6. Plan Ahead Any successful AD&D campaign requires a great deal of preparatory work on the DM’s part. If you intend to play a high-level game, however, you also must prepare your campaign for PCs who have the power to radically alter it, and you have to be sure your campaign can provide a continuing challenge.

The best time to prepare for high-level play is during low-level play, when the PCs are just learning about the world and you have had time to see how things are working. If you wait too long, lots of details about your world become fixed in the players’ minds, and you won’t have the flexibility you need to make changes. If you start too soon, you may burn yourself out before you ever run an adventure (all work and no play makes the DM dull), and you run the risk of over-planning and trying to force the campaign’s action in directions the players don’t want to go. In other words, get your campaign going at low-level, see what you’re players are going to do with it, and then start laying the groundwork for high-level play.

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