Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 warpshadow May 21, 2011 22:13:05	I am running a campaign and I have just realized that I may be coming to a stumbling block. In a couple of weeks my party will be tasked with going to war against an army of a green dragon. I was planning on having them fight the dragon's minions for about a level before the characters are strong enough to fight the dragon directly. I have several plans for different monsters including kobolds and dragonborn, some wererat and shadarkai assassins and having the players accidentally wander into a haunted area. The problem is that I have found that several of my players are a bit of the storyteller and actor bent and while they don't mind combat I don't think they would like to have only it for four or five sessions straight. Any ideas on how to add roleplaying to this scenario?
#2 Alter_Boy May 21, 2011 22:19:27	Storyteller types should be simple. War makes great stories. Watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Saving Private Ryan, and you should have a good idea about how you can make a good story out of war. Actors? Make encounters that give them a chance to showcase their character. Perhaps the kobolds are harassing soldiers whom the actors knew when they were younger. The haunted area is a great idea, especially if the Actor is a Divine PC or typically brave. They'll like to have their bravado tested. Perhaps your best bet is to give the PCs a subplot in the war. Make one of them a Lieutenant, in charge of a band of fresh recruits. Give one of them a vial of Dragon-slaying poison that he must keep safe and use on the green dragon. Think of a reason why a Psion/Druid/Warlock etc. might go to war, and make it happen, and make it important to do.
#3 Houndstooth May 22, 2011 2:09:51	Maybe the greendragon has other ways of attacking then head on with an army. While the battle rages on the Dragons eliet minions work on a ritual or race for an artifact or something the pcs can focus on that is part of the war, but not just fights. watch the first hellboy movie for an idea of rituals during war, and the sub plots of a great conflict.
#4 maliklucius May 24, 2011 5:39:38	Storyteller types should be simple. War makes great stories. Watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Saving Private Ryan, and you should have a good idea about how you can make a good story out of war. Actors? Make encounters that give them a chance to showcase their character. Perhaps the kobolds are harassing soldiers whom the actors knew when they were younger. The haunted area is a great idea, especially if the Actor is a Divine PC or typically brave. They'll like to have their bravado tested. Perhaps your best bet is to give the PCs a subplot in the war. Make one of them a Lieutenant, in charge of a band of fresh recruits. Give one of them a vial of Dragon-slaying poison that he must keep safe and use on the green dragon. Think of a reason why a Psion/Druid/Warlock etc. might go to war, and make it happen, and make it important to do. I'll second this, and add to it. My group is consisted completely of high-immersion storyteller types; we come from shared and separate backgrounds of writing, theatre, and varying degrees of historical reenactment. It's not nearly so hard as you might imagine to run a campaign that caters to storyteller types. The suggestion of a deeper subplot will have them at it, and you can work solely off the party's concption of what's going on to fuel the story. For the simplest points, involve a personal aspect of one or more characters with the enemies or with an ongoing plot. If a character's homeland was the victim of Drow raids or something similar, the ShadarKai's cultural tendencies toward masochism and acts of torture might be a cold, hard reminder of those years. You only need to mention that a certain aspect of the plot bears noticing or reminds them of some part of their past, and the player is likely to pounce upon the opportunity for character development. This doesn't even require you to deviate from your planned plot. For something that will span even farther into the future; prepare to leave some details blank. You can merely hint that the dragonborn or kobolds have some ulterior motive in their service to the dragon, and sit back to listen to the party discussion. During a food break or some other, casually bring up the events of the campaign. The players are sure to have an idea about whats going on; whether you know the plan or not, the important thing is that the players think they know it. The green dragon probably had no relation to the nation that one of the characters hates for imprisoning some innocent faction; until that player mentioned that he suspected it was so. You can then lead off in whatever other direction you so choose, story can be casually dropped in wherever you see fit. When the plot eventually loops back around to confirm the party's longtime suspicions, they'll be all the more satisfied for having 'solved' the story in advance, and impressed that the polot was so well woven into their backstory. With storytellers, it's most important to realize that what happens at the table is only a small part of the plot playing out inside their imaginations. The story that the character stars in started long before and will end long after the campaign that s/he participates in. That is to say, many of the driving points of the character's personality happens off-screen, and that will be the case even in an ongoing campaign. The trick is to supply a framework onto which the storyteller can craft their own story in the context of your campaign. In that way, your goals and theirs will always be the same; so long as they can accomplish your goals in their own way. Hope this helps. Happy Gaming ;D