Burials of Teganshire Post 4 of 30
Your D&D/Pathfinder games (and others, but Griffon Lore Games is currently only on these two systems) are not Hollywood.
The Hollywood-style dramatic plot doesn’t work for the D&D game table. The players may have a fantasy movie running through their heads, and the DM made have a fantasy movie in his head, but D&D is an interactive game. The story you want to tell is a bunch of friends getting together and laughing at just how bad the player rolled his wizard’s saving throws and had his PC fall into a pit of cow dung that was lit on fire, not some grandiose Game of Thrones mega-plot. That falls apart on Season 8 (ahem).
Plot Points in a Localized Campaign
“But Anthony! You just went over Characters and Setting! Now, this is a Plot post! That’s like a novel, Dude.”
Well, my friends, that’s life. More specifically, human history. There is nothing more compelling than human history. In history, we have people, we have places, and we have things that happened.
In a localized campaign, the goal is to make a small portion of the game world come alive, and “what happens in the world” should drive the “plot” of the campaign.
- NPCS have their motivates
- Players have their game drives—such as leveling their PC, having their PC get a Staff of the Magi, etc. Some players just want to show up and drink beer and roll dice. Obviously, their contribution to the plot will be small
- Setting changes—the king’s wayward sister rides into town. A flood. An earthquake. Bad draught. Diseased fauna. Etc.
- The main antagonists have his own motives
These four localized history drivers look like this:
Now that the DM has a history of his world, shaped by players, NPCs, setting, and a bad guy, he or she can move forward with rolling dice and killing monsters. And that’s where adventures come in—a DM can run their own, pull one off the shelf, or, most likely, do a combination thereof. In a localized campaign:
- Modules that have robust win and fail conditions fit in better than a “win at all costs or we failed the module” adventure
- Adventure paths can offer a “road” for the PCs to drive down while the other portions of the game world churn. That is, it’s not that the PCs took care of the bad guy, it’s that they solved a problem so they can convince the mayor to back their village expansion. Or mining expedition.
- Conflict is more personal. An attack on the village’s bridge on the trade road is an attack on the village. If the PCs don’t care about the village, because the description of it and the people in it are flat, or that they are going to “Level and Leave” then the adventure, the roll dice and kill monsters portion of your game, descends into murderhoboism.
- Lore is only used insofar as applying detail for the PCs to add their own lore. Lore impacts everything and shapes everything. If you find your lore driving the plot, well, that’s not a player-centric game. That’s just you as a DM. Which is fine, as long as you know what you’re getting into.
The Story Thus Far
We’ve talked about avoiding giving the PCs the excuse to disconnect from the campaign world. We’ve also spoken about crunchy NPCs with minds of their own, not some convenient plot-forwarding device. Then we went over the setting, talking about maps and random encounters attached to the map.
“What comes next,” is a combination of all of that, and that’s Griffon Lore Games’ goal: give the DM a module that he or she can run with the tools that support the players feeling like it’s their game and their world, and that they aren’t just cogs in a storytelling machine to advance a plot.
Your PCs are making history. Use that history to give them conflict. Conflict causes action. And who doesn’t like an action-packed adventure?
Next, we’ll depart from the general concept of campaign philosophy and talk about villains. Because who doesn’t like a great villain? Villains are delicious. Let’s feast!
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