My husband is a perpetual DM. We moved to a new town in Ontario and made some local friends who expressed an interest in trying D&D, so he did a mini-campaign with all of us to see if our new friends would like it. At the same time, he was running our campaign with our old friends from Quebec. Between the two, he was getting pretty overwhelmed with the planning and prep work required for both!
When the mini-campaign with our friends was over, they were eager to jump into a larger campaign. One of them expressed a desire to do a campaign that felt like “classic D&D,” so I thought this would be a good opportunity to try my hand at DMing to give my husband a break. He was super excited to finally build a character and be a player!
I sent everyone a list of a few campaigns that were on the longer side. Everything I looked at said to run Curse of Strahd, but my husband started DMing that one with another group a while back so he was too familiar with it (and I didn’t feel comfortable stealing it from him after he did all the studying for it). I offered them these options:
Storm King’s Thunder
Princes of the Apocalypse
Rime of the Frostmaiden
Out of the Abyss
I sent those four titles with a mini description of the campaign to everyone, and they all agreed that Princes of the Apocalypse was the one they wanted to try. They liked it because it sounded like it would have lots of evilness and dark elements, which is right up their alley (Curse of Strahd would have been perfect 😫).
I really should have read reviews before I even put Princes of the Apocalypse in the options list. I assumed all the campaigns would be well written and it wouldn’t matter which one they chose, but WOW was I wrong. As soon as I started digging into Reddit posts and blog reviews, I realized that I chose one of the worst campaigns to try as a new DM.
This campaign is one that requires a LOT of prep work to feel confident with the story and all of the moving parts. The book is really disorganized, so I found myself doing read-through after read-through to understand how everything fit together. I also found the amazing Power Score RPG, who has a beautifully written walkthrough and breakdown of all the elements that helped me finally wrap my head around how to run this campaign. I also used the WikiDot site to get some extra yummy tidbits to add to the adventures.
After doing all that initial research and studying, I knew I wanted Red Larch to be a focal point of the story. There are 22 different locations and even more NPCs in the town, and I wanted my players to consider it their home base and begin to build relationships with the townsfolk. I loved the idea of sowing seeds of mistrust and doubt about who in the town is evil, who is trustworthy, who is a huge gossip with some elements of truth, etc. I pictured a sort of crime scene investigation where my players went door-to-door and tried to gather information about what was going on in the town.
With that in mind, I also really wanted to make the game more tactile and engaging for the players. I decided to get the map of Red Larch printed on 48”x36” engineering paper at Staples, which we then put under the clear vinyl table protector that was already on our dining/gaming table. IT LOOKED SO COOL!! I also made these little signposts that showed all the names of the shops so they could see what options were in each area of the town.
Here’s where I went down a rabbit hole. I made the signposts and then thought, well wouldn’t it be cool if each shop had their own little sign too? So I made those. I used ChatGPT to draw 22 unique signs for each of the shops in town. I then printed and laminated the signs. Then I glued them to mini skewers and made sure they were all relatively the same heights. Then I glued them to bases so they wouldn’t topple over. This took me hours.
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All of that is only a fraction of the amount of prepping I did before our session 0. I essentially prepared the first 3 sessions because I was so concerned about timing, so I prepped all of the Chapter 6 “Into the Wilderness” mini encounters. This included making maps and learning the intricacies of each location inside and out.
I did all of that and then realized that if I was encouraging them to go to each location in Red Larch, I would need to know each of the NPCs they would encounter in EACH of the 22 shops! So I made a binder. But not just any binder! One with 30 different tabs that would allow me to seamlessly flip from shop to shop based on where they decided to go. Did I stop there? OF COURSE NOT! I turned to ChatGPT (ol’ reliable) and asked it to help me plan out each potential encounter at each of the 22 shops. Describe the building’s exterior. Describe the interior. Describe the NPC. Tell me what they would say. Build me a pricing list of what they sell.
Did I mention I started doing this over a month before we even had Session 0 planned? Session 1 was still 6 weeks away and I had already prepped way more than was necessary. Unfortunately for me (a struggling perfectionist), I couldn’t stop. I began thinking about what information I wanted each shop owner to have and how they would present that information to the players. I needed a way for them to be interested in doing the 4 adventures from “Into the Wilderness,” so I invented stories that each NPC might tell that usually ended with “but you should go ask _____ about that. They know more than I do.” I created an intricate web of gossip and rumors that would eventually lead to the 4 adventures I wanted the players to do.
THEN I realized that the 4 adventures were cute, but they didn’t really seem to tie into the campaign very much. Wait. 4 adventures. 4 elements. 4 prophets. Let’s have the prophets show themselves a little earlier than planned! As each adventure was completed, I had ChatGPT help me write out little scenarios where each of the prophets introduced themselves very briefly before disappearing again.
I planned all of these intricate details and connections, but I knew that Session 0 was going to change the way I did some things. I didn’t even know who my players were going to choose for characters, so I decided to stop there and wait until I knew more about who everyone wanted to play.
My recommendation to new DMs: if you insist upon doing Princes of the Apocalypse for your first campaign, dedicate a full month to prepare 😂