Running a Campaign

You’ve got your players, you’ve made your characters, and maybe you’ve even played a session to get a feel for the game. What’s next?

Most tables will start a campaign: a series of connected sessions often played weekly or monthly that let everyone explore their character’s story over an extended period of time. When you decide to start a campaign together, you can kickstart your adventure using the guidance in this section, along with the inspiration presented in chapter 5. In Daggerheart, campaigns are intended to be personal, focused, and responsive. The amount you plan before character creation depends on you and your players’ preferences, but the details players provide about their characters should be the primary scaffolding upon which you’ll craft the majority of the campaign. Aside from overarching plot beats, you’ll often be prepping just the material you need week after week, letting the story evolve naturally through play. Chapter 5—“Campaign Frames”—provides six scafoldings for different campaigns. If you’re an experienced GM, you may have your own method of campaign prep—as always, feel free to utilize the pieces from this book that help and ignore the pieces that don’t.

Choosing a Campaign Frame

Before your session zero, you might choose to implement a campaign frame to ground the players in the type of fantasy story you’re interested in as a GM. The fantasy genre is so wide—providing a campaign frame can give players a strong jumping-off place to start brainstorming their characters. Daggerheart provides several campaign frames to start you off, but these shouldn’t limit the stories you tell with this system. If you have a strong idea about the kind of campaign you want to run for your table, use the structure of the frames to build your own before your session zero. You can find the following campaign frames in chapter 5:

The Witherwild

When an invading nation attacks an ancient forest deity, a virulent overgrowth spreads throughout the land.

Five Banners Burning

Long-brewing tensions between rival nations boil over, threatening all-out war.

Beast Feast

When a small village’s monster defense system fails, the local heroes must venture into the endless caverns below to fix it—and cook up trouble for the creatures that stand in their way!

The Age of Umbra

In a dying world immersed in relentless shadow and nightmarish monsters, small communities hold fast to the light, hoping those who endure can find a way to save this broken realm before all is lost to darkness.

Motherboard

In a world where magic takes the form of the technology left behind by a long-fallen civilization, a new threat rises as a malicious virus spreads through the machines that wander the Wastes.

Colossus of the Drylands

A prosperous region of gunslingers and outlaws has fallen into terror as colossal creatures awaken from beneath the earth.

Building a Map

At the start of a campaign, one of the most important questions to answer is “Where are we?” To do this, you’ll choose one of the blank maps in the appendix or create your own, then print a copy of it out for your table. If you’re utilizing a campaign frame, use the map detailed in that section. Digital copies of these maps are available on the Daggerheart website for download. If you know at character creation that you’ll be running a campaign, you can bring a blank map to your session zero to fill out together. Otherwise, you can always introduce it at the top of your next session to integrate into your game moving forward. To start, place the map on the table and explain to the players that you’ll be using it to build the region together. Choose the name of the region from the options available (or make up your own) and write that name on the sheet. If you’re using a campaign frame, the name of the region is provided for you. Next, remind the players about any locations they have already created for the setting. Pass the map around and have them label the locations they created anywhere they’d like. Then, choose one of the locations from the list on the sheet and add it to the map. Describe this place for the rest of the table—what is it? Why is it called this? What makes it so significant? Then pass the map to another player to do the same. Encourage them to tie in their character’s backstory or history with the new location if they wish. As players describe the locations they’ve chosen, record any important information about them in your notes. The map should continue around the table like this until it feels like it is populated with enough exciting locations and plot hooks for you to work with. With four players, twice around the table is usually enough. Remember, you can always do this again at the start of another session to fill out the map further, or even introduce a new region that connects to the current one. After the table feels happy with the details they’ve added, take the map back and begin the adventure. Maybe it’s somewhere the players have already added, or maybe it’s a new place— either way, this will help you orient yourself for the campaign moving forward.

Filling Space, Leaving Blanks

As part of the prep for your next session, you’ll want to review the map your table built together. Think about how the locations your players created might affect the region, and add anything you think might be important or relevant to the sheet. For example, if someone labeled a spot with “The Healing Fields,” you might consider adding a town nearby that specializes in creating Health Potions or curing ailments, or a mage’s tower that overlooks the fields to protect them. Pay attention to where the PCs currently are in their journey— where might they consider going next? It’s also important to leave blanks. Don’t feel the need to fill everything in, and don’t worry about planning out what every labeled landmark or town is like. Leaving some things vague gives you the freedom to adapt on the fly and reduces the amount of worldbuilding work you have to do for places your players might never visit.

