Back in the fall of 2009, Chris Dinkins and I interviewed a host of game designers and novelists who were also experienced game masters. We sent around too many questions to too many GMs and received far too much material for one article to hold. As a result, a lot of great material got scrapped. Fortunately, gaming wisdom ages well. I recently discovered a folder full of all that cut material (anecdotes, advice, and miscellany), which we will be presenting, here, in the Lost GM Scrolls. Enjoy! —JLCJ

Mike Mearls was a lead developer on D&D 4E. Now he’s heading up the creative team that’s developing D&D Next. Here’s a quick look into the way Mearls runs a campaign.

Mike Mearls: I tend to rely on building general story elements and a feel or theme I want for a game or section of a campaign, and then let the players find their own direction. In one of my current D&D campaigns, the characters are in the City of Brass on a quest to convince Imix, the evil elemental prince of fire, to do a big favor for them.

When I planned things out, I made a simple list of stuff the PCs might try to do, then created a few NPCs and groups that might play a role in those tasks. Here’s part of my list for the City of Brass:

• A rundown, thieves’ guild type tavern—the Iron Griffin
• An information broker—Varda the Hag
• Useful criminals—a gang of smugglers who specialized in ice and storm magic
• Bad guys—the Cinder Lords, pirates who operate on the Sea of Fire
• Opportunists—Timm and Tamm, arcanoloth twins

My notes are more fleshed out than that, but the basic idea is that I have these pieces that I can bring into play as the PCs think of how to deal with a situation. In the campaign, they wanted to find information, so a friendly NPC pointed them to Varda. Varda asked them to steal a boat from the Cinder Lords in return for the information they wanted. Now the Lords hate the PCs, while Timm and Tamm have heard of them and are eager to dupe them into an alliance.

The key for me is to find a balance between passive NPCs and story elements that I can use when the PCs make a decision, and active ones I can bring into the story if things stall. For instance, if the players were fumbling with a plan, I could have Timm and Tamm introduce themselves and try to strike a deal with them.

I think of all these elements like Lego pieces that I can pull out and use as needed. The key is that they have things to offer the PCs or the story, and pointers to the next piece that fits with them. Varda’s hook is that she has info the PCs want, so the characters want to talk to her. She has a grudge with the Cinder Lords, so there’s an easy way to send the PCs into conflict with a bad guy group.

The nice thing is that the PCs have a clear goal: Talk to Imix, and make sure that talk ends with his helping them. I placed the end point of this arc of the campaign in front of the PCs, but give them a lot of latitude to get there however they want. I take a lot of notes on NPCs and what happens in the game, and use that info to keep things moving. If the PCs hate the Cinder Lords, maybe they show up just as the PCs are about to grab the item they need to bribe Imix. If you keep good notes and pay attention to what the players enjoy about your game, the campaign starts to write itself.

So, how do you plan out your campaign? Feel free to share your thoughts on this question in the comments below. You never know when something that works for you is exactly what a fellow GM needs to improve his or her game!