Before you even start with a new campaign, you have to come up with ideas for one. And these ideas lead to more ideas and soon enough you start to fill notebooks with history, maps and factions and you will be burned out, before the first dice even have been rolled.

One thing I have seen often, is that campaign building and world building are used interchangeably. But they are not. They are both distinct. Yes, there is some overlap, but you can start a new campaign without any serious world building and vice versa. I say serious world building here, as of course you need some place where the adventure will take place, but you can keep it to a very minimum.

It is nothing more than an iceberg, or a lens that is focused on the players. Why bother figuring out all the political intricacies of a war, if your players are thousands of kilometres away from the conflict?

A seed is all that you need. Just a vague idea of things. The players will start to fill out blanks for you. Or you will come up with it as you go. Let the players come up with theories and if you like one, than let it become the truth. The players will be happy, that they figured out something and you are happy, because you didn't had to spent hours coming up with a detailed history of things.

Or just take a premade adventure or setting. It is the campaign that you play within it, that will shape the world and not the other way around. Worlds aren't build in a day or week. They grow over many years.

Step 1: Concept

The most important thing for a new campaign is to have a clear concept on what you actually want to achieve with the campaign. This is the pitch you will give your players. It should be short and just convey enough information so that they can make a decision. There are a few cornerstones, that should be included:

1. Game System
2. Core Concept or Frame
3. World Truths
4. (optional) Special Mechanics
5. Inspiration

Game System

This is the simplest question that needs answering, but often is the one that gets overlooked the most. Which system are you actually playing? This already informs a lot to potential players: Is it more heroic (like D&D 5e) or more gritty (OSR) for example.

Core Concept

Here you will formulate your actual pitch. The shorter the better. The easiest is just to come up with some keywords to the following points:

• Theme: Why / What?
• Setting: When / Where?
• Tone: How?

Optionally you can add a Twist to it.

Theme: Survival, Mystery

Setting: Icewind Dale (Forgotten Realms) - Ten Towns and beyond

Tone: Dark, Horror

Can you guess from where this example is? Yes, this is Rime of the Frostmaiden.

World Truths

Next, we define some simple truths about the world. These should be focused on the players. You can come up with as many as you'd like. But I would settle with about three. Keep the iceberg in mind. Superficial stuff is enough. It just seeds the curiosity. You can also think of these, like the rumours the character's will most likely have heard about the region.

• The region is plunged into perpetual night, since two years
• The people of Ten Towns have been cut of from the rest of the world since then
• Strange figures from the mountains have been invading Ten Towns

Special Mechanics

This is an optional step. Here you can explain special (house) rules or mechanics that will be applied in this campaign. These should focus what is special for this campaign. Your general house rules should be covered in session zero.

You could imagine here, special rules for dealing with the cold and the night, for Rime of the Frostmaiden.

Inspiration

If you have any, list your inspirations. This will most likely fill a lot of gaps and you can keep things on a minimum.

Step 2: Starting Region and Settlement

We now need a place, where your characters can play. This is the starting region. In a pre-made adventure this is most often provided. I suggest having one or two places at the ready to present the players and then go from there.

But what if you don't have one?

Well, you can easily just create one. And you don't need much to do so. You can take my series on hexcrawls to create a new province in no time. It doesn't even need to be that big. A starting settlement and a dungeon nearby is most often enough to start. Sprinkle in two factions to taste and you're done.

These settlements also don't need to be fully fleshed out. A name is more than enough and maybe a local contact, that can give them their first quest.

Step 3: Find Players

When you arrive here, you have all that you need to find players. The best way to convince them to come play with you, is to summarize everything in a one-pager. And you should stick to that one page. Not more. It is just enough to hook your players and to not overwhelm them with information (that frankly, they will probably forget anyway).

From this you can then start to plan the actual campaign on a per session basis. I will come to that in the future.

Further Reading: The Gygax 75 Challenge, Spiral Campaign and World Building in D&D, Writing a One-Page Campaign Guide, Just Three Hexes - Campaign Starters