November Campaign Design

Greyhawk GrognardUncategorized, , 5 Comments on November Campaign Design

I’m declaring November to be NaCaCrMo.

Sodium-Calcium-Chromium-Molybdenum for the win!

Oh, wait. No. With all the national month of this or that or the other thing in November, I thought I might turn my own attentions to creating a campaign setting in a month, both to see if I can do it, and to share my own process for doing so with you all. I’m calling it NAtional CAmpaign CReation MOnth. Because those sorts of semi-acronyms are all the rage nowadays, apparently. Maybe it’s not “national”, but I’ll give it a try anyway.

Starting on November 1st, I’ll go from a bare concept to (hopefully) a finished, ready-to-play campaign setting that could last many years of play.

My only self-imposed limitations:

  • It’ll be written for some form of D&D or OSR game (or more than one)
  • It’ll have at least one complete map and accompanying descriptive text
  • It’ll be in final, playable (not necessarily publishable – formatting and layout is not required) form by November 30
  • It’ll have at least one unique twist to set it apart from most other campaign settings
So there we go. Hope this works out as well as my NaGaDeMon experience a few years ago!
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Illustration from Ed Greenwood’s excellent “Plan Before You Play” article in Dragon Magazine 63.

Written by 

Wargamer and RPG'er since the 1970's, author of Adventures Dark and Deep, Castle of the Mad Archmage, and other things, and proprietor of the Greyhawk Grognard blog.

5 thoughts on “November Campaign Design”

  1. "Illustration from Ed Greenwood's excellent "Plan Before You Play" article in Dragon Magazine 63."

    One of my favorite campaign-planning articles!, along with

    – Lenard Lakofka, "How To Make a Pantheon You Can Have Faith In!" in Dragon #36
    – Lenard Lakofka, "Starting From Scratch" in Dragon #39
    – Ed Greenwood, "The Merry Month of…Mirtul?" in Dragon #47
    – Ed Greenwood, "Down-To-Earth Divinity" in Dragon #54
    – Ed Greenwood, "Law Of the Land" in Dragon #65
    – Lewis Pulsipher, "War!" in Dragon #65
    – Lewis Pulsipher, "A Player Character and His Money…" in Dragon #74
    – Katherine Kerr, "Beyond the Dungeon" (parts 1 and 2) in Dragon #87 & 88

    Looking forward to seeing what you do with the month, Joe!

    Allan.

  2. I was going to exploit Nanowrimo and attempt the same thing this year. I guess now I have a different acronym to call it! I'd love to see this become a thing.

  3. How funny – I was just thinking doing exactly this, viz. write up a campaign that I could have ready to play in a month's time or so.

    Well that tears it: now I *have* to!

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