We’ve talked about session 0 where you set-up your world for your players and give them an idea of a story that you want to tell. We’ve then talked about getting the game going, how do you get the adventuring party together and how do you start dropping the story hooks for the first adventure.

So now you are starting your campaign, how do you run a game that has good balance, good flow, and doesn’t end up with you accidentally getting your big bad guy killed quickly or killing off your whole adventuring party?

There are two different grooves that we are going to talk about here, your story groove and your session groove.

The story groove is probably the easier of the two. You just have to come up with the little bits of information that the players are going to be getting and keeping them motivated. But you also need to be putting into your mind the story that is happening around what your characters are doing. What’s going on in their home town while they are gone? It’s very possible that the answer is nothing, it’s been a boring time at their home time. But the bigger question is what is the bad guy doing? Your players shouldn’t be chasing around the BBG (Big Bad Guy) the whole time, it won’t allow them to really level up naturally. So what do your players need to do while they are waiting to be strong enough to face the bad guy, and what is the BBG doing to taunt, cause trouble, or increase the need for the players to go after him, while the players aren’t able to?

The harder of the two with the session, how do you keep your players involved in each session. It is made more interesting by the fact that your players will want different things. Some players are going to be really interested in roleplaying, talking to the tavern keeper and expect every character to have information on what they are looking for. Some players are going to be a bit more of a murder hobo and they are going to want to think about combat and will want to fight something every session. Some players are going to want it to spend the whole time creating a story.

So how do you balance out all of those things?

Try and get some of all of those things into your game is the first thing. Use your roleplaying and combat to help tell the story is fairly important. And another big thing is to keep the tension on in the game. Now, that doesn’t mean that their aren’t down moments, they can have a peaceful night and an easy combat, but more often than not, you need to remind your players that their characters might die. The world that you are in should be dangerous, and there should be people who are scheming and doing things. If their characters fall into unconsciousness, it’s something that the players remember. They remember the sessions where the stress is higher, especially if it is something that is related to the story.

You also don’t have to just have a monster that is really tough for them to try and kill. Plan various other types of conflicts as well, maybe an NPC doesn’t want to do what your players characters want them to do. Or maybe there is a situation where they are getting hit over and over again, but there is some puzzle that they have to figure out to survive. Or maybe, like early on in Dungeons and Flagons, they have to try and stop something from happening. Killing the bad guys is important, but you want to stop them from getting away with what really matters, and that’s why you are trying to kill them.

So, try and have some balance in your sessions. But try and keep everything progressing forward somehow and you can try and teach your players a little bit on what to expect or not expect. For example, in Dungeons and Flagons, they go up a tree and find themselves in the Fey Wild. Now, there was nothing up there for them. I knew I could do a little bit with Nimrose’s backstory in the Fey Wild, but there wasn’t going to be anything there to help them in the main quest that they were after. Was it bad that they explored there? Nope, not at all. But was it needed for them to go there? Nope, not at all. I gave them a bit of a story there, but not the story that they were hoping for.

So now, get your story running, get your game flowing, and finally, be willing to change what you were thinking a lot. You don’t need to change the big part of your story, it can still be the game BBG, but if your players come up with a better idea or are going in a different direction, adjust what your BBG is doing, adjust where they are going to find what they need to defeat him. Adjust how they are going to get there. Be willing to create the adventure that your players are interested in. Now, that can be really tough to do if you really love some piece of your story, but you can run another game, another time, and use it when your players are ready for it, or when you find players who want to get to that. Create a notebook, document, or something with the stories that you haven’t been able to use, and then adjust your adventure that you are playing now, and everyone will have more fun.