I’ve identified several key elements that contribute to my joy as a GM and the success of a campaign. They span every aspect of my job as GM: preparation, tabletop gameplay, Discord threads, and post-session efforts. By identifying both the benefits and problems in these areas, I hope it will help us sustain campaigns longer, and more importantly, create more fun at the table and in Discord.
Why do I GM? I design and run games to escape into creativity and to build stories with people I trust and love. I do it because it invigorates me—the world-building, the characters, the drama. I do it for the shared joy.
Why this document? It is a further exploration into the singular goal of creating sustainable, fun campaigns. It lives alongside the GENRE BOUNDARY GUIDE but presents insights into how I GM along with practical solutions to improve the entire process.
A campaign thrives when the creative energy is shared and sustained by everyone in the group.
I love designing campaign settings with rich conflicts, deep factions, conspiracies, and dynamic setting-wide relationships. I love symmetrical design: timelines that make sense, escalations that scale correctly, characters with interrelated backgrounds. When the players latch onto these aspects, it generates pride, and acts as a continual recharge of my creative energy.
Player engagement with the setting recharges my creativity. Strengthen the campaign by asking questions, forming theories, and tying your character into the world’s elements.
There’s no other way to describe Lin, Sam, Rei, T’risskah, Mini, and Rosarie. I love these characters. They drive my passion at the micro level in the campaign. They are intrinsic either to the main plot or to the PCs, and I devote an inordinate amount of time designing them in both storytelling and art. With them, I seek mechanical fairness, story immersion, and background complexity. When I sense a disconnect between them and the players (or PCs), I seek remediation. “Fixing” these characters to forge a better connection. If that fails, it pains me.
NPCs who matter to PCs matter to me. Whether an NPC is meant to be ally, antagonist, or something stranger, the goal is resonance. But if it doesn't light the spark, the campaign survives because most NPCs are disposable.
Muses are different: they’re extensions of my creativity, passion, and player identity projected into the campaign. When a Muse resonates with the group, the story ignites. When that resonance fades, it disrupts the campaign's emotional core. When that happens, let's collaborate to restore or reshape that connection, because without a living Muse, the campaign itself cannot thrive.
I resent building complex session logs. Hyperlinks, art projects, character spotlights, important discoveries, timeline recaps. Creating an extensive log requires significant time, concentration, physical effort, and emotional drain. It has become an obligation and generates significant resentment.
Detailed logs create resentment. If I create a session log, it will be brief and act more like a “memory jog” than a “memory marathon”.
When Patrick introduced me to DAZ Studio I never imagined how it would change my life. I sometimes devote many hours a day to finding, buying, and using art assets. With every discovery I imagine how to enrich my campaigns. This has almost completely replaced browsing the internet for art and celebrity photos (probably 98:2 ratio). I love this aspect of my design process, especially related to my Muses. But ultimately, my priority is on campaign visuals (often through the Muse) and tabletop enhancements: Figure Flats, Character Portraits, Character Tents, Campaign Posters. Anything else is driven purely by inspiration and ends when it becomes a burden and kills the joy.
Art research that inspires is top priority. Next is art that improves immersion and gameplay; inspiration-only art-creation projects stop the moment they become burdens.
I resent when the timetable stagnates. The campaign calendar often doesn’t matter like it should. We jump from “Who are you?” to “What’s your life story?” in a matter of hours on the campaign calendar. I want the campaigns to breathe. To find opportunity in the mundane, or let it pass as slowly-evolving character development. We need to embrace more Downtime that doesn’t require the same detailed investment of time and writing (if in Discord) as Combat and Casual Causative Roleplay. To accomplish this we need to recognize three distinct pacing modes: