Video Preview: Spiral Campaign Development
Here's a preview of an upcoming video on Spiral Campaign Development. Thanks for the question, Andrew R!
If this video is showing up as "private", that means it's queued up to show up on my YouTube channel and will be back up in a few days.
Comments (9)
I will be watching this video multiple times I am sure.
Want another question? How would you adapt the Way of the Lazy Dungeon Master to play by post? I run my games continually, and I ask for (and usually get) one post per day. Which doesn't produce anything like a "session" to prep for. For playable campaigns, this isn't too hard, but I'd like to get back to homebrew, so.... Okay, not really your problem, but suggestions would be appreciated.
I know, I don't overdevelop. I perceive it as a weakness because by centering always on the NOW and the immediately next, you tend to forget the whole. It makes incredible adventures, though. So nowadays I define some top level things like a pantheon, but only take less than two hours to do so because I only do broad strokes. I also add a campaign goal, and then go spiral. I find that this two tweaks work great for me, and fixed the issues I had.
I used to create all my campaign worlds this way, I call it the top-down method, where I only define some top things and then center around what's important for the players NOW for the down part. Lately I noticed that this is great but leaves some things as gods undefined, and that is a weakness of the method. So, right now I'm starting to develop the broader strokes a little more to include a little about gods and some kingdoms, and then continue with the rest of the method intact. Spiral is a great name for it.
Interesting that you view this as a weakness when the goal of the method is to spawn creativity. In my experience, I have used this method for a long time and although it creates a lot of "threads" I find that it only increases my flexibility. I only build upon what is needed and I frequently ask my players the direction they wish to pursue so that I may focus my efforts on the threads they find interesting. I would warn against going "too broad" as you may spend a lot of energy on things that the group will not even make use of.
Very helpful! I have been struggling with this concept along with incorporating effective Fronts. I feel like my campaign has been meandering a lot and this will help
This video is great. I'm running my own homebrew campaign for the first time and using the Lazy DM method. I know who the central villains are and a few locations I hope the players get to, but I'm taking it one session at a time and only building what I need for the next session based on what the players do and want.
You have just explained how I create my campaigns and you did it better than I ever could.
Fantastic video. I love the spiral campaign model. I did however propose this to a fellow DM and he was a bit concerned that a goal-centric elevator pitch “railroads” the PCs. I don’t necessarily agree with him, but I can see certain players balking at the notion that they must defeat the archenemy lurking in the background. Not a criticism, per se!