LootLootLore

For the longest time, I ran 1.5 hour campaigns. I would run them for my local youth club. There were rules set by the organizers that helped mold my prep. First, I had an 1.5 hour time slot total. That includes set-up, cleaning up after wards and gaming, so my sessions happened fast. Secondly, I only have around 4-5 sessions. I did largely oneshots for the first 2 years and the last one I did an actual campaign. My prep was guided by these rules and still help me today. Here is my prep process for that last 4 session campaign.  First off, rule system. 5e isn't big in my area. Gamestop ceased all operations in Ireland and they had the most tabletop stuff (dice and 5e mainly). I ended up creating a rough 2d6 system loosely based off of Kal Arath. At this point I would assemble all the random tables and spark tables I need. Secondly, I would prep the starting 3 missions. I like sandboxes and I found them easy to run as my players were part of a community. I prepped the mission by gett...

There is a game design phrase I heard a while ago called "The Myth of the Gun and the Myth of the Sword can't coexist". The Myth of the Sword is your power comes from you. The power you have is intrinsic to you. For example, Hulk from the MCU. I want to focus on the Myth of the Gun, where the items you carry is where you get your strength. An example would be Iron Man from the MCU. If the item breaks, you lose the power. Oftentimes monster hit all parts of the character sheet, from rust monsters attacking your equipment to ghouls taking your levels. Here is where the Myth of the gun shines as your players have to come up with creative solutions to be able to use their Guns.   This ties nicely into a old OSR tenet, "The answer is not on your character sheet". This isn't perfect as there is one part of the character sheet that you should look at and that's equipment. When I play dungeon crawlers and the situation starts to become more and more dire, the...