In one of my first posts I discussed the “How to be a Great GM” resources – https://www.greatgamemaster.com/dm/

The site is excellent in providing guides on how to tell epic stories and providing templates on walking you through the story creation and story telling process. Perhaps the best template is the Masterplot template. I find it really makes you question and flesh the motivations of the BBEG and not just assume that the BBEG is bad because and you need to defeat him because.

For Rime of the FrostMaiden, the Masterplot made me create a new overarching story that would help to explain her anger and viciousness to the Ten Towns. Rather than just assume that she was that way because, I created a backstory of a loss she endured that could explain her actions and grief. I have since used this template for other campaigns like Curse of Strahd as well. It really does help to make the BBEG and NPC characters have more depth and makes the actions make sense.

Of course maybe it was just my players, but I had multiple parties that would frequently ask “Why are we doing this again?”, “Why should we accept this quest?”. I really did have to make sure that the rationale of the campaign held together and made sense.

If you have parties and players like that, this just may be the tool for you. Here is a copy of the one I created for Rime of the FrostMaiden. I kept it pretty high level and wrote out extra details in pen which I have now lost, but I think you will get the idea of what I was trying to accomplish.

SPOILER ALERT – if you are a player.

The same site also provides chapter templates to help you work through the details and motivations of the chapters of the adventures. The chapter templates prompts you to think about the chapter situation, theme, monsters, NPCs, expectations, and ideas seeded. Here is an example of one chapter:

These templates together allowed me to think through the campaign and plan it out at a high level so that the players could still take the stories in directions I did not anticipate. This is perhaps one of the biggest lessons I learned – define the plot at a high level so players could still create the story with you.

All of these templates focus on the plot, but not the story. It really helped me to understand how to balance giving the players reasons for action but not instructions on what to do.