Whether you’re already familiar with running Dungeons & Dragons or you’re entirely new to the hobby, the task of devising ideas for your next campaign can be equally as daunting. 

If you’re not keen on trying out any of the prewritten D&D campaigns available from either official channels or the homebrew market, then the obvious option is to come up with campaign ideas yourself. However, that can be easier said than done - where the hell do you even start?

We’re tackling this exact question in the following article, with the specific goal of helping you to come up with exactly the kind of Dungeons & Dragons campaign you want to run for your players. 

Gather up some major inspirations

Good concepts rarely - if ever - spring from absolutely nowhere, with even the most original ideas requiring at least one form of influence. 

Dungeons & Dragons campaigns are made up of a collection of elements, whose inspirations could come from a multitude of places. Consider what kind of stories, worlds, styles and characters you and your D&D player-group - if you’re already familiar with them - are into at the moment. Not just general genres and vibes, but specific examples. 

For instance, you could love dark fantasy like Elden Ring, or ‘80s adventure like Jim Henson’s Labyrinth and The Princess Bride, or classic fantasy tales like The Lord of the Rings or Fantasy horror like Hellboy or Castlevania. These are all specific examples of video games, films and books that you could draw upon for ideas for your next D&D campaign. 

Don’t just think about what you and/or your players like, but also why you like them. Is it the subtle/implied worldbuilding of Elden Ring? The epic story of friendship and courage uniting otherwise vastly different people in The Lord of the Rings? Or how about the whimsical and bizarre style and atmosphere of Labyrinth? Or the monstrous but moral characters found in the Hellboy franchise?

Identifying what you specifically like about these examples will not only give you a better understanding of the kind of approach to take with your D&D campaign, but provide you with elements you can cherry pick for ideas. Unless you intend to lift aspects from existing media into your D&D campaign with the intention of selling it for profit, there is absolutely nothing wrong with including things you like from art you enjoy in your campaign. Don’t necessarily limit yourself to a single inspiration either, as long as you can make it work you can have Balrogs running around in a gothic castle that teleports across medieval eastern Europe if you want.

Devise a selection of key scenes

When you’ve had a good think about some of the major inspirations for your D&D campaign - as well as which elements you could borrow from them - you can start to establish what key elements you want to feature and feelings you want to invoke. 

Perhaps you want your campaign to elicit melancholy and empathy, maybe you want to have a highly humorous and lighthearted campaign, or perhaps you want to scare and produce tension in your players, or push them towards a sense of achievement and excitement? Maybe you want a mixture of a few of these emotions to come from your D&D campaign? Picking out some of these emotional goals will provide direction for your ideas. 

Next, think about any specific elements you want to feature in your D&D campaign. Imagine some key scenes for your players to experience, such as a perilous journey through a dark forest, or a stay in a wholesome and quaint village or a voyage on a ship flying through the clouds. This process could be as simple as thinking about specific scenes you really like - like Sophie, Howl, Calcifer and Markle making and eating breakfast together in Howl’s Moving Castle, or the iconic poison-drinking scene between Westley/the Dread Pirate Roberts and Vizzini in The Princess Bride - and shaping them into your campaign. 

You don’t want to force these scenes in if they’re not going to work with your players’ choices, but they’re options for you to reach for during your D&D campaign planning and running.  

Choose your players’ motivations

Once you have your key elements and scenes together, you’ll need to figure out how you’re going to connect them together into a single Dungeons & Dragons campaign. 

The thing that will thread these elements together is providing an overarching drive for your player party, or a reason for them to encounter these elements and scenes. Though the more specific reasons may vary between the player characters, there still needs to be a shared goal to encourage the players into adventure. 

This could be in order to find and reach a specific place, such as a lost home or possible shelter from a terrible conflict or natural disaster. Alternatively, the players’ shared goal may be to obtain a powerful object, whether to use its abilities or to exchange it for something else, or even protect it from others. The beauty of selecting a singular but broad goal for your player party is that you can then tailor it to specific characters - perhaps with the consultation and input from their players - depending on their respective origins and motivations.

One particularly versatile goal option is shaping an entire campaign goal around a specific character. This character can be taken wholesale from one of your selected inspirations - if you had an example in mind - or from your own imagination. Maybe the player characters wish to find this character, whether to fulfill a contract, to gain answers to an important question or ask for help. Perhaps this character needs saving from a terrible fate: with one character being duty-bound to rescue them and another being a beloved relative. This character could even be a villainous individual that the players must defeat, either to protect their loved ones or for the sake of claiming revenge. 

Goals can evolve throughout a campaign, whether in response to the players’ characters shifting personalities and motivations or as a way of providing a twist in the tale. Maybe a character’s once selfish motivation changes to a more benevolent one, or a character players were once set on killing might turn out to be an ally in disguise. Whatever core idea you choose to run with for your D&D campaign, don’t let yourself be hemmed in by it - leave plenty of room for new directions that your players could take you down. You could even utilize anything you don’t end up using in your next D&D campaign, so there’s rarely any waste. 

There you have it! A collection of methods for brainstorming ideas for your next D&D campaign. If you’re looking for any more advice on how to run Dungeons & Dragons or any other tabletop roleplaying game, then you can find plenty of very useful articles on the Legend Keeper blog.