rpg-campaign-foundation

RPG Campaign Foundation (Pathfinder 2e, dark-leaning by default)

What this skill is for

Build the foundation of a campaign — the dramatic spine a GM creates before any region, city, or dungeon: the central antagonist (or tension) and its true motivation, the thematic pillars, the act structure, the central secret, the escalating signs, and the planning roadmap that routes everything downstream. This is the top of the kit: it produces the document the rest of the skills feed off.

It uses Pathfinder 2e (post-Remaster) as the toolkit, referencing the Archives of Nethys (AoN) for deities, planes, and creatures. Crucially, this skill does not build cosmology — it adopts PF2e's existing Great Beyond, pantheon, and bestiary and decides this campaign's stance and spin on them (see Step 3g). Original metaphysics is a rare, explicit override, not the default.

Default tone is dark-leaning (level 3 of 5): heroic fantasy with shadowy inflections. See references/tone-spectrum.md.

The core idea — start with the antagonist and the truth, not the world

This is the thing this skill exists to get right, and the reason it replaced a generic world-foundation skill.

Strong campaigns don't start from cosmology — they start from a central dramatic engine: an antagonist (or a central tension) and the true motivation/secret beneath it. Everything else — theme, acts, signs, the world itself — grows to serve that engine. The frameworks agree, and so does real practice:

• Dungeon World — Fronts: the campaign is driven by an antagonist's plan in motion and the impending doom if the heroes fail.
• The Alexandrian — "don't prep plots, prep situations": prep the situation and the trail of clues (the revelation list), not a script.
• Sly Flourish — lazy campaign building: start with a hook and a handful of campaign truths, capture them on a one-pager, then spiral outward from the characters rather than building everything first.