Simple ways to structure a D&D campaign (part one)

In the heart of most GMs is the desire to tell a big story, one with heroes, villains, intrigues, dilemmas, hard choices, fortresses to capture and treasures to find. Above all for many there is the deep sense that the players, having come through fire and blood have grown together as comrades and friends.

There are of course countless campaigns that you as a GM can buy that will provide your players with excellent adventuring experiences, and that you can adapt to your own campaign world if necessary.

This post is for those intrepid GMs who want to create their own campaigns, either situated in their own universes or in the fantasy realities created by D&D or other RPG designers.

We'll look at a quite simple structure in this post, and then in later posts explore more complex campaign designs; fortunately popular culture has provided us with a perfect ready made framework for creating this kind of long form story telling around.

The movie.

The structure of a movie