Nothing fancy, just most basic, but functional stuff, taking account for whatever characters they can make (unless they've made them already during the meet-up).
>N-th time with the group, can be even 2nd
Same as above, except now tied to what their characters are and what they can do, compounded by how the players act and behave (eg having a dwarf merchant is useless for your scenario if the player behind him is just Silent Joe that only ever speaks up when directly asked)
>Ahead of time prep
Always have at least an outline of the scenario and contingencies for each of the points of the outline (eg NEVER assume that people are going to just do the single thing you want them to do, that's the biggest trap there is), and do a simple mental check if it all adds up. Never, ever, under any circumstances try to overengineer things, unless you are already absolutely certain your players can handle that stuff, and, more importantly, will show interest in it.
And that's about it. Anyone who tells you about some bullshit like music, art or whatever is just a homosexual that's there for the theatrics. The game simply has to be functional and possible to play. And you would be surprised how many people fail at making that happen.
My opinion is you need the framework, and thats it. If your entire campaign can be summarised in one page then you are doing well.
The rest you fill as you play
My personal framework is World general description, Campaign Goal, Campaign Start, General Flow (escape prison, find mcguffin, defeat dark lord)
Tell me your pitch OP I can probably accurately guess how much prep actually needs to be done.
>Tell me your pitch OP I can probably accurately guess how much prep actually needs to be done.
PCs are part of the colonization effort on this mysterious island (think Taiwan or Ireland, size-wise), that is covered by dense jungle, full of dangerous beasts. Inside the forest, there are ruins of disappeared ancient civilization.
I would assume the adventure would contain some hexcrawl over the dense island and exploring the ruins. In between, PCs would need to engage in colonial politics - how much will they strive for independence on their home country, how will they organize their colony (will they lean to democracy or will they seize power?), etc. I think might have to kill the original leadership to nudge the PCs to step up. If they will not, that's fine, too.
Over time, the island will grow increasingly hostile. With each ancient ruins penetrated, the more will jungle beasts attack the PCs, and even the settlement. The very jungle will hinder their movement, and fast growing vines will cause the colonists to struggle.
The reason for this, is that the civilization that used to inhabit this island transcended their mortal form, and their minds now inhabit the vast network formed by plants of the dense jungle. And this overmind, or singularity does not like the intruders with their colonization efforts, like cutting down trees (which form the brain cells of the macroorganism) or maybe breaking the ruins (which are important parts of it also).
This is something they might discover in some of the hidden ruins. (Which are mostly derelict, but that doesn't mean they are not dangerous. But they will likely contain valuable stuff - either minor artifacts colonists can themself use, or perhaps sell it to mainland in exchange for more resources. There are bound to be some nerds interested in this stuff.)
1/2
Yes, it is basically Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri in fantasy setting. I just love the topic of new starts and colonizing frontier. I guess It helps I am not American nor from any of the former colonial powers.
My intent is to make something self-contained, that could I could run within 6-12 months, since I suck at long term projects.
I guess my main issue at this point is kinda filling in particular adventures to fill in the blanks, so to speak. But as other Anons pointed, that is probably the most important part of preparation.
2/2
I recently pitched a similar themed game on my rpg forum. It didn't generate any interest.
https://rpghq.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1025-thread-for-people-who-want-to-play-rpghq-pnp-games
That's not quite true: it appears you have at least two people interested, provided your setting includes barbarians and kobolds.
There's nothing wrong preparing detailed plots, intricate NPC's, clues and leads and timed events
If you can improvise, you'll be able to improvise whether or not some plot you've made hooks your players. It's nice to have things that are purposeful and detailed ready that fits together and doesn't have a history that was made up on the spot as your brain reaches for the easiest answer as to who the bartender would be and in a rapid attempt not to be tropey slingshots into a burst of superficial addendums filed under 'things you would not expect about the bartender, but the very first thing you and most others would not expect'
All depends how much work you want to do, but the better you are the better it tends to be the more you put into it
>There's nothing wrong preparing detailed plots, intricate NPC's, clues and leads and timed events
It's a matter of time investment on DM's part.
I've gone two different extremes. I've planned a detailed setting, complete with thematically appropriate homebrew gear. I've also planned a setting during Session Zero after asking everyone what they wanted to play. The first campaign was an exercise in frustration as the players never vibed with the setting in the same way I did. I realized it was based on my own, personal autism that the players simply didn't share. With the second campaign we're doing stuff that the players all said they wanted to do, and as a result everyone feels motivated to do said things and be members of the party. It's one of the most fun campaigns I've ever run, despite being one of the lazier ones.
