The Campaign Builder's Guild

Greetings Everyone!
I'm A new user to this site and  new Game Master looking for tips and ideas, I'm hoping you guys here at CBG will be able to help me out.
I've roleplayed a few times and plan on running a campaign for my close circle of friends (theres 4 of us) and we're running a really basic system on percentages(Basically the GM rolls the dice and you roll to beat him, if you do your action passed if not it failed. items/weapons can boost up your roll etc.)
I have the "World" mapped out so far, it's pretty simple; I have elves, dwarves and humans who all have their own kingdoms in their own continents and then there is a city on a small island thats independent of the kingdoms called Union city where the characters will start the story.
I'm looking for outlining tips on how to make a story. I believe I have all the nuts and bolts down for the world, (town names, guilds, terrains and areas of interest) but I have no idea how to make an engaging story where the characters wonder "whats going to happen next" and they actually look forward to gaming every week. My friend tried to run a game before me and it fell apart when we couldnt figure out what to do next and he had to bring in NPC's to tell us what to do, eventually everyone lost interest and we started playing Magic again. Now that we've had a break from that they've asked me to take the reigns and be a Game Master, I'll admit I'm a little nervous. 
If you could please help and give me tips to build a good storyline i'd really appreciate it!
-Tiberius

A RPG can't really have a pre-planned plot in the way that a novel or a movie would. What you'll need is to come up with some interesting situations or conflicts to present to the player characters. For example:

"You are visiting one of your friends but he's not home. His house has been broken into, and there's a note knifed on the door demanding a ransom be paid, or else!" (A kidnap plot - will the PCs scrounge money for the ransom or will they try to track the kidnapper and rescue their friend?)

"The water in your town's wells has all turned black and tastes like piss. And all the barrels of wine and beer have been likewise fouled!" (The cause could be a vengeful alchemist trying to mess up the town because the mayor recently humiliated him in a chess match. Better find and expose him, or you'll have to get used to the new flavour in your drinks!)

"Lots of people are suddenly accusing you of random acts of theft, vandalism, insults, etc. Several eye witnesses testify to these crimes being committed by you at times and places when you where somewhere else." (Doppelgangers are posing as the PCs and causing havoc to get them in trouble. They may have to dodge the law while hunting down these impostors to clear their names.)

There is no real plot structure to any of those scenarios above. You simply set it up and then let it play out to what ever conclusion (if any) emerges from the actions of the player characters.

One approach I've found to help with planning is to plan what the NPCs (usually the villains) are going to do if they're not interfered with. That way, they go about their business, and, left alone, the plot proceeds-- but the players are free to act. It requires a bit of improvisation and thinking through the contingencies of what happens when their plans are invariably foiled, but it lets you have some plan without there being a "railroad" or something like that players tend to hate.

So, I'm going to need to create different "stages" where the villians scheme is going the way they plan it, and have that affect the world somehow and those will be the situations where a party will want to jump in?

on a slightly unrelated note...

Quote from: Ghostman
"Lots of people are suddenly accusing you of random acts of theft, vandalism, insults, etc. Several eye witnesses testify to these crimes being committed by you at times and places when you where somewhere else." (Doppelgangers are posing as the PCs and causing havoc to get them in trouble. They may have to dodge the law while hunting down these impostors to clear their names.)

this would be an awesome quest to go through!

Since you're new to GMing, I'd actually suggest pretty much dispensing with "plot" pretty much altogether and running a more location-based adventure, where you need only the vaguest plot concept - retreiving an item, killing a bandit leader, rescuing kidnapped villagers, cleansing the city sewers of wererats, etc.  Design a dungeon, ruin, catacomb, or similar space, with a map, and then key each room with challenges (monsters, traps, puzzles, allies).  This doesn't mean the adventure has to be a total hack and slash affair: there could be lots of creatures and other individuals to interact with in a non-combat capacity, mysterious rooms or objects, riddles, logic puzzles, and the like, as well as monsters.  You can introduce more "plotty" elements as you go.

Check out some of the early D&D adventures for inspiration, like Against the Giants, Dwellers in the Forbidden City, Tomb of Horrors, and Castle Amber.

Some people scoff at the "dungeon crawl" mode of play, but location-based, exploratory adventuring can be really fun.  It's much easier to GM than some super-involved and convoluted story, and it trains a GM to learn to improvise and describe spaces.  For a beginner GM in a fantasy world, I highly recommend it over a plot-centric adventure.

What made you decide to go for a percentage-based system rather than adopting one of the many free roleplaying systems available online, i.e. D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Labyrinth Lord, etc?

Oh wow that sounds like an easier start, I may just go with that.

Quote from: Steerpike
What made you decide to go for a percentage-based system rather than adopting one of the many free roleplaying systems available online, i.e. D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Labyrinth Lord, etc?

