Adventures, Not Campaigns

Adventures, Not Campaigns TM means planning and playing your TTRPG one small adventure at a time, not anticipating a grand finale and following a long six-month to a year plan to get there.

I don't know where this game will be in 10, 12, 15, or 20 levels. I don't even know if we'll all be playing for that long. I only want to plan enough content for 1 to 2, maybe 3 levels at a time. Maybe just the next session. I'm not saving my good ideas for when everyone is level 18. If I promise a dragon or a lich or a colossus, I'm putting that in now, not later. I'm not making the players fatten themselves up for 7 to 10 levels on the side content first. The main show is what's on tap, with side content available for curious or ambitious characters.

This is the promise of Adventures, Not Campaigns TM.

Players and the GM need to discuss what sounds fun right now, and the GM needs to prep that content. Once the players finish that, then we can discuss what sounds like fun next. This also gives us the ability to pivot more easily. If someone loses interest in the current conflict, or if more interesting conflict arises somewhere else, someone joins or leaves the group, we can adjust more easily.  Expectations can be met more regularly. Boring intermittent sessions can be avoided. The sessions will be focused on the immediate goals, not some major cataclysm one and a half years from now.

Here's how this works:

• First, the GM creates a local setting consisting of one town, one dungeon, and a wilderness in between, with room for expansion.
• Then, players create characters from the setting, with a goal, either short-term or long-term.
• The GM prepares the setting and the people in it, not the story. The setting will have:
• One major goal, possible minor goals on the side. Ways for the players to learn about them.
• One major obstacle, possible minor obstacles on the way.
• A reward or other motivation for the goal. 
• May also contain a condition such as a time limit or another restriction. 
• This is an adventure.
• When an adventure is completed, a new adventure will be created. A campaign is a just a series of adventures.

When I think about Curse of Strahd for 5e for example, I think "cool, let's fight Strahd", but in reality, we start off at level 1 or 3 and we do all the side content for several months until we're bulky enough for Strahd, then we fight Strahd! That doesn't sound like fun. Strahd should be an adventure, and the other stuff should be optional content. If Curse of Strahd was the Village of Barovia, Castle Ravenloft, and the wilderness in between, and if everything else was optional content, what percentage of people would pursue the optional content? How much optional content would they pursue? If you're playing your character, you want out of Barovia. Play your character and kill Strahd.