The "Gygax 75" technique for building DnD campaigns

I only recently stumbled into this channel. Good content man. Please, start your videos with a standard greeting. Then introduce your topic. It makes a difference

When you started the numbered list of Gary Gygax guide. It would make it easier for the viewer to see the points written on screen.

I met Gary Gygax at Gencon in Lake Geneva, Wi in 1974. We had a nice talk. The 1st rule book was 'Chain Mail with Fantasy Supplement', 2nd ed. I still have it.

I follow the following steps when making my D&D campaign.

First, I make an overland map. Just some landscape, mountains, forest, maybe a lake, river, or shore. I then put down dots and stars, the stars being kingdoms/cities, and the dots being towns/villages. Next I name them. I put down strange names from a racial language if it's a non-human settlement (D&D racial dictionaries on the net are good for this), but otherwise it doesn't matter what the town's are. The players haven't been there yet.

Next I flesh out the town the players will be starting in, just a little bit. Usually something simple: "this is a town of artists," "this kingdom is like ancient Rome," "this town has a history of rulers getting assassinated by the next ruler in line," etc. I don't worry about what's in the town as a whole unless the PCs want to go some place specific, then BOOM! There's a location like what they're looking for on that corner over there.

Next I make a dungeon for players to play in. This part I pay attention to. It will have multiple rooms with many encounters, traps, and treasure. It will also have a goal the players are dealing with. In one game, the party had been kidnapped by slavers and had to escape without their equipment. In another, they had agreed to help a king by finding historical texts so he could learn more about the kingdom he ruled. In yet another, the party was searching for an ancient statuette of the goddess of lust for some rich pervert. Whatever it is, the players have a goal to get to and I can add to the story later.

I tend to start in medias res. The players are at the dungeon and ready to go. I don't let them stop the game by suddenly doing things in town and never getting to the adventure; they have already negotiated a price or the starting events have happened, you can do the stuff you forgot to do later. GO!

The main thing is that I don't have anything planned beyond the bare bones and the first adventure. The players are expecting an adventure, so I give them one and worry about the main story later as events happen. I have a few hooks for the story in mind in the first adventure, but what the players do determines how the story flows.

a Tile of a 1 mile hex and the surrounding six could be the next scale up, compromise with the 6 mile hex people.

My party once set out to explore a mega-dungeon, they hired an expedition manager and security for the base camp and at check points in cleared areas of the dungeon, a barrister to bargain with the local Duke for tax requirements, and ended up with a whole host of camp followers that made their way along with the party in the hopes of securing some fortune. Base camp itself turned into a large temporary settlement of tents and ramshackle huts and an endless source of adventure hooks and ideas - not to mention outright problems.

My campaing is about race conflict. Humans and dwarves come from a """central""" continent called Hebreska, the dwarves were created by 7 dwarf gods (pretty obvious detail), each representing a form of crafting/piece of how the universe works, and they live isolated in a huge mountain chain to the east, near to halflings. For other continents we have Mordok, home for the mordokin which include goblinoids, orcs, ogres and other "mean" things (I purged their prejudice against them in the very first session and teached how they are just different people and finally from the multiples islands that form the Yivin region come elves, gnomes and other more magical races. I'm still in a rough draft, but I'm surely going to follow your guidelines to better mix the race placement, give them twists and more flavour.

My process was different. One day i decided to try DMing, so i picked up a random one shot adventure i found online. I added a little detail that the players wouldn't have the chance to explore at the time: hints of an evil drow mage doing dark experiments on human beings, using a dark magical powder. I kept this character as a cool idea to maybe get back to if i ever had to design a campaign. One day i decided to create my world. I used that little theme, the dark powder, to literally create:
1) A planet
2) Gods and a reason for them to inhabit that planet (that is, extractions of the powder).
From there it went all "outside in": i invented the stories of the conflicts between the Gods, the end of peace, the changes in the shape of the world that occurred in response. I had few ideas in mind for the worldbuilding that i tried to connect with mythology, history of the races and even astrology. I made a word file of dozens of pages that i would come back to to add details day after day. I played other one shots that would fit the lore of the world, a history of past events for the future players to be acquainted with, even if they would have come back with new characters. I opened photoshop and took weeks to make my pen and paper map look stunning and real. I even used plate tectonics theory, geology and meteorology to shape the planet. I also invented a new race (and its origins, history etc.). At some point i decided to play the campaign. I had the characters' stories, a world, and no plot hook. I made everything up in a short time the best i could, downloaded a random small dungeon map and went for it. Every day i played i would not know anything that would have take place the following session. I invented all the story session after session, cause simply i found it beyond my capabilities to design a full campaign all at once. All of the above took me some months to complete, and i still have many blank spaces in my lore and geography as well. I slowly adapted my style of preparation to be more "inside out", even if this is not my natural way. Briefly, i took all this long to invent a deep world knowing that the players would not see the 95% of it, just cause i loved it. Keep in mind that even if you develop a world like Tolkien, you would still miss almost the full part of preparation. All this work can even be detrimental: you risk loving your world too much that you will be sad when your players will f* your favourite good faction just because the chief of the party is a druid and he hates castles.

I would also recommend Worlds Without Number by Kevin Crawford. Though it is his version of Fantasy Roleplaying, most of the book is made of ideas and tips for world building. Very useful for any DM.

Used this method, ended up running a campaign when I showed my notes to my previous GM.

My world is established, but that doesn’t mean the maps are accurate!

For me, I started with part of an island. This island had the capital city, the city they started in, a city they were delivering supplies to for the initial plot hook (which would be their main town) and a few things like caves and forests. It also had the promise of a path with a name, going towards a mountain range, so they knew that this was the 'creche' for them to learn the game before seeing more of the world.
It meant I got to expand the main island over time, so even that wasn't all at once. Heck, we didn't even have a proper pantheon for the first year of playing because nobody wanted to be a cleric or paladin.

Hot take :-) why design the big dungeon as a start? Its in the name, I hear you say? And I answer: because anything can be a dungeon! Do you have dragons in every region and session? No! A dungeon in 20 layers is basic, boring, anti-imagination and just illogical/possible.
Dungeons can be a warehouse, a mine, a castle, the sewers, a graveyard(a tomb), a cave, a forest, a tower, and so on! Sooo many dungeons, smaller dungeons, that fit the STORY of the adventure/scenario you play, is way better than 20 levels of rooms, monsters and traps!!! And dragons.

Great video. I noticed the UVG book on your bookshelf. Great system. I hope you make a video about the book someday.

In my experience, they always go to the tavern and play out the drink order. Describe a tavern, a barkeep, a drinks list, some of the chit-chat with the barkeep and a joke. Don't forget the joke. Write all of this down in bullet points on a single page and draw a beer jug on it. Always doodle on the paperwork.

My point is; there are "unimportant details" that come up every single time they enter a town, if those details have some variation the players will remember that name of the town.

Have a start at ground zero world my friends and I created aprox 25 years ago. We played in and expanded on that world for about 10 years. Dusted that world off again when my youngest showed interest, and ran a campaign for her and her friends there with the original campaign's characters as prominent NPCs. She has now taken the reins and runs multiple campaigns in that ever expanding world. I love what she has done with the place!

Kinda nuts how deep the history of a world will become all on its own through game play riffing. Stack years into a custom world and you wind up with detail you couldn't possibly create for a world out of the gate.

Wandering Monsters is lazy game crafting. f there is an encounter that needs to occur in the forest/desert/hills, then just make an encounter. You can make it SEEM like it's a wandering monster, but otherwise, just run what you want to run when you want to run it.

Just procedurally a continent in Dwarf Fortress and use that...

If you're going to create a mega-dungeon, make sure it makes sense. Level 12 full of dragons? Why? How do they survive? Why do the other inhabitants stick around? Why is better treasure in lower levels? Who built the dungeon and why? I'm not saying there can't be good answers to these questions, but they do need good answers for the campaign to make sense.

My advice would be:
make the starting map 25-50% greater than the area your players have their first adventures in. This way they don't feel confined in a small pen and can even venture a bit further than they should. Otherwise you get into problems wenn they "cross the borders" and you absolutely have no idea what comes next.

Old school definitely had more interesting and better encounter tables. Mixtures of difficulty, including some results that should send the players running for their lives. They also, as you pointed out, had non-combat encounters that mixed things up. Nowadays, encounter tables are just done by challenge rating, meaning you are locked into encountering certain things way too consistently

Thank you. This is an exciting resource that I'm printing out right now. My gaming group started in 1978 and we're still going strong forty-four years later. I'm sure several of them will be eager to read this.

1. OSR with a Lovecraft feel. 2. Seaside town called Stormhaven and nearby monastery.. 3. Extensive cavern system beneath the town. Now who wants to play because I have no friends. 😂

Making big dungeons seems so difficult to me... I struggle to do more than 7 or 8 rooms. I find it hard to just come up with dud rooms

Thank you for the link to the Gygax 75 challenge! I am going to use this to build my own world and have my friends run it with me

My first time I was a DM. The entire campaign was what you call that dungeon, since it was based upon Sword Art Online. Every floor that is canonized, I didn't have to actually do all of that much work. The other 75%, I'll admit I made it up as I went along, in terms of the specifics. I mainly just had a vague list of ideas that every floor would be based around. For example I stole from a fan fiction and made one of the floors a neigh untravelable swamp with sparce settlements dotting the landscape.