When it comes to planning broad strokes is the way to go. Players will think outside of the box, and they will see possibilities where none were intended. Improvisation is an important tool of any GM, and it's more important to know enough about the internal consistency of your world to be able to improvise readily than it is to plan out every possibility. One example was with a first time GM. He lead our party to an underground city, where he had plans for us. However, the party started running around doing random shenanigans and the GM was becoming visibly frustrated. One of us told him that he is the GM and he can do whatever he wants, if he thinks that's the right thing to do to facilitate play. So he bullshitted a bunch of invisible ninja's that shot us all in the neck with knock-out darts so we could wake up for the puzzle session he actually intended. Which was a lot of fun.
Don't prepare a tight movie script, prepare milestones and events you can insert into your game as player choices shape it. You want to have A story you're going for, but if you go with this modular approach your players will never really derail or stumble you because you have an answer to every problem.
Have a concept of what you want the game to be about. High fantasy or low fantasy? Dungeon crawling or wilderness exploration?
Know the rules you're going to use.
Have improv tools preped, like encounter tables and name lists.
Have your first adventure prepared. Eg. A keyed dungeon for a dungeon crawl, or a list of scenes and clues for an investigation.
I make generic areas give or take the campaign I want to run and make a roll table for encounters and possible loot they would find. That way I just have a quick reference for every room or area and an easy way to keep in mind what kind of setting the players are going through.
Sorry I know this is off topic but at least I will be sure GMs actually post here and if I make a thread it might not get replies or just shithead players with 0 actual advice.
I am a first time DM running a fairly large group. Things have been going smoothly, not everyone can come every time but usually there are a lot of us to hold our weekly session.
The problem is 3 of my players (the only 3 who claim to have previous experience with the game) are constantly metagaming and have late stage main character syndrome. I had a serious talk with them few sessions ago and while 1 of them made improvements the other 2 only seemed to have doubled down.
What can I do to to get them to play nice? It has gotten to the point where their characters simply know what happened in rooms they never even walked in or saw inside at any point and I am getting tired of explaining that they could not have known any of that and to stop metagaming. They also hoard like any sort of magical or slightly magical item despite not knowing what it is or how it works because both of them lack the appropriate skills to discern what is magic and what is not.
I am very tempted to kick them out but unfortunately if they leave at least 3 other people might leave leaving me with not much of a group. Their attendance so far has been spotless which I cannot say for the other players.
Problem player's, huh? They sound newish or not super socially skilled, and sometimes, nothing but time can sort that out. Still, some bullet points
-say 'no, your character has no reason to do that'. Be a Dom GM and set some uncrossable boundaries.
-if they aren't killing the fun for others, consider letting them have their cheap fantasy. Hell it might even grow stale.
-have more talks until they get it; recruit the other players. It's a group game, not about them, etc
-wrap the campaign in a few sessions and start a new one with the players you want. You are here to have fun too.
-try a different system. The metagaming item hoarding sounds very D&D. Sometimes a system with a different premise that isn't about dungeoncrawling can system shock people into a different way of thinking, especially if you're able to successfully engage them in a different aspect of rping eg by collaborating in a story they find appealing.
-just politely explain their style of gaming might be for another table. If people leave with them, they weren't really locked in for the game, just a hangout and it is not that impossible to bring a new group together. Like I said above, you are part of this as well and should enjoy things too.
-make them GM a one-shot each, they might get a dose of insight
Usually not advisable, but since I don't know the context and these might be some pathological players:
-their ability to express psychic abilities attracts dangerous entities
-party wipe because they were hoarding unused items that would have made the difference in someone elses hands
-every metagame assumption they make becomes completely mistaken
Explain how they are meta gaming
Basically whatever happens at the table their characters would somehow know about.
The rogue found a hidden treasure in some other part of the dungeon? The sorcerer gets piss angry and confronts him about sharing it.
The wizard pockets some scrolls from the court wizard? The fighter pulls a sword on him and threatens to call the guards despite not ever seeing the inside of the castle, let alone the wizard taking the scrolls.
Rogue sneaks into the warlock's room to rifle through her shit looking for a non-existent spellbook because warlock doesn't have one (obviously played as a joke)? Sorcerer is all of a sudden not out buying gear but standing in the doorway holding the said non-existent spellbook and taunting the rogue about it.
Wizard, warlock and barbarian spends about an hour exploring a dungeon looking for clues trying to solve a puzzle. When they find the solution the fighter player puts his phone down and opens the locked door with their solution. His character was just sitting there and had an eureka moment.
All those happened last 2 sessions and a bunch of smaller stuff that really breaks the immersion.
Honestly they sound based and the rest of the party seem like jackasses
Have you tried talking to them?
Tell them they're not their characters.
i just daydream some concepts. Feed them to chatgtp and work over them to make them better, It works unexpectly well.
