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| #1Cody_YOct 19, 2014 18:24:14 | Warning spoilers and mature content discussed within this thread.
Now the entire point of this thread is, as the title suggests, just to share ideas on how to revive old content based upon my current experiences with running the latest box set for players whom have had varying degrees of familiarity with it already. I hope some of this information will be helpful or inspiring to others whom find themselves in this position. I like to go into things with some detail, explaining not just what I did, but what I was attempting to do, what my thought process was, and why in order to help others succeed where they may disagree with me or believe I failed, so there will be a lot covered below. If you were hoping for a short read, well, I have to apologise because this is not it.
Running a good game often requires a great deal of consideration, caculation and tedium. I do not game often, and run games even less frequently although I like to think my efforts are by and large usually well received. Recently I was asked to run a group through the 5e Red Box Set, however, there are certain caveats and the group in question presented some novel challenges in addition to unique variables which I had to overcome. The two players responsible for drawing me into this predicament had played partially through the the box set previously, and wished to continue it, but could not continue with the same group as they did not wholly agree with house rules of the previous ST. I try to allow my players as much liberty as possible to pursue whatever muse has inspired them and am somewhat more lenient than most. I do not believe in denying players anything encompassed by the available material, however aesthetically undesirable or difficult to accomodate I may find it. I allowed them to start with the experience and gold value accrued by their initial run so that the previous two months of their invested time would not feel wasted, but did insist upon fresh characters so I could add in new players, at level one, and launch the campaign from the very beginning as to allow everyone to enjoy the narrative in its entirety. We had three interested new players at the onset in addition to the original two, though only one would actually show for the first session. Conducting a module which individuals have already played through is tricky in and of itself, when they have done so recently it is even more daunting, but compounding this was also the participation of the previous ST who wished to join the campaign. This individual has been playing this game since he was eight years old and been running games since first edition. He has some thirty years of experience with Dungeons and Dragons all told. Also, he has run this box set five times for a neighborhood hobby store in order to garner interest in 5e and knows the module intimately. Making this campaign relevent, exciting and new for him would be an exciting test, especially as I am younger and far less knowledgeable than he.
Now every ST has their own signature style, a way of orchestrating content which is unique to their vision and talents. I think of mine as clockwork. For me choice and consequence are the aspects of an RPG from which all excellence is derived. Those two things are what make the setting come alive and make the plight of the characters involved intimate and hopefully epic. To do this well, some subtlety and attention to detail is required. In fifth edition, where one is fully healed every night and combat once completed can largely be forgotten, time is a resource rarely utilized to its full potential. My clockwork philosophy tries to balance this issue. So prior to starting my campaigns I do my best to fully realize the NPCs: Their motivations, their abilities, their assets, connections, personalities, drives, and desires. As the players manouver through the setting, so too are the NPCs acting, each affecting the other. This way ripples of their actions, PC and NPC alike, can be felt through the over-arching narrative and instill some unique intelligence and emotional impact to every encounter. This sort of cause and effect relationship is vulnerable to meta gaming and manipulation, especially by individuals like the previous ST, now a player, who have some knowledge of the various NPCs and their function in the story. So I decided to incorporate a new aspect to this style of play by instead of holding quests in some stort of stasis reserved only for the PCs to exploit, I viewed them as conditional opportunities to be investigated by any interested individuals -be they PCs or NPCs. The first concern one might have is that evey quest satisfied by an NPC would deny opportunity to advance in experience, capability and loot for the party, however, I addressed this by simply enhancing the NPCs as they progressed to reflect the acquisiton of experience and loot which ultimately raise the stakes and allow even the most pedestrian task the ability to evolve into something ultimately high risk - high reward. Consulting the backgrounds of the NPCs I used their position (in town, out of town etc) to see which would be able to feasibly learn of the available quests. From there I determined which, if any, of those quests they might find attractive. Then I consulted their skills and connections to consider whether or not they could acquire enough insight or information to make the quests actionable. From there I resolved what the outcome would be for pursuing those quests, ultimate success and failure in addition to investments, costs and losses. Many of these steps incorporated some simulation and rolling in order to ensure the outcomes were not predetermined or influenced by any bias. Finally I charted all of these things on a rough timeline accounting for any other responsibilities and roles so as the PCs charted their way through the story the actions of the NPCs could simultaneously take place in the background. However, this part has to be very fluid since juxtaposition and intersection of activities will eventually cause friction and conflict with one another. Running a game this way seems labor intensive, but the desire to know what will happen next lightens the workload considerably for me.
