this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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For the former, generally speaking, it's tempting to get caught up in trying to build an open sandboxy campaign that your players can poke around in. Don't. That way lies madness. You can achieve the same effect by building your first sessions as pretty concrete modules and then, when players have their feet under them, ask them which direction they'd like to go next session and prep that. Still gives players choices, but you don't have to write the whole campaign in a week.
For the latter, try to get back on the rails by moving names and locations around. If you have content planned for Riverwood and the player darts off towards Oakfell, maybe Oakfell is the town that the content is in - or maybe the module is in that random cave with suspiciously boxy chambers. If all else fails, it's easy for a party to get waylaid by random encounters (bandits, trolls, etc.) that you prep ahead of time while you work out where they're actually going.