Like I said before, I find this step to be totally optional, but it helps me ratchet up the drama in the game, so I spend a decent amount of time on it. It works well for me and my players.

However, I want to talk about “railroading”. “Railroading” to me, means taking away player agency during a session. An example might be: When I plan on a player going to the forest, and they instead go to the swamp, I find some way to force them to the forest instead. That’s my definition. 

By some reading, you could argue that my style of campaign and session design is railroading. Some GMs and players would rather be dropped into a world and to just explore that world and see what happens. The GM may have some BBEG lined up, or some plot hooks, but in general the game is freeform. Those games are generally called “sandbox” games.

My style of game is somewhere between the two - perhaps a bit closer to railroad than sandbox. And that’s by design. My players are all over the age of 35. We all have full time jobs, some of us have families. Scheduling 4-hour blocks is hard. A game that has no known end date isn’t viable. And on top of that, my players aren’t incredibly decisive. Left to their own devices, they tend to hem-and-haw for a really long time about incredibly simple decisions (like which fork to take in a dungeon - spoiler! they end up in the same place). 

To facilitate a really deep immersion that will end by a certain date, I design my sessions with very specific stopping points. These are must-hit story beats. And I’ll make adjustments throughout the session to make sure we more-or-less land there by the end. If we’re moving too fast, I’ll slow the pace and give some more lore or more space for player roleplay. If we’re moving too slow, I’ll cut content and narrate things that were supposed to be more interactive. 

This strategy works for my table, with my players. Based on the feedback I’ve gotten, they’re getting meaningful roleplay and choice in a game that moves at a sustainable pace for their personal lives. It might not be the right strategy for you and your table, and that’s totally fine.

Take what works and use it and ignore the rest.

What scenes do I anticipate?

In this step, I look at the information I need to give, think about where the players currently are, and try to anticipate where a natural delivery point will be. I get this right about 50% of the time, and because I only get it right 50% of the time, I try to brainstorm more than one way to give each piece of information, and if the information is really important, I’ll make sure I give it to more than one player. My golden rule is: If my campaign depends on the players knowing something, tell them about it three times.

Starting at the top, how are the PCs going to find out about the gala? The gala is a critical piece of information, so I need to tell them about it three times, and preferably, to three different players. There’s an obvious starting point: Lady Elithor is both the host of the party and the mother of one of my PCs. Of course she personally invites him.

Lady Elithor will visit Ash in his Marshal’s Office to inform him of the gala and request his attendance.

That means I need to design a scene that takes place in Ash’s office. (Fun fact, when actually playing this session, Ash never returned to his office. Being the fantastic commander he is, he set up a field tent so he could be on the frontline with his troops. So, I pivoted the scene to the field tent on the fly - that’s why the high level prep is so important; because I know the setting so well, this type of pivot turns out to be really natural in the moment).

That takes care of one way this information is delivered. Who else is a natural target for it? Well, Arranis is an Indiana Jones type  - they even carry a whip. They’re probably aware of when important artifacts are on the move; maybe Arranis gets a tip that something is going down at the gala. Nothing concrete, but enough to get Arranis’s interest piqued about attending.

One of Arranis’s friends will visit to let them at their home know the gala is happening, and something shady is going down.

So this implies a scene at Arranis’s home. I chose their home because presumably Arranis would want to get their fiancée home after her grisly ordeal in the ritual.

For the last one, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. In session one we set a precedent of the Marshal’s field officers giving daily briefings to the marshal. So, it seemed reasonable that after such a calamitous event the field officers would give a briefing. In this briefing Ash could be informed of both the missing glyph and the gala.

At the Unified Guard’s HQ Ash will receive a briefing from his field officers. They will tell him about the missing glyph, the gala and various other things going on.

And so I prepped a scene at the Unified Guard’s HQ. (Fun fact, this one also had to be moved last minute. Ash held this briefing in his command tent!)

And on down the list I went. Sometimes I will give information in a more “meta” way. For example, one of my bits of information to deliver was that Ash was going to be up for nomination to the Unified Guard’s office. One of Ash’s main character goals was to prove that he is a capable leader, and to get out from under the shadow of his deceased father, the previous Marshal of the Guard. In session 1, I made a big deal out of how most of the soldiers of the Unified Guard didn’t respect Ash - they thought he was a nepo-baby. Throughout the sessions I kept track of how Ash responded to certain situations, and whether or not he was a selfless leader. And I decided to surface that hidden mechanic in a scene in session 3.

To set up the scene, I had one of Izzy’s mentees (Kael) come to visit. Kael was now on the Council of Voices, and would be voting on whether or not to nominate Ash. Kael had reservations about Ash’s ability to lead. And knowing that Izzy and Ash were friends, Kael wanted to know what Izzy thought of Ash.

So I had a scene prepped for this. The information is delivered to Ash’s player via the meta (he’s at the table while this is going on), but not directly to him. Some folks might disagree with this, but I definitely lean into metagaming at my table. It gives my players the ability to lean into tension and drama between their characters, and makes for really fun scenes. Here’s the one I jotted down for session 3:

Kael visits Izzy at her home to get Izzy’s advice. Kael wants to get Izzy’s thoughts on his reservations about Ash, and has a tense and awkward conversation with Izzy.

This scene was AMAZING. Izzy’s player knew that Ash’s player was sitting at the table. And Izzy spoke openly about her opinion of Ash, and Ash’s player got to peek behind the curtain. Of course Izzy gave Ash a glowing review, and Ash’s player loved it. And now Ash “knows” that his position on the council is uncertain.

I believe I also had Ash’s personal assistant let him know that the vote would be happening, just to close the in-game loop.

At this point I’ve got everything I need to run a fairly in-depth, four hour roleplaying session. Each player has a plot that moves forward, the BBEG’s plan progresses, and the players have some meaningful scenes and decisions to make.

For the most part, I don’t spend much time designing individual scenes. The exception to this is my Session 1 - which I’ll cover in a separate post - and scenes that have lengthy speeches or really specific language in them (like a prophecy or dream or something).

Because I already know so much about my setting, my PCs, my NPCs and my BBEG, I let improv take over at the table. I know what information I need to deliver for the scene and who is most likely to deliver it, and I just let that happen naturally.

I used to spend a lot of time designing scenes and I found that I used my scene notes less than 50% of the time, which meant I was doing a ton of work for nothing.

So now you know how to run epic story driven campaigns! Go forth and try it out and let me know how it goes!