My Life As A Gamer: How To Erect A True Campaign

You've read my posts on the True Campaign Model. You've read Jeffro's posts on Trollopolous, and other #BROSR bloggers (such as Rick Stump) post about their campaigns and campaigning. Now you're curious about how to do it yourself, especially now that virtual tabletops exist as well as other tools making online play viable, and you'd like a road map towards making it happen.

I've got you, my fellow gamer. You don't need to set this all up at once; you're a busy man, with a real life, so this stuff is meant to be done after hours or during your lunch and coffee breaks during the day. After all, this is a hobby and not a second job.

• Choose a game: Chances are good you're into your basic fantasy adventure, so play AD&D 1st Edition (you only need the three core rulebooks) and be done with it. Whatever you choose, take the time to master the rules; you've got friends in the #BROSR that will help you get a grip, so ask for help. A little prep goes a long way. You can order copies during a coffee break.
• Get Your Stuff Together: Get a map of the campaign area; a blank hex map will do, as all you need is to mark one hex as your starting town and players will fill in the rest. Get your manuals, dice, and a notebook or pad- you will be taking plenty of notes. Having a play mat for in-person tabletop sessions is good idea; gridded for dungeons and hex for outdoors if you're doing D&D. You can order those online or buy at local shops.
• Online Contacts: You need a convenient place that you will check regularly wherein players can contact you in your capacity as Game Master. Nothing more than an email address is required, but you may want to establish a Discord server (or something with similar functionality) as you will want an online location to make campaign information available and to control access depending upon if a given player should have access to that information or not. Discord can do that.
• Online Public Record: A general channel in Discord for campaign updates will do, but you can do this with a regular email newsletter or as a blog; redundancy works, so having all three isn't a substantial increase in time spent or effort expended--literal Copy-Paste, or enabling post notifications/RSS feeds--and it allows people to keep up when (or if) they do not participate.
• Online Repository: You need some place to post intelligence for players to act upon. This can be (again) a channel in the Discord server, a Wiki, a Page or hashtag on a blog for ease of search, etc. and your campaign maps will go here along with other information items of note. This differs from the Record in that you will need to restrict access to those who are playing characters that would possess this information.
• Online Meetup Space (optional): Strongly advised to have a place where you can talk or chat directly in real time, either for virtual tabletop sessions or other disucssions that need to go down in real time, as it expands the possible reach of your campaign to those outside your immediate local environment- not a trivial concern these days.

As I noted above, Discord has functionality to do all of this. It was originally intended for gaming purposes, so that should not be surprising. Chat channels, voice channels, easy posting of images, screen-sharing in voiceover channels, private livestreaming, channel restriction through the Role function (i.e. only users with the Patron role get to see the Patron channel, etc.)and more is doable. Discord is free and covenient to set up and use, which is why a lot of tabletop players use it.

That said, I do recommend using an email address and a blog for non-participants; some folks just want to see a campaign unfold, like reading someone's memoirs or biography. Wordpress and Blogger remain free and easy to use, with only marginally more effort and cost required to set up your own site and installing Wordpress there.

Finally, consider that you may want a quality filter if you're going to run this sort of campaign, and that's where a site like Patreon and Subscribestar come into play. In addition to taking the money of those who want to pay you to entertain them--and yes, there are folks who do find this stuff genuinely entertaining--you can use campaign access as a Perk in the same way that some Twitch or YouTube streamers use Patron subscriptions as a filter for access to a supporter-oriented Discord server.

You don't have to be a dick about it; the Black Pants Legion explicitly tell you that your money will be used for stupid stuff and quality shitposting, and that's as honest as it gets. If you're keen to have a self-funding hobby pursuit, this is your best way to make that happen. In turn if you do turn out a popular and successful campaign you can share the love by taking some of that revenue and commissioning original artwork or mapwork that further promotes your campaign. Folks back in the day chipped in for pizza and Doritos; this is the next step up.

I recommend allowing for global participation, at least at the Patron level, because Patrons don't need stats to play as they're doing what amounts to old-school play-by-mail wargaming (and today looks like playing a strategy game online) and you'll be pleasantly entertained by what they come up with as solutions to the problems encountered pursuing their objectives. If you can handle online tabletop play, do that too.

I haven't addressed online tabletop interfaces due to that being very much an evolving niche; Roll20 is dominant, but competitors keep cropping up and some options for RPGs don't require much more than--say--Tabletop Simulator or even just being in a voice channel on Discord. What I describe here works for almost every tabletop RPG on the market, and most homebrews as they are derivative of standard practices- and, again, using things like Patreon should be considered only to filter out shitters, permit supporters to aid you, and to defray costs. This is a hobby and not a business.