Incorporating Player Backstories

One of the most important tools in a GM’s arsenal is to ask your players questions and incorporate their answers—their responses will tell you what they find exciting. The most important details to utilize while building a campaign are the answers to a character’s Background Questions. The Background Questions are designed to generate story hooks the players care about, which you can leverage for narrative fodder during the campaign. Take good notes during character creation and ask follow-up questions. Don’t be afraid to dig deeper into anything the players offer up during this process. If they make up a person, ask them for their name. If they invent a place, ask them what it’s called and what it’s like. Ensure you record at least one or two things about the world that are important to each player and their character. The more you incorporate these things into the campaign, the more invested that player tends to become.

Backstory Notes

After character creation, create a simple list of important narrative elements the players have given you, sorted by character. For example, you might make the following notes about the PCs: Marigold Seok (She/Her)—Seaborne Elf Ranger

Played by Kate (she/her)

Born in the floating city of Bloomfare. Had to leave her mother behind to go on the run. She is being chased down by the leaders of the Four Elementals for stealing their stone of power during the last ceremony. Barnabas Britespite (He/Him)—Loreborne Simiah Wizard

Played by Asa (he/him)

Obsessed with finding relics, treasures, and bones of legendary creatures. He thinks these should be collected and utilized for various practical purposes, not stashed away into museums. Wants to gather as much knowledge as he can in his lifetime. Uses bone runes to cast magic. Served as the advisor to King Guthril, but failed to protect the king’s daughter Nira from being killed by wild beasts during her first hunt with him. Left the kingdom in shame. Is chasing down the fang of the great dragon Krugthar, because it is said to contain knowledge of every creature the dragon has ever consumed. Is rivals with Maverick, a snobby human treasure hunter who is trying to collect all the bones of legendary creatures to put them in a museum. Jasper Flores (They/Them)—Highborne Halfling Bard

Played by Emerson (they/them)

Grew up in The Sunbearer’s Crescent with the royal Galamore family of halflings. Was in a secret relationship with the princess, Astrid Galamore. They had a secret place they would meet. Astrid and Jasper were supposed to run away together, but she never showed up. Jasper still wonders what happened. There are rumors that she was forced to marry someone else. Was trained by Mage Yaro within Illiat’s Tower. Yaro is the one who convinced them to travel the world and learn all they can. They look up to a fellow bard named Quill who plays at the Golden Goose in The Sunbearer’s Crescent. Jasper met Quill through Yaro. Sprout Hilldweller (She/Her)—Wanderborne Fungril Druid

Played by Chen (she/her)

Was chased out of the city of Branishar because she accidentally spent too much time there and decimated the environment around her. She’s learned she has to keep moving: she can’t stay in one place for too long or bad things happen. She uses her Death Connection ability to absorb and memorialize the core memories of all people she’s slain. She sometimes forgets those histories aren’t her own.

Tying Backstories Together

Once you’ve identified key points in each PC’s story, identify which of these pieces of information could be related—how these stories could potentially cross paths—and draw some connections between them. Maybe Maverick, the snobby human treasure collector that Barnabas is rivals with, could be the same person that Astrid Galamore, the halfling princess, was forced to marry? And if that’s the case, what if Maverick was now forcing Mage Yaro to use his magic to invade the fungril network and seize more great treasures around the world without having to leave the kingdom? This would create a crossover between Jasper, Sprout, and Barnabas, so it seems like a good place to start our campaign. But let’s keep thinking. This type of conflict would likely eventually lead them to return to the Galamore kingdom to stop Maverick. This journey could be hindered by the fungril forces Mage Yaro is controlling, giving Sprout an opportunity to interact with the corrupted network and get hints of what is to come in a way nobody else would be able to. And when they all finally arrive in the Galamore kingdom, there could be a twist! Maybe Astrid convinced Quill, her and Jasper’s bard friend, to use shapeshifting magic to take her place right under Maverick’s nose so she could leave the kingdom and search for Jasper? This could be a fun opportunity to flip the “princess in peril” trope on its head and provide an unexpected reveal once they reach the kingdom. If this is the case, we’ll also want to brainstorm a clue Astrid could leave behind at the secret place where she and Jasper used to meet so the party can go after her. But that’s down the road, no need to flesh that out immediately. Marigold needs some love—maybe we could put the floating city of Bloomfare in the great dragon Krugthar’s path of destruction? This would push Marigold to return home and face the consequences of her actions to save her mother’s life, while giving Barnabas an opportunity to chase down the dragon he wants so badly. But given they’ll have to face a dragon, this should probably be later in the campaign. So perhaps in the interim, to keep Marigold’s backstory involved, we could put some elemental creatures on the party’s trail intermittently as they travel. This will keep the threat of her home and the reminder of what she did relevant until she must return to confront them. Maybe we even make that our first encounter of the campaign to set up that long-running danger and tie Marigold in at the start. A few extra threads to tie up—Sprout should probably have to deal with what she did in Branishar. Either she faces signs of the same thing happening wherever she travels, or something pushes her to return home. Barnabas should probably discover something unexpected about Nira’s death—could she still be alive? If so, maybe she finds him to reveal that her father King Guthril secretly set up an ambush to have her killed. It wasn’t Barnabas’s fault, and Nira wants revenge. That’s more than enough for now! As the campaign plays out, there will be plenty more to work with and some of these plans may change drastically—but this is a great foundation to work from.

