User blog:Hashimashadoo/A bit of refreshment

A couple of weeks ago I decided that I couldn't cope with the campaign as well as I would have liked.

Unless you spend all of your time writing it so you have all the content you need ready for any given situation, a freeform adventure requires you to anticipate your player's future actions and prepare for them. I was finding that I was failing at this task. My players went in different directions to what I was expecting and I found myself on several sessions not having any prepared material to use with them. I had planned for this eventuality and placed a few guides into the campaign to push them in a particular direction if ever I was feeling to pressured but I'm not a very authoritarian DM and didn't push these guides hard enough to have the party use them.

So, while I catch up on pre-writing, I'm taking the party through what I like to call the "Weave Campaign" (Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave, Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land & Anauroch: The Empire of Shade). The party are on the cusp of their first level up and they're pretty keen so far.

After running a game where I am under so much pressure, I can't tell you how nice it feels to have it all taken away by seeing all of the content prepared for you. Plus, it puts paid to all the comments of "When the Icewind Dale Campaign starts..." Just like with the 'evil campaign' as soon as I mentioned it, characters were being built and thoughts were being put towards it every session. I suppose I should have expected it as two of my players are Drizzt fans. Ah, well. It seems that I don't learn learn lessons.