Plan Ahead (HLC)

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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.
==Create Villains Who Learn==
Create villains that can grow with the PCs. A growing villain is a character who has personal ambitions and achieves them over the course of play, just as the PCs do. The villain also becomes more powerful and accumulates his own hoard of magical items, associates, and followers. This approach reminds the players that their characters are not the only people who are making a difference in the world. It heightens the sense of urgency the players feel when the PCs confront a threat or opportunity because they know there are NPCs who are just as determined and powerful working toward results that the heroes won't like.
Backgrounds are important for NPC villains. The heroes have the advantage of constant molding and shaping by their own actions as well as the plot twists that the DM throws at them. The villain needs the same benefits in order to be truly challenging to the PCs. Some examples are included below, but the list is by no means exhaustive.
Source of Power: What is it that allows the NPC to be villainous? Does the villain merely depend on spells and character skills, or does he also command an army, run a government, or control a business?
Objectives: What vile thing does the villain want to accomplish? The emphasis here is on the word vile. The NPC's objective should be objectionable to the heroes at the very least, if not outright detrimental. The villain might wish to destroy or enslave the nation where the PCs live, wipe out an entire race, or even destroy the world.
Motives: Why does the villain wish to do vile things? He might simply be highly aggressive, have a compulsive need for power, or a thirst for revenge.
Personality: What is the villain like in person? Decide what the NPC looks like, how the character acts, where the character lives, and so on. Great villains are never flat characters; if your villain is simply a collection of statistics, the players look at the evildoer as just another monster rather than someone they love to hate.
History: How did the villain come to be? Decide where he was born, what significant things he has accomplished in the past, what failures the villain has suffered, and so on. Great NPCs are shaped by their past.
Allies: What other NPCs does the villain use or abuse? Decide if the heroes' nemesis has henchmen or servants to carry out plans and decide who those servants are. Perhaps the villain serves an even more powerful master.
==Consequences==
Consider the consequences that can arise from your low-level adventures. Remember that adventurers don't live in a vacuum, and your world is a bigger place than the small area the PCs happen to be in at any given time. When the PCs finish an adventure, you still have work to do.
Start by thinking about what could happen when the PCs leave the adventure site. Ask yourself who's still hanging around to pick up any goodies the PCs might have left behind. More than one villain got his start by collecting the remnants of his slain master's treasure hoard. Consider what that survivor might do. Does he flee or retreat and fortify?
Would he seek protection from a more powerful creature?
Now think about how much time might pass before creatures that were not directly involved in the adventure discover what the PCs did. If the heroes are given to boasting about their accomplishments, it won't take long for word to spread. If witnesses escape, or the adventure site receives regular visitors, word of the deed spreads quickly. It might be a very long time before anyone notes the disappearance of a small, independent band of goblins, but a royal messenger's demise is going to be noticed very quickly.
Consider who might care about what the PCs did. Is anyone helped? If so, how can they take advantage of the opportunity? Is anyone hurt? If so, how can they minimize or repair the damage? Take the preceding example of the slain red dragon. Perhaps the dragon has a charmed servant lurking in a village nearby. The servant is responsible for informing the dragon how much wealth the villagers have hidden and keeping track of the village's maidens and would-be dragon slayers. As one of the dragon's confidants, the servant is hated and feared, but the charm keeps the servant from thinking too hard about how unpopular he has become. When the dragon no longer visits the village to collect its annual toll of maidens, the servant is forced to flee.
The servant might make his way to the dragon's abandoned lair. If he is the first to reach the lair, he might collect a few left over coins and an overlooked magical item or two and go off to start an adventuring career. If something else got to the lair first, the servant might be captured by the lair's new resident. The servant could be killed, which ends the story line, or he might betray the village in an attempt to re-establish himself as someone to be feared. You don't have to have all of this in place before the adventure starts, just be prepared to use every adventure as a springboard for new ideas.
Not all consequences have to be bad. For example, the PCs might acquire a follower or henchman when a freed prisoner decides to follow them home. Nor do all consequences have to fall directly onto the PCs. For example, if the party infiltrates a building by using stone shape spells to force an entry, many stone buildings in the area might hastily be reinforced with metal bars, and the PCs might not be affected until they, too, wish to build something.
In many cases, however, simple adventures might have multiple layers that the PCs peel away one-by-one. In the classic adventure Against the Giants, the party begins by dealing with a single group of marauding hill giants but discovers clues that lead to a conspiracy that ultimately was hatched deep in the bowels of the earth. Ultimately, a resolute party follows the trail into the Abyss itself.
Simple, seemingly harmless incidents that the PCs dismiss with a laugh might have far-reaching implications. Bosamp, the villain in the TSR® novel Captains Outrageous, began as a fairly harmless young wizard who suffered from an unfortunate love affair and ultimately threatened to destroy the world.
==Fame and Infamy==
Keep track of PC fame and infamy. It's fun to watch players' faces when they hear exaggerated accounts of their characters' early exploits. Imagine the role-playing possibilities when they encounter a blowhard who claims to have known them way back when—imagine the possibilities when they encounter a blowhard who actually did know them way back when!
Fame and infamy should have an effect on how PCs are received later on in their careers. For example, characters who break their word too often find it difficult to get land grants or honorifics such as knighthoods later in their careers.
==Balancing Act==
Remember that it is easier to build a balanced campaign than to fix one that's out of control. A campaign that is in control has a reasonable balance between the hazards the PCs face and the rewards they gain. A controlled campaign also has a reasonable survival rate among characters who are played well.
To build a balanced game, start by reading Chapter Eight in the DMG. Decide how quickly you want your player characters to advance, and set up your campaign's experience point awards accordingly.
You also need to keep an eye on the treasure and magic you give out. You should
decide in advance how much magic you want the PCs to have, then carefully place it, making sure that the PCs have to take appropriate risks to get it. Killing an orc to get a long sword +5, holy avenger is too much reward for too little risk. If the PCs seem to be finding too much magic, make it harder to find by removing some undiscovered magical treasures or making sure that unattended magical items are well-hidden and defended by traps, curses, or spells. Remember to regularly take excess magic out of circulation.
How much magic is enough? That's up to you to decide. If you've decided that magic is going to be fairly rare, a PC should expect to find about one permanent or rechargeable magical item for every two or three levels of experience, plus one or two additional consumable items for every two levels of experience. This means that if you're following the DMG's suggestion of three to six adventures between character levels, a party of six characters should find only about one item every adventure (after six to twelve adventures, all six characters have at least one magical item). Note that a character might own considerably fewer magical items because they are used up or destroyed during play.