Sagas RPG.com

As promised in last week’s post I will be expanding on what you will be able to accomplish with DPnP. Today we start with the most obvious: Campaign Building.

The first, and most obvious place to start is with pre-generated campaigns. These are the generic settings such as Modern Sagas, or Fantasy Sagas. Basically, you want to start with one of those to fill in the most likely components for your game. There is absolutely no need to itemize every single item, skill, power, etc when there is a huge collection already available.

Once you have your basic campaign elements opened (by opening up Fantasy Sagas or Modern Sagas). You can then start customizing the rules. This is done in campaign options. In there you set things like racial balance, can you roll for attributes, use point buy , or both. What are the rules for creating a character? What elements can you use? Are there magic in the world, or modern weapons?

Once this is done you can look at importing campaign elements. These are specific packages of campaign elements, such as a collection of new spells or races. Import the packages you want, overwriting things as you need. Then you have the bulk of your campaign finished.

Next, you trim the fat. You simply remove the elements you don’t want. Furthermore, you can keep certain elements but remove them from player options. For instance, you can set certain races as being un-playable for players, but still usable for the GM.

Next, you add your own custom elements. This usually means adding new races, skills, etc. However, most importantly, it means adding factions, npc’s and regions. These are all elements you can simply add as you need them or try to build them all up front. For myself, I usually create a central area to start with, where the players will start, and develop surrounding regions. I give regions more details as the campaign evolves.

When you’re done you can print the entire thing as a rule-book, save the campaign and share (you’ll need to send the campaign to your players for them to build characters for it), or print out necessary section for your players.

Once shared, you can continue to evolve your campaign. Its a good idea to store it online for your player’s to be able to upload it whenever you update it (we provide space on our site to do this for free).

The entire process is as detailed and involved as you want. Your campaign will have the level of detail you commit to it, but that doesn’t mean that things will look simple and easy. As a matter of fact, we added the importing tools and element packages simply to make things as fast and easy possible. 

Next week I will move on to a general outline of the character generator.

Until then, Happy Gaming!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Campaign Resource Manager, DPnP, Developer Blog, E-RPG General Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.