Well we're all pretty poor as a gaming group. no one owns a laptop, printer or very many dice(I'm using my work computer right now ha ha). We have a few sets of percentage dice and some d6's and 2 d20's. The original GM made up the system up and its easy enough to play, either you pass or you fail. everyone has 6 "Hits" they can take before they get knocked out. We're not doing permanent death since its our first one haha. 

Steerpike, to be fair, there could be plenty going on in the background of a dungeon crawl, depending on who lives there and whatnot. I think the approach actually being advocated here is "it vastly decreases the workload on the GM if there is no overarching things-going-on and we assume the whole world revolves around the PCs and nothing happens until and unless they interact with it." A dungeon crawl is just one setting where this kind of thing is probably not too egregious of a problem.

Quote from: sparkletwistSteerpike, to be fair, there could be plenty going on in the background of a dungeon crawl, depending on who lives there and whatnot. I think the approach actually being advocated here is  "it vastly decreases the workload on the GM if there is no overarching things-going-on and we assume the whole world revolves around the PCs and nothing happens until and unless they interact with it."

That's partially true, but it's not precisely what I meant.  Preparing a dungeon crawl can be a pretty big workload depending on its size and scope, and running location-based adventures like hexcrawls and the like can be demanding as well, especially if done in a full sandbox style.  What location-based adventuring minimizes is the "lead the players by the nose"/railroading effect that more story-based play can devolve into unless care is taken, in which the GM has to be very careful to consider the overall shape of events in a narrative and the players' effect on those events.  Of course things can and should be going on "in the background" of a crawl.  You don't want the world to feel as if it simply revolves around the PCs, even in a location-based adventure, and I'm not arguing for that type of play.  You want to give the location a feeling of verisimilitude and reality, to feel alive - there should be signs of conflicting factions, history, contention, previous exploration, patrols, weather, other travelers, etc.  But these aren't very "plotty": they're not about an over-arching narrative so much as a thorough understanding of the space and the things/people that inhabit it.  They help to drill into the players the idea that they make the story, rather than just walking through it like a script the GM prepared.

Quote from: TiberiusWell we're all pretty poor as a gaming group. no one owns a laptop, printer or very many dice(I'm using my work computer right now ha ha). We have a few sets of percentage dice and some d6's and 2 d20's. The original GM made up the system up and its easy enough to play, either you pass or you fail. everyone has 6 "Hits" they can take before they get knocked out. We're not doing permanent death since its our first one haha. 

Fair enough - if that works for your group, go for it.  If you want to get more adventurous with a system you might try checking out hobby shops or even bookstores to see if they have a few old gaming books sitting on the shelf gathering cobwebs - you might be able to pick up a few cheap rulebooks.  Or perhaps ebay, of course.

Quote from: SteerpikeYou don't want the world to feel as if it simply revolves around the PCs, even in a location-based adventure, and I'm not arguing for that type of play.

Ok, well, maybe I was, then. It's not the best, of course, but for a newbie DM doing a dungeon crawl, it's probably kinda sorta ok. Given that you definitely want to reinforce the idea to players that they make the story, as well as not have things be too much of a burden, starting with an extremely player-focused game and gradually incorporating more of the world and background details isn't the worst way to go.

If you felt like experimenting with one of the systems that is free online, printing off a few copies of the more important rules might be an option.  

But yeah, for a first attempt at GMing, a dungeon crawl might be for the best, as SP suggests.  Of course, my first attempt at GMing was TECHNICALLY a dungeon crawl, but I still managed to railroad the PCs.  Basically each room had two exits: the way back, and the way forward. Meaning they had no choice but to face my ridiculous challenges (I didn't understand the Monster Manual, so I just threw whatever looked cool at them.  Of course I also had no idea how powerful they were supposed to be, so I ran a Dracolich with 5 HP.  I don't know why I didn't ask for help...) Try to avoid that.  Options are good, and tend to help keeping players from wanting to bash your head in with your own adventure.

Quote from: Steerpike

That's partially true, but it's not precisely what I meant.  Preparing a dungeon crawl can be a pretty big workload depending on its size and scope, and running location-based adventures like hexcrawls and the like can be demanding as well, especially if done in a full sandbox style. 

Sorry, but what is a Hexcrawl?

Quote from: Steerpike
Fair enough - if that works for your group, go for it.  If you want to get more adventurous with a system you might try checking out hobby shops or even bookstores to see if they have a few old gaming books sitting on the shelf gathering cobwebs - you might be able to pick up a few cheap rulebooks.  Or perhaps ebay, of course.

If we really get into it i think we'll try hunt down D&D 3.5 and our hobby shop just sells Magic Cards and comic books and Minis. ='( i havent thought to check old bookstores ill give that a shot!
Thanks for all your help guys I really appreciate it!

http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl

A link to friend Justin's useful site.  This is a great tutorial on the hexcrawl style of play, which I have used and played with in the past.  My SIG players know this stuff...
I use the Campaign hexagon booklets templates from JG, so my hexes are pretty much only 1m deep.

Thanks for the link Lord Vreeg!