I learned this from Ben Robbins.

No, no. Not directly. I just read his blog. I’m not that cool.

It was his write up of the first West Marches campaign. I read it years ago and its stuck with me ever since.

Last week, I started a new DnD campaign. It’s the first one I’ve ever done that is all point crawl. Yes, I’m surprised too.

What I didn’t expect was how much the structure of the game lived in the background where it couldn’t be seen. “There’s a door to the west and a door to the north. The King’s road stretches west to east”.

Anyway, I digress. What did I learn from Ben Robbins? Running an open world game can be daunting. It feels like you have to have the whole world fleshed out before you start, but you don’t. You just need the player’s help.

First off, you need their buy in during the first session. Mine started with a really strong hook based on the characters they made. It pretty much relegated them to a single mansion that I had all mapped out.

At the end of the session came the tip form Ben Robbins – I simply asked them what their plans were for next session.

It was a rocky question – I don’t think anyone was used to thinking about that at the end of a four hour game. We talked about just answering the question in the Discord with a deadline. They eventually came up with a plan, however.

That plan told me where I need to focus my prep.

Now I’m going to branch out as well, but at least I know what NEEDS to be done. Thankfully, they plan to return to the mansion (they accidentally stole the wrong item. Oops).

The take away here is this: when you are running an open world game and need to know what to prep next, just ask the players.