4 – Filling Out Your Campaign5 min read

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  • SRD Reference: Faces & Places
  • Rules Reference: pg 25 (Fate Core Systems Book)

Filling Out Your Campaign

Filling Out Your Campaign Flowchart
Filling Out Your Campaign Flowchart

Now you get to work on some very specific elements of your setting:

  • faces
  • places
  • organizations

These will be the things that you will encounter during your adventures. You may want to start with your antagonist and their organization, if any.

Places and Organizations

You will want to start with your organizations and places first. Come up with a few of each. No more than 6 total otherwise you may have too many to manage in a single session. You will want to think of organizations and places that will be important to your characters, to history, to the setting, or to the Current Issue. As you have these decided upon write them down on a note card.

Organizations Places
  • mercenary group
  • knightly order
  • noble house
  • king’s court
  • tech corporation
  • thieves guild
  • major city
  • nation
  • local restaurant
  • local market
  • forest
  • important road

Note: If you have more than 6 total then write the remaining ones down so you can revisit them at a later time.

Issues

Once you have your list of Places and Organizations you will want to assign 1 Issue to them. Issues are anything that will cause conflict or problems. Create 1 Issue for each: either a Current Issue or an Impending Issue, but no more than that otherwise you may get bogged down with too many details for this stage.

Write them down on the note card along with its location or organization. These will be great drivers for subplots and to give the characters something to do at all times. If there is a location or organization that should be mysterious feel free to leave it as such so that the GM can fill it out later.

Types of Issues Sample Issues
  1. schism between leaders
  2. schism in belief systems
  3. a group trying to subvert authority 
  4. invading forces 
  5. antagonistic environmental, technological, or magical issues
  6. opposing desires 
  1. The Prince wants to rule 
  2. Some want a violent resolution to the strike.
  3. rebels want to stop the barons rule
  4. undead are beginning to rise
  5. uncontrolled sentinel nanites 
  6. the weapons smiths are disgruntled the trade agreement

Faces

Once you have issues created for your Places and Organizations it is time to bring them to life with some NPC’s that inhabit them or are associated with them. Create a single NPC for the place or organization that embodies it, opposes it, or can bring some perspective to it. This may be the character’s’ primary method to learn about or access the place or organization. The GM can flesh them out later.

You will also want to add at least one detail to them to make them stand out against the sea of nameless faces. Also, if you are feeling somewhat  punchy, you may also assign what type of NPC they are too: supporting or main. Keep in mind that this can change as the GM needs or as their role in the campaign changes.

Note: Of course, you may feel the need to not have an NPC for each location and organization and that is fine. Run with your inspirations. The GM can fill in the gaps later.

Character Aspects and Histories

Once your characters are created revisit this process and take a moment to look at your Character Aspects. Take a look at the list of faces, places, and organizations mentioned therein. If there is not already at least one place, organization, or NPC created that is associated with one of your character’s aspects, then create one in a similar manner which will give a little more emphasis to the campaign for your character. It will also provide your GM with a little more fodder to pull in your character aspects and history to create subplot focused on your character.

Fatesville Gaming Group

The work of filling out the locations, organizations, issues, and NPC’s was a long one. They started by adding a few locations and organizations. One of which was the Larion Vale, which is the homeland that they want to save from the dragon. Then they added the Gindenwald which was the boodiest and final site in the Five Nations War. Issues for their organizations and locations came next. For the Larion Vale, its Current Issue was Clashing with the their Blue Dragon Neighbor. For the Grindenwald, they added an ominous Impending Issue – The Dead are Rising. Lastly, they added the NPC’s for their locations. The first was the dragon from which they will need to save the vale from – Kyraxius, their slothful and tyrannical green dragon overlord. Another NPC was Telly, a resourceful and gregarious human that frequents The Barter House.

Inspired by the Grindenwald location, which was Dan’s idea, Sarah began to write down some rather lengthy information about it as they continued their talk of issues to assign the locations and organizations. Jeff just shook his head at Sarah as he realized what she was doing. Writing was boring. He wanted to roll his magical dice and slay some dragons already. His wizard character was already happily percolating in his mind. As the pizza had finally arrived, George announced, looking at a message on his phone, that he had to go because his friend needs his help. Everyone waved goodbye as George gathered his stuff and left early.