Planning a Story Arc

Now that we have some ideas of what could potentially happen in our campaign, it’s time to talk about story arcs. Arcs are a connected series of sessions within a campaign that focus on a specific objective, theme, character, or idea. Though you won’t know for sure the path your players will take, by preparing the structure of the arc, you can ensure that you’re giving them the adequate narrative fodder for a satisfying story. Arcs are typically between three to five sessions in length, though they can be longer depending on how large of a campaign you’re running. It’s usually good to start small and build up to larger arcs as players get more invested in the story you’re telling together, but an arc’s structure typically remains the same regardless of the length. There are a few different structures that stories often take, but we’re going to use the Three-Act Structure as our framework because it is the most common and is the easiest to identify in many of today’s movies and TV shows. As always, feel free to experiment with your own style of storytelling and only use the things from this section that help you at your table! The Three-Act Structure is pretty straightforward—Act One is the introduction, Act Two is the trials and tribulations, and Act Three is the finale. This is something we see in almost every popular movie or TV show—a character wants something, they work hard and face challenges to get that thing, and finally succeed or fail. Either way, they always change because of the journey they went through. Because of this, it’s often what players expect out of a good story, even if they don’t know it. It’s what feels satisfying to us, because it’s the way we’re used to seeing stories. We can utilize that expectation in our prep to make our work easier. Let’s take the example from the previous “Tying Backstories Together” section to form our first arc. Given how much the NPC Maverick is intertwined in multiple PCs’ backstories, he’s going to be our focus here, since that will give almost everyone a chance to have their backstories interwoven into the story at the start. Maverick is the snobby human treasure collector who is Barnabas’s rival, and we’ve made the decision that Maverick is the one who stole Astrid Galamore’s hand in marriage, even though she has been in love with our party’s bard Jasper since childhood. Because Maverick is now residing in the kingdom with her, we’ve also decided that he is forcing Jasper’s old mentor, Mage Yaro, to use his arcane powers to tap into the expansive fungril network and hunt for treasure remotely, disrupting Sprout’s connection to the fungril network. And on their way to the kingdom, there will be no waiting around for the perfect opportune moment to act, because Marigold has a set of powerful elemental leaders hot on her trail.

Act One: Collision

Let’s make an event collide with our party that they can’t ignore. It’s often best to go to the most obvious answers first, then complicate things from there. In this case, let’s set up Maverick going after an artifact that the party has been asked to protect. If he’s using the fungril network to do it, then perhaps Maverick has Yaro create plantlike creatures filled with the fungus that he can control! There’s our first act encounter—and we can build the rest of this act from there. The most important thing to keep in mind about Act One is that you want to use it to introduce a bigger conflict the party will encounter later—give them a taste of what’s to come and draw them into the arc’s story. Using the techniques in the earlier “Running a Session” section, after you’ve played through Act One with your table, you might end up with something like this:

Beat One: On their way to the city of Helayre, the party runs across the damage left behind by elementals—Marigold recognizes the work of those chasing her.

Beat Two: As the party arrives in Helayre, they notice that large plants have overwhelmed everything. They also meet kind townsfolk who tell them about the attacks on the city by plant creatures at night. Upon inquiry, they’ll be taken to where the attacks are the worst—the university.

Beat Three: At the university, the students all know Barnabas by name—the headmistress, Olivia Rose, is a proponent of his work. She shows the party what the plant creatures are after: the Stone Soul, belonging to a griffin from the hidden island of Boga Tiren. Olivia’s parents disappeared searching for Boga Tiren when she was a kid, and she has spent her life looking for them. If they extract the memory of its location from one of the plant creatures, then maybe she can find the island.

Beat Four: Olivia captured a plant creature that attacked. When Sprout uses Death Connection, she learns it’s full of tiny mushrooms. She gets clearer flashes of the mage in a nearby port town. He cries out for help, looking pained. The mage is consumed by a memory in which a voice tells him to “get to the stone.”