I tend to believe an ST should be largely disinterested and objective in order to be fair, and almost all of my effots are spent in support of this aim, although later in my account you will see I am not above totally ignoring it altogether. I just wanted to put that out there. Now I have no intention of detailing every session, and will just spend some time on the first since it will not feel the impact of time or activity.
So day one began with the party, comprising then of Desmond and Jack playing a third level fighter and bard respectively in addition to Brett a first level Rogue, being commissioned to accompany an ox and cart of supplies from Neverwinter to Barthen's Provisions in Phandalin. Now the module says to start as the party is approaching an ambush by goblins just outside the town. Now to avoid meta game proctoring in my campaigns, I try to employ a literary approach to narrative that way any new interjection of detail or description does not result in everyone at the table shouting 'I ready my bow!' simultaneously. Taking some liberties, which I do frequently, I instead opted to begin outside of Neverwinter to get them acquainted to my style of delivery that way an unexpected ambush might till be preserved as a genuine surprise.
The three days it took to arrive at the crossroads and then the last leg of it east before arriving at the waylay point would not be sufficient for any real changes in the initial encounter. This would be the first impression they would have of the relaunch of the module so striking an appropiate tone and favorable impression would require some retooling of the encounters fundamentals. While Dungeons and Dragons has an almost trademark, and exhaustive, portrayal of goblins, their culture and their tactics to draw from, I am not readily familiar with any of it and I only had a couple weeks to pull this together which was not sufficient time for me to both investigate and impliment all of it. Rather than attempt a half measure I decided to take some license and model them after the Viet Cong, which I was more familiar with, and which I thought would make them a little more interesting as well as challenging. This required a total rework of the cave warrens to reflect the VC tunnel infrastructure and I also had to simulate the encounter between Sildor and Gundren being beset by the goblins. Now the sort of creature competent in laying an effective ambush would by necessity have to be capable of insightful reasoning, also, since they are inclined towards slaughtering strangers capriciously I imagine they should also be pragmatically brutal. With this combination in mind, it seemed reasonable to me Sildor would be interrogated viciously for any information he might possess, and his life or death being of little intrinsic importance to the goblins, the only reason he would be left alive for possible rescue would be if he proved accomodating and gave up information on the inbound party. Such a betrayal, I believed, would also endear him to the party when they rescued him as he would feel indebted to them. Leaving the horses on the road with arrows impaled upon their flesh struck me as clumsy and stupid, Goblins I imagine would be inclined towards self sufficiency, and would not allow so much meat to simply rot in the road and announce their presence. Oxen harnessed to a cart moving appreciably slower than two men on horseback, I allotted there was sufficient time for the goblins to fell a tree to ensure the party halted their progress at a predetermined point and haul the slain horses back to the caverns. After handily dispatching the goblins, they moved the tree and proceeded to town intent on returning the following dawn. In that time, I had the goblins haul the tree back from it had been cut and positioned to try and conceal the breach, laying cruel and cunning traps nearby to forestall the party. They nearly succeeded in both efforts.
I won't describe what ensued as I imagine anyone reading this far can probably guess if they know the matieral, except for one peculiarity. When I redrew the goblin warrens I added a section for a nursery of infants and young as well as caretakers of the same, it reflected both the original Viet Cong inspiration as well as lent credibility to the setting and motivation for the goblins to defend their lair rather than abandon it. The PCs, as PCs are always wont to do, chose a point of infiltration I had not anticipated and managed to come across the nursery almost immediately despite having positioned it protectively at the heart of their compound. After some small discussion of what they should do, unexpectedly little actually, they decided A,) goblins were not really sentinent and were therefore more akin to animals than men so B.) they had no recognized right to exist, furthermore C.) represented a potential, and possibly existential, threat to the party, and were D.) evil savages in any event forfeiting any claimaint on life. Confident in their conviction it was good to kill goblins they did so swiftly and methodically. Now as I said, a good ST should be disinterested, an impartial mediator, however, times such as this can be trying and I was not inclined to merely play mute witness to such events. Each individual at that table possesses free will, and I would not presume to dictate to them limits on their ability to exercise it, but it also seemed reasonable to me that such a heinous act would not be allowed to go unchallenged. At this point I departed wholly from the constraints of the module. The shed blood of the innocent demaned reciprocity and Maglubiyet heard it, bestowing upon the party a curse. Where the slain blood of the young had fallen upon their skin, a seed has been planted introducing a change which, slowly, over the next several sessions will find them adopting physical properties reminiscent of goblins until one morning, quite suddenly, they awoke to a complete transformation. Immediately, they only noticed a paling of their skin where the goblin blood had been and that the food they ate was neither pleasing nor wholly satisfying, but it was enough to make them uneasy. Additionally, that night, a mother of the slain children rose as a revenent intent on visiting vengeance upon them. They initially caught sight of it but could not identify it or its purpose, so its very presence had also served to set them on edge. Every foray outside of Phandalin was faught with unrestrained axienty and nervous tension.