Currently running two campaigns that way,
>Just turn your brain off completely and let a bot do all the creative work there is
Why run games, when you let a machine do all the fun part of it? At this point, you are reading a script you didn't make, as a fricking meat machine to just passively go through the whole experience.
People who go all "just use bot for this" are completely fricking missing the point and the reason why anyone bothers.
>Why run games, when you let a machine do all the fun part of it?
I can imagine, how actually running the game might be the fun part for someone.
>At this point, you are reading a script you didn't make, as a fricking meat machine to just passively go through the whole experience.
Isn't it kinda like running premade module?
Well, it won't be, if you left the creative process to a fricking bot, self-reducing yourself to a dice roller for NPCs
>Isn't it kinda like running premade module?
That's the point, you moron: by delegating to AI, you've turned it not just to a module, but a shit one.
Don't post until you finally start playing, to say nothing about running.
You clearly think too highly of humans, for the average person calling a npc anything other than Bill already requires effort...if they need random tables for nouns, imagine full phrases
I prep one ahead for sure, enough that I can cover everything I'm sure the PCs will most likely hit, or I can work out if they do something crazy.
I have a rough skeleton of everything else going on. A couple notes on goings on from this NPC, or this town, or that faction.
Helps me keep up with all the stuff in the background, and I can reference it quickly if I need to.
I'll have a few ideas on possible games after this. I usually recycle the good ideas that don't get used. Prevents a last hour scramble if I have a busy week and can't get a good amount of prep done. Too much will get wasted, but a few bullet points are always useful to me.
Drop whatever system you're using and pick up one that allows for sandboxing, where you just come up with the basic premise and generate the actual adventure as you go
Got campaign world and setting sorted. Not changing it.
Prep hexmap of area,
Prep a proper dungeon.
Print out a few random dungeons for emergencies.
Players start as faceless human adventurers outside of the dungeon,
Stat templates and a random name generator
They walk into the proper dungeon,
From there on I backfill stuff they encounter between sessions.
Factions, new dungeons, hex features, npcs, random plot hook adventure from a generator.
(Wanted posters, call to arms etc).
Tradeable goods between towns so the party can buy cheap n sell high (no XP for that gold).
>Pitching a game
An elevator pitch. You can prep more, but nobody’s gonna ask to see your 50 pages of lore or your curated book of enemies and stats you plan to use before saying yes or no.
>Before a session
A vague idea of direction, NPCs with a physical description and idea of what they want, and stat blocks for likely enemies.
>nobody’s gonna ask to see your 50 pages of lore or your curated book of enemies
Yes I will ask about the lore and about type of enemies that are usually found in certain a certain region. How else would my custom background fit the setting and offer multiple ways for you to hook my character and attach it to the main plot?
Pitching a game, not making characters. Pitching a game is literally “would you be up for this?” You just need a general idea for the game.
just prepare that night's session, and when that starts winding down set some bait for next night's session.
if you're in a sufficiently crunchy system, just having a couple conceptually-linked fights can be more than enough.
if you're ever in danger of running out of ideas, steal them from your players.
when all else fails, have someone kick down the door.
Thank you all for your insight, frens.
Preparation comes after the pitch because you need to have a group is actually interested.
Most campaigns never get beyond 6 sessions. Don't frontload the work
Have some events for the first 3 sessions or so, and figure out the themes you want your players to go through, the overarching idea of 'Players start here and should ideally end up here or there.' Enough worldbuilding that you feel comfortable with questions the GMs are likely to ask like "so if I want to be an elf, where am I from."
after that, you should be good to pitch the idea: by the time your players decide to join in, have their characters made and decide on a date to game: you'll have plenty of time to finish prepping maps and additional goodies for your players.
im really bad at prep, and beyond the initial hook or maybe inciting incident i fly by the seat of my pants. i could probably do more but im really bad at focusing, and second guess everything.
sometimes i feel as if im doing my players a disservice but no one has ever complained.
life is busy enough as it is.
We hexcrawl and can’t find any of the content the DM actually worked on and get bogged down roleplaying with a random encounter
yeah that sucks, i could never pull of a hexcrawl. id probably never do one
>but no one has ever complained.
That doesn't mean there aren't things to complain about
> before pitching game to prospective players?
Almost none, although anything homebrewed should be done.
> Before session 1
Almost all of it, just keep your tools flexible and have fun.
>Before pitching
Know the big grand sweeping idea of your game. Who. What. Where.
EX
Adventurers doing dungeon crawls in grim dark fantasy
Nomads struggling to survive in cyberpunk indonesia
Imperial guard forces fighting orks for control of a shrine world
Afterwards you can do the big planning for things like about how many sessions, critical plot points, npcs etc etc