Beat Five: Plant creatures descend on the university. The party must hold them back and defend the Stone Soul. As the final creature goes down in battle, the party hears the mage’s voice seep through it—the voice calls out to Jasper with a nickname familiar only to Yaro. With the planet creatures defeated and Yaro revealed, Act One is complete. Though the party’s decisions might require you to adapt or make changes, this framework will help you use Act One to set up the rest of the arc. It creates questions for the PCs to chase—why is Yaro doing this? Why did he sound scared? Who was giving him orders? Could it be Maverick, looking for relics? And also—Where is Boga Tiren? Why is it hidden? Dramatic questions like these drive the PCs forward into Act Two.

Act Two: Complications

In Act Two, the PCs are thrust into a journey to answer their big questions. Before the end of Act One, you should confirm which direction they’re going to go before you dive into planning—they’ll almost certainly want to figure out what’s happening with Mage Yaro, but what if they decide to instead escort Professor Rose to Boga Tiren? Or something else entirely? It’s often best to lead from behind as you approach Act Two—let the players show you the questions they want to answer most, then fill in the gaps as they move toward finding those answers. Once the party is off on this quest, Act Two is all about the complications that get in the way. As you prep for these next sessions, the complications should matter—they should be personal and speak to the themes and tone of the campaign. If, for example, the party decides to head north to the Galamore kingdom to find out what’s happening with Mage Yaro, we know they’ll be on the road for a few days to get up there. It might be tempting to throw in a few random encounters with wild animals, some people asking for help with unrelated issues, or some rolls to see how well they’re able to survive the distant travel, but Act Two is all about building up to a climactic finale. So what can we do instead to make it feel like a story, rather than just time passing before we get to the Galamore kingdom? We know Barnabas is searching for the legendary dragon Krugthar, and we’re likely going to have a future arc (when the players are higher level) centered around his attack on Bloomfare (Marigold’s home). One option is to foreshadow that event and show the dragon’s power. Maybe we put a village decimated by fire on their path, the village’s mage dead and the ruins gouged with immense claw marks. Those alive talk about an attack by a massive flying beast that disappeared into the sun—something Barnabas will immediately recognize as Krugthar. But to give the players something to act on now, maybe the beast had small companions or minions that could be creating havoc in the village, dragging important NPCs into the forest, or shapeshifting to replace normal citizens. You can change this encounter depending on the kind of challenge your table enjoys. We also know from Sprout’s backstory that if she stays somewhere too long, she rots away everything around her— perhaps we see the devastating effect that Maverick and Yaro had on the environment. Perhaps the party encounters twisted arcane creatures riddled with fungus and struggles to traverse a sickly land. These events serve as a reminder to Sprout of the place she decimated and the destruction she left behind. She could have the chance at a bit of redemption here, or at least knowledge of this kind of blight that helps keep her friends safe. Another option might be to encounter an additional place where Maverick’s fungril creatures successfully stole another artifact of power—but this relic is something that can be consumed to steal another person’s arcane power. Perhaps we decide this was the plan along, for Maverick to use Yaro until he could absorb his magic himself. Even without knowing the full context, the PCs will likely rush to the Galamore kingdom as fast as they can, knowing this powerful object has fallen into the wrong hands. Whatever the journey may entail, once the PCs have reached the kingdom to confront Yaro and learn about Maverick, we enter the final act of our arc.

Act Three: Climax

Act Three will usually see our PCs resolve some of the big questions they have and face off against the powerful force they’ve been preparing for through Act One and Act Two. Identify which answers the players are most excited about discovering and provide at least some of those answers in this act. Oftentimes, these answers are what launch the next arc of your campaign—having an idea of what they are going into this act will help you prepare for what’s to come. Though not absolutely mandatory, it’s also always a good idea to plan some sort of reveal, surprise, or twist in this act— something that isn’t quite what it seems. These plot twists keep the players on their toes and make them excited to find out what will happen next. In the case of our current example, we have a few twists prepared—Yaro is being controlled by Maverick, who has squirmed his way into the kingdom by marrying Astrid Galamore, Jasper’s childhood love. As we prepare this act, we should identify the questions we are going to answer—things like “Who is forcing Yaro to do this?” and “What happened to Astrid?” It’s important to think through what Maverick would do to keep himself safe and Yaro under his control. Perhaps he orders the king’s guard to attack the party when they enter the city, putting Jasper in conflict with the very people they grew up with. Maybe the kingdom is locked down and the drawbridge raised, forcing the group to find another way in. Think about how you can create a last set of complications that ramps up the tension until the final confrontation is inevitable. The arc will end with a showdown between Maverick and the party. Maybe he still has Yaro under his control and uses the mage as a weapon against them. Maybe he has absorbed Yaro’s arcane power using the relic he stole and is now attacking the party with magic himself. Maybe he has turned coward and is attempting to flee with Astrid through a secret tunnel beneath the castle. Whatever the encounter is, it should be a big, exciting, and dangerous ending to the arc that ties up some of the loose ends and creates an opportunity for more adventure in the next arc.

