I think the first one I did was for my school friends when I was around fourteen, or fifteen. What I do remember though, is that I barely did any preparation. I just went in there, rolled characters, and started setting a scene. It went okay for a few sessions as I just threw combat encounters at them, but we started to lose momentum around the fifth wave of goblins!
I realized that my campaign, whilst functional, had no deeper meaning. There was no story to be told here other than the murder of goblins. I realized quite quickly that my campaigns needed to be planned better if I was going to keep players interested in what I had to offer them. Far forward some fifteen years later, and my campaign planning starts months before.
Role playing campaigns are complex things. You have entire worlds, and planes of existence to explore. Forgetting that a bad guy dies twenty sessions ago, and bringing him back only for your players to point it out is awfully embarrassing. Here are some tips I have for preparing yourself for a long form story campaign.
Sometimes you have amazing adventures lodged inside your mind that are just dying to get out and be enjoyed by others.
These ideas are usually where I start when thinking about a campaign I want to run. Some stories are just too long to try and play out in one continuous adventure. Instead take that awesome story arc you had and break it up into smaller digestible portions. I divide my campaigns into chapters. Each chapter has a beginning, middle, and end, but the story feeds into the next one.
