Matt Colville is absolutely right that running an episodic Dungeons and Dragons campaign can be much better.
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Transcript:
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:24:18
Bennett Tomlin
I was recently watching Matt Colville on YouTube because he has the best videos if you want to think seriously about running Dungeons and Dragons or frankly, most other TTRPGs and one of his recent videos, How Long Should an Adventure Be? He argues that fewer people should be running long, epic campaigns like Strahd, and more people should be running adventures that are smaller and more contained,
00:00:24:20 - 00:00:52:09
Bennett Tomlin
connected together by the party of adventures. And I absolutely agree. My very first campaign, which I've run so far from level five to level 15, has been a wonderful experience and I think starting it episodic worked really well. When we started my campaign, it was the second campaign for our table. We would play in mind whenever we couldn't get everyone together for the main campaign.
00:00:52:11 - 00:01:30:13
Bennett Tomlin
And since our main campaign was a high fantasy heroic campaign, my campaign was going to be the evil campaign for our characters. So I settled on the following structure. Every single character was a member of the Zhentarim, also known as the Black Network, and specifically they were members of what the Zhentarim called the Premier, which is a group of adventurers who are sent in basically like the CIA, to foment revolutions, smuggle weapons and drugs, investigate threats too powerful, to trust with mercenaries and the like because they were already the elite members of the Zhentarim.
00:01:30:13 - 00:02:00:08
Bennett Tomlin
We started at level five, which made everyone feel powerful immediately. Before each session, they would receive a description of their mission from their handler, and between each session, they were allowed to basically take advantage of Zhentarim fences to sell certain goods. They acquired or acquire other goods and resources they need. The really great thing about structuring it episodic in this way, is that we did not need the same group of players each time we played whichever subset of players were available.
00:02:00:10 - 00:02:24:01
Bennett Tomlin
It was their characters who were being pulled into this specific mission, and in game, the other characters are engaged in whatever tasks they need to for the organization. Between each session, we were able to effectively deal with downtime without having to take up a lot of in session time for it, and because they were working for a larger organization, it's really easy to get them to bite.
00:02:24:01 - 00:02:51:10
Bennett Tomlin
And the adventure hooks, because they basically have to. They're being told by their boss, do this thing. Eventually, we reached a point where the interests of the group started to diverge from the ancient green dragon running this interim, who wanted to become a Draco lich. And it was at that point, after a bunch of missions and several levels of advancement, we broke the episodic framework to switch to a more sandbox, open world type campaign.
00:02:51:12 - 00:03:16:05
Bennett Tomlin
But having that episodic structure early on was so helpful, especially as a newer DM. It helped me keep my prep focused and like clear, kept the story moving for my players and made sure that we could deal with scheduling, which is a big problem at most tables. I highly recommend you consider running an episodic campaign, and make sure to check out Matts longer video on this topic.
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