Another one was literally "Pokemon Red/Blue" except fuck version exclusives. Granted for the progression boss you had to beat Giovanni with a much stronger team than what he offers up as the gym leader

This is the best of yours I have seen. Very nice.

better than critical roll

What is the best way to apply the Gary 75 Challenge to a Space Setting? I was to build a west marches campaign with WEG D6 Star Wars.

For me, mega dungeons are problematic simply because I have difficulty finding an in world rationale for them. As I've grown in the game, I've really gravitated toward wilderness campaigns more and more. Most folk in these worlds live above ground, and it's much easier to build up, not down. So I typically like keeping my dungeons pretty small, for the most part---and frequently they can serve as a base for my antagonists in a wilderness or a city setting. It's some place the bad guys have stumble upon, is easily defensible, and something they've already cleared out for the most part. Monster hotels can be a lot of fun, but they typically don't make much sense.

There can be exceptions to this---lost or partially buried cities. Ancient tombs that have been consumed by the local environment, old mines that open up into vast underground caverns where it becomes it's own underground wilderness setting. These are all possibilities.

Fun! Good. Thanks!

I love that Forever DM had been a meme in the D&D community since the D&D community

The majority of my encounters as a gm are not hostile. 😢

Its a long hidden fact. Your players will supply you with most of the world building you will have to do. When you set them up at Sesh 0. You give them a broad spectrum of what is possible and available. Then listen to what they want and give it to them. There are constraints, of course, but the buy-in should never compete with the wide wonder of what is about to happen. You describe the world, the players interact and you give them a reason to be heroic.

My most recent campaign was just supposed to be a starter game for a few new players so I just hijacked the Sword Coast map and have been using it for about 6 months now. The world definitely belongs to us and feels very relevant to the players and we have ignored the pre-existing lore , I would recommend it to others! There are loads of great resources in existence to play with

I've mostly created small scale campaigns focused on one or two locations, or large continent-spanning free-roam adventures. The small scale adventures are front loaded in terms of the work I put in, while the large scale are easy to start but require more work on an ongoing basis: essentially, paying cash up front or making regular payments that add up to more work but over a longer period. Honestly, the large scale ones tend to be more popular and easier for me. To start I create the following:
1. The map. One inch is 30 miles. The maps can be very big.
2. Notes on world-building, such as kingdoms, rulers, key locations, trade, deities, history. Very abbreviated.
3. Wandering monster table - generic creatures/people like goblins, bandits, etc.
4. Wandering NPC table - specific named individuals. This tends to be where the most fun comes from. The local sheriff, the infamous witch, a serial killer pretending to be a bard.
5. Wandering encounter table - this has set pieces like broken down wagon, castle siege, flooding, forest fire, witch trial,etc.
Essentially, the entire game is free-roam. There might be a basic premise, like find a McGuffin, but usually what the players end up doing is dictated by the random encounters. For example, one campaign was entirely centered around an encounter where the party rescued a witch who was about to be burned at the stake, and a lord who didn't like adventurers perverting his righteous justice. I've also created dungeons with random rooms, but it generally works better to determine what's in each room ahead of time rather than on the fly - although that can be hilarious for a short game.

This sounded exactly like Abomination Vaults from Paizo

Instead of mega dungeons I have a couple towers in my world with mini-game type encounters for them. Completing one room allows you to move up with encounters becoming harder and loot becoming better

Nice to see the B/X book on your bookshelf!!

In 75 Gary had not run campaigns for years and years. At that time he had played and DMd for just a few years. Not that the advice is bad. It's important to remember he was just as big of a newbie DM as anyone else once upon a time.

So far what I'm doing with mine is just make one continent, and just a character map of some of the major players that will get name dropped because it's information that the players would already have (even if they don't know them) and I almost made important towns. Then I focused on one area of the map and that would be the adventuring area. I filled this area with points of interest and smaller towns.
What I did after that was tell the players "you tell me where your character came from" which is basically if they came from a major city, so be it, but later they can make up town names for where their parents came from. Or if they came from some small town somewhere, me and the players would flesh it out as play went on, like if they talk about their favorite inn or a place on the outskirts that they would remember as they talked to various NPCs. When they want to explore more, then I would expand on where certain towns/monuments/dungeons and other Points of interest are, but if they stay in the same are for months, the players have control over telling me what things are near certain areas, like if there is a roadside in near the capital that servers good stew, it will be there even if they don't travel there.

Kiel Harbor

Isaac Overpass

Bechtelar Flat

Eloy Drives

Shaniya Fort

Jaylen Haven

Eugenia Cape