How to plan for a campaign.
Okay, I see a lot of those v5 posts, and can't help it. V20 people, help the newbies out.
1. Look at how often you get to play. Lets say, every weekend, every other weekend, once per month, ect. IN these newer times, it could as well be discord. the frequency with which you hold games is one of the indicators.
2. how much xp do you hand out? the second indicator.
3. Who plays. The third indicator.
Now,. these are the three indicators that you should cover BEFORE even picking up the book. a game for 4 friends who play every weekend for 6 hours will look radically different then a game for 30 + players who play once a month.
1. Write down how the end session characters should look. Lets say, you want end session characters with 200 + xp, because in the last fight of the campaign, you want them to take down a methusalah. So, look at the timetable. If you have 4 players that play every weekend, cool. 2 years, makes 104 weeks, makes around 2 xp per session. with the occasional bonus XP for being cool roleplayers. lets say you have 30 players over discord. then, it could be good to even think about handing out 1 free XP just fopr being active.
2. Write down a rough timeline of the campaign. Lets say, year 1, location of the methusala discovery, year two, prevent gehenna. That rough is allright.
3. Now, write down 13 vampires for the 13 clans. some of them can be for the sabbat, some of them can be for the cam, just make them unique. Those 13 main characters can be everything you want them to be, just remember, those should be recogniseable. Your players should not be able to say, kenneth, sorcerer, is actually brian the bruhja. make them as different as possible. They are all kind of high generation, and act outside the immediate sphere of the group.
4. Fill it up with a couple of NPC. Brian bashfist, slapfighter, can be a bruhja ghoul, as well as a giovamnni button man. have those NCP ready, just in case. I go with generic profiles, done up untill 6 points in skills, one point two points and three points. Need a bartender? 3 points performance bartender, 2 points empathy, 1 point larceny. This is how I can shake NPC out of the depths.
5. Now, carefully, seperate the 2 single years into monthly blocks. I like to rule an adventure lasts 4 sessions, 1 for actual adventure, 1 for prep and after prep, one for player fuckery, and one just because we all know having an extra session lying around is allways worth it. Write in public holidays, like springbreak, carnical, or whatever you celebrate.
6. Now, make a rough plan of the aerea. I like to open google maps for this, look at the area. Draw in with sharpie where the lines are between the territory for the sabbat, rthe cams, the werewolves, the fae, the mages, whatever is playing in my campaign. Every location that is named gets put on that map. My players will never ever get to see that map. They can make their own copy. It just pays off the first time you don't have to say, "uuuhm, yea, well, you, like, go there", but youy can instead say "you take the interstate down to freemont, past marties bar, dodge the police radar trap, and make it over. "
7. Now, that every location is on the map, seperate the NPC's in factions. Every NPC gets a random encounter table like "what do I do today". For examp-le, if martys bar is an important biker bar, I will write down "new year gets celebrated with half price beer and pussy at martys. " Thus, when you need to know what happens this week at marties, you can just look it up. IF a major NPC dies, I can just look up all the events he participated in, and rewrite the events to come.
8. This concludes setting up the backdrop, and it gives you a good idea how the city runs. Now, lets say you want top line up the adventures, you simply drop them in. You put in who gives you the adventure, and what they need that for. Think of the hunted hotel questline in VTMB. Lets say, marties lost its prizewinning obscene taxidermied bear due to a path of flames related accident in may, so in june, word may copme down that a few urban explorers found a sensual elk in mint condition in the old hilton hotel at the edge of the city, so the players get tasked with retrieving it. Every location also follows the roll of asociation. Lets say the city park is territory of clan gangrel. Clan gangrel does well? City park looks spic and spam. The c ity park is now taken over by lupines? Yea, it looks overtgrown, and the city park employees like nothing more then slacking off with the mowing and whatnot.
9. BY now, you should get a feel for the play area, and have an idea of what the area feels like. What I like to do now i to give each location a 20 items random encounter table. Lets say kevin the caitiff has murdered the daughter of the magistrate by accident, and has stuffed her in a drain pipe. When she gets found, it will mean that everything in a 1 kilometer radius gets put under surveillance, and gets higher then usual police presence. I handle that with a d20 from my Pathfinder games. usually, it isdivided nicely. even means good for the players, odd means bad for the players, and the second roll gives me the events. lets say my players roll up to martys. I roll even, and I roll 12: the local tweakers sell stuff out of the trunk of their car. Some really great shocking discounts, the minorioty of this stuff is directly traceable, but the players might find what they look for sitting in one of the trunks, sold by a man who looks like he just ate eight cans of ravioli in one sitting. It fleshes the city you are playing in out.
10. At this point, I just prepare 1/4th of local adventures. Like,. exorcie the ghost from the local orphanage. friday night Bum fight. Backyard wrestling and meth tasting. You know, stuff that would make it on old cops episodes, or stuff I read under "florida man". IF a squirrel got into the local setites methlab, and ate amn entire box of meth, and now is ready to bite the shit out of everything..... this counts as a local adventure. I leave 1/4th of the adventures free, just in case some stuff works and some stuff doesn't work.
Then, when everything stands, I gather the players, and tell them, "hey, there is a new campaign, who wants to play? "
Hope it helps the legions of newbies, and gives them just a little bit oif a hint on the ay to become a goood ST, and to one day run their own game.