An additional consequence of this was rather unexpected, even for me. By chance one of the goblins came across the nursery while searching for reinforcements after the party had been pushed into taking up a defensive position within one of the larger expansions of the tunnels (i.e. a place they could almost stand upright, since the tunnels had been made for much smaller goblins and without any consideration for human proportions). Angered and grief stricken the goblin beheaded Sildor and threw the head into the position held by the party where his compatriots attempted to flush them out with smoke and fire. The look on their faces was, I have to admit, singularly satisfying for their peril was great, and the question of how to escape so consuming, they'd quite forgotten why they were there in the first place. The session ended with the party victorious and goblin threat neutralized.
Overall, reimagining the scenario was a success, and best of all, it had moved the clock forward a total of six days by the time they returned to town. That was enough time that the NPCs could begin to develop their own progressions.
In that time Iarno had learned of the spellbook sought by Sister Garaele and heard rumors of the undead at Old Owl Well, under the not wholly unreasonable assumption the two were related, he set out to investigate the matter personally - operations in the town requiring the continued presence of his Redbrands. Discovering Hamon instead, Iarno engaged him in coversation and the two eventually arrived at the decision that they should confront the banshee Agatha together. Packing only what Hamun believed would be useful should the endeavor go badly, they return to Phandalin briefly to gather some of Iarno's Redbrands since the expedition could be long and dangerous then set out.
Daran Edermath, concernerned by the presence of the undead wandering the ruins of Arthindol's tower, attempted to recruit Sister Garaele into joining him in an attempt to put them down, to which she readily agreed. However, lacking anyone to delegate her duties to, their venture is delayed while she prepared her shrine and herself for the departure knowing she could be gone easily for a few days. Finding Hamun's guardians they quickly put them down, seizing his abandoned belongings, and returned content that they had done all that was required. The undead, they reasoned, had probably been disturbed by some visiting scholar or acolyte whom had no doubt been forced to abandon their efforts and fled for the safety of wherever they had come from.
Anyway, I won't exhaustive list everything which took place, but it was enough to shift variables so that while they remained recognizable they were no longer familiar.
One of the unexpected treats was the outcome of Iarno and Hamun's eventual partnership. A banshee is not provoked lightly, and neither had any desire to approach it themselves, so they sent in two Redbrands whom botched negotiations badly (critical failure) and did not live long enough to even regret it. I imagined Agatha would be insulted and enraged and not at all placated with only their deaths. Now there are no stats for her in the module so I wasn't sure how to approach the aftermatch of this initially, but I soon learned she had been around since second edition and that her inclusion was probably meant to be a treat for older players. I wrote up what I thought was a fairly conservative, and ridiculously overpowered for the anticipated levels of the campaign, stat sheet for her and thinking I was making a mess of things committed myself to combat between three major NPCs, the loss of any representing a significant detraction from the overall experience and quite possibly jeopardizing my success with running this in a satisfactory manner.
Still, I was determined to see this through, come what may. Life is not always kind, after all. Especially to STs.
Now Iarno and Hamun were intelligent enough to know they could not win such a fight, and need only engage it long enough to ensure the remaining Redbrands committed themselves to the battle and afforded they two time and opportunity to escape. So deciding upon their actions and making the corresponding rolls, I simulated what the combat taking place would look like making notes as to the effects and the evidence which would remain in testimony to the battle afterwards for the party to stumble upon later. To my surprise, the dice were not as impartial as I attempted to be, and the wizards and the Redbrands held their own at first. Enboldened, I had the wizards fully commit and though it was a narrow thing, Iarno was still standing at the end of it (barely), and Hamun had even managed to survive four successive rounds to the end of combat and be stabilized. I would have said that was an impossible outcome before I had started, but can't say I was unhappy with it turning out that way.
Anyway, I am sure I am not the only one to approach the game this way, and doubtless there are similar threads and experiences detailed on this site, but on the off chance this might prove useful to anyone else I am sharing it anyway. Hope you enjoyed it and I apologize for the eleventy billion typoes I am sure I missed as I typed this. |