Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Campaign Story Lines/Plots
When developing a living campaign world it's important to have stuff going on. Maybe there is a border war with another kingdom. Orc raiders razing farming villages. A cult of necromancers littering the landscape with undead. The point is, there is something going on when the players enter the scene. There is movement to the world. A life of events that exists beyond the characters.
How much of that infringes on what the players do? There is no right answer. I guess the rightest answer for me is, as much as the players want. Events will occur whether players chose to be involved or not. Say those necromancers attack a town and the players have chosen to go after some rumored treasure. When they return, a good chunk of the town is burnt to the ground. Unloading all their treasure becomes more difficult. So the attack affects them indirectly.
I'm developing a new campaign world (very slowly it seems) and I like to have a few over arcing story (plot) lines that are shaping the current landscape of the world; politically, spiritually and monetarily. The players can chose to be as involved as they want. The side quests/story lines/plots are usually developed during play. I might have a vague shadow of an idea, but it's the players that flesh it out. Players make the best story lines accidentally.
As of now, I've have some of the smaller things figured out, such as, developing a few interesting cultures and how they interact. A little history to add some depth to the world. If you're going to have ruins for the players to explore there should be a reason why they are there originally. It helps shape the adventure. Plus, I can add artifacts from past cultures or kingdoms. I like adding that sense of history to a campaign. I learned this important lesson from the Majestic Wilderlands. Rob Conley has developed such a rich history that it is a pleasure to explore. So I like to offer that same option to my players.
As I develop my campaign, and I might add, I am ripping off ideas from blogs left and right, I'll post some of what I'm working on. No spoilers for the players though. I need to do something like Trey Causey did with his Weird Adventure and develop an index.
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The trick is to find effective methods of having this stuff without having to play 30 years ;-)
ReplyDeleteOne thing I found is to reskin stuff that happened in other campaigns or different media (like tv, etc). A lot of stuff that folks do and act works in any time period or genre if you change the details. Look at Lucas, Star Wars and the Hidden Fortress. Or the numerous Seven Samurai adaptations.
My favorite of these is _Yojimbo_, reskinned at least three times, as a Western (Fistful of Dollars), Swords and Sorcery (The Warrior and the Sorceress), and a gangster film (Last Man Standing). Yojimbo in turn was a reskinning of Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, about a mining dispute in Montana in the 20s.
DeleteSounds great. I agree the world needs to move on in ways without the player's necessarily interacting with that piece.
ReplyDeletePeople do seem to like the indices, too.
Even if it's only "rumors," such as a neighboring town being attacked and the local populace wondering when/if it will happen to then.
ReplyDeleteOr, the king has died and there is turmoil in the capital as to which son will inherit. Something that would certainly affect the campaign at the local level: one son is "good," the other "evil."
Really like the history idea of artifacts from another era. Using the ruins as a history of the relam instead of just some random lair. Sounds like a lot of detail good luck
ReplyDeleteThat's why I've come to love the event charts in Oriental Adventures. A general event type for the year (Invasion, Assassination, whatever), plus more specific event types for each month, plus possible specific events (in addition to random encounters, I'd suppose) each day. They can be easily adapted to any cultural background.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember who it was, but someone talked about making a spreadsheet that used a simple set of random weather charts (Lisa Cabala's from Dragon 137) and the year and month event charts from OA to plot out each game year in advance. I want to do that myself, but I'm not a great spreadsheet programmer. I'd hate to have to work up cell data for each of 360-odd rows of cells. If there's a way to automate the similar cells, I'd be happy to learn it.
Wouldn't be too tough, really, and it's something I've wanted to do for my world. I've always liked those tables from OA!
DeleteI think this is an area where I could improve as a GM. In my recent PbB game, there were lots of different threads revolving "around" the players but not so much in terms of things going on beyond their immediate sphere (but that would, for example, affect them indirectly).
ReplyDelete