Prep Your Campaign Like A Gamebook
Header Image: Player’s Handbook (2014) by Wizards of the Coast
When you are preparing for a game, it can be easy to just assume what your players will do and prepare content that way, or just assume that an ending to the session. In truth, you should be preparing your games as if it was a gamebook, also known as a Choose Your Own Adventure, where there are several options, and you explore, in your prep, what each option could look like.
What is a Gamebook?
Gamebook is a genre of literature where you are reading a story from a second-story perspective and, at certain situations, the book asks you what you want to do. Of course, since a book can’t be exhaustive in all options, there are typically only a handful of choices that you can follow. You then flip to the appropriate page and find out what are the consequences for your decision - typically this will mean additional options for you to choose, items that you ‘keep’ with you throughout your reading adventure, and, probably, you dying in a variety of different ways. Once you finish the book, you get a semi-unique ending - but you can reread the book multiple times, picking different options and getting other endings based on different choices you made.
History
For a quick primer, the original Choose Your Own Adventure books were first created by Edward Packard. He got the idea from telling bedtime stories to his children until he eventually ran out of ideas and turned the problem to his children, what should the main character in their story do?
At this point, the children came up with all sorts of ideas and he ran with it - coming up with consequences on the fly and following the trajectory for each idea that the children had. At this point, he realized that he had a potentially great idea for writing novels and the gamebook genre was born.
Gamebooking Your Prep
Based on the, very brief, history above - you can probably pick out major similarities between the genre of gamebooks and your own RPG table. You present to your players a situation, they then come up with their solution and you are responsible for describing the consequences of their choices.
The only difference between a gamebook and your table is that a gamebook has a page count they have to stick to and it typically ‘builds’ the character that you are assuming control of in the book. The options in a gamebook are more limited than at your table, but there is a very similar experience between the gamebooks and RPGs.
Writing like a Gamebook
So what can we take away from the gamebook genre? My answer is how to prep for your adventures. When you are writing your prep for your table, regardless of whether or not it is a pre-written module, come up with different solutions that the party might follow.
What this means is that instead of assuming a solution, or only spending time thinking about a single solution or outcome to a future event at your table, you spend that time thinking about multiple events - and PLEASE do not take this to mean you need to do more work and more prep. In truth, this should actually allow you to prep the same amount but have more ideas to work with.
Why this is, is because instead of getting very detailed about a specific outcome the party might take - and thus limiting your ideas at the table - you are instead going to list out different possible solutions that the party could take and what could happen in each. Each of these different situations are only a few sentences each and are just there to help give you an idea of what to do. This gives you a lot of ideas on paper and you are not prematurely marrying your story and plot to a single solution.
This not only opens you up and being more accepting of what the party might try to do, no matter how unconscious your resistance from choosing the ‘true solution’ might be, but also means you have a lot of ideas and decisions to draw on. No longer do you only have a single ‘plan’ that you prepped for. Now you have multiple plans that you can steal different parts from when your party goes off and does their own thing.
Examples
Now I am going to share with you two examples of notes from an old campaign I ran and made. You won’t understand names and references, but you can see that I have several ideas for what the party might do and possible outcomes. In addition, I’ll let you know what the party decided to do and how I used my notes.
Encounter with Maester Leyden
For a point of reference, Maester Leyden is a powerful spellcasting NPC while Buckwheat is a ranger PC.
Maester Leyden has gotten news that Buckwheat has used his name to move subpar product, is furious. Uses scrying every day to target Buckwheat's position (DC 19 Wisdom save)
Maester Leyden is in the process of forming into a Lich, he is still several months from losing all his skin, but he is already beginning to smell like a graveyward and has taken to eating garlic to mask the scent.
Once finds his location, will teleport there and then use Locate Creature to find him (if required). Will have Detect Thoughts up when confronting
A) Buckwheat apologizes, makes matters right. Maester Leyden will leave, giving one final warning, "If my name passes your lips, I will know. I will hunt you down and ensure it never happens again."
B) Buckwheat tries to lie, run away, obfuscate, Maester Leyden will grow angier, "Your life will fall to dust, your joy will be ashen. I am keeping my eyes on you forester, and so are the Silver Twilight."
C) Buckwheat attacks, Maester Leyden has Foresight up and Buckwheat has disadvantage on attacks. Will cast Power Word Pain on Buckwheat. "I promise you the pain you are feeling now is just the beginning."
In this situation, my player decided to go with option B where they first lied and then ran away. But that wasn’t all, after they ran a few streets away, they then hid behind a building and decided to try and tail Maester Leyden. I didn’t have any plans for that outcome, but I at least had my potential outcomes for lying already written out so I had that to lean on. In addition, I have a sentence in there about Leyden trying to become a lich, so I could include Buckwheat, the character, tailing Leyden as they go magic item shopping, using magic to teleport out, or something else to clue the PC into Leyden and Leyden’s history.
Leaving Molai for Talimeth
My next example are just a boring “travel” notes prep for the session, but allowed me to quickly tell the players their options if they asked around town or wanted to know how fast they could get to their next destination. The party wants to enter the city of Talimeth with little fanfare as they are trying to be covert.
Can walk 5 days and 1/2 day on a small ship [5 sp each] to get to Venkat, then take drake ride to Talimeth (4 hexes a day [2 days total], 80 gp for each drake) 1 person per mountain drake, sycamore [pet bear] can be attached in place of luggage. not fun for her. Flying straight for 12 hours each day [huge chance to be noticed, flashy entrance].
Take a ship 27 hexes (6.75 days, 1 gp per day per character) [somewhat chance to be noticed]
Walk for 14 days (12 hexes, 2 hexes are difficult terrain due to the mountain) [less to no chance to be noticed]
Walk 1 day to a small village on the lake (Lake Gevaar) and take a small lake ship (2 days,3 hexes a day, 5 sp per day) down it to another small town and then walk 9 days (1 hex a day, 2 hexes are mountains and difficult terrain)
Can get mules and donkeys to speed up journey to 1.5 hexes a day (12 hexes, 2 hexes are difficult terrain due to mountains) 11 day journey of just walking. They cost 8 gp each, can get 2 donkeys per person (alternate riding, and can carry their heavy equipment). Or buy ankylosaraus or hadrosaurus instead. Ankylosaurus can be good for 4 people, Hadrosaurus is good for 2 people. [50 gp for hadro, 110 gp for ankyl)
While traveling might not be the most exciting thing to write notes about, when it is important to the plot, it can be quite useful. In this situation, my party decided to walk for 14 days. They prioritized not being noticed and didn’t want to spend any more money than they had to since many were hoping to purchase a few important magic items once they got to the city and didn’t want to waste it on mounts I was probably going to kill on the journey (not saying I would, but still…).
Writing Your Prep
Of course, not all my notes are written in such a clear-cut fashion. I don’t always have multiple different choices pre-written. Instead, I often write two or three paragraphs with a wide overview of the situation and then spend a sentence for a handful of ‘solutions’ I could think of that my table is likely to follow.
What each sentence is doing is simply a kickstart for my brain to think of what could happen, not what will happen. I want my players to have their own say in the story and by keeping my mind open to multiple possibilities, it is easier to let them guide the story. When I first started out, I had specific outcomes that I wanted, maybe because I thought it’d be cool or that was just the ‘obvious’ answer, but it led to resistance for my table.
In reality, we are creating a story with the players. They should get a say in the story as well. Otherwise, we aren’t creating a story at the table, but rather writing a novel. We are making an adventure with the players and so the moment you start writing your prep like a gamebook, allowing the players to choose their own adventure, the sooner your story becomes one created by the table as a whole and it becomes richer because of it.
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