Travel Check

In my post about adding a calendar to your world, I mentioned that writing timelines helps me organize series of potentially chaotic events. Here’s a few principles for how to do that, along with an example (which has already resolved in my game world, so it’s not a spoiler to any players).

A few principles:

It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it’s better if you keep it simple. You aren’t writing a story here, you’re outlining. In fact, you shouldn’t put a lot of effort into it, because…

The timeline changes as soon as the players interact with it. The timeline exists so you know what would happen if the player’s don’t interact with a series of events. In this example, the party had gone planes-hopping and left the mess behind. But the players don’t need to be that far removed. In any long-running campaign, you’ll probably have a few different threats (or “fronts”) happening at any given time, and the players will usually only be focused on one at a time.

When the players get back to a particular plot, that plot’s timeline gives you a summary of what’s happened in the time they were away. Future events will change when the players get involved—they’re the one piece of the game world you don’t have control over. When they do, revisit your timeline as part of GM prep and update future events based on how they change.

Timelines tell you when the plot pushes back on the players. Sometimes the players leave a threat simmering in the background for too long, and it comes looking for them. Maybe it’s a message from one of their allies, maybe it’s one of their friends being hurt or captured, or maybe the party themselves are hunted by an enemy. A timeline lets you properly pace and prepare for when that should happen—thinking ahead about how you might reveal it given the players’ current situation.

Using dates helps you think about travel times and other lag. Too much time between events and the game bogs down in weird ways; too little and the players aren’t able to properly respond or things feel unrealistically fast. (I actually think I erred towards the latter in this example, because it was a lot of movement in a few weeks.) But NPCs have limitations—they have to travel, they have to learn news of what other characters are doing, they have to sit and think and argue and work towards their goals. A timeline helps you be more mindful of those things. You can always come back and adjust dates if you reconsider, because…

Nothing is set in stone. I change some of these details as I went, either because there was a more interesting approach or I forgot about a detail. You don’t want a complete history here; you want improv prompts that you can work from when you need it. You’re free to adapt those prompts as you go, and the timeline gives you context so you know what your constraints are.

Writing a timeline is good brainstorming. When I write a timeline, I start by listing what the applicable NPCs know and want in the present. I might also include some past events, giving context (for example, where the players last met a particular NPC). From there, I can start listing events in broad strokes—that gets me in the NPCs’ heads, makes it clear where intermediate events might be necessary to their plot, and generates some ideas about what might happen as a result.

One timeline for one NPC, faction, or plot. Timelines are quick references for specific plot threads, not encyclopedic histories of the game world. If you find a timeline gets too complicated—for example, you’ve got two different groups of people acting in parallel, very busy with their own plots, but only occasionally interacting—maybe it needs to be multiple timelines. You can always note those intersections as events on both of the resulting timelines.

Example: Briste Reactivation

Here’s a timeline I used in my current D&D campaign.

The party captured a dark imp they know as “Grifo” after a series of misadventures, and dropped him off with a mages’ college in a small town.

They were approached by a man named “Rosewind” who wanted their knowledge of Briste (a fey portal between the planes).

Rosewind—actually an officer with the local Imperial engineers—was at odds with the local Imperial army, led by Osran Tyrol, who wanted to blow up the portals to prevent any sort of incursion from another world.

At this point, the players know of two planes adjacent to the material, The Wandering Plain (a strange, desolate place) and The World of Secrets (home to a group of fey).

• 5 Decemus IY 519

  • Osran Tyrol mobilizes a large group of soldiers, engineers, equipment, supplies, and a few tanks across the Westwood Road towards Helgard

• 7 Decemus

  • The party has been missing for a week, so Kessain Arda and Ondrea Belasch think they have a shot at taking custody of Grifo. They bring this up to their superiors at the Wizards Conclave, who give them the go-ahead to leave with Grifo for Briste.

    • They are under a mild fey charm effect at this point, but would be pursuing this to some extent anyway, as it aligns with their academic goals.
    • They begin looking for a way to transfer control of the Dimensional Shackles, using books they have smuggled out of the Wizards Conclave.
    • They hide out in the Westwood, scouting out the Imperial mobilization towards Briste

• 8 Decemus

  • Osran Tyrol makes camp along the shore near Briste. He beings felling trees and building rafts at camp, allowing the army to travel to Briste.
  • Rosewind and Allondre arrive back at Rissimo and Helgard, marshalling their “mercenary” forces.

• 10 Decemus

  • Rosewind arrives back at Briste with their troops. He skirts past Osran’s camp, knowing time is of the essence.

• 11 Decemus

  • Rosewind reactivates Briste and travels to the Wandering Plain with half of his forces. The other half stand guard and send a sending-stone message to the Empire about their discoveries.

• 12 Decemus

  • The Empire calls off Osran Tyrol’s assault on Briste and assassination attempt on Grifo.

• 21 Decemus

  • Kessain and Ondrea manage cast a modified version of Dispel Magic on the Dimensional Shackles to take control of them. With Grifo free, they begin trying to find and sneak into Briste.

• 23 Decemus

  • Kessain, Ondrea, and Grifo begin planeshopping, first to The World of Secrets to allow Grifo to regain his strength

• 24 Decemus

  • Eliastree appears to the party in a dream, warning them of the threats

• 25 Decemus

  • Rosewind , buoyed by approval from Argencourt, has been given increased resources and has built supply lines from Rissimo and Helgard to Briste. Multiple 14th Imperial Engineering squads are now running expeditions to map The Wandering Plain and find other portals out. (If the players find other portals in other planes, they may already be activated.)
  • “Rosewind” and his “mercenaries” have now dropped cover, as they have official Imperial backing.

• ?? Decemus

  • The party’s criminal connections will make contact if they show up in Rissimo or Helgard.

    • As “Rosewind” has dropped cover, the criminal underworld is now aware that he’s actually Lt. Heidrek Blacke and the 14th Imperial Engineering Divsion.

    • The criminal connections know that there was bad blood between the 14th and the 57th Imperial Battalion, and that Osran Tyrol (the lieutenant the party met when they talked to Helvius) was disgraced.

      • Osran’s not interested in undermining the Empire–he’s happy to go back to his easy assignment on the frontier–but he wouldn’t mind seeing Rosewind personally taken down a peg.
    • Word in the underworld is that they helped Rosewind/Heidrek with a plan that might give the Empire some rather unnatural advantages. The party may be persona non grata among criminals with an anti-Imperial leaning.

Notice that none of these bullet points are enough to run an encounter or narrate a session. You need to fill in a lot of gaps to figure out how they play out–the encounters and NPCs that the players will actually come in contact with.

But that also means you’re not out much if the players throw a wrench in the timeline. At the point things go off the rails, I can simply delete and rewrite so I have an idea of what’s going to happen next.

And there are plenty of moments that will assert themselves–the dark imp Grifo regains his power and goes planeswalking, Tyrol and Blacke’s ambition will spill out across the region in the form of Imperial activity, and one of the PC’s gods will alert them to the danger when things begin to boil over.