Long-form Play

Just as an arc is a collection of scenes and sessions, a campaign can be thought of as a collection of arcs. The shape of your campaign will depend on your campaign frame (whether you’re using a formal frame or not)—a campaign focused on the PCs rising to prominence as gladiators in one city-state will have a different shape than a grand tour campaign where PCs travel the world collecting the artifacts needed to defeat a world-ending threat. Some campaigns may be more episodic, with individual and seemingly disconnected adventures that eventually culminate into a larger story, and others might be a more serial narrative of unfolding arcs. Depending on your campaign, each story arc might end in the party leveling up, or a story arc might span across an entire tier of play (levels 2 through 4, 5 through 7, etc.). There’s no wrong way to plan as long as it serves your needs as a GM and the players are enjoying the game. A longer campaign (closer to eight to ten sessions per level) may have several story arcs per level or more complex story arcs, plots with red herrings or tough choices that force the PCs to decide between simultaneous threats. Then you can take the plots that the players did not focus on and progress them so that when the PCs do get around to addressing them, the situations have escalated. A few sessions into a campaign, once everyone has a solid sense of their characters and their motivations, you can explore options for longer-term planning and how to help the group execute on the table’s creative intentions for the campaign. Look at the background answers and connections, especially ones that haven’t yet been explored. Ask yourself how these elements could work with what’s already happened in the story. If a central character relationship between PCs already changed, what external events or situations could enrich or complicate that relationship? What elements of character backstory could provide dramatic contrast to how a character has presented themselves so far? What elements of the setting would be impacted by what’s already happened in the story? What threats have grown while the PCs were taking action elsewhere?

Constructing Arcs

Imagine a rope. You have dozens of smaller cords twisted around one another to create something stronger and longer lasting than any one thread could be as an individual. That rope is a story arc, and the cords are the plots that weave together to craft it. While the rope always starts frayed, the cords tighten around one another as the story unfolds to create a cohesive and satisfying narrative. We build story arcs by breaking them into three or four sessions that each cover a major plot beat. These beats are created when we intertwine several ongoing storylines, which we’ll call A-, B-, and C-plots. As you chart out arcs, you’ll determine which storylines to prioritize when they best deserve focus. By threading storylines into beats, then those beats into arcs, you can weave the arcs together into one thrilling, cohesive campaign.

A-PLOT: The star of the show, often dealing with the primary action of a session. Early in a campaign, this typically involves taking the first steps into revealing a larger world and a looming threat. As a campaign moves forward, A-plots will fall away as B- and C-plots rise into their place.

B-PLOT: This plot is flexible and often throws a wrench into the gears turning the A-plot, forcing the party to divert their attention. The B-plot in one arc should become the A-plot in the next.

C-PLOT: The least-featured plot thread in an arc or beat, the C-Plot exists to seed upcoming and important plot threads. These are best used sparingly—you’ll know you did it right when a late-campaign revelation has a trail of breadcrumbs, only visible in hindsight, leading back to some of the earliest story points. C-plots often become B-plots in subsequent arcs. You can always inject a D/E/F-plot into the story if it calls for it. But even if you have more than three major plot threads in your story, focusing on three in any given session will help keep everything manageable. In the table below, you’ll see four example narratives: “Marigold’s Four Elementals,” “Sprout’s Power,” “Krugthar’s Destruction,” and “Yaro’s Return,” and how they might weave together into a three-arc campaign.

A Larger Plot

When you run a campaign, you might prefer to have PCs explore a number of smaller arcs using the structure above. You can also nest this structure within one overarching plot. In heroic adventures, this often manifests as a quest to stop the villain, protect the kingdom, or save the world—a challenge the PCs must overcome that affects the wider world and the people in it. If you want to include a larger plot, it will appear more or less in each session, remaining throughout your story until the characters finally arrive at the climax of the campaign.

Example Long-Term Arcs

Marigold’s Four Elementals A-Plot A-Plot A-Plot Sprout’s Power B-Plot B-Plot A-Plot A-Plot A-Plot A-Plot Krugthar’s Destruction B-Plot B-Plot B-Plot A-Plot A-Plot A-Plot A-Plot Yaro’s Return C-Plot C-Plot C-Plot B-Plot B-Plot B-Plot